is the common element in state and disposition and passive quality and figure and shape? And what about rarefied and solid and lean? (VI. 1. 10, 1-6)
Searching for this "common element" (τό κοινόν), Plotinus proceeds by making tentative proposals. A proposal will have to be modified or abandoned if it leads to impossibilities or absurdities. The first proposal which Plotinus makes in this connection is that δύναμις (potency, power, capacity) may be the "common element" shared by all different kinds of qualities.53 Now, this assumption seems to hold in such cases as habits,
dispositions, natural capacities and the like. It is evident, however, that as a common characteristic of qualities it cannot apply to physical incapacities (άδυναμίαι), which nevertheless are considered by Aristotle as qualities.54 Besides, how is it possible for figures (σχήματα) and shapes
(μορφαί) to be considered both as powers and as qualities in the Aristotelian sense? But for Plotinus the most absurd implication of the assumption that qualities are powers is this: If the assumption were true, then only qualified beings would be powerful, while pure Being or Being without qualifications would have to be powerless. That is to say, qualities (δυνάμεις) would seem to be raised above the activities (ένέργειαι) of substance which is not acceptable to Plotinus. He states:
And further, being qua being will have no power except when the quale comes to it. And the activities of substances, which are activities in the strictest sense, activate what belongs to the quale by themselves, and what they are belongs to their own powers. (VI. 1. 10, 12-15)
Consequently, the original proposal that qualities are powers must be modified somehow. For, Plotinus argues, perhaps qualities are condi tioned by powers which are posterior to the substances as such "So that quality would be a power which adds to substance, posterior to their being themselves, the being qualified" {Ibid. 20-21). But this posteriority would be enough to prevent qualities from enjoying the unity of a genus, since "genera," for which Plotinus seeks here, are primary.55
If this is so, then it will be well to look somewhere else for the "com mon element" in all types of quality. Plotinus' second proposal is that this "common element" may be "a sort of forming principles" (λόγοι τινές). In order to grasp the importance of this proposal, it is necessary to examine briefly a basic distinction which Plotinus draws between
53 According to SAC, pp. 224ff., the conception of qualities as δυνάμεις was Stoic. For
the various meanings of the term, see Metaphysics 1019a-1020a.
54 Άδυναμία is the opposite of δύναμις, that is, the absence of the potency or potentiality
of something.
55 In VI. 2. 8, 42-43, Plotinus states: "Καί πρώτα δέ γένη δτι ούδέν αύτών κατηγορήσεις
κυριως ποιότητες and όμωνύμως π<ΗΟτητες. The latter are also called by Plotinus διαφοραί της ούσιας (essential or specific differences). A parallel of this important distinction is to be found in Metaphysics (1020b 13-21), where Aristotle distinguished two kinds of ποιόν, what he calls διαφοραί της ούσίας or τό κυριώτατον and what he calls διαφοραί κινήσεων or πάθη. I shall quote and compare both related passages here. Aristotle states: Quality, then, seems to have practically two meanings, and one of these is the more proper. The primary quality is the differentia of the essence and of this the quality of numbers is a part; for it is a difference of essence, but either not of things that move or not of them qua moving. Secondly, there are the modifications of things that move, qua moving, and the differentiae of movements; virtue and vice fall among these modifications; for they indicate differentiae of the movement or activity, according to which the things in motion act or are acted on well or badly. (Ross* translation) Plotinus states:
But the specific differences which distinguish substances in relation to each other are qualities in an equivocal sense, being rather activities and rational forming principles, or parts of forming principles, making clear what the thing is none the less even if they seem to declare that the substance is of a specific quality. And the qualities in the strict and proper sense, according to which beings are qualified, which we say are powers, would in fact in their general character be a sort of forming principles and, in a sense, shapes, beauties and uglinesses in the soul and in the body in the same way. (VI. 1. 10, 21-27)
The basic difference between these two approaches, insofar as the twofold division of qualities is concerned, is that, what Aristotle con sidered as qualities in the strict sense (i.e. the essential differences) are, for Plotinus, qualities only in a secondary sense (i.e. equivocal or homonymous). For unlike the qualities in the true sense, they are not δυνάμεις, Plotinus argues, but ένέργειαι and λόγοι. He also asserts that the qualities in the strict sense determine the qualified things by virtue of being powers. But then the question is: "How can they all be powers? Let us grant that beauty and health are, of both kinds, but how can ugliness and illness and feebleness and in general incapacity be powers?"
(Ibid. 27-30). The following passages may suggest an answer to this
question:
Nor, again, are all qualities rational forming principles: for how can illness, a permanent state of illness, be a forming principle? But then, are those which consist in forms and powers qualities, but these other ones priva tions? So they are not one genus, but they are brought into one category, as for instance knowledge is a form of power, but ignorance is a privation and incapacity. (Ibid. 37-43)