Explaining the Unexplainable in Macbeth

The problem of interpreting Macbeth’s shift
At a first reading, one remains baffled by Macbeth’s transformation: a brave warrior and loyal subject becomes the bloody murderer of his king, without any plausible reason.

Yet everything becomes comprehensible if we read this transformation through Porphyry’s philosophy of the incorporeal and of ὑπόστασις as presented in his Sententiae.

In Macbeth, evil is transmitted from the witches to Macbeth not as a substance but as a derivative and relational ὑπόστασις - a secondary mode of being that becomes contiguous to him. Without this hypostatic mediation, his passage from loyal subject to regicide would remain inexplicable.

Macbeth does not simply “decide” to become evil. Nor is he “persuaded” in a psychological sense. Nor is he corrupted by rational argument.

The witches, by proximity - by ὑπόστασις - impart to him a mode of existence that is neither substance nor essence, but influence: a secondary being, a power that does not mix with Macbeth’s own essence yet becomes contiguous to him and activates something latent within him.

Thus:

• The incorporeal (the witches’ prophetic evil)
• Does not enter Macbeth’s essence,
• But produces a second-order power
• That attaches itself to his psyche
• And alters the mode of his existence

It is not “possession.” It is not “temptation.” It is a metaphysical contiguity - always near, even when it is not operating. It lies contiguous, and enters the moment it sees the opening:

Τὰ καθ' αὑτὰ ἀσώματα, οὐ τοπικῶς παρόντα τοῖς σώμασι, πάρεισιν αὐτοῖς ὅταν βούληται. 

“The incorporeals in themselves, though not locally present to bodies, are present to them whenever they wish.” (Sententiae 3)

Why this explains Macbeth’s transformation?
Without this relational ὑπόστασις - this metaphysical contiguity - Macbeth’s sudden shift would indeed be psychologically implausible:

• From a loyal subject
• To regicide
• To tyrant
• To nihilist (“Life is a tale told by an idiot…”)

The witches do not give him evil. They affect him and awaken the evil that was already a potential within him — dormant, unactualized, unimagined.

This is precisely how Porphyry describes the relation between incorporeal powers and bodies:

• The incorporeal remains pure,
• But its ῥοπὴ (inclination, tendency) produces a secondary power,
• Which becomes προσεχής (contiguous, adjacent),
• And modifies the being it touches

Macbeth’s evil is not “injected.” 

It is awakened by a power that operates him without mixing with him.