Podcast episode
April 14, 2021
Episode 117: The Esoteric Plotinus, Part II: Unsaying the Real
In this episode we make some necessarily-incomplete, but hopefully sympathetic, forays into the territory of the unsayable in Plotinus. The One/Good, the first principle of all reality, is, for our author, formally ineffable. He gives us solid, logical reasons why this reality must be ineffable, and must indeed transcend not only all categories or predicates (such as ‘being’, ‘existence’, or even the names ‘one’ and ‘good’), and all attempts not only to describe it, but even to know it. That being said, we can touch it, or stand face to face with it, or do a number of other things which are really impossible, but which are said when language breaks under the strain of the ultimate, primal nothingness.
We discuss some of the techniques by which Plotinus unsays the One, some of the ways in which scholars have dealt with this extraordinary textual unsaying, and the ways in which this type of text can be fruitfully considered to be esoteric, with the proviso that in Plotinus’ case this is a welcoming, protreptic esotericism.
Works Cited in this Episode:
Primary:
- The encounter with the One: arguably IV.8.1; V.1.6; VI.9.11. There are others.
- The one is the source of all things, but not their source, etc: VI.8[39]8-9.
- It subsists: VI.8.11.33; VI.8.13.50-52.
- It does not subsist: VI.8.10.35-38; VI.8.11.1-5.
- It is act (energeia): VI.8.20.13-15.
- It is not act: III.8.11.7-10.
- It is free: VI.8.20.17-19.
- It is not free: VI.8.8.9-12.
- It has life: V.4.2.17-18.
- It does not have life: VI.7.17.12-14.
- VI.7: Plotinus even deconstructs the use of the definite article ‘the’ when we say ‘the good’: 38.7.
- Thought cannot grasp the truly simple: e.g. V.3.17.1-25: ‘But what description is possible of the totally simple? But it is enough if the nous touches it; touching it, while it is in contact, it cannot speak at all, nor does it have leisure to do so, but later it can reason about it.’ [trans. Armstrong, slightly modified].
- The One unthinkable/unthinking because perfect: see e.g. III.9[13]9 (beyond noêsis); cf. III.8[30]11.13-15; VI.7[38]41.26-27: (beyond gnôsis, noêsis, synaisthêsis).
Secondary:
- A. H. Armstrong. The Architecture of the Intelligible Universe in the Philosophy of Plotinus. Adolf M. Hakkert, Amsterdam, 1967, on the complexity of Plotinus’ metaphysical canon. We cite p. 1. Cf. John Dillon. Plotinus at Work on Platonism. Greece and Rome, 39 (2 (Second Series)): 189–204, Oct. 1992, 194.
- A. H. Armstrong. Pagan and Christian Traditionalism in the First Three Centuries A.D. In Hellenic and Christian Studies, Variorum, Aldershot, 1990, pages 414–431. We cite p. 32.
- Emile Bréhier. The Philosophy of Plotinus. University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 1958. Translated by J. Thomas, we cite p. 133.
- A.-J. Festugière. La révélation d’Hermes Trismegiste. J. Gabalda, Paris, 1944-1954. 4 vols.
- Pierre Hadot. Exercices spirituels et philosophie antique. Études Augustiniennes, Paris, 2nd edition, 1981. We cite p. 188.
- Alexander J. Mazur. The Platonizing Sethian Background of Plotinus’s Mysticism. Brill, Leiden/Boston, MA, 2021.
- Raoul Mortley. From Word to Silence. Hanstein, Bonn, 1986. 2 vols.
- W. Proudfoot. Religious Experience. University of California Press, Berkeley/Los Angeles, CA, 1985.
- J. Rist. The Road to Reality. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1967.
- Michael Sells. Apophasis in Plotinus: A Critical Approach. Harvard Theological Review, 78(1/2):47–65, Jan. – Apr. 1985.
- Idem. Mystical Languages of Unsaying. University of Chicago Press, Chicago, IL, 1994.
- R. Wallis. Neoplatonism. Duckworth, London, 1972. We cite p. 41, describing Ennead VI.9.3-4.
Recommended Reading:
- Dylan Burns. Apophatic Strategies in Allogenes (NHC XI, 13). Harvard Theological Review, 103(2):161–79, 2010.
- J. Bussanich. Mystical Elements in the Thought of Plotinus. ANRW, 36(7):5300–5330, 1997.
- Odo Casel. De philosophorum graecorum silentio mystico. A. Toepelmann, Giessen, 1919.
- J. Deck. Nature, Contemplation, and the One. University of Toronto Press, Toronto, 1967.
- W. Franke. Apophasis and the Turn of Philosophy to Religion: From Neoplatonic Negative Theology to Post-Modern Negation of Theology. International Journal for Philosophy of Religion, 60(1/3):61–76, Dec. 2008.
- M. Jufresa. Basilides, A Path to Plotinus. Vigiliae Christianae, (35):1–15, Mar. 1981.
- R. Mortley. Negative Theology and Abstraction in Plotinus. American Journal of Philology, 96(4):363–377, Winter 1975.
