Harvard Divinity School

Apophasis in Plotinus: A Critical ApproachAuthor(s): Michael SellsSource: The Harvard Theological Review, Vol. 78, No. 1/2 (Jan. - Apr., 1985), pp. 47-65Published by: Cambridge University Press on behalf of the Harvard Divinity SchoolStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1509593Accessed: 16/10/2009 10:34

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HTR 78:3- 4 (1985) 47- 65

APOPHASIS IN PLOTINUS: A CRITICAL APPROACH*

Michael Sells Haverford College

To most modern sensibilities, Gnosticism has a strong and even dangerous appeal, frequently under other names, but Neoplatonism scarcely moves anyone in our time. William James reacted to the Neoplatonic Absolute or God, the One and the Good, by saying that "the stagnant felicity of the absolute's own perfection moves me as little as I move it." No one is going to argue with James now.

Harold Bloom'

Is apophasis dead? Can there be a contemporary apophatic theology, or critical method, or approach to comparative religion and interreligious dialogue? If such approaches are possible, then a resource of virtually unfathomable richness lies largely untapped. I suggest that apophasis has much to offer to contemporary thought and that, in turn, classical apophasis can be critically reevaluated from the perspective of contem- porary concerns.

Plotinus was not only a founder of apophasis in the West, but also the author of what remain some of the most challenging and radical apophatic passages. This essay is simultaneously a reinterpretation of those passages and a reconsideration from an apophatic perspective of contemporary issues in language reference and the generation of mean- ing. Such a discussion must enter into the world of Plotinian language, a world of constantly shifting reference and perspective, of radical,

*This paper was presented at the panel of the International Society for Neoplatonic Studies, American Philosophical Association, Western Division (Chicago, 25 April 1985). The initial research was aided by an Andrew Mellon grant and by the hospitality of Stan- ford University's departments of Religious Studies and Classics. I owe special thanks to Bernard McGinn for his careful and challenging readings of earlier drafts.

I Harold Bloom, Kabbalah and Criticism (New York: Seabury, 1975) 18.

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sometimes violent, alterations of linguistic structure, of a continual movement from paradox to paradox; in short, a world in which the ground continually falls out from underfoot as one walks. Despite its initial strangeness, I will argue that this is an interpretive world very much our own.

Regress from Reference

"The beyond-being" does not refer to a some-thing since it does not posit any-thing, nor does it "speak its name" (Plato Parm 132 a 3). It merely indicates that it is "not that." No attempt is made to circumscribe it. It would be absurd to circumscribe that immense nature. To wish to do so is to cut oneself off from its slightest trace. (Enneads 5.5.6.11 -17)2

For Plotinus, "being" implies form and therefore a delimited entity (horismenon, 5.5.6.1-11).3 He is thus led to call the unlimited the "beyond being" (epekeina tou ontos). However, it is not only being that implies delimitation. The very act of naming delimits. A name's

2 All references are to Plotinus, Plotini Opera (ed. Paul Henry and Hans-Rudolf Schwyzer; 3 vols.; Paris: Descl6e de Brouwer; Leiden: Brill, 1951, 1959, 1971), cited by standard Ennead, treatise, section, and line number. Plotinus speaks of his first principle with the personal, masculine pronoun (autos), and with nonpersonal terms such as the Good (to agathon), the One (to hen), and the beyond-being. In order to emphasize his effort going beyond delimitation, I vary between masculine and neuter forms in my translations. In composing the translations used in this study, I have tried to preserve the distinctive tone of the version of Stephen MacKenna (Plotinus [5 vols.; London: The Medici Society, 1921-30]), sometimes echoing a MacKennan turn of phrase. Though MacKenna's translation has been superceded by the English of A. H. Armstrong (Lon- don and Cambridge, MA: LCL, 1966-85), the French of E. Brehier (Paris, 1924-38), the Italian of V. Cilento (Bari/Laterza: 1947-49), and the German of R. Harder (Ham- burg, 1956-62), its lyrical intensity is often unique in expressing deeper Plotinian reso- nances. Even as newer translations based upon modern editions replace it in scholarly discussions, MacKenna's work continues to stand forth as a remarkable literary achieve- ment, and a compelling interpretation (by translation) of Plotinus.

There is a large modern literature on Plotinus, and it would be long to cite it all fairly. This essay is based upon readings of the passages cited, and other similar passages that lend themselves to a rigorous apophatic reading and defense of Plotinian apophasis. I should point out that Plotinus's passages vary in degree of apophatic tension. Some pas- sages are apophatically more rigorous than others. This treatment focuses on the most purely apophatic passages in Plotinus and does not attempt to give a comprehensive view of his corpus.

31 translated to on and ousia throughout as "being," and ta onta as "beings." For Plotinus, "being" is primarily the object of a reference, and thus any form of referential entification.

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referent is, by the act of naming, marked off in some manner from those things which it is not. It is a tode ti, a some-thing, a delimited entity. If denomination and reference are necessarily acts of delimita- tion, how is it possible to refer to the unlimited (aoriston)? Names such as "the One," or "the beyond being" cannot refer to the unlim- ited since, insofar as they refer, they delimit. "We find ourselves in an aporia, agonizing over how to speak. We speak of the ineffable; wish- ing to signify it as best we can, we name it" (5.5.6.23-25).

