Тhе fеmininе, thе оrigin оf еvil аnd thе моtiоn оf маttеr in Рlutаrсh's dе аnimае рrосrеаtiоnе

In De animae procreatione in Timaeo Plutarch names three first principles, real existence, space, and becoming (1024c). This phrase, ὄν τε καὶ χώραν καὶ γένεσιν, is a direct quote of Timaeus 52d.1 The exact nature and relation of these three kinds is a notoriously difficult problem of Plato’s cosmogony, and it is in particular the latter two and the origin of evil that has caused serious scholarly speculation. Much of this revolves on a reading of Laws 10, where Plato posits both a beneficent and a maleficent soul (896e). Demulder has highlighted the prominence of Laws 10, especially 892a-898e, in De animae procreatione.2 Plutarch’s dualism is well-known but its subtleties remain elusive, so scholars tend to ascribe to him a measure of inconsistency. Chlup has argued that Plutarch does theorise two opposing powers, but that the irrational is only found in the sublunary sphere and the metaphysical schema of De animae procreatione and De Iside therefore fails to clarify the relation of the irrational principle to the highest ontological level. According to Chlup, Plutarch’s primary interest is ethical, for which metaphysics is only a support and a guide.3 However, metaphysics also offers an explanation for ethical dilemmas not so easily supported otherwise.4 Plutarch’s theory of the origin of evil can thus be read as a critical expansion to his arguments for women’s ability to attain both moral and philosophical virtue.5

Plutarch’s understanding of the passage at Laws 896e which postulates two opposing cosmic souls is crucial to his view of the feminine and the origin of evil. The disordered movement of the Receptacle, described as a “shaking” of the elements in the Timaeus (52e-53a, cf. 57c), thus presents a real problem, since it’s not quite clear whether the movement is that of the Receptacle itself. Dillon understood the Receptacle to be a source of disorderly motion but not positively evil, “a system exhibiting all the whole spectrum of possible varieties of being”, while Ferrari considered the motion of Matter the result of an irrational acosmic6 soul which Plutarch identified with the maleficent soul of Laws 10.7 Vlastos identified disorderly motion as the cause of evil but denied that there is in Plato an acosmic ‘evil’ soul akin to that found in Plutarch’s metaphysics. Instead, he considered evil the result of soul’s partnership with body, which causes irrational corporeal mo-tions.8

Motion is a predominant theme in De animae procreatione . This has important implications for Plutarch’s reading of the relationship between the three kinds at Timaeus 52d and the passage in Laws 10. I’m not concerned here with whether Plutarch’s account is a correct interpretation of Plato, but rather whether it is plausible and internally consistent. My argument is two-fold: (1) Matter and Motion are separate kinds that act on the highest ontological level, that of the acos-mos; and (2) they are inseparable in principle, thus Matter and (its) Motion together comprise the Indefinite Dyad (ἀόριστος δυάς). I see two advantages to this argument. The first part clarifies that the feminine is not the origin of evil and supports Plutarch’s views on the virtue of women in texts such as Mulierum vir-tutes and the Amatorius . The second part allows for a measure of scepticism regarding women’s ability to attain virtue in practice.

It is clear in both De animae procreatione and De Iside that Plutarch intends to separate the feminine from misconceptions that attribute to it the origin of evil. Matter is without quality and differentiation, and thus cannot be the cause of evil ( An. proc. 1015d). Nor is his account here particularly inconsistent; he never assigns to Matter itself a cause of disorder except insofar as it is in contact with disorderly motion . Attributing the cause of evil to Matter is a misapprehension of Plato shared even by Eudemus (1015d). Characterising Matter or the feminine as the cause of evil has serious implications for Plutarch’s views on the virtue of women. Plutarch does see two opposing souls on the basis of Laws 10 but is quite clear that they are different souls that exist on different ontological levels, and that neither the good nor the maleficent soul can be equated with the feminine principle.

The formulation at De animae procreatione 1015d, where Plutarch explicitly states that the feminine (“mother and nurse”) cannot be the cause of evil, functions as a commentary on the inherent nature of women, who Plutarch argues elsewhere are fully capable of ‘masculine’ virtue (Amat. 769b-c, Mulier. virt. 242f-243a). As a result, a fundamental question arises: if the feminine is not the origin of evil, what is? In De animae procreatione Plutarch offers a solution to this problem by positing an acosmic motive cause which is distinct from Matter, though closely entwined with it. This configuration of acosmic being has the benefit of absolving the feminine of her role as the origin of evil, thus allowing for women’s complete participation in virtue.

