If the complexity and qualified self-sufficiency of Nous demand further, regressive analysis, then, given the structure of Plotinian explanation, what will ultimately explain and ground everything else will have to be absolutely, metaphysically simple: this, Plotinus designates “the One” or “the Good,” that arche and reality which is so utterly simple that it is completely unconditioned and independent of anything else.78 On this conception of simplicity, the One has no parts whatsoever, no constituents upon which it would otherwise be dependent. Indeed, unlike Nous (or any other entity), there is nothing about the One such that internal distinctions of any sort can be made. Based on the account as I have presented it thus far, we can also go on to say that the One is not a component of something else (roughly analogous to the way in which, for example, a Form Fx remains distinct from its instantiation fx in a particular entity Afx—though they remain somehow intimately related). Moreover, the absolute simplicity of the One entails that the One somehow be “outside” of being and existence: the One neither has being nor is a being. Correspondingly, the One is indeterminate, and hence, remains “outside” the realm of anything knowable. Finally, the One does not think or cognize at all, for doing so would compromise its simplicity: indeed, on Plotinus’s view, the One could not even be aware of itself without thereby being complex.79 In fact, because the One is absolutely simple, it is absolutely independent, so much so that “it will not need thinking.”80
1.3 Problematizing Plotinus’s Conception of the One
In the previous two sections, I sketched the basic features of Plotinus’s understanding of the structure of reality, focusing primarily on the line of thought whose conclusion calls for an unconditioned condition of all things not itself: the One. As it turns out, given Plotinus’s fundamental metaphysical commitments, there ought to be very little to say about the One. At best, one would expect to see a series of negations and denials, and indeed, this is what we observe: the One is not complex in any way; it neither has components, nor is a constituent of something else; it neither exists, nor has being; it is not determinate; and it is not knowable (and does not think/know itself or anything else). In Ennead III.8.10, for example, we find Plotinus explicitly denying of the One any property or attribute: “It is certainly none of the things of which it is origin; it is of such a kind, though nothing can be predicated of it, not being, not substance, not life, as to be above (hyper) all these things.”81 Yet, even a cursory examination of the Enneads will show the reader that Plotinus says quite a bit about the One. So what precisely is Plotinus doing? Is Plotinus simply contradicting himself? Is his view inconsistent?
Although Plotinus’s views are not without some very deep tensions—some of which I will have reason to point out where germane—they are far from being self-contradictory or inconsistent. In many respects, the greatest difficulty Plotinus has to work through philosophically arises from the methodological demand to balance the two poles of explanation: {1} how and why all else is ultimately dependent upon the One; and {2} how and why the One is absolutely independent of all else. Plotinus must address the first requirement {1} by discussing the various ways in which the One is understood as the ultimate source, ground, and goal of all else. If the One is the source of the great diversity and multiplicity of everything that exists, then there will likewise be a great diversity and multiplicity of relationships in which entities stand to the One. These relationships of dependence, of participation, of being generated/produced et al., comprise the foundation of our understanding, thinking, and speaking about the One. Indeed, it is on account of these relationships that anything positive can be said or thought at all about the One. If this is the case, however, what does such thought or speech amount to, given Plotinus’s insistence that the One cannot be known, spoken, or named? Furthermore, the very need to respond to difficult questions concerning the cosmos—for example, whether everything exists, and events occur, arbitrarily82—will force Plotinus to characterize the One in ways that run counter to the way(s) in which the One’s independence must be strictly and emphatically maintained {2}: given that they are applied to entities on the basis of the determinacy of being,83 how can any attribute be ascribed to the One if it (the One) is indeterminate, unknowable, and abides outside of being, beyond anything that exists?
For reasons stated at the outset, I have framed my exposition thus far primarily in terms of Plotinus’s metaphysics: for it is the unique metaphysical status of the One—in particular, its absolute simplicity and independence—that, at bottom, drives the series of negations and denials. Although I will continue to emphasize the metaphysical dimension of Plotinus’s conception of the One, I will now also attend to what Plotinus actually says, positively and negatively, about the One. In order to ameliorate the various tensions formulated in the paragraph above, I must show, among other things, that the semantic content of Plotinus’s statements cohere, even though such statements may, grammatically for instance, have the form of contradiction or paradox. If, as Plotinus claims, the One cannot be known, named, or spoken, then what does Plotinus take himself to be referring to in, or by way of, such statements? Does the injunction to negate all attributions to the One apply to negations of the One? Plotinus says, in Ennead VI.8, that all statements concerning the One must be qualified by “as if” or “so to speak.”84 Does Plotinus really mean that everything one says about the One should be so qualified? Correlatively, then, do negations even need to be qualified by “as if” or “so to speak”? What, furthermore, is the status of positive descriptions of the One? Why do positive or negative statements not provide us with any knowledge of the One? Perhaps even more crucially, I will also go on to argue that Plotinus’s statements need to be understood in terms of their performative/pragmatic function: both positive and negative discourses concerning the One are context-sensitive and have more than one functional role to play in Plotinus’s thought. The question one might pose here is: In speaking of the One, does Plotinus’s take his statements to do more than just explain?
1.4 The Broader Context of Plotinus’s Project
Concerning the One
As a step towards establishing the broader context of Plotinus’s project concerning the One, one might proceed by asking why it is important for Plotinus to write, speak, ponder, and understand the One. What is at stake in any discourse concerning the One? Why pursue an understanding of the One?
But all the same, even now we must speak of it for a little, starting from that [experience] but proceeding by rational discourse. The knowledge or touching of the Good is the greatest thing (esti men gar e tou agathou eite gnoosis eite epaphe megiston), and Plato says it is the “greatest study”, not calling the looking at it a “study”, but learning about it beforehand. We are taught about it by comparisons (analogiai) and negations (aphaireseis) and knowledge of the things which come from it and certain methods of ascent (anabasmoi) by degrees, but we are put on the way to it by purifications (katharseis) and virtues (aretai) and adornings and by gaining footholds in the intelligible and settling ourselves firmly there and feasting on its contents.85
I will say a bit more later concerning the grand, cosmological dynamic of Plotinus’s metaphysical vision of reality: all things proceed from (proodos) from and return/revert (epistrophe) to the Good/One. As Plotinus explains in the passage above, the project of what he calls “knowing” or “touching” the One transpires as part of the larger movement of an “ascent” to the One—which, most broadly understood, is one modality of the return/reversion of the soul to the One. Within that broader context, the “greatest thing” for a human being to pursue and accomplish in via is to “know” or “touch” the Good. For Plotinus, the “knowledge or touching of the Good” is the end and result of one modality of the soul’s reversion to the One: namely, the mystical union of the soul with the One.86
Plotinus goes on to invoke Plato’s authority in support of his own position by citing a passage from the Republic, in which, according to Plotinus, Plato commends to his [Plato’s] students the “greatest study”: endeavoring to learn about the Good.87 In so doing, however, Plotinus contextualizes Plato’s comment, ordering it within his [Plotinus’s] own schema: learning and studying about the One “beforehand” are a means of preparation for mystical union with the One. The further implication is that such study and learning take place, for the most part, within the medium