Unfortunately, I think this is really misunderstanding the Christian tradition. It's premised on violations of God's eternal nature, divine simplicity, the Doctrine of Transcendentals, and really the Analogia Entis as well.

God can't be striving towards things "before and after." God is absolutely simple, not stretched out time. The whole of God is always present to God's self (divine simplicity implies eternal existence, "without begining or end," not simply "everlasting.") — Count Timothy von Icarus

I didn’t intend to here present that stringent of an argument but, yes, I at least so far find the notion of a Divinely Simple, etc., God who in any way intends (needless to add, this purposefully) any X whatsoever to be self-contradictory:

One can always fall back on “God is beyond all human notions of logic, including the basic laws of thought, and hence beyond all human comprehension”, but if God is nevertheless understood as having intended and/or intending anything whatsoever then there necessarily is some end/purpose not yet actualized which God strives toward in so intending - hence making God’s actions purposeful - and this will then be blatantly incongruous with the notion of Divine Simplicity, among others.

Divine Simplicity, however, is necessarily applicable to, as one example, the Neoplatonic notion of the One - which is not a god – although there’s nothing precluding the One from being appraised as the pinnacle of Divinity upon which all else is dependent and, in this sense alone, as G-d/God (such that the sometimes heard of aphorism of “God = Good” can here make rational sense).

As just one possible example, this one from Jewish tradition:

In Maimonides' work Guide to the Perplexed, he states:[10]

"If, however, you have a desire to rise to a higher state, viz., that of reflection, and truly to hold the conviction that God is One and possesses true unity, without admitting plurality or divisibility in any sense whatever, you must understand that God has no essential attribute in any form or in any sense whatever, and that the rejection of corporeality implies the rejection of essential attributes. Those who believe that God is One, and that He has many attributes, declare the unity with their lips, and assume plurality in their thoughts."

According to Maimonides, then, there can be no plurality of faculties, moral dispositions, or essential attributes in God. Even to say that God is all-knowing, all-powerful, and all-good is to introduce plurality, if one means thereby that these qualities are separate attributes. — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Divine_simplicity#Jewish_thought

This is (or at least can be) in full rational accord with the notion of the One as described by Neoplatonism (the Neoplatonic descriptions of cosmology here placed aside) and, again, is fully discordant rationally to the notion of God as an intending superlative deity.

As to possible commonalities between diverse traditions - here primarily addressing the Neoplatonic notion of the One and some subspecies of Abrahamic thought - if there is a perennial philosophy, then this would account for different traditions' diverse interpretations of the same Divinely Simple, uncreated and imperishable, essence which, to here use Aristotle's terminology, is the unmoved/unmovable (i.e., changeless) mover (i.e., change-producer) of all that exists. Although, as I previously argued, this could not rationally be an intentioning God (e.g., God as described in the Torah/Bible, imv most especially as addressed in Genesis II onward).

One can always fall back on “God is beyond all human notions of logic, including the basic laws of thought, and hence beyond all human comprehension”, but if God is nevertheless understood as having intended and/or intending anything whatsoever then there necessarily is some end/purpose not yet actualized which God strives toward in so intending - hence making God’s actions purposeful - and this will then be blatantly incongruous with the notion of Divine Simplicity, among others.

But this is profoundly misunderstanding the classical tradition, Thomism, etc. Pace Maimonides, who only recognizes the via negativa and apophatic theology, the Christian tradition generally, and Thomism in particular, is based around analogical predication vis-á-vis the divine nature (to be sure though, the entire Christian tradition is heavily affected by Pseudo-Dionysus' apophatic theology, and Plotinus' comments on unknowing would fit right in with St. John of the Cross or the anonymously written Cloud of Unknowing). There is no retreat into total equivocity, at least not in influential thinkers. In fact, this is what the tradition is at pains to deny, and this is still a focus of Catholic thought (as set against some Protestant theologians), e.g. Pryzwara, Ulrich, Balthazar, etc.