Matter and (Its) Motion

Plutarch tends to incorporate a number of principles into the three kinds, offering a unified account of Plato’s cosmology.⁹ These principles operate at the highest ontological level, from which Sameness and Difference is derived. According to Opsomer there are two originating principles in Plutarch, indivisible being and divisible being, which Opsomer termed the ‘cognitive’ and the ‘motive’ forces. In this structure indivisible being is τὸ ὄν, while divisible being is Soul-in-Itself, and to the mixture of these is added Sameness and Difference. For Opsomer these principles are derivates of two ultimate principles, the One and the Dyad. He argued that the “compound of divisible and indivisible being then serves as a receptacle for the admixture of the entirely antagonistic principles of sameness and difference”.¹⁰ But the Receptacle is ungenerated and everlasting (cf. Ti. 52b); it is not itself the mixture, but rather the substrate for the mixture. Hence for Plutarch, Matter and Motion are not divisible in the same way; Motion is the being that becomes divisible in the case of bodies ( An. proc. 1022f) while Matter is body divided into particularity (1023a). Let us then first address the argument for the separation of Motion from Matter.

In Plutarch’s view, the generation of soul cannot be a simple mixture of intelligible and perceptible being, since in that way one might generate anything whatsoever ( An. proc. 1013b-c). When he begins his own exposition of the Timaeus at De animae procreatione 1014a, he notes that the substance out of which the universe came to be was already available for the demiurge (1014b). The elements were unmixed and unamiable in their acosmic state, moving with their own motions ( De facie 926f). Plutarch calls this condition disorder (ἀκοσμία), the state of things from which god is absent ( An. proc. 1016f, De facie 926f, cf. Pl. Ti. 53b). This section is most revealing and deserves closer scrutinising in light of what follows ( An. proc. 1014b):

• (1)    disorder is not incorporeal (ἀσώματος), it is a state of corporeality that is amorphous (ἄμορφον) and incoherent

• (2)    disorder is not immobile (ἀκίνητος), it is a state of motivity (κινητικόν) that is demented and irrational

• (3)    disorder is not inanimate (ἄψυχος), it is the discord of the soul devoid of reason

  This acosmic state is thus psychic in some sense, hence god did not make the incorporeal into body nor did he make the inanimate into soul (1014b-c; cf. De Is. et Os. 369a). Plutarch thereby sets up an opposition between corporeality and soul but doesn’t quite yet explain what he means by ‘soul’. Following Demulder, acosmic being consists of amorphous corporeality and unreasoning soul, both of which are ungenerated and have always coexisted.¹¹ God did not create the tangibility and resistance of body or the imagination and motivity of soul, but he took over both (ἀμφοτέρα) the principles, the former vague and obscure and the latter disordered and irrational ( An. proc. 1014b-c, cf. 1027a).¹² Both were indefinite (ἀόριστος) before the intervention of the demiurge. Immediately following this passage Plutarch defines the substance of body (1014c) and the substance of soul (1014d). From the outset, then, it appears that Plutarch intends to separate Matter from (its) Motion.

In De animae procreatione Necessity (ἀνάγκη) and Unlimitedness (ἄπειρον) appear as properties of the divisible motive cause rather than separate principles. Plutarch identifies soul with Necessity, which in the Timaeus is something separate from the Intellect, devoid of Intellect altogether, and which produces accidental and irregular effects ( Ti. 46e). Soul in this sense – not Matter – is the cause of evil:

Those, however, who attribute to matter (τῇ ὕλῃ) and not to the soul what in the Timaeus is called necessity (ἀνάγκην) and in the Philebus measurelessness and infinitude (ἀμετρίαν καὶ ἀπειρίαν) in the varying degrees of deficiency and excess, what will they make of the fact that by Plato matter is said always to be amorphous and shapeless and devoid of all quality and potency (δυνάμεως) of its own … For what is without quality and of itself inert and without propensity Plato cannot suppose to be cause and principle of evil (αἰτίαν κακοῦ καὶ ἀρχὴν) and call ugly and maleficent infinitude and again necessity which is largely refractory and recalcitrant to god ( An. proc. 1014e-1015a, cf. De Is. et Os. 369e, Virt. mor. 451b)

