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 ...
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