Probably the biggest influence Plotinus had on the Christian tradition was his conception of divine freedom, so I am not sure how these are supposed to be completely opposed on your view. Pseudo Dionysus certainly builds on this conception of divine freedom, but it remains the same at heart. The entire idea of "an end lying outside of God," and "an end God strives towards," requires knocking out core premises in the classical tradition in the first place.

For example, on a comparison of the view best embodied in Plotinus, Proclus, and Porphery:

Divine freedom is thus the absolute contemplative act, thought thinking itself, which does not exclude, but necessarily includes, a “natural” procession of goods from the perfectly immanent intellectual act as its fruit: God creates what is other through the thinking of himself. What tends to be excluded in the Greek tradition, however, is any sense of relationship between the fontal goodness and the individual beings that constitute the cosmos specifically in their uniqueness and individuality. It is just this form that undergoes a transformation in the Christian appropriation, which we have seen in principle in the various figures we have studied [St. Denys, St. Augustine, St. Anselm, St. Maximus, St. Bonaventure, etc.], especially those with a more ontological approach to the theme of freedom.

D.C. Schindler - Retrieving Freedom

If anything, it is Plotinus' whose views trend closer to the voluntarism that would come to dominate some strands of Protestant theology after the Reformation. Not that it trends close to it, but the seeds are there and St. Denys is at pains to walk back those elements (St. Maximus as well).

In the light of these elaborations, let us look at a summary statement about the freedom of the One that Plotinus (significantly) presents already in the first chapter of part II of the treatise. Here he describes the Good’s self-relation, noting the constant qualification of “something like” (hoion), which indicates analogy, and noting too the description of the Good’s simplicity as an identification of its essence and its existence, or in Plotinus’s (not yet technical) terminology, his hypostasis and his actuality (or energy):

But when [the Good’s] hypostasis, so to speak [hoion], is the same as his energy, as it were—for one is not one thing and the other another if this is not even so with intellect, because its activity is more according to its being than its being according to its activity—so that it cannot be active according to what it naturally is, nor will its activity and its life, so to speak, be referred to its substance, so to speak, but its “quasi-substance” is with and, so to put it, originates with its activity and it itself makes itself from both from eternity, for itself and from nothing. (6.8.7.46–54)

There are three things to highlight in this passage.
First, Plotinus clearly has Aristotle’s Metaphysics 12.7 in mind here, referring as he does to this highest actuality and including reference to nous, substance, life, and eternity, all of which occur in Aristotle’s famous passage, not to mention the allusion to Aristotle’s claim that, in the unity of being and knowing, being has a relative priority to the act of knowing in the sense that thinking does not produce being but conforms to it (we will come back to this crucial point at the end of this chapter.) Second, Plotinus spells out the steps of the transcendence as we laid them out above: the Good’s actuality is not “according to nature” in the immanent sense, which is why we cannot simply describe it as life, except analogously; nor is its activity according to substance (ousia). The subject of the will is not nature per se or substance per se but simply the self (τὸ αὐτὸ), which lies beyond both. But this does not in the least imply that the self-constituting activity is opposed to nature or substance, in the sense that these are first given and that the activity then must either conform to it or diverge from it. Instead, Plotinus says what we take to be the third point to highlight, namely, that its “quasisubstance” and its “quasi-activity” emerge at the same time. The Good is what it wills to be, and it wills to be what it is.This, in the most compact nutshell, is Plotinus’s theory of divine freedom. [Consider Exodus 3:14 "I am that I am," and "tell the 'he who is' has sent you" and how much the Patristics made of these]...


By describing God as absolute self-will, or indeed absolute will-self—the meaning of which we need yet to unpack—Plotinus explicitly rejects what he calls “a bold discourse” (τις τολμερὸς λόγος), which turns out to represent what would seem to be the only alternative, namely, that God does not will himself to be (and to be will!) but first “just is” and then wills himself as a kind of recognition of what he already has been. Because God is by definition, so to speak, absolutely first, there can be nothing “prior” to him to which one might appeal to account for him; regarding God, he explains, it is not possible to ask the two most fundamental philosophical questions, the “why” question concerning final cause, and the “what” question concerning formal cause, but this is due to an overabundance of intelligibility rather than an absence of it...