This passage includes an important detail: Matter is inert, it has no motion of its own, nor is it ἄπειρον or ἀνάγκη (cf. Pl. Ti. 50e). Those properties belong instead to a third kind, which is here simply called ψυχή (cf. Pl. Ti. 47e). Plutarch is clearly trying to draw disparate threads in Plato together.13 Laws 892d-896c argues for the priority of soul over body by positing soul as a prime cause of motion and change much like that of the Phaedrus (245d), where that which moves itself is the source of all motion. The worse of the two souls is responsible for the irrational motions in the cosmos (Leg. 898b). In the Phaedrus Socrates claims that bodies that derive motion from others are soulless, but those that derive motion from within by definition have souls, since motivity is the fundamental nature of the soul (Phdr. 246d-e). According to Gabriela Carone, Plato speaks of soul in different senses in the Laws, though he never explicitly says so. One kind of soul is soul in the abstract sense, and another is the more concrete kind that governs the universe, i.e. the World Soul. Carone argued that Plato calls Motion soul, specifically the motion able to move both itself and other things and which is thus the potentiality of change in corporeal things.14 This primary motion is the cause of all secondary motions (Leg. 897a-b, Ti. 46c-e, 68e). Soul in this sense – abstract and noncorporeal – is not the same as the World Soul but only a constituent of it.

Plutarch seems to understand acosmic soul in this sense. He therefore criticises philosophers who would attribute Necessity to Matter.15 Necessity is that which is measureless and infinite, i.e. soul:

As for the substance of soul, in the Philebus he has called it infinitude (ἀπειρίαν) … and in the Timaeus that which is blended together with the indivisible nature and is said to become divisible in the case of bodies must be held to mean … that disorderly and indeterminate but self-moved and motive principle (ἄτακτον καὶ ἀόριστον αὐτοκίνητον δὲ καὶ κινητικὴν ἀρχὴν) which in many places he has called Necessity (ἀνάγκην) but in the Laws has openly called disorderly and maleficent soul. This, in fact, was soul in itself (ψυχὴ καθ᾿ ἑαυτήν) … ( An. proc. 1014d)

Thus the cause of evil is soul, specifically the kind of soul here characterised as ψυχὴ καθ᾿ ἑαυτήν. Soul-in-Itself is the first cause of Motion, since it is self-impelled and is thus the necessary principle of all motion in the cosmos, but it is disorderly without the Intellect.

With reference to the Statesman, Plutarch argues that it is Necessity that is responsible for the periodic reversal of the heavens (An. proc. 1015a). When the demiurge withdraws from guiding its revolutions the reverse motion of the universe is a self-motion, causing destruction and change in the body (Pl. Pol. 269d-270c). This passage seems to attribute the reverse motion to the body, but the Stranger clarifies that the deterioration attributed to the body is due to its being infected by disorder (ἀταξία) in its acosmic state (273b).16 Rohr took the cause of the reverse motion of the cosmos to be disorderly motion.17 Plutarch characterises this reversal as forgetfulness, during which “the part intimate with body and sensitive to it from the beginning” periodically disrupts the harmonious movement of the World Soul (An. proc. 1026e-f). The ‘part’ referred to here must be Soul-in-Itself, which has always co-existed with Matter.

Disorder therefore doesn’t seem to arise from body, but rather appears as a separate principle of change and deterioration that is entwined with body and causes it to be disordered. Chlup took a similar view, arguing that Soul-in-Itself is “an unborn and everlasting source of motion, but its movements are irrational and blind”.18 Chlup focused on the dualistic nature of Plutarch’s account, which has the unfortunate result of neglecting the corporeal principle in favour of its erratic movement.19 Such a strict dualism cannot have productive results, but it requires something to serve as Receptacle and Matter (An. proc. 1026a), thus producing three kinds at the level of first principles – Intellect, Matter and Motion. The dualism in De animae procreatione focuses not only on the opposition between a beneficent and maleficent power but their interactions with the substrate, which is an intermediate corporeal principle. Opsomer has argued that divisible being is both material and Soul-in-Itself, but it is also a ‘nonmaterial’ substrate which only becomes tangible Matter after the creation of the cosmos.20 When Plutarch says that the source of generation is not what is non-existent (An. proc. 1014b), he must then be referring not only to the unshaped corporeal being but also to the disorderly and irrational non-corporeal being which gains its existence through its interaction with Matter.

