Philosophic Silence and the ‘One' in Plotinus

Explores a central paradox in Plotinus' work: Plotinus writes about the One, which he tells us is ineffable.

Nicholas Banner (Author)

9781107154629, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 29 March 2018

308 pages
23.5 x 15.8 x 2 cm, 0.56 kg

'Banners book enriches the steadily growing Literature on Plotin's theology. It should turn out as the author hoped. Both for 'beginners' and for specialists as profitable reading prove.' Benedikt Kramer, Plekos

Plotinus, the greatest philosopher of Late Antiquity, discusses at length a first principle of reality - the One - which, he tells us, cannot be expressed in words or grasped in thought. How and why, then, does Plotinus write about it at all? This book explores this act of writing the unwritable. Seeking to explain what seems to be an insoluble paradox in the very practice of late Platonist writing, it examines not only the philosophical concerns involved, but the cultural and rhetorical aspects of the question. The discussion outlines an ancient practice of ?philosophical silence' which determined the themes and tropes of public secrecy appropriate to Late Platonist philosophy. Through philosophic silence, public secrecy and silence flow into one another, and the unsaid space of the text becomes an initiatory secret. Understanding this mode of discourse allows us to resolve many apparent contradictions in Plotinus' thought.

Part I. The Cultural Roots of Platonist Philosophic Silence: 1. De philosophorum Graecorum silentio mystico: preliminaries
2. The silent philosopher
3. Perennial wisdom and Platonist tradition
4. Plotinus and 'the Ancients': tradition, truth and transcendence
Part II. The Transcendent Absolute, the Ineffable and Plotinian Poetics of Transcendence: 5. The development of the Transcendent Absolute in the Middle Platonist milieu
6. The Transcendent Absolute and the ineffability of reality in Plotinus
7. The poetics of transcendence in Plotinus.

Subject Areas: Religion: general [HRA], Western philosophy: Ancient, to c 500 [HPCA], History of Western philosophy [HPC], Philosophy [HP], Humanities [H]