To a modern ear, absolute freedom as absolute self-will sounds like the very limit of arbitrariness and blind power: consider Schopenhauer, Schelling, or Nietzsche, not to mention Jean-Paul Sartre. But this is simply because the modern ear has lost its capacity to hear the melody of the good and beautiful, so to speak, that constitutes the music of freedom. For Plotinus, it is simply impossible to conceive of the will apart from its relation to goodness; the very “discovery” of the will in Plotinus’s philosophy is a result of reflection on the “nature” of the Good.

The source of freedom, the One, cannot simply be lacking in freedom (see: 6.8.7.42–46), and pure arbitrariness is not freedom. Hence "ends," although Plotinus, and the classical Christian tradition, understand these analogically.

As to possible commonalities between diverse traditions - here primarily addressing the Neoplatonic notion of the One and some subspecies of Abrahamic thought - if there is a perennial philosophy, then this would account for different traditions' diverse interpretations of the same Divinely Simple, uncreated and imperishable, essence which, to here use Aristotle's terminology, is the unmoved/unmovable (i.e., changeless) mover (i.e., change-producer) of all that exists. Although, as I previously argued, this could not rationally be an intentioning God (e.g., God as described in the Torah/Bible, imv most especially as addressed in Genesis II onward).

You don't need an appeal to perennial philosophy, Plotinus grew up in a hotbed of Jewish and Christian Platonism. IIRC he was coming of age as Origen and Clement were at the height of their influence and they themselves are dealing seriously with the Gnostics, who are also big in Alexandria at the time (Gnosticism existing within orthodox churches to a large extent). The ideas are all in the milieu Plotinus is growing up in and being educated in, and of course there were pagan Platonists exchanging ideas with these traditions the whole time as well. But some Gnostic texts strike me very much as "Neoplatonism predating neoplatonism, just heavily mythologized."

One can always fall back on “God is beyond all human notions of logic, including the basic laws of thought, and hence beyond all human comprehension”, but if God is nevertheless understood as having intended and/or intending anything whatsoever then there necessarily is some end/purpose not yet actualized which God strives toward in so intending - hence making God’s actions purposeful - and this will then be blatantly incongruous with the notion of Divine Simplicity, among others.

Ignoring your placing God in time again (which violates divine simplicity and would be vigorously rejected by pagans and Jews/Christians alike), on this view none of the major Neoplatonists are Neoplatonists.

But this is profoundly misunderstanding the classical tradition — Count Timothy von Icarus

I'm not here arguing for (nor for that matter against) "classical tradition". I'm simply arguing for lucidity in thought via cogent reasoning and, if provided, accurate references (see below).

If anything, it is Plotinus' whose views trend closer to the voluntarism that would come to dominate some strands of Protestant theology after the Reformation. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Hmm, Plotinus states verbatim in the Enneads that (all underlines and boldface are mine):

1. The One is all things and no one of them; the source of all things is not all things; all things are its possession- running back, so to speak, to it- or, more correctly, not yet so, they will be.

But a universe from an unbroken unity, in which there appears no diversity, not even duality?

It is precisely because that is nothing within the One that all things are from it: in order that Being may be brought about, the source must be no Being but Being's generator, in what is to be thought of as the primal act of generation. Seeking nothing, possessing nothing, lacking nothing, the One is perfect and, in our metaphor, has overflowed, and its exuberance has produced the new: this product has turned again to its begetter and been filled and has become its contemplator and so an Intellectual-Principle.

That station towards the one [the fact that something exists in presence of the One] establishes Being; that vision directed upon the One establishes the Intellectual-Principle; standing towards the One to the end of vision, it is simultaneously Intellectual-Principle and Being; and, attaining resemblance in virtue of this vision, it repeats the act of the One in pouring forth a vast power.

This second outflow is a Form or Idea representing the Divine Intellect as the Divine Intellect represented its own prior, The One. — from Enniads 5.3.1.

Firstly, the “Divine Intellect” is clearly not equivalent to the One.

