Enneads VI.1: Of the Ten Aristotelian and Four Stoic Categories
Habituations Are Reasons That Participate in Forms
9It must therefore be granted that in the things of which we first spoke, such as knowing and doing (active being), there is an actualization, an habituation, and an actualizing reason; while in the other things there is a participation in form and reason. For indeed, if the bodies were the only essences, the relative habituations would bear no reality. If, on the contrary, we assign the first rank in existence to incorporeal things, and to the reasons, and if we define the habituations as reasons that participate in the forms, we should say that what is double has the double for its cause, and what is half, has the half as its cause; and that other things are what they are named because of the presence of the same, or of the contrary form. Now either two things simultaneously receive one the double, and the other the half, and one greatness, and the other smallness; or contraries such as resemblance and dissimilarity are to be found in each thing, as well as identity and difference; and everything finds itself simultaneously similar and dissimilar, identical and different. It might be objected that if one object were ugly, and another uglier still, they are such because they participate in a form. Not so; for if these two objects be equally ugly, they are equal in the absence of the form. If they be unequally ugly, the least ugly is such because it participates in a form which does not sufficiently subdue matter, and the uglier is such because it participates in a form which does so still less. They could, besides, be judged from the standpoint of deprivation, comparing them to each other as if they contained some form. The sensation is a form that results from two things (of that which feels, and that which is felt); so also with knowledge. In respect to the thing possessed, possession is an act which contains, which has a kind of efficacy. As to mensuration, which is an actualization of measure, in respect of the measured object, it consists in a reason.
WHILE SOME ARISTOTELIAN CATEGORIES ARE LOGICALLY POSSIBLE, THE OBJECTS SUBSUMED ARE IMPOSSIBLE.
If then, considering the constitution of the relative relations as a generic form, it be admitted that it constitutes an unity, it forms a classification; consequently it constitutes an existence and a form in all things. But if the reasons (or, relations) be opposed to each other, if the above-mentioned differences obtain among them, they do not constitute a class, and everything must be reduced to a resemblance, or category. Now, even if we admit that the things of which we have spoken can be reduced to a unity, it does not follow that all the things gathered under the same category by the Aristotelians, could be reduced to a single sort. Indeed, they lump together into the same classification, both objects and mere statements of their absence, as well as the objects which derive their appellation from them; as, for instance, doubleness itself, and the double object. Now how is it possible to reduce to the same classification both a thing and the mere lack of it, as, for instance, doubleness and the non-double, the relative and the non-relative? This is as absurd as it would be to gather into the same classification the living “being,” and the non-living “being.” Worse yet, how could one assort together duplication and the double object, whiteness and the white object? Such things could not possibly be identical.
10We are now to consider quality, on account of which a being is said to be “such.” What can be the nature of this quality that it exerts the power of deciding of the phenomena of objects? Is there a same, single quality which is something common to all qualities, and which, by its differences, forms classifications? Or are the qualities so different that they could not constitute one and the same classification? What is there in common between capacity and disposition (that is, the physical power), the affective quality, the figure, and the exterior form?
THE LACK OF POWERS CANNOT BE SUBSUMED UNDER THE SAME CATEGORY AS THE POWERS.
What shall be said of thickness and thinness, of fatness and leanness? If the element common to these conceptions be a power belonging to the capacities, dispositions, and physical powers, which gives to each object the power it possesses, the statements of the absence of power will no longer be classified along with (the powers). Besides, in what sense can we call the figure and form of each thing a “power?” Further, essence would have been deprived of all powers that were essential, retaining only those it might have received. Then, quality would comprehend all actualizations of the beings, which, properly, are actualizations only so far as they act spontaneously; and also all actualizations of these properties, but only so far as they really exist. But quality consists in (unessential) powers (such as habituations and dispositions) classified below beings. For instance, boxing ability does not belong among necessary human qualifications, such as rational functions. The latter would not be called a quality (as we would speak of boxing ability); and reasoning would be considered a quality only figuratively.