In this case he might be thinking of the Sophist ’s argument that not-being (τὸ μὴ ὄν) exists because of its participation in being. There τὸ μὴ ὄν is ultimately identified as Motion, which is something other than being; it both is being and is not-being, and not-being is therefore that which is inevitable (ἀνάγκη, Soph. 256d). In Against Colotes not-being denotes a measure of Difference, of deviation from the pattern in particulars, because it is a process of becoming to which τὸ ὂν is not subject (1115d-e). Wood similarly identified the cause of evil with the not-being and Difference of the Sophist and the Unlimitedness of the Philebus . He calls this cause a “principle of disorder and negativity”.²¹ Wood’s analysis is convincing in its argument for the relation between metaphysical principles that act on different ontological levels, and his examination of these principles across dialogues is especially elucidating for Plutarch’s understanding of Plato. For Vlastos, acosmic disorderly Motion, like unshaped Matter, is the raw material from which the demiurge created regular movement and Time.²² So in the Timaeus the distinction between τὸ ὂν and γένεσιν is a distinction between what exists and what only seems to exist, or has the potential to exist (28a). De E describes not-being as a motion in Time, a process of change and destruction that admits of no permanence in being (392e-f). Vlastos saw γένεσιν as this raw material which causes change and destruction and which without the ordering of the demiurge would be “nothing at all”.²³ Becoming then never really gains existence, but is always in a process of generation and destruction. This process is dependent on Matter, which provides the substrate for visible and tangible bodies. The demiurge is the source of the Forms these bodies copy, Becoming the cause of their irregularity. Thus Plutarch’s supposition that γένεσιν is “the being involved in changes and motions” ( An. proc. 1024c). Presumably, Motion is nothing without this constant interaction, i.e. without something to move about Motion does not exist.²⁴

Plutarch offers a particularly lucid explanation of these principles at De animae procreatione 1015b-e. Arguing against the Stoics, he denies that evil could have arisen from either Matter or God since the former is without quality and the latter is the Good, and if there was nothing besides evil would not have come to be. There must therefore be a third principle and potency (τρίτην ἀρχὴν καὶ δύναμιν), as Plato himself had recognised ( An. proc. 1015b, cf. 1026a). This principle, which is soul in the sense of ψυχὴ καθ᾿ ἑαυτήν, is at the farthest remove from god. It is essential that Soul-in-Itself is not the feminine:

In fact, while Plato calls matter mother and nurse (μητέρα μὲν καὶ τιθήνην), what he calls the cause of evil (αἰτίαν δὲ κακοῦ) is the motion that moves matter (τὴν κινητικὴν τῆς ὕλης) and becomes divisible in the case of bodies, the disorderly and irrational but not inanimate motion, which in the Laws , as has been said, he called soul contrary and adverse to the one that is beneficent. For soul is cause and principle of motion (αἰτία κινήσεως καὶ ἀρχή), but intelligence of order and consonance in motion; and the fact is that god did not arouse matter from torpor but put a stop to its being disturbed by the mindless cause ( An. proc. 1015d-e)

Thus far three things are clear: (1) Matter and Motion are separate kinds, (2) acosmic soul is an unreasoning disorderly motivity, and (3) disorderly Motion is the ultimate cause of evil. Yet even though they are separate kinds, it appears that Matter and Motion cannot be separated in principle. The reason for this is Motion’s non-corporeality, which makes it dependent on Matter for its existence.

Plutarch often assigns Necessity and Unlimitedness to Motion but rarely to Matter.25 In De E, with reference to both the Philebus and the Sophist, the ἄπειρον is identified as Motion and contrasted with Limit (πέρας), which is at rest (391bc, cf. De facie. 925f, An. proc. 1026a). Yet both of these kinds, body and soul (or corporeality and motivity), were indefinite (ἀόριστος) in their acosmic state (An. proc. 1014c). In the acosmos Motion and Matter acted on one another in a disorderly and unproductive way. While body doesn’t by nature have any quality proper to itself, its share in disorder arising from the interaction of Matter and Motion in the acosmos causes bodies to tend towards disorder and irrationality if they don’t seek the Good.26 Hence god did not arouse Matter from idleness but put a stop to the disturbance caused in it by disorderly motion, nor did he impart the origin of change to it, since he is by nature at rest, indestructible and unchangeable, but he removed the indefinitude (ἀοριστία) and discordant motion (πλημμέλεια) through harmony and concord and number (An. proc. 1015e).27 In this manner he created the World Soul.