And, as far as I can make out, the One’s “seeking nothing”—i.e., not being in search or in want of anything whatsoever—is at direct odds with the actuality of a will (cf., https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/will). One’s will or, more formally termed, volition is the sum of one's intentions (be the conscious or unconscious), with intentions necessarily holding an intent/end/purpose aimed at in order to so be intentioning. Because of this, to will is necessarily to seek the fulfilment of some telos or teloi. If there is no telos-fulfillment sought, there can be no will.

Is there some other sense of will you understanding wherein purpose is, at the very least, not a necessary condition of the will’s occurrence? (A purpose-devoid willing?)

But, because I so far can’t think of any such understanding of the term “will”, I can only then find the passage you’ve quoted to utterly misinterpret what Plotinus quite directly affirms (as per the above quote) in putting into Protinus's mouth terms such as (supposedly the One's, right?) "absolute self-will". The One (for that matter, this much like the typically understood Buddhist notion of Nirvana) is in want of nothing, hence devoid of any intent not yet fulfilled, and, thereby, fully devoid of volition, aka will, this as will can in any way apply to the "Intellectual-Principle".

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But please reference the translation of Plotinus you’ve quoted. I ask because it is utterly discordant to the translations I’m so far aware of. Contrast it, for example, with these two online translations here and here. So much so that your translation reads as though it’s from a different author’s different book.

In context:

Soul becomes free when it moves, through Intellectual-Principle, towards The Good; what it does in that spirit is its free act; Intellectual-Principle is free in its own right. That principle of Good is the sole object of desire and the source of self-disposal to the rest, to soul when it fully attains, to Intellectual-Principle by connate possession.

How then can the sovereign of all that august sequence- the first in place, that to which all else strives to mount, all dependent upon it and taking from it their powers even to this power of self-disposal- how can This be brought under the freedom belonging to you and me, a conception applicable only by violence to Intellectual-Principle itself?

It is rash thinking drawn from another order that would imagine a First Principle to be chance- made what it is, controlled by a manner of being imposed from without, void therefore of freedom or self-disposal, acting or refraining under compulsion. Such a statement is untrue to its subject and introduces much difficulty; it utterly annuls the principle of freewill with the very conception of our own voluntary action, so that there is no longer any sense in discussion upon these terms, empty names for the non-existent. Anyone upholding this opinion would be obliged to say not merely that free act exists nowhere but that the very word conveys nothing to him. To admit understanding the word is to be easily brought to confess that the conception of freedom does apply where it is denied. No doubt a concept leaves the reality untouched and unappropriated, for nothing can produce itself, bring itself into being; but thought insists upon distinguishing between what is subject to others and what is independent, bound under no allegiance, lord of its own act.

This state of freedom belongs in the absolute degree to the Eternals in right of that eternity and to other beings in so far as without hindrance they possess or pursue The Good which, standing above them all, must manifestly be the only good they can reasonably seek.

To say that The Good exists by chance must be false; chance belongs to the later, to the multiple; since the First has never come to be, we cannot speak of it either as coming by chance into being or as not master of its being. Absurd also the objection that it acts in accordance with its being if this is to suggest that freedom demands act or other expression against the nature. Neither does its nature as the unique annul its freedom when this is the result of no compulsion but means only that The Good is no other than itself, is self-complete and has no higher.

The objection would imply that where there is most good there is least freedom. If this is absurd, still more absurd to deny freedom to The Good on the ground that it is good and self-concentred, not needing to lean upon anything else but actually being the Term to which all tends, itself moving to none.

Where- since we must use such words- the essential act is identical with the being- and this identity must obtain in The Good since it holds even in Intellectual-Principle- there the act is no more determined by the Being than the Being by the Act. Thus "acting according to its nature" does not apply; the Act, the Life, so to speak, cannot be held to issue from the Being; the Being accompanies the Act in an eternal association: from the two [Being and Act] it forms itself into The Good, self-springing and unspringing. — Enniads 6.8.7.

BTW, to be clear, it is the last paragraph of the quoted section on which the previously mentioned divergences occur.

But again, the Good is again blatently not equivalent to the Intellectual Principle, but is instead that which the Intellectual Principle seeks as end/telos. Willing (freely or otherwise) is not done by the One / the Good (for the One seeks nothing whatsoever), but by the Intellectual Principle as it's here in part addressed, and this in its seeking of the Good.