This agony (odis-the term can also mean birth pang) resulted in a new discourse with its own genre conventions, logic, and semantic and symbolic structure. The initial aporia or perplexity was harnessed and made the central principle of this new discourse, a discourse of "mysti- cal dialectic" that was to have enormous impact on Greek, Jewish, Christian, and Islamic thought.

Plotinus called his strategy for dealing with the referential aporia apo- phasis (speaking away), a term often translated as the "negative way" (via negativa), though Plotinian apophasis is very different from simple negation. More confusingly, the term has been applied to two very different kinds of writing. Formal apophasis acknowledges the ineffability of the transcendent but continues to use normal, discursive reference. The formal apophatic might place a warning at the beginning or end of the discussion to the effect that no name or prediction can be made correctly of the unlimited, but during the discussion such qualms are largely forgotten, and the language is used with little questioning of its normal referential structure. Plotinian or rigorous apophasis takes the aporia more seriously and uses it like a magnet to transform fixed reference into an open, ever changing semantic movement.

In discussing rigorous apophasis one is caught in Plotinus's dilemma. It was stated that it is impossible to refer to the unlimited, since the act of reference delimits. But in that very sentence the term "the unlim- ited" had to be used. Similarly, in the case of pronominal delimitation one might say that "We can't even call it it," but again one has had to use reference to deny the use of reference. Like the rigorous apo- phatic, the critic is caught in a regress spiralling infinitely back away from saying anything.

Rigorous apophasis is obscured when treated from an ambiguous apophatic perspective, when, for example, the Plotinian One is translated as "God," and that term is then used in a nonapophatic way. Formal or nonapophatic lenses result in a nonapophatic picture. A self-sustaining process of reversion to the normative sets in. Critical methods based upon nonapophatic premises render the rigorous

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apophatic tradition the more invisible. To avoid this trap, one must begin by adhering to the conventions of Plotinian apophasis.

Apophasis begins with apology, acknowledgement that the terms used in reference to the unlimited are incorrect and should not be taken referentially. This discussion begins with a repetition of that apology.

The second step is the apophatic marker. Plotinus often uses the term hoion (as it were) to show that a name or predicate should not be taken at face value. Though we have a wider variety of apophatic markers (quotation marks, brackets), to place an apophatic marker after every problematic reference would dilute the impact of the marker and result in an unreadable text.

This leads to the most important step, the apophatic pact. Unless the reader agrees to accept a seemingly incorrect use of names at the outset, and to make a certain adjustment in the term (described below), apophatic language will seem absurd. Plotinus believed that the mind has a language-conditioned tendency to delimit, and to be unaware of the delimitation. Not only the apophatic writer but anyone who attempts to discuss that writer's work without betraying it must enter with the reader into an engagement with the dilemmas of delimitation. Apophasis cannot be presented unless the presentation is in some way apophatic. Just as in the above passage Plotinus was forced to use the term "immense nature," so one is now forced to use terms (the One, the unlimited) that cannot perform the referential act they proclaim. The reader is asked to bracket them, to recognize their deficiency with the expectation that their referential function will be transformed.

To the referential use of language that he associates with orality, with speaking, naming, and calling, Plotinus opposes theoria. Theoria is a seeing or gazing (idein, blepein, theasthai), but as opposed to normal

sight, it is not the viewing of an exterior object. As an example, Plo- tinus suggests the Pythagorean use of the term Apollo as a "symbol" of the "not many." This is not a negation, but something more com- plex, an open, never ending process of apophasis:

The name "The One" is merely a denial of multiplicity. The Pythagoreans signified it symbolically (symbolikos) among one another through the term Apollo (a-pollon, not-many), by apo- phasis of the many. If the One is to be taken as a positing (thesis), name (onoma), and referent (deloumenon), we would express our- selves more clearly if we did not speak its name at all. We speak it so that we can begin our search with that which signifies the most simple, ending with the apophasis of even that. (5.5.6.26-33)

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Apophasis is not merely a substitution of a negative term (the non- many) for a positive term (the One). The term Apollo is used to sig- nify the "not many," but it is followed by the "apophasis of even that." As in the example above, "we can't even call it it," the nega- tion must undergo apophasis in turn. The infinite regress within the initial aporia finds itself at the center of what Plotinus refers to as sym- bolic language. An initial, working definition of Plotinian theoria or symbolism would be: a discourse that transforms itself from the referential to the nonreferential through a never-ending process of apophasis, the withdrawal of a delimitation, the withdrawal of the de- limitation posited in making the first withdrawal, ad infinitum. The language-conditioned tendency of the mind moves it inexorably toward delimitation, a tendency that must be continually transformed by new acts of apophasis as long as the contemplative gaze remains. The dynamic of symbolic engagement tends to revert to static reference, to being paraphrased as a symbol "of some-thing," the reversion of the symbol into a name. Plotinian language avoids reversion through the continued "apophasis of even that."

