Stoic Categories - Neoplatonic Critique

Neoplatonic Critique

Plotinus criticized both Aristotle's Categories and those of the Stoics. His student Porphyry however defended Aristotle's scheme. He justified this by arguing that they be interpreted strictly as expressions, rather than as metaphysical realities. The approach can be justified, at least in part, by Aristotle's own words in The Categories. Boëthius' acceptance of Porphyry's interpretation led to their being accepted by Scholastic philosophy.

The Stoic scheme did not fare as well. Plotinus wrote...

Besides, if they make life and soul no more than this "pneuma," what is the import of that repeated qualification of theirs "in a certain state," their refuge when they are compelled to recognize some acting principle apart from body? If not every pneuma is a soul, but thousands of them soulless, and only the pneuma in this "certain state" is soul, what follows? Either this "certain state," this shaping or configuration of things, is a real being or it is nothing. If it is nothing, only the pneuma exists, the "certain state" being no more than a word; this leads imperatively to the assertion that Matter alone exists, Soul and God mere words, the lowest alone is. If on the contrary this "configuration" is really existent- something distinct from the underlie or Matter, something residing in Matter but itself immaterial as not constructed out of Matter, then it must be a Reason-Principle, incorporeal, a separate Nature.