Can you reference anything out of the Enniads directly that would, within its proper context, contradict what is here stated in the two quotes, or else in my own evaluations regarding the One?

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As to the notion of freedom in and of itself, the One is affirmed to be devoid of any and all limits—i.e., absolutely unbounded, else in no way constrained, by anything whatsoever (it is in-finite in this literal and non-mathematical sense). I know of no other more accurate or literal description of an absolute, hence perfect and complete, freedom. Do you?

But as to the Christian doctrine of divine freedom which affirms God to have free will – which Christ himself had about as much to say as he did the Trinity (Christian doctrine proper, with its Trinity included, being first introduced in the First Council of Nicaea, this 325 years after Christ’s death):

Please explain how the very notion of free will (however one might choose to interpret the term) can hold any cogency in the complete absence of intention, hence purpose, hence telos one seeks to fulfill.

Ps. I’m here asking for cogent reasoning, preferably yours, and not for the questionable opinions of others regarding the matter.

Firstly, the “Divine Intellect” is clearly not equivalent to the One.

Yup, that's the basics of the cosmology and the hypostases. Nous is the result of the One's vision of itself. “In turning toward itself The One sees. It is this seeing that constitutes The Intelligence” (1.7)

The difficulty for St. Augustine in digesting this cosmology is that Nous, which is quite similar to the Christian Logos, e.g. in Origen (or the Barbelō in Gnosticism) is obviously not coequal with the One. This ultimately is what leads to Augustine's rejection of the hierarchical model for a semiotic triad as the model of the Holy Trinity.

But, because I so far can’t think of any such understanding of the term “will”, I can only then find the passage you’ve quoted to utterly misinterpret what Plotinus quite directly affirms (as per the above quote) in putting into Protinus's mouth terms such as (supposedly the One's, right?) "absolute self-will". The One (for that matter, this much like the typically understood Buddhist notion of Nirvana) is in want of nothing, hence devoid of any intent not yet fulfilled, and, thereby, fully devoid of volition, aka will, this as will can in any way apply to the "Intellectual-Principle".

Is there some other sense of will you understanding wherein purpose is, at the very least, not a necessary condition of the will’s occurrence? (A purpose-devoid willing?)

First, because Plotinus is engaged in analogical predication and sort of "pointing" as opposed to "describing," he frequently affirms and the negates his affirmations. As he says early on, the truth of what he says is to be found in contemplation not discursive reasoning. Nonetheless, simplicity does not imply a total equivocity of all words, else his project would make no sense.

To embrace an absolute via negativa, to say that nothing of God can be said except that God is not anything, is itself to slip into the very sort of total equivocity you yourself seem to point out as inappropriate.

Second, is your contention that the One is completely devoid of all intentionality and that simplicity demands that it be thought of as an almost mechanistic principle, devoid of any content since any content would introduce limit? Does Nous possess something positive that the One lacks?

I don't feel like arguing something completely at odds with Plotinus entire metaphysics. Even at the level of the Intellectual Principle, the thinker is the same as the thought, and the knower is the same as the known, transcending any distinction between Being and Knowing. Parmenides' "the same is for thinking is for being," sits at the heart of Plotinus' metaphysics and epistemology.

I don't mean to be rude but have you actually read the entire Enneads or any secondary literature on Plotinus? There seems to be a lot of modern assumptions packed into your thoughts here about the difference between thinking and being, a divorce of intentionality and existence, that simply do not make any sense in Plotinus. Something like Perl's "Thinking Being," could help explain the profound difference between Plotinus and the implicit dualism that pervades modern thought when it comes to intentionality.

Anyhow, consider the entire discussion of divine freedom in 6.8. At 6.8.3 Plotinus discusses freedom in created beings. Freedom can't be just doing what one desires, else infants would be free. Freedom is proper to the intellect, one must know what one wills and why one wills. Plotinus uses Oedipus killing his father out of ignorance as an example; here Oedipus is determined by a truth that lies outside his understanding.

