The One

What was it that made the radically top-down idealism of the Neoplatonists so appealing? Disregarding in this context the religious-sentimental appeal Neoplatonism undoubtedly must have had and perhaps still has, its philosophical attractiveness and significance lies in the fact that it offered a maximum of explanatory power on the basis of just one metaphysical principle. Even though the system coheres in such a way that it is possible to approach it from many angles, it is perhaps best to begin at the top of the ontological pyramid and to return to the question posed earlier: How is it possible to explain the world’s emergence from a single divine principle of consciousness?
It may be useful first to state that the pagan Neoplatonists were not creationists. That is to say, whatever account they were giving about the universe’s origin, this narrative was not to be misunderstood as recounting a creation in time or at the very beginning of time. Instead, they speculated that the process of the emergence of the universe from the divine principle, as they conceived of it (described below), has gone on forever, just as it continues at this very moment and will continue to do so, sustaining a world without end. When the general outlook of Neoplatonism was appropriated and adapted to refine and articulate the creeds of Christianity, Islam, and Judaism, this feature of the doctrine, and the connected doctrine of the eternity of the world, would become a vigorously debated issue.
Second, unlike the ancient theologians of Israel and Egypt, the Neoplatonists did not think that the universe could spring from the deity directly and in a way that surpasses all understanding, for example by being thought and spoken into existence. Their more refined view was that reality emerged from “the First” in coherent stages, in such a way that one stage functions as creative principle of the next.
This kind of emanationist cosmology rests on the tenet—based to some extent in observation, but elevated by them to the status of a heuristic principle—that every activity in the world is in some sense double insofar as it possesses both an inner and an outer aspect. For example, the inner activity of the sun (nuclear fusion, as we now know) has the outer effect of heat and light, themselves activities as well. Or the inner activity of a tree that is determined by the kind of tree it is (its genetic code, we would now say; the Neoplatonists spoke of an inherent formative principle, logos) results in the bearing of a particular kind of fruit; or again, thoughts and feelings internal to human beings express themselves in speech and actions. In each case, the outer effect is not the purpose or end of the inner activity; rather, it is simply the case that one falls out of the other and is concomitant with it. Furthermore, it is also the case that these outer activities will typically be productive of yet other outer activities that are ontologically more remote and derivative: Fruit serves as nourishment or poison for other individual life forms, and human speech and action constitute, over time, a person’s biography or a society’s history. It is important to note that, in all cases, the outer activity will not be some random affair, but rather something intimately connected with the inner activity it is an expression of. In other words, any inner activity will somehow prefigure the character and nature of its outer effect. Thus, the Neoplatonists insisted that there is nothing on the lower ontological levels within the chains of causality that is not somehow prefigured on the corresponding higher levels. In general, no property emerges unless it is already in some way preformed and pre-existent in its cause.
As regards the very first principle of reality, conceived of as an entity that is beyond Being, transcending all physical reality, very little can actually be said, except that it is absolute Unity. However, we know empirically of its effect, the entire universe, and we must therefore suppose that the One is the carrier of, or rather identical with, a boundless sort of singular activity or energy. Since it is counterintuitive to suppose that the material universe leapt into being its present form directly from this well-spring of energy, the question arises: what precisely is the first and primary outer activity of the inner activity of the One?

3. Absolute Consciousness

In accordance with the Platonic-Aristotelian commitment to Mind over Matter the Neoplatonists’ answer to this question was that the outer activity and effect of the First must be nous, a difficult and ambiguous concept commonly translated as “Intellect”. It seems preferable to translate the term nous in an experientially more concrete and accessible way as pure and absolute “Consciousness”. According to Neoplatonic theory, Consciousness would not be some kind of emergent property of material constituents arranged in a certain way, but rather be the first effect of the activity of the One, the most supreme form of reality (since the One was posited to be beyond Being), a kind of pre-embodied power of cognition as such. Neoplatonists referred to Consciousness as the second “Hypostasis”, a term that would have a long and complex history as it acquired new and related meanings in Christian contexts. “Hypostasis” is an abstract noun derived from a verb meaning “to place oneself under or beneath”, with the connotation of “standing one’s ground”. The word “hypostasis” therefore denotes a distinct substantial being or realm of reality of a certain kind which, in the case of Consciousness, is the derivative outer activity of the first principle. The term could also be applied to the One as the “first hypostasis”, in which case the connotation of subordination would recede into the background.
What, then, is the inner activity of Consciousness? The inherent task of consciousness is to understand, and understanding entails the cognition of causes. In trying to understand itself, Consciousness can only turn towards its origin and thus posit or behold the First as the transcendent principle of its own reality. As the Neoplatonists would put it, having emerged from the First, Consciousness “turns back” towards it in order to understand the pre-condition of its own existence. Becoming thus aware of another entity, the originary unity of Consciousness breaks up into duality, and with it emerge the categories of identity and difference, of greater and smaller, of number, of change and of rest. In fact, in a way not fully explained, or perhaps even explicable, the entire ideal world of Platonic forms and ideas emerges effortlessly in the course of Consciousness’ effort to understand itself.
Before we move on to discuss the outer effect of this inner activity of Consciousness, we must correct the common assertion that what we are dealing with here is a process of “emanation”. To be sure, Consciousness (or Intellect) somehow emerges from the activity of the First, but calling this a process of emanation, with its obviously materialist connotations, is misleading. The Neoplatonists used the words “procession and return” (prohodos and epistrophê), which, as spatial metaphors, are not much better either. And even though the analogy oftentimes invoked in this context is that of light radiating out from the sun, this too does not do much to help us grasp the nature of the Neoplatonic theory of how Consciousness, and by implication the entire rest of reality, eternally emerges from the first cause. In essence, there is no process of generation or production; nothing material or spatial is happening; no agent exerts its influence on a patient. Although the Neoplatonists followed Platonic tradition in talking about a demiurge (divine craftsman), their cosmology has nothing demiurgic about it, as Plotinus rarely failed to point out. Craftsmen think, forge, labor, arrange, and coordinate a host of diverse technical operations towards the creation of some product of their craft. Unlike Plato’s character Timaeus or the authors of Genesis, Neoplatonic metaphysics has no room for such crude analogies. In the realm of Consciousness, the activity is one and constitutes itself as a multiplicity within that unity. In the identity of the activity of thought with its objects, the Neoplatonists contended, the ideal world of all forms and ideas came to be conceptualized. Here again, in an unintentional and effortless way, this inner active life of Consciousness produces further outer effect, the Soul.

The One

3. Absolute Consciousness

The One :: تعاليق

The One