Plotino - Tratado 43,14 (VI, 2, 14) — Eliminar outros gêneros: a qualidade

14 Pasando a la cualidad, ¿por qué no está entre los géneros primarios? Pues porque también ésta es posterior y viene a continuación de la Sustancia. Ahora bien, la Sustancia primaria debe tener a éstas por acompañantes, mas no debe recibir de ellas su constitución ni estar integrada por ellas. Si no, sería posterior a la cualidad y a la cuantidad. En las sustancias compuestas y resultantes de una multiplicidad, en que los números y las cuantidades son factores del cambio de aquéllas, podrá, sí, haber cualidades y se echará de ver en ellas una cierta comunidad. Empero en los géneros primarios no hay que distinguir entre entidades simples y compuestas, sino entre entidades simples y entidades integrantes de la Sustancia, no de una sustancia particular. Porque tal vez no sea absurdo que aun la cualidad forme parte integrante de una sustancia particular, dado que ésta tiene ya su sustancia antes de tener cualidad, y tiene su «talidad» como algo extrínseco, mientras que la sustancia misma debe tener lo que tiene como algo sustancial. Aunque en otra parte sosteníamos que las partes integrantes de la sustancia son cualidades equívocamente, pero que cualidades son las determinaciones extrínsecas posteriores a la sustancia, y que las intrínsecas a las sustancias son actividades de las mismas, mientras que las posteriores a las sustancias son ya afecciones. Ahora añadimos que las partes integrantes de una sustancia particular no son, en absoluto, partes integrantes de su sustancia, porque no cabe adición sustancial en el hombre en cuanto hombre en orden a ser sustancia: al hombre le viene su sustancia de arriba, antes de pasar a diferenciarse, del mismo modo que es ya también animal antes de pasar a ser racional.

XIV. Passons à la qualité. Pourquoi ne figure-t-elle pas non plus parmi les genres premiers? — C’est qu’elle aussi leur est postérieure : elle vient en effet après l’essence. L’Essence première doit avoir pour conséquences ces choses [la quantité et la qualité] (37), mais elle n’est ni constituée ni complétée par elles : autrement, elle serait postérieure à la qualité et à la quantité. Pour les essences composées, formées de plusieurs éléments, dans lesquelles il y a des nombres et des qualités, elles sont différenciées par ces divers éléments qui constituent alors des qualités, et en même temps elles ont entre elles quelque chose de commun. Mais pour les genres premiers, la distinction à établir ne se tire pas de ce qui n’est pas simple et du composé (38), mais du simple et de ce qui complète l’essence (39). Remarquez que je ne dis pas ce qui complète une certaine essence : car s’il s’agissait d’une certaine essence, il n’y aurait rien de déraisonnable à admettre qu’une telle essence fut complétée par une qualité, puisque cette essence subsisterait déjà avant d’avoir la qualité et ne recevrait du dehors que la propriété d’être telle ou telle. L’Essence absolue doit au contraire posséder essentiellement tout ce qui la constitue.

Au reste, nous avons reconnu ailleurs (40) que ce qui est complément de l’essence n’est appelé qualité que par homonymie, que ce qui vient du dehors et après l’essence est proprement qualité; que ce qui appartient en propre à l’essence en est l’acte, que ce qui vient après elle est passion [modification passive]. Nous ajoutons maintenant que ce qui se rapporte à une certaine essence ne peut à aucun titre être complément de l’essence. Il n’est besoin d’aucune addition d’essence à l’homme, en tant qu’homme, pour qu’il soit une essence. L’essence existe déjà dans une région supérieure avant qu’on descende à la différence spécifique : ainsi l’animal existe [comme essence] avant qu’on descende à la propriété de raisonnable [comme différence spécifique, quand on dit : l’homme est un animal raisonnable] (41).

QUALITY IS NOT A PRIMARY GENUS BECAUSE IT IS POSTERIOR TO BEING.

14. Let us now pass on to quality. Why does quality also fail to appear among the primary genera ? Because quality also is posterior to them; it does indeed follow after being. The first Being must have these (quantity and quality) as consequences, though being is neither constituted nor completed thereby; otherwise, being would be posterior to them. Of course, as to the composite beings, formed of several elements, in which are both numbers and qualities, they indeed are differentiated by those different elements which then constitute qualities, though they simultaneously contain common (elements). As to the primary genera, however, the distinction to be established does not proceed from simpleness or compositeness, but of simpleness and what completes being. Notice, I am not saying, "of what completes ’some one* (being"; for if we were dealing with some one being, there would be nothing unreasonable in asserting that such a being was completed by a quality, since this toeing would have been in existence already before having the quality, and would receive from the ex-Iterior only the property of being such or such. On the contrary, absolute Being must essentially possess all that constitutes it.

COMPLEMENT OF BEING IS CALLED QUALITY ONLY BY COURTESY.

Besides, we have elsewhere pointed out that what is a complement of being is called a quality figuratively only; and that what is genuinely quality comes from the exterior, posteriorly to being. What properly belongs to being is its actualization; and what follows it is an experience (or, negative modification). We now add that what refers to some being, cannot in any respect be the complement of being. There is no need of any addition of "being" (existence) to man, so far as he is a man, to make of him a (human) being. Being exists already in a superior region before descending to specific difference; thus the animal exists (as being) before one descends to the property of being reasonable, when one says: "Man is a reasonable animal."

14. Why is Quality, again, not included among the Primaries? Because like Quantity it is a posterior, subsequent to Substance. Primary Substance must necessarily contain Quantity and Quality as its consequents; it cannot owe its subsistence to them, or require them for its completion: that would make it posterior to Quality and Quantity.

Now in the case of composite substances - those constituted from diverse elements - number and qualities provide a means of differentiation: the qualities may be detached from the common core around which they are found to group themselves. But in the primary genera there is no distinction to be drawn between simples and composites; the difference is between simples and those entities which complete not a particular substance but Substance as such. A particular substance may very well receive completion from Quality, for though it already has Substance before the accession of Quality, its particular character is external to Substance. But in Substance itself all the elements are substantial.

Nevertheless, we ventured to assert elsewhere that while the complements of Substance are only by analogy called qualities, yet accessions of external origin and subsequent to Substance are really qualities; that, further, the properties which inhere in substances are their activities [Acts], while those which are subsequent are merely modifications [or Passions]: we now affirm that the attributes of the particular substance are never complementary to Substance [as such]; an accession of Substance does not come to the substance of man qua man; he is, on the contrary, Substance in a higher degree before he arrives at differentiation, just as he is already "living being" before he passes into the rational species.