Novel Ineffability

I: Introduction

Plotinus is not an easy philosopher to read for many reasons. While his writings are written with a reader in mind, they are not made with the intention of introducing the reader to the schools of thought with which he is in conversation, with his dialectics rarely specifying whom he’s attempting to address. Even worse, occasionally it won’t even be clear whether a position he’s presenting is his own when in fact it belongs to an interlocutor that he’s positioning in opposition to him. This creates an issue where his statements often seem incompatible with each other depending on where in his works he says them.¹ Even more peculiar, though, is that there seems to be ambiguity within his philosophical content as separated from the way it’s presented. However, it’s in this ambiguity and difficulty that we find some of the most interesting content of his thought. Most notably in Plotinus’ philosophy, this lack of a comprehensive explication best designates the One, arguably the most important part of his metaphysics. By John Bussanich’s account, “the One or the Good is the most difficult to conceive and the most central to understanding Plotinean philosophy.”²

This difficulty comes not only from the difficulties surrounding Plotinus’ writing (although those difficulties are absolutely there and they don’t help), but particularly from the notion of ineffability that Plotinus ascribes to it. The One is both the most important aspect of Plotinus’ system of thought and is in equal measure something that can never be understood in terms of itself. Ineffability, that which can’t be spoken, is the calling card of the One. The strangest aspect of this ineffability seems to be the anachronistic comparisons that can be drawn between it and similar qualities of ideas that came about at very different times in the Western philosophical canon. Comparisons can be made between the ineffable One and Kantian noumena, the source of phenomenal content,³ and the Wittgensteinian ladder. And yet Plotinus comes before all of these!

What follows will be an attempt to identify this quality of ineffability as not only peculiar, but novel within the philosophical pedigree of Western antiquity.⁴ This will be done firstly through a recapitulation of the One as Plotinus explicates it within his metaphysical system, before identifying the main reasons behind its ineffability, primarily being the One’s relation to the hypostatic Intellect and the limits of intellection as an activity. This ineffability will then be compared to Plotnius’ Platonic roots, emphasizing a greater flexibility and more liberal engagement with the ineffable in Plotinus as opposed to Plato. Finally, the ineffable quality of the One will be distinguished from the thought of ancient skepticism, with an explanation of why the two schools are opposed, rendering Plotinean ineffability distinct from skeptical doubt. However credence will still be lent a possible line of influence from the skeptics that could have affected the development of Plotinus’ metaphysical system.

II: A Recapitulation of the One

For Plotinus, unity is of the utmost importance as a governing law of the cosmos. “All beings are beings due to unity.”⁵ From the perspective of a subject recognizing their surroundings, unity is the operative force allowing entities in the world to be made coherent. It is through the unification of constituent elements that a proper entity can be composed and manifested in the world. An army is not an army without individual soldiers just as a house isn’t a house without the materials that make it, brought together into coherence through unity.⁶ This primacy that Plotinus attributes to unity guides his entire system of thought, and it’s through the law of unification that the One becomes a necessary concept. This, however, leads to a question: if all things are unified in such a way that they can be broken down into constituent elements, then there must be something that allows unification to take place. For if unification is the most important law within the development of the cosmos, then there must be something that bestows that unity or allows unification to take place–for Plotinus this is the One.

The One has a few qualities that must be understood. There is unfortunately not enough space for all the qualities and associated justifications for each quality that are attributed to the One, especially since the characteristics of certain qualities are still the subject of scholarly debate, but the ones important to the present research shall be clarified.

1. All things come from the One, as previously described.
2. The One is absolutely simple and non-composite, for “a many does not come from many, but that which is many comes from that which is not many.”⁷
3. Perhaps perplexingly, the One is also all-encompassing in such a way that it can be compared to a totality of all things that descend from it, as the One wants for nothing, and being utterly self-satisfied means that it has everything.
4. The One is atemporal, existing outside sequence or chain, but is also pre-ontic, with its presence preceding existence itself.
5. The One is beyond Intellect and all intelligible things.