In a vivid passage, Plotinus imagines a glowing mass in the center of a hollow sphere. Light is wholly present over every spot on the sphere. Then:

If someone should take out the corporeal mass, but preserve the power of the light, would you then speak of where the light was? Or would it not be everywhere, distributed in and over the entire sphere? No longer can you say through dianoia where it was first located, and no longer can you say whence and how it came. You will be brought into perplexity and wonderment. (6.4.7.32-38)

The hand of the author reaches back into the image to pull out the glowing mass, a kind of manus ex machina, as it were. This is apo- phasis: to reach into a reference and withdraw the delimited referent, to reach into the notion of contemplating something and withdraw the "some-thing." What appears to happen ex machina is not really artificial, however. The apophatic withdrawal is governed by the inner logic of the aporia. In the above example, the entire image was not withdrawn, only the central mass. An analogous situation holds for propositions. Apophasis does not negate the first proposition, it with- draws from it a delimiting element. The original regression that spirals back away from saying anything is transformed into a movement spiral- ing deeper into the prereferential, or rather, transreferential symbol. The common, closed categories of discursive reason (dianoia) are transformed into a dynamic, open-ended process of theoria.

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Disontology and Double Proposition Semantics

Then there can be no "thus." It would be a delimitation and a some-thing. One who sees (idOn), knows that it is possible to assert neither a "thus" nor a "not-thus." How can you say that it is a being among beings, something to which a "thus" can be applied? It is other than all things that are "thus." But seeing the unlimited you will say that all things are below it, affirming that it is none of them but, if you will, a power of absolute ontological self-mastery. It is that which it wills to be; or rather, the being that it wills to be it projects out into beings, while it remains greater than all its will, all will being below it. So neither did it will to be a "thus," so that it would have to conform (to its "thus"), nor did another make it so. (6.8.9.38-48)

The critique of language reference is tied into a critique of ontology.4 Both ontology, the placing of the unlimited within the category of being, and referential delimitation, as represented by the predications "thus" and "not-thus," are invalid. The unlimited must be free of all categories, including the category of being. The argument can be diagrammed as follows: (a) Since the unlimited is free, no other makes it what it is. It is what it wills itself to be. (b) But it cannot even be said to be limited to what it wills itself to be. (c) We should say that it projects the being, the quiddity, the "what," that it wills itself to be out into the realm of beings. It always remains above its own being and its own willing. This series of apophatic withdrawals is an explication of the dense expression dynamin pasan hautPs ontOs kyrian, "power of absolute ontological self-mastery." The One's "projection" of being outside of itself is the prime Plotinian symbol. Later, even the notion that "it projects" will be transformed, since the subject of such a predi- cation implies an actor or being, but "being" is precisely what is being projected out.

Disontology, mythically represented by this "projection," is the tran- scendence of predication and reference as represented by "thus" and "not-thus." To say that the One is x is to delimit it, to mark it off from the not-x. It is also to mark it off even from the x it is said to be. To say that it is here is to mark it off not only from "there," but also "here." There is some category, hereness, which is other than it (oth- erwise the statement "it is here" would be a tautology). A similar case

4 For a discussion of the concept of "being" in Greek and medieval Western thought, see Ivor LeClerc, "God and the Issue of Being," RelS 20 (1984) 63-78.

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of double delimitation would occur for the "not thus." Plotinus was convinced that such reifications, hidden within acts of predication, determine consciousness in a manner both subtle and profound. We cannot even say "it is" since this would imply a category (beingness) from which it would be marked off and delimited.

Elsewhere, instead of saying it is neither x nor not-x, he says that it is both x and not-x (see below). It is often maintained that such language is only a "seeming contradiction." It must be argued that real contradictions arise when the delimited, referential function of language encounters a rigorously apophatic notion of the unlimited. But they are not illogical. They result from a rigorous critique of referential delimi- tation. Further, the rules of non-contradiction and of the excluded middle apply specifically to delimited language reference. The coin- cidentia oppositorum is the logical result of any reference to the unlim- ited, and the means by which language reference is transformed into theoria. Since the term "paradox" is often defined as a "seeming con- tradiction," the term "dialectical logic" is preferred for the coincidentiae oppositorum under discussion here.

The dialectic of immanence and transcendence is an instance of dialectical logic. "It is beyond all things" is a statement that delimits. If it is beyond all things, then there is a conceptual space (all things) from which it is excluded, and another space (the beyond all things) in which it is confined. Apophatic thinking criticizes normal, one-step statements of transcendence as being just another form of delimitation. To achieve an affirmation of transcendence of all limits, one must "transcend" the delimitation of normal affirmations of transcendence. The solution lies in the following double proposition: It is within all things-it is beyond all things. Neither proposition in itself is meaning- ful since each imposes a delimitation. The smallest semantic unit is not the sentence or proposition, but the double sentence or dual proposi- tion. With the image of the glowing mass within the sphere, meaning was generated only when a second image was superimposed upon it, the reaching in and pulling out the mass. Meaning results from the interac- tion of the first and second propositions. Either proposition taken by itself is delimiting and thus, in reference to the unlimited, meaningless. No single proposition can be true or false since no single proposition can say anything about the unlimited. It is to this new semantics of the double-sentence that dialectical logic applies.

