Note 234

Plotinus would certainly deny that there is any positive evil force at play in the cosmos — that would be a tenet of the Gnosticism that he eschewed. Rather evil is seen as an absence of good — the One is the Good — and distance from the One is distance from the Good, although Plotinus exempts the whole of the intelligible world, including the higher reaches of soul. Evil is no more than a necessary product of emanation at the level of the sensible world. And matter is evil in this restricted sense. This is broadly the conclusion reached in a late treatise, I [51].8.