Are There Qualities in Intelligible Being? On Plotinus VI.2 [43] 14

The present article provides a detailed commentary on Plotinus VI.2 [43] 14. This chapter raises some difficult questions concerning the status of quality in Plotinus’ metaphysics. Recent interpretations suggest that Plotinus here distinguishes two levels in intelligible ousia and that he expresses this distinction through a qualified use of the distinction between constituent and accidental qualities (see L. Lavaud, The Primary Substance in Plotinus’ Metaphysics : A Little-Known Concept, « Phronesis », 59, 2014, pp. 369-384). This distinction had been developed in the commentary tradition on Aristotle’s Categories and Plotinus focuses on it in treatises II.6 [17] and VI.1 [42]. As a matter of fact, such a reading is unpersuasive. In VI.2 [43] 14 Plotinus does not transpose and adapt the classification of qualities into his account of intelligible being. Rather, he shows that quality is not one of the greatest genera or kinds that define the structure of the Intellect. So the greatest genera are neither accidental qualities nor constituent properties of intelligible being. Furthermore, Plotinus argues that the distinctive type of multiplicity in the Intellect cannot in any way be expressed through the distinction between subject and property, and this because at the level of intelligible being all multiplicity is substantial and completely internal.