But then Plotinus brings up a problem very similar to the one you have raise. If one is determined, by nature, by the Good, then is one truly free? For here the Good striven for must lie outside the person, or even for the Good itself, it seems it would be unfree in that it acts "according to its nature." But Plotinus rejects this objection, and he rejects it particularly for the Intellectual Principle (which as we shall see applies for the Good itself as well).

Further, this objected obedience to the characteristic nature would imply a duality, master and mastered; but an undivided Principle, a simplex Activity, where there can be no difference of potentiality and act, must be free; there can be no thought of "action according to the nature," in the sense of any distinction between the being and its efficiency, there where being and act are identical. Where act is performed neither because of another nor at another's will, there surely is freedom. Freedom may of course be an inappropriate term: there is something greater here: it is self-disposal in the sense, only, that there is no disposal by the extern, no outside master over the act.

In a principle, act and essence must be free. No doubt Intellectual-Principle itself is to be referred to a yet higher; but this higher is not extern to it; Intellectual-Principle is within the Good; possessing its own good in virtue of that indwelling, much more will it possess freedom and self-disposal which are sought only for the sake of the good. Acting towards the good, it must all the more possess self-disposal for by that Act it is directed towards the Principle from which it proceeds, and this its act is self-centred and must entail its very greatest good.

This seems to be Plotinus rejecting your argument tout court.

Now if we take the modern view of freedom/will where both are defined in terms of potency, we may run into difficulties here. But Plotinus is not laboring under the idea that will is primarily potency and must be driven externally into act. Act and being are united in 6.8.7:

This state of freedom belongs in the absolute degree to the Eternals in right of that eternity and to other beings in so far as without hindrance they possess or pursue The Good which, standing above them all, must manifestly be the only good they can reasonably seek.

To say that The Good exists by chance must be false; chance belongs to the later, to the multiple; since the First has never come to be, we cannot speak of it either as coming by chance into being or as not master of its being. Absurd also the objection that it acts in accordance with its being if this is to suggest that freedom demands act or other expression against the nature. Neither does its nature as the unique annul its freedom when this is the result of no compulsion but means only that The Good is no other than itself, is self-complete and has no higher.

The objection would imply that where there is most good there is least freedom. If this is absurd, still more absurd to deny freedom to The Good on the ground that it is good and self-concentred, not needing to lean upon anything else but actually being the Term to which all tends, itself moving to none.

Where-since we must use such words- the essential act is identical with the being- and this identity must obtain in The Good since it holds even in Intellectual-Principle- there the act is no more determined by the Being than the Being by the Act. Thus "acting according to its nature" does not apply; the Act, the Life, so to speak, cannot be held to issue from the Being; the Being accompanies the Act in an eternal association: from the two [Being and Act] it forms itself into The Good, self-springing and unspringing.

I don't know how you read this to imply "the Good lacks all intentionality." It says the opposite and is essentially refuting your argument. Other things seek the Good, the Good intends itself. Why do you think he is at pains to show that Act and Being are not separate?

The objection that "because the Good is a unity and unique it can intend nothing," is called absurd here. To be sure, words are imperfect, but "since we must use words here," Plotinus speaks of Being united to Act.

A God that intends nothing is an idiot God. It is not a free God (at least not for Plotinus who defines freedom primarily in terms of intellection not potency). It would essentially mindless mechanism.

Whereas a God who lacks intentionality would seemingly lack being on Plotinus view of being. Or if we cannot say it has intentionality because of a total equivocity that no analogy can span, then what exactly is Plotinus talking about in his entire project?

Ps. I’m here asking for cogent reasoning, preferably yours, and not for the questionable opinions of others regarding the matter.

You presented an argument about "Christianity" and "Neoplatonism" in general. I happen to be very familiar with the classical Christian tradition and some later medieval philosophy. I pointed out that you are making assumptions that these traditions would absolutely reject.

What more cogent reasoning do you need? Your premises would be judged false, ergo your conclusion is not demonstrated. The premise "if there is intentionality it must be directed towards something exterior and something temporal," in particular is not going to sail. It's not going to sail on Plotinus' view either.

