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GOD Being has a kind of shape of being, but the One has no shape, not even intelligible shape For since its nature is generative of all things, the One is none of them It is not of any kind, has no size or quality, is not intellect or soul It is neither moving nor stationary, and it is in neither place nor time; in Plato’s words it is ‘by itself alone and uniform’—or rather formless and prior to form as it is prior to motion and rest For all these are properties of being, making it manifold (6 38–45) If no predicates can be asserted of the One, it is not surprising if we enmesh ourselves in contradiction when we try to so Being, for a Platonist, is the realm of what we can truly know—as against Becoming, which is the object of mere belief But if the One is beyond being, it is also beyond knowledge ‘Our awareness of it is not through science or understanding, as with other intelligible objects, but by way of a presence superior to knowledge.’ Such awareness is a mystical vision like the rapture of a lover in the presence of his beloved (6 V.) Because the One is unknowable, it is also ineVable How then can we talk about it, and what is Plotinus doing writing about it? Plotinus puts the question to himself in Ennead 5, 14, and gives a rather puzzling answer We have no knowledge or concept of it, and we not say it, but we say something about it How then we speak about it, if we not grasp it Does our having no knowledge of it mean that we not grasp it at all? We grasp it, but not in such a way as to say it, only to speak about it The distinction between saying and speaking about is puzzling Could what Plotinus says here about the One be said about some perfectly ordinary thing like a cabbage? I cannot say or utter a cabbage; I can only talk about it What is meant here by ‘say’, I think, is something like ‘call by a name’ or ‘attribute predicates to’ This I can with a cabbage, but not with the One And the Greek word whose standard translation is ‘about’ can also mean ‘around’ Plotinus elsewhere says that we cannot even call the One ‘it’ or say that it ‘is’; we have to circle around it from outside (6 55) Any statement about the One is really a statement about its creatures We are well aware of our own frailty: our lack of self-suYciency and our shortfall from perfection (6 15–35) In knowing this we can grasp the One in the way that one can tell the shape of a missing piece in a jigsaw puzzle by knowing the shape of the surrounding pieces Or, to use a metaphor closer to Plotinus’ own, when we in thought circle around the 312
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