PYTHAGOREAN OPPOSITIONS ARE ALSO WORTHLESS AS EXPLANATIONS OF GOOD.
Project Gutenberg EPUB3 edition
Plotinus and Guthrie, Kenneth Sylvan
20. Since therefore we have given up desires as forms in the determination of the nature and quality (of the good), shall we have recourse to other rules, such as, for instance (the Pythagorean104) "oppositions," such as order and disorder, proportion and disproportion, health and sickness, form and formlessness, being and destruction, consistence and its lack? Who indeed would hesitate to attribute to the form of good those characteristics which constitute the first member of each of these opposition-pairs? If so, the efficient causes of these characteristics will also have to be traced to the good; for virtue, life, intelligence and wisdom are comprised within the form of good, as being things desired by the soul that is wise.