Because of the tendency to treat the sentence as the semantic unit, apophasis must be continually repeated. Otherwise, the gravity of language-conditioned thought pulls it toward giving independent propo- sitional status to the last sentence. Plotinian discourse, when the

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context is the unlimited, is made up of dual propositions, the last sen- tence of the first dual proposition forming the first sentence of the second dual proposition. One movement popular with Plotinus and his successors begins with the dialectic of immanence and transcendence: It is beyond all things-it is in all things. But as the mind settles on the second sentence, it reifies a some-thing contained in all things as in a place. A new apophasis pushes off this reification by switching to a stronger form of immanence: it is not in all things but is all things, or is the very place of all things. It is through a continual movement of dual propositions that meaning is generated. Once the movement stops, the mind is trapped in the false signification of the last single proposition.

It is ironic that practitioners of mystical dialectic are accused of pantheism or the denial of the transcendent. Their critique of language showed that simple, one-proposition affirmations of transcendence are misleading, pretending to affirm what in fact they cannot. It is the attempt to find a meaningful formulation of transcendence that leads ineluctably to statements of radical immanence. The charge of panthe- ism is often countered by saying that we shouldn't take seriously the more extreme statements of immanence. But dialectical logic is a logic of extremes. The "absolutely transcendent" is meaningful only if it is simultaneously the "absolutely immanent." Otherwise it is just another being, however great, among beings.

The existence of the apophatic critique is often ignored. William Christian states, for example, that "in most conceptions of God he transcends the world but is not utterly or absolutely transcendent, since he is immanent in the world also."5 This statement is based upon presuppositions concerning the relationship of language reference to transcendence that are challenged by mystical dialectic. Plotinus would certainly wonder how an absolute transcendence could be affirmed without an absolute immanence.

Dialectical logic as defined here can be found in Plato's Parmenides where the hypothesis of "the One" results in a plethora of coincidentiae oppositorumr6 Specific passages will now be examined to show how Plo- tinus gives this schematized logic a dynamic principle, how he makes it come alive.

5 William A. Christian, Sr., Meaning and Truth in Religion (Chicago: University of Chi- cago Press, 1964, 1978) 190. Italics mine.

6 Parm. 137c-155d. See E. R. Dodds, "The Parmenides of Plato and the Origins of the Neoplatonic One," Classical Quarterly 22 (1928) 129-43.

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Subject-Predicate Fusion

For Plotinus, discursive reason reflects alienated consciousness. It must "run after" the object of its contemplation through activity. It is caught in dualisms of subject-object, cause-effect, origin-goal. Nous as spirit, intuition, theoria, is the overcoming of these dualisms. It involves several acts of union: (1) The union of subject, predicate, and object. Nous is thought thinking itself, or it is the union of being (ousia) and act (energeia), at once pure being and pure act. (2) The union of all these activities in one act. In Nous, to think something is to make it, rather than to consider a preexistent separate object, and both acts are identical with willing, loving, living, etc. (3) The union of the divine and human. The human stage of psyche insofar as it achieves noetic contemplation is by that fact united with Nous. And Nous is considered by Plotinus to be divine. Nous is an event, and from the human perspective we might consider it the event of union with the divine. (4) The union of all three unions in Nous. The three occur simultaneously and imply one another.

The statement "thought thinking itself" still contains dualisms. Though subject, predicate, and object are said to be identical, they are linguistically differentiated and thus delimited. The last stage, the unlimited, the One, lies beyond this delimitation. Nous can be realized only when the contemplative gaze is focused not on Nous but on the One. For Nous to be Nous it must look beyond itself.

If Nous is thought thinking or contemplating itself, what does it mean to say that Nous contemplates the One? There are two problems here. First, the One cannot be an object of contemplation, since that would make it a delimited entity, marked off logically from the subject that contemplates it. Second, if Nous is self-contemplation, then to say that it contemplates the One is to say that it is the One. In either case, the reference is split.

The breakdown of standard reference can be seen in predications such as "the One wills." As was mentioned earlier, to say "the One wills" creates several delimitations marking the One as subject off from the activity in which it engages, marking the activity of will off from other activities. To say that the One is "self-willing" does not solve the problem since it is Nous that is defined as self-reflective act. Plo- tinus suggests that the One can be intimated only when language arrives "where there is not two as one, but One-either because there is Act only, or because there is no act at all" (6.8.12.35-37).

As opposed to the noetic identity of being and act, or subject and predicate, the identity spoken of here can be called fusion identity. Again, such a notion can only be conceived of in a dual proposition.

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The first step posits a predication ("the One wills") and the second step reaches in to withdraw the glowing mass, this time in the form of either the subject or the predicate. We are asked to think of an act so total that the subject has been utterly fused into the act, a willing without a willer; or alternatively, to think of a pure subject, a subject that does not act, but serves as the bottomless ground (or depth) out of which the divine willing and divine consciousness (as Nous) well up or emanate. Because thought gravitates toward the subject-predicate, being-act dichotomy, a willing-without-willer or willer-without-willing can only be glimpsed momentarily in the interstices of the dual proposi- tion. Apophasis must keep the mind from settling into delimitation by ever new dual propositions. This being-without-act or act-without- being attempts a momentary transcendence of predication. The follow- ing passage begins with an apophatic apology, only to shift into the most intensely apophatic language. The crucial moments are signaled by the use of the apophatic marker (hoion, as it were):

But given that we must incorrectly employ predications for the sake of the inquiry, then let it be said once again that they are not being spoken correctly, since a duality must never be posited, not even for the sake of obtaining a notion (epinoia). We use these names now for the sake of persuasion and in doing so we depart from strict accuracy. If we give it activities, and imply that its activities are through its will (for it would not act will-lessly), the acts must be as it were its being; its will and its being will be the same. If this is so, it is as it willed to be. (6.8.13.1-9)