A discerning eye may also observe that the One plays a role in answering the question regarding the nature of the source or origin point of the cosmos. If all things are put together by unification, then there must be a fundamental principle or entity of unification where the chain of composition first starts–something to which everything returns. The clear line to be drawn is back to Aristotle’s prime mover, the idea of a necessary first presence that comes to allow all subsequent entities in the sequence of existence to manifest. When an object is moved, “then there is also something which moves it. And since that which is moved while it moves is intermediate, there is something which moves without being moved; something eternal which is both substance and actuality.”⁸ This notion is then extended forward to ascertaining the structure of divinity and cosmological creation. However, one notable characteristic is that the One qua prime mover also operates in accordance with its own principle of unity, meaning it in a sense is all-encompassing and totalizing in such a way that renders it inconceivable. This is where we can first establish the notion of ineffability in relation to the One. To think of the One as a God or unified body that acts as the cause of existence is insufficient. When trying to encase the One within a specific boundary of conceptualization, even one as expansive as the concept of God, “it is more. And again when you unify it by discursive thinking, then, too, it is more than you imagine, in being more unified than your thinking of it.”⁹ The One provides an all-encompassing totality of everything in existence, while simultaneously being the source of all the things that it encompasses.¹⁰

Perhaps the most critical point to establish for the present research is that the One exists beyond Intellect, therefore being beyond all intelligible things and rendered unintelligible. It is not possible to ascertain something beyond unification (which also bestows unification) through the creation of lesser unities. As a result, it cannot be understood by typical scientific modes of understanding which create unities of knowledge (taxonomies, empirically informed ontologies, etc.).¹¹ The One is not something to cataloged, diagramed, or drawn, and that is precisely what creates the quality of ineffability central to the ambiguity in Plotinus’ metaphysics.

III: The One’s Relation to the Intellect

Here, we must make the distinction between Intellect and One clear in terms of how Intellect comes from the One and how its characteristics differ from it.
Following Eyjolfur Emilsson’s account, the One must undergo generation as an effect of its perfection. “[I]t in a way overflows and its superabundance has made something else.”¹² Thus, the Intellect is born from this overflow. As this divide between the two is created, the Intellect attempts to return to its roots and reunite with the One, and in an attempt to bring the One into view, it must begin to think in order to perform the act of seeing.¹³ As all things are meant to do, the One intends to reverse its descent away from the One and return to the embrace of its origin, but it is unable to do this.

The issue with Intellect’s attempts to reunite with the One is this: as was previously mentioned, the One is utterly simple and without multiplicity. By Plotinus’ formulation, the activity of thinking is necessarily plural.

[E]ach of the things that are thought brings with it this identity and difference; otherwise, what will it think if it does not have one thing and another? … So, that which is thinking must be different and grasp that which is different and that which is thought has to be understood as being variegated. Otherwise, there will not be intellection of it, but only a touching and a sort of inexpressible contact without thought.¹⁴

As summated by Emilsson, “if there are no distinctions whatsoever, there isn’t anything to think.”¹⁵ And because it is impossible to get to the One by way of intellection, in its failure to return, it defines itself clearly as Intellect.

From this we can draw our first distinction from the One, that being the Intellect is an active being. The Intellect does not simply exist, but it actively participates in its own manifestation through the activity that defines it.¹⁶ This runs contrary to the One, which doesn’t need to act to do anything, as it already has everything it needs. It is through this self-thinking that the Intellect is rendered an entity in existence from which all descending hypostases come to be.¹⁷

The second distinction is that this activity of thought renders it a plural entity, one that is not absolutely simple like the One, thus making return impossible. As previously mentioned, thought is plural, and thus no thinking thing can ever reunite with the One.

