Igal
10 Hasta aquí sobre este punto.
Pero si la materia carece de cualidad, ¿cómo puede ser mala?
Se dice que carece de cualidad porque ella misma, en sí misma, no tiene nada de esas cualidades que va a recibir y que van a estar en ella como en un sustrato; no, sin embargo, en el sentido de que no tenga ninguna naturaleza. Si, pues, tiene una naturaleza, ¿qué dificultad hay en que esta naturaleza sea mala, pero no mala a modo de dotada de cualidad? Porque la cualidad misma es aquello en virtud de lo cual otra cosa se dice estar dotada de cualidad. La cualidad es, pues, un accidente y está en otro. La materia, en cambio, no está en otro, sino que es el sustrato, y el accidente está en ese sustrato. Se dice, pues, que carece de cualidad porque no obtuvo la cualidad que tiene naturaleza de accidente. Por tanto, si la cualidad misma carece de cualidad, ¿cómo vamos a decir que la materia esté dotada de cualidad porque no recibió cualidad? Luego con razón se dice que carece de cualidad y que es mala; porque no se dice que sea mala por tener cualidad, antes bien por no tener cualidad, para que no fuera quizá mala por ser forma y no una naturaleza contraria a la forma.
Bouillet
En voici assez sur ce sujet. – On demandera sans doute comment la matière peut être mauvaise puisqu’elle est sans qualité (ἄποιος). Si l’on dit qu’elle n’a pas de qualité, c’est en ce sens qu’elle n’a par elle-même aucune des qualités qu’elle recevra, auxquelles elle servira de sujet; ce n’est pas en ce sens qu’elle n’aurait aucune nature. Or si elle a une nature, qui empêche que cette nature ne soit mauvaise, sans que cependant être mauvaise soit pour elle une qualité? En effet rien n’est qualité que ce qui sert à qualifier une chose différente de soi; une qualité est donc un accident : c’est ce qui s’affirme comme l’attribut d’un sujet autre que soi-même. Mais la matière n’est pas l’attribut d’une chose étrangère; elle est le sujet auquel on rapporte les accidents. Donc, puisque toute qualité est accident, la matière, dont la nature n’est pas d’être accident, est sans qualité. Si de plus la qualité [prise en général] est elle-même sans qualité, comment pourrait-on dire de la matière, tant qu’elle n’a pas encore reçu de qualité, qu’elle est qualifiée de quelque manière? On a donc le droit d’affirmer à la fois et qu’elle n’a pas de qualité et qu’elle est mauvaise ; ce n’est pas pour avoir une qualité qu’elle est mauvaise, c’est pour n’en avoir aucune. Elle serait peut-être mauvaise si elle était une forme, mais elle ne serait pas une nature contraire à foute forme.
Guthrie
MATTER IS BOTH WITHOUT QUALITIES AND EVIL.
10. It may well be asked (by Stoics) how matter can be evil, as it is without quality? That matter possesses no qualities can be said in the sense that by itself it has none of the qualities it is to receive, or to which matter is to serve as substrate; but cannot be said in the sense that it will possess no nature. Now, if it have a nature, what hinders this nature from being bad, without this being bad being a quality? Nothing indeed is a quality but what serves to qualify something different from itself; a quality is, therefore, an accident; a quality is that which can be mentioned as the attribute of a subject other than itself. But matter is not the attribute of something alien; it is the subject to which accidents are related. Therefore, since every quality is an accident, matter, whose nature is not to be an accident, is without quality. If, besides, quality (taken in general), itself be without quality, how could one say of matter, so far as it has not yet received any quality, that it is in some manner qualified? It is, therefore, possible to assert of matter that, it both has no quality, and yet is evil. Matter is not evil because it has a quality, but just because it has none. If, indeed, matter possessed a form, it might indeed be bad; but it would not be a nature contrary to all form.
MacKenna
10. But if Matter is devoid of quality how can it be evil?
It is described as being devoid of quality in the sense only that it does not essentially possess any of the qualities which it admits and which enter into it as into a substratum. No one says that it has no nature; and if it has any nature at all, why may not that nature be evil though not in the sense of quality?
Quality qualifies something not itself: it is therefore an accidental; it resides in some other object. Matter does not exist in some other object but is the substratum in which the accidental resides. Matter, then, is said to be devoid of Quality in that it does not in itself possess this thing which is by nature an accidental. If, moreover, Quality itself be devoid of Quality, how can Matter, which is the unqualified, be said to have it?
Thus, it is quite correct to say at once that Matter is without Quality and that it is evil: it is Evil not in the sense of having Quality but, precisely, in not having it; give it Quality and in its very Evil it would almost be a Form, whereas in Truth it is a Kind contrary to Form.
“But,” it may be said, “the Kind opposed to all Form is Privation or Negation, and this necessarily refers to something other than itself, it is no Substantial-Existence: therefore if Evil is Privation or Negation it must be lodged in some Negation of Form: there will be no Self-Existent Evil.”
This objection may be answered by applying the principle to the case of Evil in the Soul; the Evil, the Vice, will be a Negation and not anything having a separate existence; we come to the doctrine which denies Matter or, admitting it, denies its Evil; we need not seek elsewhere; we may at once place Evil in the Soul, recognising it as the mere absence of Good. But if the negation is the negation of something that ought to become present, if it is a denial of the Good by the Soul, then the Soul produces vice within itself by the operation of its own Nature, and is devoid of good and, therefore, Soul though it be, devoid of life: the Soul, if it has no life, is soulless; the Soul is no Soul.
No; the Soul has life by its own nature and therefore does not, of its own nature, contain this negation of The Good: it has much good in it; it carries a happy trace of the Intellectual-Principle and is not essentially evil: neither is it primally evil nor is that Primal Evil present in it even as an accidental, for the Soul is not wholly apart from the Good.
Perhaps Vice and Evil as in the Soul should be described not as an entire, but as a partial, negation of good.
But if this were so, part of the Soul must possess The Good, part be without it; the Soul will have a mingled nature and the Evil within it will not be unblended: we have not yet lighted on the Primal, Unmingled Evil. The Soul would possess the Good as its Essence, the Evil as an Accidental.
Perhaps Evil is merely an impediment to the Soul like something affecting the eye and so hindering sight.
But such an evil in the eyes is no more than an occasion of evil, the Absolute Evil is something quite different. If then Vice is an impediment to the Soul, Vice is an occasion of evil but not Evil-Absolute. Virtue is not the Absolute Good, but a co-operator with it; and if Virtue is not the Absolute Good neither is Vice the Absolute Evil. Virtue is not the Absolute Beauty or the Absolute Good; neither, therefore, is Vice the Essential Ugliness or the Essential Evil.
We teach that Virtue is not the Absolute GoodGood and Beauty, because we know that These are earlier than Virtue and transcend it, and that it is good and beautiful by some participation in them. Now as, going upward from virtue, we come to the Beautiful and to the Good, so, going downward from Vice, we reach Essential Evil: from Vice as the starting-point we come to vision of Evil, as far as such vision is possible, and we become evil to the extent of our participation in it. We are become dwellers in the Place of Unlikeness, where, fallen from all our resemblance to the Divine, we lie in gloom and mud: for if the Soul abandons itself unreservedly to the extreme of viciousness, it is no longer a vicious Soul merely, for mere vice is still human, still carries some trace of good: it has taken to itself another nature, the Evil, and as far as Soul can die it is dead. And the death of Soul is twofold: while still sunk in body to lie down in Matter and drench itself with it; when it has left the body, to lie in the other world until, somehow, it stirs again and lifts its sight from the mud: and this is our “going down to Hades and slumbering there.”