The statement that its will and being are the same contains a tension between the fusion identity evoked, and the noetic, linguistic identity which is the most that any one-step proposition taken by itself can actu- ally say, a tension which is here highlighted through italics. The mind glimpses an identity of fusion beyond the delimitations of language before it settles into normal habits of reference. In other passages, the author attempts to prolong such a glimpse by an apophatic withdrawal of the subject from the proposition, by speaking of an awakening without an awakener, for example. In the following quotation the One-Nous is said to cause itself, to be its own very act of self-causing, to be its act of contemplating itself. This turning inward, this motion towards itself, is the "power of absolute ontological self-mastery" men- tioned above. The deontology consists of a continual fusing of the subject-predicate dualism. The apophatic marker hoion appears with such frequency that to translate it each time as "as it were" would be cumbersome. It will here be marked with the sign: (. Despite

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Plotinus's intense use of the marker, this passage and others like it have been read as if there were an entity engaging in activities.7

He is everywhere and nowhere. ... if nowhere, nowhere has he happened to be, and if everywhere, then, just as he is, he is every- where so that he is the everywhere and the everyway. ... If then he exists in view of holding fast toward himself and gazing 0 toward himself, and the being 0 is for him that very gazing toward himself, he would then make him(self) 0, and then he is not as he happened to be but as he wished to be. ... The being that he is is that very act toward himself. ... If then his act did not come to be, but always was, an awakening 0 without an awakener as other 0, an eternal awakening and a supra-intellection, then as he awoke to be he is: awakening beyond being, and Nous, and rational life 0, though he is these 0, act beyond Nous and understanding and life, which are from him and from no other. By himself, in himself, and from himself is his being. He is, therefore, not as he hap- pened to be, but as he wished to be. (6.8.16.1-39)

Predications imply that a subject engages in an activity, that there is a "remainder" within the subject that is not that activity itself. Plo- tinus evokes an act without subject to overcome such remainders, to overcome the delimitations hidden within predication. He evokes an act so utterly complete and instantaneous that the subject is fused into the act to the point of no longer existing. In terms like "awakening without an awakener," the fusion of normal syntactical units results in extraordinary semantic intensity.

Split or Shifting Reference

The One is Nous, but beyond Nous. Or the One-Nous is the being it makes itself to be and then, in disontology, is said to project outside of itself. This disontology is reflected in language by a splitting of normal reference, and by a subversion of normal distinctions between reflexive and nonreflexive. When Plotinus says in the above passage that "he

7 A. H. Armstrong in his influential book The Architecture of the Intelligible Universe in the Philosophy of Plotinus (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1940) took these pas- sages as positing a positive One, a being with attributes of freedom, will, knowledge, love, and goodness, that is in contradiction with a negative One mentioned in other Plo- tinian passages. For another nonapophatic reading of Plotinus, see J. M. Rist, Plotinus: The Road to Reality (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1967). In the recent work of Armstrong, the centrality of apophasis in Plotinus is stressed: A. M. Armstrong, "The Escape from the One: An Investigation of Some Possibilities Imperfectly Realized in the West," StPatr 13 (1979); idem, "Negative Theology," Downside Review 95 (1977).

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would then make himself," or in another passage that "logic leads us to the discovery that it made itself," the reflexive pronoun is subverted by the infinite regress lying within the notion of self-causality. The simultaneous use and subversion of the reflexive is a deliberate verbal strategy.

This is a critical moment. The infinite regress that constituted the original aporia returns as the interior principle of mystical dialectic, splitting apart normal reference structures from within:

And if someone should say: "What! doesn't it follow that he would have had to come into being before coming into being? For if he makes himself, then, insofar as he is made, he is not yet in being, but from the perspective of the act of making he is before the self as made, which he is said to be?!" To whom it must be replied that he cannot be taken as made, but only as maker. The act of making himself must be freed (apoluteon) from all else. (6.8.20.1 -6)

The dual proposition now takes the following form. The One makes/wills/thinks itself to be (self-causality)-the One cannot be taken as the object, it transcends the self which it makes itself to be (self-transcendence). Parentheses are used here to indicate the splitting of reference: It is as it makes it(self) to be. Split reference occurs not only in the object [it makes it(self)] but throughout the proposition. What is it that makes itself? It must be Nous since Nous is defined as reflexive act. But then it would have had to make itself in order to exist in order to make itself. Nous as self-making devolves into an infinite regress. On the other hand, if we say that the One makes itself, then we must withdraw not only the "itself," but also the division between maker and making by posing a making without a maker or a maker without a making. Insofar as "it makes," it cannot be the One, since the One cannot be referred to in a subject-predicate delimitation. Nous both is and is not the One. The double dialectic of self-causality and self-transcendence brings to life the underlying dialectical logic. This analysis accounts for the disagreement among editors in many cases over whether the antecedent of the pronoun is Nous or the One.8

8 See Henry and Schwyzer's apparatus for 6.7.16.15-16, 6.7.8.16.37, 6.8.13.54-55, 5.2.1.12-15, 5.1.7.10 for a few examples of the controversy over whether the reflexive or nonreflexive is meant. For a more extended view of the controversy in a particular instance, see V. Cilento, Enneadi, vol. 3, part 2, p. 32. In a separate essay (in prepara- tion) I apply the principles of interpretation outlined here to a detailed discussion of the above texts.