Plutarch therefore sees two souls, an acosmic soul that is itself ungenerated and irrational and the motive cause of all things generated, and a rational World Soul that is the generated mixture of the first principles and to which Intellect and Reason has been imparted by the demiurge ( An. proc. 1016c, 1017a, cf. De Is. et Os. 369e, Virt. mor. 451b). Dillon has taken Plutarch’s views on the irrational soul to mean that he sees the World Soul as essentially irrational.²⁸ Like the Indefinite Dyad, the rational World Soul and Matter, Dillon sees the ‘evil’ soul as a feminine principle.²⁹ Yet it seems that Plutarch considers the World Soul itself to be the rational soul, and there is little indication that there is more than one World Soul (cf. De def. or. 424c-d). He notes the inconsistency between the Timaeus , where soul is generated, and the Phaedrus , where soul is ungenerated (1016a). To solve this difficulty, he makes a distinction between two kinds of soul :³⁰

For unsubject to generation is said of the soul that before the generation of the universe keeps all things in disorderly and jangling motion (πλημμελῶς πάντα καὶ

ἀτάκτως κινοῦσαν),³¹ but come to be and so subject to generation is said on the other hand of soul that god installed as chief of the sum of things when out of this soul here and that abiding and most excellent being yonder he had produced a rational and orderly one and from himself had provided intellectuality and orderliness as form for her perceptivity and motivity. ( An. proc. 1016c-d)

The ‘rational and orderly’ soul thus produced is the World Soul (κόσμου ψυχὴ, An. proc. 1017a), which contains acosmic Soul-in-Itself as a necessary part that provides motivity. God is therefore not the creator of either body or soul in the absolute sense; acosmic soul is “a certain self-moved and so perpetually activated potency of imaginative and opinionative but irrational and disorderly transport and impulse” ( An. proc. 1017a) while the body upon which it acts is the potentiality of perceptibility. There is no Motion without Matter and there is no soul without Motion. Likewise, there is no World Soul and no cosmos without god. Without his Intellect Matter and Motion cannot be truly productive, and even though they are not the same, they are bound together by their indefinite nature. Thus we turn to the Dyad and the interaction of Motion and Matter in the body.

The Dyad, the Feminine and Somatic Disorder

Matter and Motion may not be the same, but there is one characteristic that they consistently share: ἀοριστία. The notion that this indefinitude might in fact be two principles originates in the testimony of Aristotle. He wrote that the Dyad is for Plato a duality of the “Great and Small”, which is a material principle (Metaph. 987b21ff).32 Plutarch, like others before him, adopts the term ἀόριστος δυάς as too the use of ὕλη for Matter, while all the while referring back to Plato himself.33 The materiality of the Dyad, its role as a principle of evil and its relation to the feminine therefore poses a real problem for the philosopher who wishes to absolve the feminine from any direct role in the origin of evil. This difficulty can be resolved if the Indefinite Dyad is one principle but two kinds. As Aristotle suggests in the Metaphysics, a non-corporeal motive cause is necessary to explain the cosmos fully:34

All those who regard the universe as a unity, and assume as its matter (ὕλην) some one nature, and that corporeal (σωματικὴν) and extended, are clearly mistaken in many respects. They only assume elements of corporeal things, and not of incorporeal (ἀσωμάτων) ones, which also exist. They attempt to state the causes of generation and destruction, and investigate the nature of everything; and at the same time do away with the cause of motion (τὸ τῆς κινήσεως αἴτιον). ( Metaph. 988b23-29, cf. 987b20ff, 988b2-9)

Aristotle criticised philosophers who ignored the cause of motion and change because without it there can be no generation or destruction ( Metaph. 990a9-13, 1080a5), and he ascribed to Plato and Leucippus the view that motion is eternal ( Metaph. 1071b, cf. Leg. 894b). Vlastos noted that acosmic disorderly Motion is therefore also atemporal, since Time is a cyclical motion.³⁵ It’s quite possible that Plutarch thought of the Dyad as an ungenerated motive corporeality composed of two kinds encompassed in a single principle.