We’re then left with a cosmological structure where our ability to ascertain the One is sorely ineffective, as any form of thought that we engage in is descended from the hypostatic Intellect, and if the hypostatic Intellect can’t return to the One, our chances aren’t much better. This forms the logical justification for the One’s ineffability. We’re placed at an impasse where the Intellect must be used to ascertain the hypostases, and while it works just fine for hypostases at or below Intellect on the cosmic hierarchy, it’s profoundly insufficient when attempting to reach beyond it.

The question we’re now left with is this: how can we even identify the presence of the One to begin with if it’s beyond our capacity for intellection? Plotinus himself allows this question to be asked so that he may answer it, “How, then, do we speak about it?”¹⁸

Plotinus’ answer is simply not to look at the One, but rather to look towards that which isn’t the One. Simply by identifying that which is posterior to the One, we can clarify characteristics through a sort of order of elimination, marking out characteristics that we know don’t belong to the One to find satisfactory descriptions of its qualities.¹⁹ The One in its actual presence, then, lingers outside of our view, obscured by its ineffability, yet is still connected to us. Therefore, when we speak of our affections as referred to as the One, the One is implicated in those affections, which allows our statements to hold validity.²⁰

One might think that this doesn’t make sense, as Plotinus at many times attributes specific qualities to the One in a positive fashion, but as suggested by Bussanich, there is a way to make positive statements about the One, albeit not the One as it truly exists. The One has its trace in all entities that descend from it (i.e., all of existence). Since it is utterly all-encompassing, total, and in want of nothing due to its perfection, there is a capacity in which it exists even in the things that aren’t the One. This is to say that it exists in us, too, giving us a connecting thread that we can follow back to it. Thus, when we speak of the One, it is not so much us speaking of the One in itself, but rather us speaking of ourselves in terms of our impression of the One, encapsulated in the data of our experience, allowing us to speak of our affections as if they were the One.

What’s important to understand with Plotinus is the criticality of metaphor and a use of intellection where Plotinus is fully aware of its insufficiency for describing the One as it actually exists.²¹ For all his systematic thought, Plotinus is not of the opinion that philosophy must describe all things in fully explicit objectivity. In fact, to describe something as it is objectively with no interpolation on the part of the philosopher who delivers the information simply isn’t possible for the One. Rather, the aim of the philosophy being performed by Plotinus is to lead the reader in the right direction, putting them on the path to finding the One and beginning their divine ascent towards it.²² Intellect in this argumentation is not the exclusive method to reaching the One, but rather one to be implemented as necessary until it loses its usefulness.

With this rough sketch of Plotinus’ formulation of ineffability, we can begin a basic inquiry into the genealogy of the concept as it can be traced to figures that Plotinus both took inspiration from and positioned himself as an opponent against.

IV: Ineffability and Plato
An important question to ask is whether this notion of the ineffable can be traced back to Plato. Considering Plato as the primary influence on Plotinus, one would expect that if there were any place to track the idea of ineffability and the need to touch such an ineffable object, it would be him. However, this is not as clear cut as one would imagine, for while Plato definitely inspires Plotinus (he’s called a Neoplatonist for a reason), the reading of Plato in terms of divine ineffability seems to be deeply imbedded far beneath Plato’s most explicitly stated philosophical leanings.

As defined by Pietro Montari, divine ineffability, being the incapability of human beings to ascertain divine wisdom, would easily include the One’s ineffability. By Montari’s account of Plato, “both the divine and its wisdom are and must be fully thinkable.”²³ This notion would place Plato in a position that doesn’t seem to explicitly drive Plotinus’ thought towards the ineffable. Instead, it seems that Plato is positioned against Plotinean notions of the comprehensibility of divine knowledge. This can most explicitly be found in the Parmenides from which Plotinus acquires the One, where Plato seems to state a rejection of its associated divine ineffability.²⁴

… the one has no name, nor is there any description or knowledge or perception or opinion of it. … And it is neither named nor described nor thought of nor known, nor does any existing thing perceive it. … Is it possible that all this is true about the one?” “I do not think so.”²⁵

