The term 'Matter' occupies a vast and contested terrain within the depth-psychology corpus, ranging from Plotinus's Neoplatonic ontology—where Matter is the formless, passive receptacle of Ideal-Forms, itself neither primary nor real in any robust sense—to Aurobindo's integral vision, in which Matter is revealed as a condensed form of Spirit, and Consciousness is the true substrate from which material appearance descends. McGilchrist approaches the problem from the philosophy of mind and contemporary physics, arguing that matter 'evanesces' under rational scrutiny, dissolving the materialist ground upon which mind was supposed to rest. Simondon intervenes with a process-philosophical account, insisting that the hylomorphic schema misrepresents the relation of matter and form by rendering matter passive: in reality, matter is the bearer of active potentialities. Pauli, writing at the intersection of physics and philosophy, records the Einsteinian dissolution of the matter-energy boundary, demonstrating that even light now qualifies as matter. Berry, in the archetypal register, signals that psyche is as deeply implicated in matter as in spirit, and that literalism—not materiality itself—is the true obstacle. Taken together, these voices reveal that 'Matter' in depth-psychological discourse is never simply the inert physical substrate of common sense; it is perpetually haunted by its relation to Form, Spirit, Consciousness, and Soul.
In the library
29 passages
matter evanesces as we look at it more closely and turns out to be every bit as inscrutable as consciousness itself … it is not just brains, but the tiniest particles of matter, we discover, that cannot be considered independent of consciousness.
McGilchrist argues that matter, far from offering a solid, mind-independent foundation for reality, dissolves under close scrutiny and proves no less mysterious than consciousness itself.
McGilchrist, Iain, The Matter With Things: Our Brains, Our Delusions and the Unmaking of the World, 2021thesis
a theory of mind that depends on matter that depends on mind could not yield the solid ground so many materialists yearn for … Strawson uses the word physicalism to refer to a reality which is not antithetically divided into matter and mind, but incorporates both elements as indivisible.
McGilchrist, drawing on Strawson, contends that the circular dependency between matter and mind undermines naive materialism and requires a non-dualist account in which both are indivisible aspects of one reality.
McGilchrist, Iain, The Matter With Things: Our Brains, Our Delusions and the Unmaking of the World, 2021thesis
Substance or Matter, then, is only a form of Spirit. The appearance which this form of Spirit assumes to our senses is due to that dividing action of Mind from which we have been able to deduce consistently the whole phenomenon of the universe.
Aurobindo identifies Matter as a form of Spirit whose appearance as separate substance is produced by the dividing action of cosmic Mind, not by any independent material principle.
Matter itself cannot be the original and ultimate reality … Matter is a form of Spirit, a habitation of Spirit, and here in Matter itself there can be a realisation of Spirit.
Aurobindo insists that Matter is neither ultimate nor opposed to Spirit, but is Spirit's own habitation—a principle that makes spiritual realisation immanent within the material world.
Matter is necessary to quality and to quantity, and, therefore, to body. It is, thus, no name void of content; we know there is such a base, invisible and without bulk though it be.
Plotinus defends the ontological necessity of Matter as the invisible, bulkless substratum without which neither quality, quantity, nor body could exist, despite Matter's own formlessness.
They must, therefore, consist of Matter and Form-Idea— Form for quality and shape, Matter for the base, indeterminate as being other than Idea.
Plotinus establishes that all composite sensible things require both Matter and Form-Idea, Matter providing the indeterminate base while Form supplies quality and shape.
not any eternal and original law of eternal and original Matter, but the nature of the action of cosmic Mind is the cause of atomic existence. Matter is a creation, and for its creation the infinitesimal … was needed as the starting-point or basis.
Aurobindo argues that Matter has no eternal, self-grounding law but is a creation of cosmic Mind, with atomic structure arising from the need for extreme fragmentation of the Infinite.
the matter and form both must play a dynamic role … The matter is the bearer of potentialities that expand and are distributed uniformly in it; the homogeneity of the matter is the homogeneity of its possible becoming.
Simondon subverts the classical hylomorphic schema by recasting matter as dynamically active, the bearer of potentialities that become actualized through individuation rather than a passive substrate shaped from without.
Simondon, Gilbert, Individuation in Light of Notions of Form and Information, 2020thesis
The technical operation that imposes a form on a passive and undetermined matter isn't just an operation considered abstractly … this is essentially the operation controlled by the free man and executed by the slave.
Simondon reveals that the representation of matter as passive and undetermined is a socially mediated projection rooted in the division between free and enslaved labor, not a neutral ontological finding.
Simondon, Gilbert, Individuation in Light of Notions of Form and Information, 2020supporting
even light has become matter now, due to Einstein's discoveries. It has mass and weight; it is not different from ordinary matter … The only difference is that light is never at rest, but always moving with the same characteristic velocity.
Pauli marks the Einsteinian transformation of the concept of matter by which the mass-energy equivalence extends matter's domain to include light, fundamentally revising what matter means in physics.
Pauli, Wolfgang, Writings on Physics and Philosophy, 1994supporting
the fundamental nature of Matter can take no increase by anything entering it, and no decrease by any withdrawal: what from the beginning it was, it remains.
Plotinus characterizes Matter as ontologically invariant—permanently unchanged by the Forms that enter and leave it—making it the absolute ground of passivity in the sensible world.
Matter remains as it was, taking nothing to itself: it is the check to the forthwelling of Authentic Existence; it is a ground that repels; it is a mere receptacle to the Realities as they take their common path and here meet and mingle.
Plotinus describes Matter as a paradoxical receptacle that takes nothing into itself but serves as the reflective ground through which Authentic Existence generates the sensible world.
the representation of Matter must be spurious, unreal, something sprung of the Alien, of the unreal, and bound up with the alien reason. This is Plato's meaning where he says that Matter is apprehended by a sort of spurious reasoning.