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It is neither and both. As with other writers of mystical dialectic, Plo- tinus splits the normal reference so that the reflexive/non-reflexive, self/other division is no longer operative.9 The referent continually slips beyond the proposition.

Below, Plotinus speaks of the beyond-being projecting being outside itself. As indicated in reference to the "power of absolute ontological self-mastery," the predication "it projects" cannot stand. To the extent that it is projecting outside of itself its being, it has no being that it might be thought of as a being that projects. The proposition turns in upon itself in apophasis, transforming itself on ever deeper levels of deontology into a transreferential theoria.

So we should intuit the beyond-being spoken as a riddle by the ancients. Not only did he beget being, but he is subject neither to being nor to himself, nor is his being a principle of himself, but he, being the principle of being, did not make being for himself, but having made it, he projected it outside himself-he who is in no need of beingness, who made it. Thus he did not make in accor- dance with his being. (6.8.19.12-20)

Self-making refers then to Nous (noetic self-reflexivity) and to the One (fusion-identity) at the same time. The propositions "it is as it willed/made/thought it(self) to be" not only split the reference, but the infinite regress implied in them continues to split the reference as long as the gaze (theoria) is maintained. The split reference of self- causality, the "projection" of being outside the self, the process of deontology, the breakdown of the self/other dichotomy, are all aspects of emanation (literally "outflowing," though the term also refers to overflowing). Emanation is reified when presented non-apophatically as if there were some place or thing from which things "flow out." In

9 For similar shifts in Erigena, Eckhart, and Ibn cArabi, see Michael Sells, "The Meta- phor and Dialectic of Emanation in Plotinus, John the Scot, Meister Eckhart, and Ibn (Arabi" (Ph.D. diss., University of Chicago, 1982); idem, "Ibn cArabi's Garden among the Flames: A Reevaluation," HR 23 (1984) 287-315; and idem, "Ibn cArabi's Polished Mirror: Perspective Shift and Meaning Event," Studia Islamica (forthcoming). Ibn (Arabi refers to the doctrine of fana,, the passing away of the ego self in the contemplation of the divine beloved, through the image of the polished mirror. When the Sufi passes away, his heart becomes a polished mirror. The mirror is no longer "seen," only the divine image reflected in the mirror. The question "Who sees whom in whom" then involves an infinite regress of shifting referents, which I attempt to translate as "It (divine subject, human subject) sees it(self) through it(self) in it(self)." Again, normal linguistic distinctions between reflexive and nonreflexive, between self and other, are split or fused.

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Plotinus there is always that second step, the reaching to pull out the glowing mass.

Emanation as Overflow of Meaning

The One is all things but no one thing. The principle of all things is not all things, but is all things in "that" way. For there all things run within, as it were. Or they are not, but will be. How then from the absolute One, in which no multiplicity appears nor any duality whatsoever, [can there be a many]? Rather, it is because there is nothing in it that all things are from it In order that Being be, That must not be Being, but rather Being's begetter. This is, as it were, the primal genesis. Perfect, seeking nothing, having nothing, needing nothing, it overflowed, as it were, and its overflowing made its other. This begotten turned back toward it(self) and was filled and became the contemplator of it(self) and became Nous. Its standing before it made Being, and the contem- plation toward it made it Nous. When it stands before it, so that it sees, at one time it is engendered as Nous and Being. Thus, since it is, as it were, That, it brings about likenesses-pouring forth a vast power, and that is its image. (5.2.1.1-16)

"Because there is nothing in it, all things are from it." Here emana- tion is tied in directly to "ontological self-mastery," or disontology. The passage contains coiled within it the entire mystical dialectic, and by unraveling its dilemmas we can see the workings of this genre. For example, the primal act of generation (prote gennOsis) is called an overflowing. The overflowing produced an other, which turned back (epestrapho), was filled, and became a contemplator and Nous. How- ever, if the One produced the other by overflowing, if that other is what flows from it, then to state that the other is filled by the same per- petual overflowing is to fuse together the vessel-content dualism on which the metaphor is based, or to first pose the dualism and then withdraw one element. This is the dilemma that the vessel is the con- tent.

A similar dilemma is intimated by the meanings of the English term emanation: the act of flowing out or of causing to flow out, or that which flows out. What flows out is identical to the act of flowing out, the result of the process is the process. In regard to the One and Nous, it [split reference] is the motion of procession and return (or turning back), the motion of which it is at other times called the result.

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Another dilemma concerns the fact that what flows out, or the flowing out, cannot really be or happen until the turning back to the source. Only after the return can it really be said to have proceded. Similarly Nous (as intellective act) is said to be Being. Sometimes Nous is said to proceed and become being when it turns back. At other times Being proceeds and becomes Nous when it turns back. Plotinian discourse is filled with related double paradigms (Beauty-Life, Unity- Multiplicity, Rest-Motion). These double paradigms, which elsewhere are referred to as reciprocal causality, are latent in the split reference [it turns back toward it{self)]. In the semantics of the double paradigm, no single, static paradigm is meaningful. "A then B" leads ineluctably to "B then A." Again, textual difficulties that occur in deciding the antecedent (Nous or the One) for the pronouns in this passage can be seen as a result of Plotinian split reference.