From this we can infer that a standard reading of Plato would not lend well to any notion of ineffability being present or heavily discussed when developing a system of metaphysics.
There is one exception to this rejection of philosophically valid ineffability that is adduced by Montanari. Montanari specifically refers to the Timaeus and its use of χῶρα (khôra), referring to the empty space that allows physical matter to take shape. In regard to the question of ineffability, what can be argued is that while Plotinus does take this assertion from Plato to be true and puts it into use in his philosophy, it is not in relation to the One (which would fall closer to the divine ineffability that Plato seems to reject). Rather, Plotinus puts this idea into play with his idea of Matter. It is worth noting that there are notable similarities between Matter and the One in terms of their metaphysical descriptions, but they exist at opposite ends of Plotinus’ hypostatic hierarchy. As summated by Montanari, “In Plato, there is no conceptual space for divine ineffability, whereas epistemic ineffability seems to play a role only at the bottom level of the system, the χῶρα.”²⁶

With this in mind, we can assume that this notion of ineffable Matter is prima facie taken more directly from Plato, but Plotinus’ interpretation of the One is much more transformative by comparison. In fact, Montari’s account of Plotinus in relation to this suggests “a radical change in the scheme” in its placement of ineffability not only at the bottom of the metaphysical hierarchy with χῶρα as taken from Plato’s Timaeus, but also at the top with the One being the divine ineffable that the entire system revolves around.²⁷ Thus, it can be concluded that as far as Plato goes, the ineffable quality of the One is something of a Plotinus original, serving as a divergence from Plato. Plato’s relationship to ineffability was not one that allowed for the unintelligible to have a place in the purview of philosophy, so Plotinus’ definition of the One (or at least how we are supposed to relate divinity to it) is in this sense the introduction of something novel in the philosophy of antiquity.

We see here a more complicated account of the continuum from Plato to Plotinus, where it is unlikely that the Plotinean concept of ineffability was obtained by purely straightforward exegesis. While the source of ineffability that Plotinus identifies in Plato seems to be present, the cadence with which Plato treats what he identifies as unknowable is quite different. If there is to be a Plotinean reading of Plato, one would have to look deeper into his oeuvre and perform more than a standard reading of his work to manifest and identify it.
In sum, I assert that the best way to understand Plotinus in relation to Plato is not simply performing a recapitulation of the standard Plato, but rather a reconstruction that notably deviates from the immediately accessible Platonic reading. In this reconstruction, rather than allowing the divine ineffable to be abandoned as an idea, he takes it as its described by Plato and runs with it, moving forward to where Plato never felt the need to go.

V: Possible Roots in Skepticism

One thing that must be made clear is the distinction between Plotiniean ineffability and the metaphysics of ancient skepticism to which Plotinus was opposed, and that Plotinean ineffability is incommensurable with skepticism.
Sextus Empiricus, as a relevant example of skeptical thought, has a critique that actively problematizes a developed aspect of Plotinus’ cosmology, that being the logical possibility of self-thought. The relevant skeptical assertion is that perceiving of the self’s own thought is impossible, specifically wording it as showing “that the intellect is not cognizant of itself.”²⁸ The argument is that an intellect thinking of itself in an act of apperception cannot think of itself in terms of its whole intellect. Intellection is plural, after all, requiring both a subject that performs the intellection and an object that is considered (i.e., ‘intellected’). If the whole intellect is engaged in the activity of thinking, then there isn’t anything left of it to be thought. Thus, apperception in full totality is impossible.