Plotinus, following Plato, holds that Matter cannot be grasped by genuine intellection but only by a 'spurious reasoning' that mimics knowledge, marking Matter as the limit-point of rational apprehension.
Matter entire takes Magnitude and every particle of it becomes a mass … material things become visible through standing midway between bare underlie and Pure Idea.
Plotinus explains that Matter becomes visible and spatially extended only through the irradiation of Ideal Principles upon it, situating sensible things as mediators between formless substrate and Pure Form.
Matter is continuously overruled towards the better; so that out of the total of things … there is, in the end, a Unity.
Plotinus asserts that Matter's tendency toward the lesser good is continuously overcome by Soul's governance, so that the cosmos tends, despite its internal opposition, toward unity.
Matter is not a Primary we have established elsewhere … Its existence is but a pale reflection, and less complete than that of the things implanted in it. These are Reason-Principles and more directly derived from Being.
Plotinus argues that Matter, despite appearing as the most fundamental substrate, is ontologically derivative—a pale reflection of Authentic Being, inferior even to the Reason-Principles embedded within it.
it is the prime matter of all bodies, and through it, they say, complete and universal reason passes, just like seed through the genital organs … the cohering body they take to be without quality, i.e. matter or substance, completely passive and subject to change.
The Stoic account preserved by Calcidius presents matter as utterly passive and qualityless but as the universal body through which active rational principle (logos) passes to generate all things.
A.A. Long and D.N. Sedley, The Hellenistic Philosophers, 1987supporting
psyche has as much to do with matter as with spirit … Body, objects, the sensible-perceptible, facts, images are all the prima materia upon which, and even within which, the psyche operates.
Berry insists, from within archetypal psychology, that psyche is as much engaged with matter as with spirit, and that the concrete sensible world constitutes the prima materia of psychological work.
Berry, Patricia, Echo's Subtle Body: Contributions to an Archetypal Psychology, 1982supporting
Matter can never be dissolved. What into? By what process? … Matter lies there as the meeting ground of all these qualities with their changes as they act and react in the blend.
Plotinus defends Matter's indestructibility by arguing that it serves as the meeting ground for all qualitative change while itself remaining unaffected and undissolvable.
Spirit itself is pure substance of being presenting itself as an object … to a light of a pure spiritual perceptive knowledge in which the subject becomes its own object.
Aurobindo maps a descending hierarchy of substance from Spirit through mind and life to physical matter, each level constituting a different mode of self-presentation of the one Conscious-Force.
An electron is simply an energy increment of a spread-out matter field … it is more like an event within a temporal and spatial continuum.
McGilchrist marshals quantum field theory to show that matter at its most fundamental level is not particle-like but event-like, dissolving the commonsense conception of solid material substance.
McGilchrist, Iain, The Matter with Things: Our Brains, Our Delusions, and the Unmaking of the World, 2021supporting
We should no more conclude that we can deny matter than that we can deny consciousness … physics may tell us a great deal about the structure of physical reality, but it seems that it can't tell us anything about the intrinsic nature of reality.
McGilchrist argues for a non-eliminativist position: neither matter nor consciousness can be denied, but physics reveals only structural relations, leaving the intrinsic nature of both inaccessible.
McGilchrist, Iain, The Matter with Things: Our Brains, Our Delusions, and the Unmaking of the World, 2021supporting
the Matter of this realm is all things in turn, a new entity in every separate case … in the eternal, Matter is immutably one and the same, so that the two are diametrically opposites.
Plotinus distinguishes between the ceaselessly mutable matter of the sensible world and the eternal, immutable Matter of the Intelligible realm, establishing a radical ontological difference between the two.
I reverence and honour matter, and worship that which has brought about my salvation. I honour it, not as God, but as a channel of divine strength and grace.
John of Damascus provides a theological counter-position to Platonic denigration of matter, affirming matter's sanctity as the vehicle of divine incarnation and salvific grace.
John of Damascus, Saint John of Damascus Collection, 2016supporting
The matter conveys with it the potential energy being actualized; the form … plays an informing role by exerting forces without work, forces that limit the actualization of the potential energy momentarily borne by the matter.
Simondon reconceptualizes the matter-form relation as a dynamic system in which matter carries actualizable potential energy and form acts as a limiting constraint rather than an external imposition.
Simondon, Gilbert, Individuation in Light of Notions of Form and Information, 2020supporting
first there is Chaos, and then there is Mother Earth … each chaos mothers itself into form.
Berry, reading Hesiod imagistically rather than narratively, presents matter (as Earth/Gaia) as the form that chaos simultaneously contains and generates, linking matter to the maternal principle.
Berry, Patricia, Echo's Subtle Body: Contributions to an Archetypal Psychology, 1982aside
the mathematical formalism of field theory suggests that these lines can be interpreted in two ways, either as positrons moving forward in time or as electrons moving backwards in time.
Von Franz invokes the time-symmetry of quantum field equations as evidence of matter's strange temporal indeterminacy, connecting physics to the broader psyche-and-matter problematic.
von Franz, Marie-Louise, Psyche and Matter, 2014aside
how can Matter be a first-principle, seeing that it is body? Body must necessarily be a plurality, since all bodies are composite of Matter and Quality.
Plotinus refutes materialist first-principle claims by arguing that Matter's inevitable compositeness with Quality disqualifies it from the ontological primacy materialists assign it.
the death of Soul is twofold: while still sunk in body to lie down in Matter and drench itself with it.
Plotinus employs Matter as a moral-ontological category: the soul's deepest degradation is its immersion in Matter, figured as a drowning in mud that constitutes a kind of death.