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If the One cannot be described, how did Plotinus manage to write so much about it?

Chiara Bellandi Fellow
· 6 replies
Existence & beingGreek & RomanMedieval ChristianNeoplatonismGraham PriestPlatoPlotinus#beyond-being#ineffability#negative-theology#the-one
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Visitors to my workshop often tell me that this or that painting is "Neoplatonic", and I have learned to be wary of the word, because art historians argue fiercely about how much philosophy the painters actually knew. So I decided to go to the source and read some Plotinus, first in the Latin of Ficino, who translated him here in Florence, and then in a modern Italian translation when Ficino's Latin defeated me.

I understood less than I hoped, but one thing puzzles me more than the rest. Plotinus says the first principle, the One, is beyond being and beyond anything we can say or think. It has no qualities, no shape, no name that fits it. And then he writes treatise after treatise about it, full of descriptions: it is the source, it overflows, it is the Good, it is like light.

Isn't that self-defeating? If the One cannot be described, every one of those sentences is false. If the sentences are true, the One can be described after all. I'm sure this is a beginner's confusion, but I can't see the way out. Can someone explain?

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6 answers

Accepted answer

  1. Nikos Theodoridis

    ✓ Accepted answer Fellow

    Not a beginner's confusion: critics have always pressed it, and Plotinus saw it coming.

    First, why he says the One is indescribable. Anything we can describe is determinate: it is this and not that, it has features. Anything with features is already in some way many. But the first principle must be absolutely simple, or we would need something prior to explain how its features fit together. So it cannot be one being among others. Plato had already said, in the Republic, that the Good is "beyond being".

    Second, how he talks about it anyway. He says in one treatise that we can say what it is not, but not what it is. "One" is not really a description; it denies multiplicity. "Good" and "source" describe the One's relation to everything else, not the One in itself. The treatises are best read as pointers, or as a ladder that leads somewhere language does not reach.

    Third, where the ladder leads. For Plotinus the goal was never a correct description but a direct contact or union with the One, beyond thought. The writing is preparation for that, not a substitute for it.

    Whether this fully answers your objection is still argued over. But it is not a contradiction he overlooked; it is a cost he accepted.

    1. Chiara Bellandi

      Fellow

      Nikos, thank you. So the sentences are signposts, not portraits. That makes sense to a restorer: the light that shows you a painting is not one of the colours in it, and you can't paint it directly either, only what it falls on.

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Other answers

  1. Tomasz Szewczak

    Fellow

    The logician's worry, to keep Nikos honest: "the One is indescribable" is itself a description, and so is "the One is beyond being". Philosophers call this the paradox of ineffability, and it recurs in every tradition that tries to talk about what cannot be talked about. Some logicians, Graham Priest notably, have argued that the honest response is to accept that these sentences are both true and contradictory. Plotinus would not have liked that, but it's a sign of how hard the problem is.

    Helpful · 1
  2. Siobhán Keane

    Fellow

    A ninth-century Irish echo, since I can't resist. John Scottus Eriugena, who knew this tradition through the Greek Christian writers he translated, went as far as calling God "nothing", but nothing by excellence, because God is not any of the things that are. It shocked people then and it still shocks people in Cork when I explain it over a drink.

    Helpful · 2
  3. Sasha Kovalenko

    Fellow

    Your last sentence would have pleased Plotinus; light is his favourite image for the One's overflowing. The tradition travelled far. Skovoroda, the Ukrainian wandering philosopher I keep coming back to, drew on Platonist and patristic sources for his own picture of an invisible reality shining through the visible. He is a long way from Plotinus, but you can feel the family resemblance.

  4. Valentina Ríos

    Fellow

    And one from New Spain. Sor Juana's long poem First Dream describes the soul trying, in sleep, to grasp the whole of creation in a single intuition, failing, and then attempting a slow climb through categories instead. Scholars still debate how much Neoplatonic and Hermetic material she drew on, but the image of ascent towards a source too bright to look at is unmistakable.

    Helpful · 1