Plotinus not only is in opposition to this, but fully voices a refutation against it in Ennead V.3. Plotinus dismisses the division between subject and object when it comes to the thought of hypostatic Intellect.²⁹ Given that the Intellect’s core activity of thought is what substantiates its being, there is no such thing as an Intellect qua object. A passive intellect is an impossibility. “It is in this way, therefore, Intellect and that which is intelligible are one[.]”³⁰ This additionally gives more clarity to Plotinus’ adduction of self-thought to the hypostatic Intellect, which grounds the epistemic commitments to Platonic forms.³¹

Looking at an even more explicit refutation of skepticism, the Intellect is defined by its capacity to think, and specifically think with certainty and without conjecture. “Might, then, one say that Intellect – the true and real Intellect – will ever be in error and have beliefs about non-beings? Not at all.”³² The conclusion to be drawn here is that there is a source of epistemic certainty that exists in the cosmos. And since this is the Intellect, which unlike the One is a comprehensible hypostasis, there is a pathway given by Plotinus towards certainty that we can support easily even if only through intellection. If one performs the process of ascension correctly, then there is no worry to be had regarding if knowledge is untrue or not. After all, getting knowledge from the Intellect is essentially getting knowledge before it even could be polluted by doubt – after all, intellect is posterior to doubt. With this in mind, it can be said that Plotinean ineffability is divergent enough from skeptical doubt that the notion of its novelty is still present.

However, while this is to say that the skeptical doubt that Plotinus refutes is not the same as his development of the One, it isn’t to say that there is no connection between the two whatsoever. One might assume that through the negative theology implemented to ascertain the One, the characteristics that are obtained by way of discursive thinking (dianoia) are certain through rational means, and thus not in any way connected to skepticism. But that still leaves the question of influence open. After all, both Plotinus and the skeptics are similarly weary regarding the nature of external materiality and the empirical senses that are used to comprehend it, the only distinction being Plotinus believes that there is a clear option for reliable epistemological grounding.
Dominic O’Meara claims that while Plotinus was not sympathetic to skeptical thought in and of itself, the form of skepticism was something from which he took inspiration in relation to the ineffability of the One.

Return to the argument of how the One is ascertained by the individual, particularly regarding the One having traces of us within us as the initial cause.³³ This formulation and method of invoking the One through the analog of our own affection seems to carry a notably skeptical cadence. It is a methodology that affirms not things in themselves, but rather the appearances that present themselves to us. After all, an appearance necessarily must have something generating it, and thus it can be inferred that to say something about the appearance is to also say something about the thing responsible for the appearance. Even in a simulation, the mere presence of a referent gives meaning to its deciphering. Per O’Meara, “Sextus’ skeptic does not claim to speak of external things, as they are in themselves; the sceptic merely expresses his affections.”³⁴
Based on this account, while the two schools of thought are still two rigidly opposed to assert that the One’s ineffability is a skeptical concept or a concept whose novelty must be given to the skeptics, there is still a line of influence to be drawn between the two.

VI: Conclusion

Keep in mind that even with the account of skepticism influencing or inspiring certain aspects of Plotinus’ formulation of the One, it’s important to note that the metaphysical arrangement of the One in its system is decidedly unskeptical to the point that can still be referred to as original in its development. Thus, while both Plato and skepticism can be considered influential towards Plotinean ineffability, neither of them has an account that quite matches Plotinus in his originality and system.

This can largely be considered an incomplete investigation, as there is not an account for the accounts of ineffability in other influences on Plotinus such as Aristotle, the Gnostics, or the pre-Socratics that could have conceivably informed the development of the Plotinean notion of ineffability. Still, this should work as a starting point for answering the question of novelty in Plotinian ineffability.

Bibliography

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———. “Plotinus’s Metaphysics of the One.” In The Cambridge Companion to Plotinus, edited by Lloyd P. Gerson, 38–65. Cambridge Companions to Philosophy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996. https://doi.org/10.1017/CCOL0521470935.003.

Emilsson, E.K. Plotinus. The Routledge Philosophers. Taylor & Francis, 2017. https://books.google.com/books?id=D540DgAAQBAJ.

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Montanari, Pietro. “Epistemic and Divine Ineffability in Plato.” Diálogos. Revista de Filosofía de La Universidad de Puerto Rico 2, no. 108 (2021): 7–35.

O’Meara, Dominic J. “Scepticism and Ineffability in Plotinus.” Phronesis 45, no. 3 (2000): 240–51.

Plato. Parmenides. Translated by Harold N. Fowler. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1925.