Split reference involves a double gaze. Nous looks toward its source/self. Plotinus accepted Aristotle's Nous as thought thinking itself, but criticized making it the ultimate principle.10 Nous becomes itself by gazing beyond itself. The enigma of the double gaze relates to the problem of predication. If Nous is reified as a principle, as subject of predication, then the thought-thinking-itself freezes into a static con- cept. In the simultaneous contemplation of source/self, contemplative mind is led by the aporia into reenacting the very unions mentioned above as being part of Nous: union of subject and predicate, of all activity in one act, etc. The unlimited, like a magnet, keeps Nous in a state of constant activity.

One could go on explicating the dilemmas of emanation. Later Neo- platonists did so systematically. What is most important is the aporetic function these dilemmas represent. The aporia keeps the mind in incessant activity, never allowing it a fixed referent. One is led from one facet of aporia to another. The logical regress within the aporia continually forces the reader to reach in and pull out the glowing mass. Whenever a source of emanation is delimited a second step removes the delimitation.

10 Enneads 6.7.41.8-17, 6.7.40.22-30. Though Plotinus considered himself a disciple of Plato and a critic of Aristotle, it may have been in his unraveling the hidden dynamic within Aristotelian formulations of Nous (Metaphysics 1074b 33-1075a; De anima 3.4.429b-430a) that the Plotinian infinitely receding referent evolved. The term "Neo- platonism" may grant too much to Plotinus's rhetorical self-positioning, and may neglect the profound impact upon him of certain Aristotelian texts. (Of course that is in addition to the deeper problem with the term "Neoplatonism" with its implication that what is interesting about Plotinus lies in his doctrine rather than, as suggested here, in his mode of discourse.)

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The aporia governs a discourse that combines the metaphor of ema- nation, or the mythic language of "projection of being out of it/self," with an inner dialectic that transforms the dualistic structures upon which images are based, forming a symbolic process of mythic dialectic or metaphoric dialectic.

Emanation is often seen as causal explanation, and genesis as simply the One's engendering of Nous, and the succeeding creation of the lower realms. But the inner apophatic logic subverts the dualisms and delimitations upon which such narrative, explanatory language is based. Explanatory language is transformed into a language of theoria. Until now theoria has not been translated here as contemplation since con- templation is most often seen as contemplation of some-thing, and that reification of a "something" is precisely what Plotinus was attempting to avoid. Nous is contemplation, but the "object" of its contemplation is constantly being pulled away through the techniques of linguistic fusion and split reference.

From the fusion or fission of small particles results an enormous energy. Though such analogies may only be suggestive, Plotinus does obtain an extraordinary symbolic intensity through splitting reference, and fusing subject and predicate. This is the "pouring forth of a vast power" that results from the Plotinian epistrophe, the turning back to the self/source.

Ingress into Symbol

Plotinus called his apophasis a "symbolic" use of language. This use of "symbol" should not however be confused with pre-referential signification. Mystical dialectic uses language and language reference. It "proceeds" out into delimited language reference, only to "return" to the non-delimited source. Both steps are necessary for the genera- tion of meaning. The first or "kataphatic" step sets the context. The cultural and linguistic context of a given tradition, in this case the philosophical tradition of late antiquity, is affirmed. The second or apo- phatic step removes the delimitation through the negativity, represented by withdrawing the glowing mass.

The second or negative stage can take on meaning only within its context. This negativity can never be propositionally distinguished from mere negativity or nothingness. From the standpoint of the apo- phatic moment, the question "does it exist or not" cannot be answered. On what grounds could one affirm or deny the existence of what (!) lies beyond the delimitations of predication, of "it exists" or "it does not exist." When the apophatic movement is taken out of context it sounds nihilistic. But a greater danger is posed by those who

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attempt to show that the apophatic moment actually affirms a "some- thing" and thus delimits it. Apophasis demands a moment of real negation. After speaking of absolute unity as that which is most power- ful (dynatotaton) in an animal, a soul, or in the all, Plotinus says:

But should we grasp the One of authentic beings, their principle, wellspring, and dynamis-will we then lose faith and consider it nothing? It is certainly nothing of the things of which it is the ori- gin, being such, as it were, that nothing can be attributed to it, nei- ther being, nor beings, nor life. It is beyond those. If then by withdrawing being you should grasp it, you will be brought into wonder (thauma). (3.8.10.26-32)

After contemplating the worldview of his tradition, the mystic then withdraws being from the source. At this moment the soul "fears that there be nothing" (6.9.3.6). A moment of pure receptivity is demanded, a letting go, a leap beyond the security of delimited con- sciousness. At this point one is asked not to lose faith. The faith demanded is not a faith in any-thing, but a willingness to let go of being. Such a letting go results in wonderment (thauma), and emana- tion, an overflow of meaning. But wonderment and the overflow that result from liberation from deliberation constitute an event. They can- not be held onto. The process must be continually repeated.

Apophasis transforms a semantics of predication into a semantics of realization. Nothing can be affirmed objectively about the One/Nous without delimiting the unlimited and freezing the dynamic. Noetic con- templation must be realized (in the double sense of understood and actualized or reenacted) at the moment of apophatic withdrawal.