Dillon rejected the notion of two separate principles composing the Indefinite Dyad in Plato’s metaphysics, arguing instead that it is a principle that ranges between two opposing poles. For him the Indefinite Dyad is higher on the ontological scale than Matter but both are feminine, as is the World Soul. Rist too considered Aristotle’s view that the Dyad is two things an error, because the plurality opposed to the One (cf. Metaph. 1085b, 1092b) must have been meant by Plato as the “potentiality of plurality”, not a plurality of principles .³⁶ Plutarch, however, may have seen enough evidence in Plato to connect the Dyad with the potentiality of Motion’s divisible activity in Matter, which thus causes plurality. Without this interaction the generated universe would be perfect – if Matter truly is devoid of quality except that which it gains by its reflection of the Forms, there is no satisfactory explanation for the varying and imperfect copies it produces.³⁷ A principle of motion and change must act as the catalyst for the differentiation in generated bodies. The Timaeus (58a) seems to address this problem when it describes Motion as the cause of irregularity.

If this view is correct, Motion and Matter are two separate kinds but inseparable in principle, and this is just how Plutarch characterises their interaction. When he speaks of the Indefinite Dyad in De defectu oraculorum it is “the principle underlying all formlessness and disorder” (428f). Plutarch thus treats the Dyad as a single principle, but the terminology recalls that of De animae procreatione : the Indefinite Dyad is (1) ἄμορφον, and (2) ἄτακτον. (1) is the formlessness of Matter before the generation of the cosmos, while (2) is the acosmic disorderly Motion which causes ἀπειρία in the Dyad. In connection with this passage, Dillon argued that the Dyad “manifests itself at every level of Plutarch’s universe, as disorderly, irrational soul, and as matter, but it is plainly something more than either of these”.³⁸ In De Iside , Plutarch tells Clea that the material is neither inanimate nor undifferentiated nor is it inert and inactive (374e-f). This seems at odds with De animae procreatione , and can only be resolved if ‘material’ (ὕλη) is here taken to mean both that which becomes perceptible and that which provides motion to perceptible bodies; a single principle composed of two kinds, Matter and Motion. The inextricable interaction of these two kinds continues in the sublunary sphere. Motion is an opinionative and imaginative faculty sensitive to the perceptible precisely because it was in constant contact with Matter in the acosmos; Matter was in motion and dispersion while Motion was divisible and erratic because of its contact with Matter ( An. proc. 1023d, 1024a). Before the intervention of the demiurge, the perceptible was amorphous and indefinite (ἄμορφον καὶ ἀόριστον) and the faculty stationed about it had neither articulate opinions nor orderly motions ( An. proc. 1024b). Motion was actively disturbing corporeality in this state.

We must then briefly return to the three kinds. In the Timaeus , the really existent being (τὸ ὂν) is the Paradigm, that “wherefrom” the Becoming is copied ( Ti. 50b) and the object of Reason (28a) in the soul. This principle is masculine, the Father of creation, indivisible (35a) and ungenerated (52a). Space (χώρα) is the Receptacle (ὑποδοχή), the nurse and mother of all Becoming ( Ti. 49a, 50d) and the place “wherein” it becomes (50b). This feminine principle is invisible, unshaped, indestructible (51a, 52b) and without any quality proper to itself, but rather moved by others (50b). The third kind, γένεσιν, is an irrational principle (ἄλογος, Ti. 28a), described as a motion in time (28a) and opinion (38a). Plutarch’s reading of the relation between these three kinds is set out at De animae procrea-tione 1024c: χώρα is Matter (ὕλη), which Plato sometimes calls the abode (ἕδρα) or the Receptacle (ὑποδοχή), τὸ ὄν is the intelligible (τὸ νοητός) and γένεσιν is the being involved in changes and motions (κίνησεις). Plutarch thus seems to understand γένεσιν as an acosmic disorderly motion which is ordered by the demiurge,

Lunette Warren / ΣΧΟΛΗ Vol. 14. 2 (2020) 387 and which becomes the principle responsible for change – and ultimately evil – in the sublunary sphere.