But please reference the translation of Plotinus you’ve quoted. I ask because it is utterly discordant to the translations I’m so far aware of

The quotes in that post are from D.C. Schindler's (a philosopher primarily focused on classical and medieval philosophy, who is fairly prolific and well cited in those areas) Retrieving Freedom not Plotinus.

I mentioned Perl and this might be helpful for why the One cannot lack intentionality and why, having Act united to Being, Act cannot be "for no reason at all," which indeed would be the opposite of divine freedom.

But neither is being ‘mind-independent,’ as if it were prior to and could exist without, or in separation from, intellect.There is no thought without being, but neither is there any being without thought. In order to avoid subjectivism, it is necessary, as Plotinus says, “to think being prior to intellect” (V.9.8.11–12), but this is only because in our imperfect, discursive thinking they are “divided by us” (V.9.8.20–21), whereas in truth they are “one nature” (V.9.8.17). Neither thinking nor being is prior or posterior to the other, for, just in that thinking is the apprehension of being and being is what is apprehended by thought, they are ontologically simultaneous: “Each of them [i.e., each being] is intellect and being, and the all-together is all intellect and all being, intellect in thinking establishing being, and being in being thought giving to intellect thinking and existence … These are simultaneous [ἅμα] and exist together [συνυπάρχει] and do not abandon each other, but this one is two, at once [ὁμου] intellect and being, that which thinks and that which is thought, intellect as thinking and being as that which is thought” (V.1.4.26–34).

As Plotinus here says, however, “this one is two:” the unity of being and intellect cannot be a simple or absolute identity.Within the “one nature” (V.5.3.1) which is at once intellect and being, Plotinus finds it necessary to distinguish between the ‘seeing’ and the ‘seen,’ between intellect as act and being as content.That which thinks itself “is not separated in reality [τῇ οὐσία] [from that which is thought], but being with [συνὸν] itself, sees itself. It becomes both, then, while being one” (V.6.1.5–8). This again follows from Plotinus’ recog- nition of the intentionality of intellect. Thinking is necessarily a thinking of something: it is directed toward, is the apprehension of, some content: “Every intellection is from something and of something” (VI.7.40.6).

As St. Thomas points out in the commentary on Boethius' De Trinitate, we cannot think of this thought in terms of human discursive reason, since the latter is drawn out into parts. But neither can it be completely equivocal. The Absolute is the fullness, pleroma, of content though, not sheer contentlessness on account of simplicity.




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You're reply, though in no way addressing the questions I've asked regarding what "will" / "intentioning" could possibly mean in absence of an intent/end/purpose sought, might be cogent save for what clearly seems to be its direct contradiction to passages such as this:

It is precisely because that is nothing within the One that all things are from it: in order that Being may be brought about, the source must be no Being but Being's generator, in what is to be thought of as the primal act of generation. Seeking nothing, possessing nothing, lacking nothing, the One is perfect and, in our metaphor, has overflowed, and its exuberance has produced the new: this product has turned again to its begetter and been filled and has become its contemplator and so an Intellectual-Principle. — from Enniads 5.3.1.

As I've previously quoted (were it to have been read) in Plotinus's terminology, the One is not Being but the source of Being. That Act and Being are united, as per 6.8.7, then speaks not of the One but of the Intellectual Principle which, via metaphor, is said to "overflow" from the One.

"Must be no being," does not mean "lacks being." This would be to say "the One does not exist." Plotinus is not saying that. He is denying the univocity of being, the idea the the One could be organized on a Porphyryean tree as one being existing alongside others. It is being itself (or superbeing) not a being. Augustine, Aquinas, Eriugena, etc. all agree on this point. Plotinus is here affirming a form of the Analogia Entis which he expands on throughout the work (see 6.8.8).

Your confusion stems from thinking of the will primarily in terms of potency. Plotinus follows Aristotle in that the Unmoved Mover must be pure act, not act deriving from potency. You are asking "how can there be act without something external to draw it out of potency?" This doesn't make sense in either Aristotle or Plotinus.

Absurd also the objection that it acts in accordance with its being if this is to suggest that freedom demands act or other expression against the nature. Neither does its nature as the unique annul its freedom when this is the result of no compulsion but means only that The Good is no other than itself, is self-complete and has no higher.

