Radical Apophasis. Todd Ohara
and intellection, and thereby function at the levels of both intelligible and sensible realities. Because of the limitations of this project, I cannot deal with the distinction between what Plotinus sees as distinct modes of awareness and knowledge: for example, dianoia, noesis, theoria, etc.
61. See Ennead V.1.2. Though not important for the purpose of this project, Plotinus thinks that there are two levels with respect to Psyche: a higher level that is the immediate outflow of Nous, and a lower level that is understood to be a world-soul.
62. See Ennead V.3, V.5, and V.9.
63. V.4.2: 149.
64. See Ennead V.1.7: 37: “[A]ll things [in Nous] come from him [the One]. This is why they are substances; for they are already defined and each has a kind of shape. Being must not fluctuate, so to speak, in the indefinite, but must be fixed by limit and stability; and stability in the intelligible world is limitation and shape” (bracketed gloss mine).
65. V.3.17: 131–33.
66. And thus cognizes things discursively: V.1.3: 21.
67. V.1.4: 23; and V.3.5: 85–89.
68. V.1.3: 21. Brackets and capitalization mine.
69. V.4.2: 149: “[I]ntellect itself is its objects.” See also Ennead V.9.6: 301.
70. Plotinus also says that Nous gazes, so to speak, upon that from which it derives: The One. Sometimes, Plotinus intimates that Nous is somewhat Janus-faced, so to speak: eternally contemplating itself and the Forms, while simultaneously in contact with, and gazing upon, the splendor of the One. Furthermore, in other passages, Plotinus seems to suggest metaphorically that Nous is the product of the One’s “activity”: as if the One’s attempt to cognize itself—its superabundance and exceeding greatness—resulted in a kind of fragmentation of itself into Nous (and the multiplicity/complexity “contained” therein). Such an “act” could not remain self-enclosed and so poured itself out, as it were, to become something complex: that is to say, Nous (with the One remaining ever simple, inert, and in itself). On this latter point, see Ennead VI.7.15: 135–37.
71. V.3.17: 131–33.
72. V.3.5: 87; V.5.2: 161; V.5.3: 163.
73. V.3.5: 89.
74. For the sake of clarity, the objects of Nous’s contemplative cognition are the eternal Forms, and not the particular, spatio-temporal entities whose quiddity and being are grounded in the Forms and in Nous’s contemplation thereof. Nous does not traffic, so to speak, with spatio-temporal particulars, since doing so would make it subject to the change and becoming which so characterize the physical existence of sensible reality.
75. V.3.13: 119.
76. In some passages, Plotinus characterizes the complexity of Nous in terms of the multiplicity of Forms/Intelligibles “internal” to Nous. In other passages, Plotinus seems to intimate that Nous is complex because its cognitive acts are, on some level, individuated by the multiplicity of objects it contemplates (see, for example, V.3.10; and by implication, see VI.7.39: 209). In both cases, it is the complexity of Nous so understood that calls for explanation by appeal to a one: namely, the One/Good.
77. For a superb discussion of the varying conceptions of divine simplicity in medieval philosophical theology, see Professor Marilyn McCord Adams’s study, William Ockham. Adams, William Ockham, Volume 2, 901–60. For this student, what is particularly fascinating in reflections on divine simplicity—whether in Plotinus, Pseudo-Dionysius, Aquinas, Bonaventure, Scotus, or Ockham—are the different criteria according to which something qualifies as metaphysically simple: whether absolutely simple, or, in some cases, “sufficiently” simple to fulfill the specific explanatory requirements at issue.
78. See II.9.1: 225–27; V.3.12: 113; and especially, V.4.1: 141: “For there must be something simple before all things, and this must be other than all the things which come after it, existing by itself, not mixed with the things which derive from it, and all the same able to be present in a different way to these other things, being really one, and not a different being and then one . . . for that which is not first needs that which is before it, and what is not simple is in need of its simple components so that it can come into existence from them. A reality of this kind must be one alone.”
79. For a statement of this view, see Ennead V.3.13: 121: “But if this is so, if anything is simplest of all, it will not possess thought of itself: for if it is to possess it, it will possess it by being multiple. It is not therefore thought, nor is there any thinking about it.” Even self-perception, if construed as distinct from self-cognition, cannot be ascribed to the One (VI.7.41: 215).
80. V.6.4: 209: “Again, if the Good must be simple and without need, it will not need thinking; but what it has no need of will not be present with it: since nothing at all is present with it, thinking is not present with it. And it thinks nothing, because it does not need anything else.”
81. III.8.10: 397.
82. On this crucial question, see Ennead VI.8.
83. That is, on the fact that anything that exists, or has being, is determinate: entities exist determinately, for example, as the Form of human being, or as this particular human being. Among other things, what distinguishes a particular human being from the Form of human being, however, is the fact that it is individuated. So, particular entities are both determinate and individuated; the immutable Forms are determinate but not individuated.
84. VI.8.13: 271.
85. Vl.7.36: 199. A brief hermeneutical aside. Notice, in the opening statement of the block quotation, that Armstrong inserts an interpretive gloss placed in brackets: “that [experience].” The gloss “translates” a section of the statement that reads: “archomenois men ekeithen.” More particularly, Armstrong’s gloss seems to refer to “ekeithen,” which might be rendered or understood as “there” or “thence.” The interpretive decision to employ the gloss “that experience” is interesting, and could be contextually significant, if he (Armstrong) is accurately translating and communicating Plotinus’s thought(s) in the opening statements of VI.7.36. Yet, it is not entirely clear whether Plotinus’s use of “there” or “thence” refers to (1) Plotinus’s discussion in the preceding section or paragraph (e.g., VI.7.35)