^{page 47 note 1} Bloom, Harold, Kabbalah and Criticism (New York: Seabury, 1975) 18.Google Scholar

^{page 48 note 2} All references are to Plotinus, Plotini Opera (ed. Henry, Paul and Schwyzer, Hans-Rudolf; 3 vols.; Paris: Desclée de Brouwer; Leiden: Brill, 1951, 1959, 1971)Google Scholar, cited by standard Ennead, treatise, section, and line number. Plotinus speaks of his first principle with the personal, masculine pronoun (autos), and with nonpersonal terms such as the Good (to agathon), the One (to hen), and the beyond-being. In order to emphasize his effort going beyond delimitation, I vary between masculine and neuter forms in my translations. In composing the translations used in this study, I have tried to preserve the distinctive tone of the version of MacKenna, Stephen (Plotinus [5 vols.; London: The Medici Society, 1921–1930])Google Scholar, sometimes echoing a MacKennan turn of phrase. Though MacKenna's translation has been superceded by the English of A. H. Armstrong (London and Cambridge, MA: LCL, 1966–85), the French of E. Brehier (Paris, 1924–38), the Italian of V. Cilento (Bari/Laterza: 1947–49), and the German of R. Harder (Hamburg, 1956–62), its lyrical intensity is often unique in expressing deeper Plotinian resonances. Even as newer translations based upon modern editions replace it in scholarly discussions, MacKenna's work continues to stand forth as a remarkable literary achievement, and a compelling interpretation (by translation) of Plotinus.

There is a large modern literature on Plotinus, and it would be long to cite it all fairly. This essay is based upon readings of the passages cited, and other similar passages that lend themselves to a rigorous apophatic reading and defense of Plotinian apophasis. I should point out that Plotinus's passages vary in degree of apophatic tension. Some passages are apophatically more rigorous than others. This treatment focuses on the most purely apophatic passages in Plotinus and does not attempt to give a comprehensive view of his corpus.

^{page 48 note 3} I translated to on and ousia throughout as ‘being,’ and ta onta as ‘beings.’ For Plotinus, ‘being’ is primarily the object of a reference, and thus any form of referential entification.

^{page 52 note 4} For a discussion of the concept of ‘being’ in Greek and medieval Western thought, see LeClerc, Ivor, ‘God and the Issue of Being,’ RelS 20 (1984) 63–78.Google Scholar

^{page 54 note 5} Christian, William A. sr, Meaning and Truth in Religion (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1964, 1978) 190. Italics mine.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

^{page 54 note 6} Parm. 137c-155d. See Dodds, E. R., ‘The Parmenides of Plato and the Origins of the Neoplatonic One,’ Classical Quarterly 22 (1928) 129–43.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

^{page 57 note 7} Armstrong, A. H. in his influential book The Architecture of the Intelligible Universe in the Philosophy of Plotinus (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1940)Google Scholar took these passages as positing a positive One, a being with attributes of freedom, will, knowledge, love, and goodness, that is in contradiction with a negative One mentioned in other Plotinian passages. For another nonapophatic reading of Plotinus, see Rist, J. M., Plotinus: The Road to Reality (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1967)Google Scholar. In the recent work of Armstrong, the centrality of apophasis in Plotinus is stressed: Armstrong, A. M., ‘The Escape from the One: An Investigation of Some Possibilities Imperfectly Realized in the West,’ StPatr 13 (1979)Google Scholar; idem, ‘Negative Theology,’ Downside Review 95 (1977).

^{page 58 note 8} See Henry and Schwyzer's apparatus for 6.7.16.15–16, 6.7.8.16.37, 6.8.13.54–55, 5.2.1.12–15, 5.1.7.10 for a few examples of the controversy over whether the reflexive or nonreflexive is meant. For a more extended view of the controversy in a particular instance, see V. Cilento, Enneadi, vol. 3, part 2, p. 32. In a separate essay (in preparation) I apply the principles of interpretation outlined here to a detailed discussion of the above texts.

^{page 59 note 9} For similar shifts in Erigena, Eckhart, and Ibn ʿ‘Arabī, see Sells, Michael, “The Metaphor and Dialectic of Emanation in Plotinus, John the Scot, Meister Eckhart, and Ibn ʿ‘Arabī” (Ph.D. diss., University of Chicago, 1982)Google Scholar; idem, “Ibn ʿArabi's Garden among the Flames: A Reevaluation,” HR 23 (1984) 287–315Google Scholar; and idem, “Ibn ‘Arabi's Polished Mirror: Perspective Shift and Meaning Event,” Studia Islamica (forthcoming). Ibn ʿArabi refers to the doctrine of fanāʿ, the passing away of the ego self in the contemplation of the divine beloved, through the image of the polished mirror. When the Sufi passes away, his heart becomes a polished mirror. The mirror is no longer “seen,” only the divine image reflected in the mirror. The question “Who sees whom in whom” then involves an infinite regress of shifting referents, which I attempt to translate as “It (divine subject, human subject) sees it(self) through it(self) in it(self).” Again, normal linguistic distinctions between reflexive and nonreflexive, between self and other, are split or fused.

^{page 61 note 10} Enneads 6.7.41.8–17, 6.7.40.22–30. Though Plotinus considered himself a disciple of Plato and a critic of Aristotle, it may have been in his unraveling the hidden dynamic within Aristotelian formulations of Nous (Metaphysics 1074b 33–1075a; De anima 3.4.429b-430a) that the Plotinian infinitely receding referent evolved. The term “Neoplatonism” may grant too much to Plotinus's rhetorical self-positioning, and may neglect the profound impact upon him of certain Aristotelian texts. (Of course that is in addition to the deeper problem with the term “Neoplatonism” with its implication that what is interesting about Plotinus lies in his doctrine rather than, as suggested here, in his mode of discourse.)

^{page 64 note 11} Katz, Stephen, “Language, Epistemology, and Mysticism,” in idem, ed., Mysticism and Philosophical Analysis (New York: Oxford University Press, 1978) 52. Emphasis mine.Google Scholar

^{page 65 note 12} There are strong similarities between Plotinian apophasis and non-dual Indian thought, for example. The Śunyata notion that all constructs are empty including the construct that all constructs are empty, including the concept that the concept that … is an infinite regress functionally identical to Plotinus's aporia, and used (as in the Vimalakirti Sutra) in similar ways.

^{page 65 note 13} There is a tendency among followers of deconstructionist thought to overlook precedents among apophatic thinkers. This is often due to a reified view of the apophatic thinkers themselves, or a dismissal of them, founded upon an inaccurate view of mysticism as irrational.