In the Timaeus , as in the Sophist , Plato sets τὸ μὴ ὄν in opposition to τὸ ὄν – the latter is always uniformly existent and has no becoming, while the former is always becoming and is never really existent ( Ti. 28a). The really existent is apprehensible by thought with the aid of reason, but that which is never really existent (ὄντως δὲ οὐδέποτε ὄν) is an object of opinion with the aid of irrational sensation.³⁹ Plutarch questions the origin of the motions of the soul that lets it apprehend the perceptible and form opinions of it ( An. proc. 1023f). The answer is that this faculty is a result of the motivity of Soul-in-Itself (1024a). Plutarch thus understands the Becoming to be Motion ( An. proc. 1024c, cf. 1025f), the potentiality of change when it acts on Matter and the source of opinion when it apprehends the perceptibles.

Neither Motion nor Matter is Difference, just as Sameness is not Rest; Sameness is derived from the One and Difference from the Dyad (1024d, cf. 1015d).⁴⁰ Plutarch describes the Dyad as the indeterminate beginning of Difference, a “doubling” which shifts from unity to plurality, though the meaning of this passage at De garr. 507a is somewhat obscure. One might reasonably suspect that the Dyad is neither Matter nor Motion, but the acosmic interactivity of these two interwoven kinds which thus produces Difference. Carone suggested that natural disorder is the incidental result of “random corporeal motions”; her phrasing captures the inextricable relationship of Matter and Motion quite well.⁴¹ For Wood, body is not in itself evil but rather morally passive. The body cannot experience sensation without soul and distracting and destabilising sensation is the cause of bodily disorder.⁴² Disorder is therefore psychic in cause and somatic in expression.

Difference institutes change, and from this change deviation from the Forms is engendered in particulars.

According to Opsomer, the irrational part of the (human) soul is the acosmic soul devoid of Reason.⁴³ I would suggest instead that the irrational part is the acosmic Indefinite Dyad composed of the material and motive kinds. Both are essentially unreasoning, but only one part of it, Motion (or acosmic Soul-in-Itself), is actively disorderly and irrational.⁴⁴ Disobedience and disorder in the human soul is the result of the differentiation of this lower part, which suggests that Difference arises in the divisibility and dividedness of Motion and Matter.⁴⁵ In the body, then, Difference is the principle that is responsible for deficiency, disorder and imperfection. In the World Soul, the irrational motive cause is subdued and ordered by the Intellect, but it makes itself known in the physical world.⁴⁶ Evil as such, and not simply disorder, exists only relative to humans (Pl. Leg. 900e, 903d-904c). Since in humans the soul is necessarily embodied, the appetitive part is incorporated in the body, with which it is closely associated even in its acosmic state.⁴⁷ The dyadic part of the soul gains influence in mortal bodies because it is present in much larger share than Reason, and that because it is divisible and infinite (cf. An. proc. 1015d, 1025d, 1026d).

Typhonic Disorder in De Iside

Accepting the duality of the unreasoning part(s) of the soul has serious implications for Plutarch’s views on women’s capacity to attain virtue. In De animae pro-creatione Intellect and Matter are gendered in the traditional way: Intellect is a masculine principle while Matter is feminine. Motion, on the other hand, is not gendered at all. It is only in De Iside that the anthropomorphised principle of disorder takes on a gender, and there it is in the form of Typhon, a male principle, as Dillon too has noted. Dillon identified Typhon with a sort of material principle on the basis that Matter is traditionally the origin of evil,48 but the materiality of Typhon is distinct from that of Isis, who is explicitly a feminine principle:

Isis is, in fact, the female principle of Nature (τὸ τῆς φύσεως θῆλυ), and is receptive of every form of generation, in accord with which she is called by Plato the gentle nurse and the all-receptive (τιθήνη καὶ πανδεχὴς) … since, because of the force of Reason, she turns herself to this thing or that and is receptive of all manner of shapes and forms. She has an innate love for the first and most dominant of all things, which is identical with the good, and this she yearns for and pursues; but the portion which comes from evil she tries to avoid and to reject, for she serves them both as a place and means of growth (ἀμφοῖν μὲν οὖσα χώρα καὶ ὕλη), but inclines always towards the better and offers to it opportunity to create from her and to impregnate her with effluxes and likenesses in which she rejoices and is glad that she is made pregnant and teeming with these creations. For creation is the image of being in matter, and the thing created is a picture of reality. ( De Is. et Os. 372e)