The appeal of apophatic mystics lies not in a universal doctrine or creed. One need not share Plotinus's opinions on astrology or the material world, for example, in order to appreciate the apophatic pas- sages. The "what" that is posed in the first kataphatic stage is condi- tioned and delimited, but the act of withdrawing it is not. Though Plotinus insists that it is necessary to follow the virtuous life, according to his own rigorous notions of virtue, to achieve a complete experience, his ultimate (and hard won) decision to write implies that reading can itself enact the epistropho, aesthetically and noetically, as a meaning event. Plotinus's agony for expression led to the birth of mystical dialectic as a genre, a genre that was to have a long history in Greek, Christian, Jewish, and Islamic traditions.

This account of mystical dialectic suggests a change in the focus of contemporary discussion of mysticism. One group has claimed that "what" the mystic experiences is the same in different traditions. In

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response, in a discussion of the experience of "nothingness," Stephen Katz answers that "the difference between cases is a difference between what is experienced, not just how something is experienced"11 Notice how "nothing" has been made into "something"! Mystical dialectic criticizes such a use of "what." The proposition "experiences what" delimits. A "what" implies a quiddity, a definable essence, a some- thing. While we might argue that the experience is contextually condi- tioned, or that it is common to mystics in differing traditions, at the apophatic level we must withdraw the "what." Such withdrawal allows an alternative either to delimiting a common essence of religious tradi- tions or denying the possibility of comparative understanding.

In this interpretation, the focus has been upon linguistic elements, subject-predicate dualisms, for example. It might be objected that Plo- tinus does not usually use grammatical terminology. It is true that he speaks ontologically, of the "other" proceeding from the One and then realizing itself as it turns back toward it(self). Yet, there are clues throughout that these passages are to be read symbolically as disontol- ogy. When Plotinus speaks of an awakening without an "awakener as an other," in the context of act-without-being, his text is self-reflective. What "proceeds" is the subject-predicate dualism that is language reference. That reference is not what it is until it returns to itself (we can't speak of the proceeding until the result, the subject-predicate, allows us to say "it proceeds"). But the language reference is not fully itself until it turns towards its source in intuition (gazing inward), in insight into the pre-predication, the un-delimited. This transreferential second step is marked by fusion identities and split reference. There is movement (procession and return) but the movement is also a rest or remaining: the event of epistrophe, of apophasis, be continually repeated in order for the gaze to rest fixed. No single proposition can be more than momentarily meaningful.

The original aporia that spirals back away from reference is transformed into a new spiral, the dynamis of disontology. The linear, dualistic thrust of intention (origin-goal), causality (cause-effect), hierarchy (high-low), time, space, and language reference is combined with an equal circular movement of dialectic and coincidentia opposi torum. In emanation, what flows out is identical with the act of flowing out. In mystical dialectic, what is meant is identical with the process, or the movement, of signification. One can never say propositionally

11 Stephen Katz, "Language, Epistemology, and Mysticism," in idem, ed., Mysticism and Philosophical Analysis (New York: Oxford University Press, 1978) 52. Emphasis mine.

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what is meant, since the meaning cannot be delimited in a "what," a something. The dynamis of absolute ontological self-mastery is the meaning event that comes about through apophasis.

Plotinus's attitude toward writing is portrayed as ambivalent, even tortured, by Porphyry, his editor, biographer, and disciple. For years he refused to write, and when he finally did, he would write an entire treatise at a time, in a kind of contemplative white heat, not moving until it was finished. Afterwards, he would not look at it, even to make spelling and grammatical corrections. His ambivalence is in part justified by the fate of his method in much subsequent interpretation. The tendency to reify the One as some kind of entity is in direct pro- portion to Plotinus's pleas, and his apophatic mechanisms, meant to prevent such reification. The quotation with which this essay began exemplifies this tendency. The One is first reified as an entity, and then that entity is attacked for its "static felicity." But the One is not a static entity, felicitous or otherwise. It is what 0 continually slips beyond delimiting language reference, leading a contemplative move- ment ever deeper into meaning. The movement never stops at a final entity. This movement can take place within any religious or cultural tradition. It does not attempt to deny the religious language of the tradition, but transforms it from the doctrinal to the contemplative, to a language of theoria. In doing so it breaks apart normal categories and boundaries, merging theology, philosophy, and poetry in a unique genre of discourse. It challenges standard stereotypes of Eastern and Western thought,12 as well as stereotypes of modern and classical views of refer- ence and language.13 It challenges the marginalization and dismissal as "uncommunicative" of mystical language. Finally, it challenges schol- arship and criticism to develop a contemporary discourse that will not freeze and reify the apophatic motion.

12 There are strong similarities between Plotinian apophasis and non-dual Indian thought, for example. The Sunyata notion that all constructs are empty including the construct that all constructs are empty, including the concept that the concept that ... is an infinite regress functionally identical to Plotinus's aporia, and used (as in the Vimalakirti Sutra) in similar ways.

13 There is a tendency among followers of deconstructionist thought to overlook prec- edents among apophatic thinkers. This is often due to a reified view of the apophatic thinkers themselves, or a dismissal of them, founded upon an inaccurate view of mysti- cism as irrational.

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