Categoria: Enéada VI

3. But perhaps we should rather speak of some single category, embracing Intellectual Substance, Matter, Form, and the Composite of Matter and Form. One might refer to the family of the Heraclids as a unity in the sense, not of a common element in all its members, but of a common origin: similarly, Intellectual Substance…

1. Philosophy at a very early stage investigated the number and character of the Existents. Various theories resulted: some declared for one Existent, others for a finite number, others again for an infinite number, while as regards the nature of the Existents – one, numerically finite, or numerically infinite – there was a similar disagreement.…

24. There remains Situation, which like Possession is confined to a few instances such as reclining and sitting. Even so, the term is not used without qualification: we say “they are placed in such and such a manner,” “he is situated in such and such a position.” The position is added from outside the genus.…

23. As for Possession, if the term is used comprehensively, why are not all its modes to be brought under one category? Possession, thus, would include the quantum as possessing magnitude, the quale as possessing colour; it would include fatherhood and the complementary relationships, since the father possesses the son and the son possesses the…

15. The “category of Action”: The quantum has been regarded as a single genus on the ground that Quantity and Number are attributes of Substance and posterior to it; the quale has been regarded as another genus because Quality is an attribute of Substance: on the same principle it is maintained that since activity is…

14. The Academy and the Lyceum are places, and parts of Place, just as “above,” “below,” “here” are species or parts of Place; the difference is of minuter delimitation. If then “above,” “below,” “the middle” are places – Delphi, for example, is the middle (of the earth) – and “near-the-middle” is also a place –…

13. With regard to Date: If “yesterday,” “to-morrow,” “last year” and similar terms denote parts of time, why should they not be included in the same genus as time? It would seem only reasonable to range under time the past, present and future, which are its species. But time is referred to Quantity; what then…

10. As regards Quality, the source of what we call a “quale,” we must in the first place consider what nature it possesses in accordance with which it produces the “qualia,” and whether, remaining one and the same in virtue of that common ground, it has also differences whereby it produces the variety of species.…

6. In considering Relation we must enquire whether it possesses the community of a genus, or whether it may on other grounds be treated as a unity. Above all, has Relation – for example, that of right and left, double and half – any actuality? Has it, perhaps, actuality in some cases only, as for…

4. We are told that number is Quantity in the primary sense, number together with all continuous magnitude, space and time: these are the standards to which all else that is considered as Quantity is referred, including motion which is Quantity because its time is quantitative – though perhaps, conversely, the time takes its continuity…

25. There are those who lay down four categories and make a fourfold division into Substrates, Qualities, States, and Relative States, and find in these a common Something, and so include everything in one genus. Against this theory there is much to be urged, but particularly against this posing of a common Something and a…

2. But are we really obliged to posit the existence of such genera? Take Substance, for Substance must certainly be our starting-point: what are the grounds for regarding Substance as one single genus? It has been remarked that Substance cannot be a single entity common to both the Intellectual and the Sensible worlds. We may…