primal matter

“You look at the last paintings that he did, after he had been diagnosed with cancer and had just lost some close friends of his, and you see him using color like a primal matter, like lava pouring out of his soul.”

Rather than positing primal matter as his first principle, Socrates initiates a whole new line of investigation premised on the absolute existence of immaterial ethical principles such as justice and goodness.

Even in its no-nonsense prose, the report revealed the emotional complexities of the nearly primal matter that the Irish government faces — a matter touching on the profound influence of the Catholic Church on national policy, the subjugation of women, respect for the dead and proper redress for human rights abuses.

Other works in the festival include “Primal Matter,” a piece by Dimitris Papaioannou, who choreographed the opening ceremony of the Athens Olympics; and “i ride in color and soft focus, no longer anywhere,’’ by the choreographer Jamila Johnson-Small.

It may be noted, too, that the ontological principles of a composite being—such as primal matter and substantial form—since they are themselves not properly “beings,” but only “principles of being,” are said to belong each to its proper category, not formally but only referentially, not formaliter but only reductivé.