The use of χώρα and ὕλη here identifies Isis with Matter and Receptacle, as does her reconstruction of Osiris’ lost penis ( De Is. et Os. 373a, 359a). She is intermediate between two further principles, represented by Osiris and Typhon. These two male divinities then represent the opposing souls of the Laws ( De Is. et Os. 370f-371a, cf. 369b-d, An. proc. 1026b). Yet more recently, Dillon has argued that Isis represents the World Soul and Typhon represents Matter and the Receptacle as a principle of disorder.⁴⁹ I agree with Dillon that the principle of disorder is a “positively disruptive force”, but equating Typhon with the corporeal principle rests on some questionable assumptions, not least of which is that Matter must somehow be the principle of evil, since that is how it traditionally goes.

Indeed, Plutarch himself says his account in De animae procreatione will be “unusual and paradoxical” (An. proc. 1014a, cf. 1012b).50 I can find only one sure reference to the materiality of Typhon, and that passage links him also to the irrational soul: “Typhon is that part of the soul which is impressionable, impulsive, irrational and truculent, and of the bodily part the destructible, diseased and disorderly” (De Is. et Os. 371b). Rather than confirming the role of Matter as the origin of evil, this passage makes a distinction between Matter-as-such (Isis) and the disorder that infects Matter. I can see no other solution for this dilemma than to connect Typhon to the disorderly motive cause of De animae procreatione, with the caveat that the two texts have very different approaches and aims.51 De Iside is addressed to the priestess Clea and given that dramatic milieu it would not be far-fetched to expect some focus on female virtue such as we do find when Isis is described near the start of the treatise as a goddess of wisdom (351e-f).

And indeed, there are references that link the disorder of Typhon to the acosmic and unproductive Motion of De animae procreatione . Plutarch writes that to Typhon “there attaches nothing bright or of a conserving nature, no order nor generation nor movement possessed of moderation or reason, but everything the reverse” ( De Is. et Os. 372a). Like the disorderly Motion of De animae procreatione , Typhon is ἡ τῆς ἀτάκτου καὶ ἀορίστου δυνάμεως ἀρχὴ - “the principle of disorderly and unlimited power” (372a). That Typhon must be the maleficent soul opposed to the logos of Osiris is confirmed by the reference to Zoroaster; in De animae procreatione the opposing powers Oromasdes and Areimanus are Intellect and Necessity (1026b), while in De Iside the same two powers are linked to Osiris and Typhon (369e-f).⁵² In both accounts the former is a god and the latter a daemon, confirming the supremacy of the rational male principle. More importantly, Isis too is deified on account of her virtue along with Osiris ( De Is. et Os. 361e). As also at Laws 906a-b, the struggle for order is framed as a cosmic battle, here between Osiris and Typhon with Isis as the mediating principle. Typhon remains a daemon, while Isis’ apotheosis endorses the possibility of female virtue if psychic disorder is subdued.

Conclusion

In De animae procreatione , Plutarch distinguishes between three kinds at the level of first principles, a division that is reflected and anthropomorphised in De Iside . It is unlikely that the Indefinite Dyad is a principle that is higher on the ontological scale than Matter and Motion, instead of an encompassing principle of disorder represented by Isis and Typhon. I am therefore inclined to say that Plutarch’s Dyad is a principle composed of the material and motive kinds. Plutarch’s motivation for the separation of Matter and Motion appears to be connected to his belief that women are fully capable of moral and philosophical virtue. Thus it is necessary to separate the feminine principle from misconceptions that attribute to it the cause of evil.

In De Iside , Isis is therefore a positive force, while the cause of evil is a male power. However, though male, Typhon is emasculated; he doesn’t father any offspring with Nephthys but she has a child by Osiris, thus the problem must lie with him (366c) and when he is defeated by Horus he is quite literally unmanned (373c). There could be several explanations for the maleness of the disorderly principle in De Iside , none of which require identification with Matter or Receptacle. Perhaps it is simply a result of Plutarch’s source material, in which the worse element of nature is the male daemon Typhon. It is also possible that the agender of the motive principle in De animae procreatione and the broken masculinity of Typhon in De Iside suggest a disfiguration of gender in the absence of masculine Reason. The further examination of this problem is beyond the scope of this paper. What is clear is that Plutarch doesn’t consider the feminine/Matter the origin of evil, only susceptible to it due to its interaction with disorderly motion in the acosmos.