- J. Rist. Theos and the One in Some Texts of Plotinus. Mediaeval Studies, 24:169–80, 1962.
- Idem. Back to the Mysticism of Plotinus: Some More Specifics. Journal of the History of Philosophy, (27):183–97, 1989.
- Idem. Mysticism and Transcendence in Later Platonism. Hermes, 92(2):213–225, 1964b.
- Michael Sells. Apophasis in Plotinus: A Critical Approach. Harvard Theological Review, 78(1/2):47–65, Jan. – Apr. 1985.
- Idem. Mystical Languages of Unsaying. University of Chicago Press, Chicago, IL, 1994.
- H. A. Wolfson. Albinus and Plotinus on Divine Attributes. Harvard Theological Review, 45(2):115–130, Apr. 1952.
Themes
Apophatic Writing, Ineffability, Mysticism, Philosophy, Plato, Plotinus, Self-Hiding Secret
Travis Wade ZINN
April 15, 2021
Zen emptiness bears remarkable resemblance
James Lomas
April 16, 2021
Where can I find the Bertrand Russell discussion?
James Lomas
April 16, 2021
Bwah??? Greek has no words for experience or consciousness?? I am going to need help thinking about this.
Earl Fontainelle
April 16, 2021
It’s true. Okay, πάθος is not unlike ‘experience’ in English, but it’s also arguably not too like it either. it’s something like ‘undergoing’ — rocks and things can have παθη, which doesn’t really work in English. You wouldn’t say ‘The rock experienced being kicked’.
As for ‘consciousness’, forget about it. Nothing remotely (unless it’s ‘nous‘, which some scholars want to translate as ‘consciousness’).
Earl Fontainelle
April 16, 2021
I’m not sure where you’ll find the Russell anecdote: it’s one I heard or read years ago and have utterly forgotten the context.
Anyone?
Joel M Zahn
April 24, 2021
One version of the anecdote is from Russell’s autobiography. In volume one he recounts his early relationship with J.M.E McTaggart at Cambridge. Russell recalls on page 84, “For two or three years, under his [McTaggart’s] influence, I was a Hegelian. I remember the exact moment during my fourth year when I be came one. I had gone out to buy a tin of tobacco, and was going back with it along Trinity Lane, when suddenly I threw it up in the air and exclaimed: ‘Great God in boots! — the ontological argument is sound!'” I’m sure there are other (and possibly earlier) variations of this story but this seems as reliable a source as any for this incident!
Earl Fontainelle
April 25, 2021
Top man, Joel!
Mateusz Stróżyński
April 22, 2021
Or there are too many words for consciousness in Greek: aisthesis, sunaisthesis, parakolouthesis, antilepsis, sunesis… 🙂 Actually, I believe Plotinus has a word for consciousness: seeing, looking: horasis, opsis, thea, and their verbal likes…
Earl Fontainelle
April 22, 2021
The first lot of terms you cite are those also cited by Hutchinson in his recent Plotinus on Consciousness, a book wherein the meaning of the term ‘consciousness’ is seemingly taken as self-evident! But it surely needs defining before we can say that these terms are all it in some way ….
Mateusz Stróżyński
April 22, 2021
Yes, you’re right. I guess there is a range of terms which we believe are indispensible: the self, person, consciousness, reality, freedom of choice, and which are modern terms, as we use them, and nowhere to be found in Plotinus. What about: there is something real, which we refer to by “consciousness” and to which Plotinus referred by other terms, just as there is something as “reality”, by which he referred by a bunch of other terms etc. So rather than trying to compare his terminology to ours, we can try to assume the common reality behind both. I know contemporary analytic philosophers would read this and think I’m being ridiculous. But I like the example CS Lewis gives about learning Greek. “Naus” is not “ship”, naus is that thing on water, with those wide, white pieces of linen, made of wood etc. You have to imagine the real thing to which “naus” and “ship” refer. The problem, however, has been made acutely clear by Augustine, a very intelligent student of Plotinus in his De magistro. In order to understand any word, you have to know or see the thing which the word points to, because the word only directs your attention to what is present in your soul. That is why you cannot really describe anything or define anything. Augustine says that if we hear “God” we immediately refer to some “experience” (not his word, of course) we had or to something in our soul. If we don’t know God, we only refer to some image which we call God, not the real God. When I read Plotinus and his horrible (wonderful?) habit of referring to the same realities by different words, terms, and phrases, I think Augustine provides a good epistemology for understanding him. He is trying to make us see what he sees. So our word “consciousness” can also point to that which is spoken about as nous, noesis, opsis, aisthesis, prosbole, epibole, sunesis (fill in the blank). But in the majority of the cases, what people refer to, while hearing “consciousness”, is not what Plotinus has in mind when he speaks about he psuche logike, nous or the Light which unables nous to think and see. I was always moved by spiritual teachers (from Bankei to contemporary non-dualists) saying “what I mean by consciousness is that thing in you which right now is hearing and understanding my words”. Beautifully Augustinian and absolutely not helpful in philosophical terms.