Plotinos: Complete Works, v. 3 / In Chronological Order, Grouped in Four Periods

by Plotinus

MERE DIFFERENTIALS OF BEINGS ARE NOT GENUINE QUALITIES.

A quality is therefore a power which adds (essential) characteristics to already existing beings. These characteristics which differentiate beings can therefore be called qualities only figuratively. Qualities are, rather, actualizations and reasons, or parts of reasons, which proclaim the "whatness," though the latter seem to qualify being. As to the qualities which really deserve this name, which "qualify" things, which we generally call "potentialities," they are the reasons and shapes, either of the soul or the body, such as beauty or ugliness.[264]