Plotinus is talking about the Good here, not Nous. Earlier, when discussing what freedom is he speaks in terms of Nous to avoid the difficulties of analogy, but Nous does not possess what the Good lacks, which is made clear below and in 6.8.8 and 6.8.9.

The objection would imply that where there is most good there is least freedom. If this is absurd, still more absurd to deny freedom to The Good on the ground that it is good and self-concentred, not needing to lean upon anything else but actually being the Term to which all tends, itself moving to none.

Where is there most good? In the Good itself. What is freedom for Plotinus?

He calls denying freedom to the Good "absurd."

Where-since we must use such words- the essential act is identical with the being- and this identity must obtain in The Good since it holds even in Intellectual-Principle- there the act is no more determined by the Being than the Being by the Act. Thus "acting according to its nature" does not apply; the Act, the Life, so to speak, cannot be held to issue from the Being; the Being accompanies the Act in an eternal association: from the two [Being and Act] it forms itself into The Good, self-springing and unspringing.

What do you think the Act is here? It seems to me you're saying the One is being without thought, which goes against Plotinus entire metaphysics (see the quote from Perl above). The Act does not spring from nature because it is not set over and against nature as in beings (again, pure actuality, not act flowing from potency). But this is clearly not saying "there is no Act." (And this is referring to the Good itself, it is saying this must hold for the Good because it even obtains in Nous, not "it only obtains in Nous and the Good lacks what Nous has")

Plotinus is here arguing specifically against the very argument you are trying to make, the idea that act requires being determined by something that lies external to the Good (or temporality, covered in 6.8.8)


If you look at the next section you will see that Plotinus both denies a univocity of the freedom of beings to the freedom of the Good and yet also denies total equivocity as well (again, affirmation and negation lead the way here).

Section 6.8.8 also speaks to your insistance on thinking of Act in terms of temporality, "happening," "not yet," "striving towards," etc.

To return to the previous topic, this presence of intentionality is as true for Aristotle's Unmoved Mover (which Plotinus is drawing on and makes reference to) as well. The Unmoved Mover is said to enjoy things in Metaphysics XII for example.

Although I don’t in principle have any disagreement with the Analogia Entis, it then seems you’ll nevertheless likewise find disagreement with these passages as well, for they parallel my own statements (boldface, underlines, and brackets are mine):

Hearkening back, whether consciously or not, to the doctrine of Speusippus (Plato’s successor in the Academy) that the One is utterly transcendent and “beyond being,” and that the Dyad is the true first principle (Dillon 1977, p. 12), Plotinus declares that the One is “alone with itself” and ineffable (cf. Enneads VI.9.6 and V.2.1). The One does not act to produce a cosmos or a spiritual order, but simply generates from itself, effortlessly, a power (dunamis) which is at once the Intellect (nous) and the object of contemplation (theôria) of this Intellect. While Plotinus suggests that the One subsists by thinking itself as itself, the Intellect subsists through thinking itself as other, and therefore becomes divided within itself: this act of division within the Intellect is the production of Being, which is the very principle of expression or discursivity (Ennead V.1.7). — https://iep.utm.edu/neoplato/#SH2a

As regards the very first principle of reality [i.e., the One], 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 [rather than either Being with a capital “B”, which it is beyond, or else nihility/nothingness]. — https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/neoplatonism/#One

I do acknowledge that Plotinus makes ample use of metaphor in his writing, as well as using terms in a context that is often foreign to us moderners (with his use of "Being", again with a capital "B", as one possible example of such)—which can lead to numerous interpretations of what was in fact meant by him. Still, in assuming this is a forum of philosophy rather than a forum of Christian faith and various apologetics for it:

In the absence of any evidence to the contrary, I’ll conclude that to you “intentional activity (or else acts) that is fully devoid of any intent” makes sense—here even tentatively indulging the belief that this is what Plotinus in fact intended to entail in the notion of the One. To me, on the other hand, this proposition as of yet doesn’t make any sense whatsoever—but is instead logically contradictory in a priori fashion (this as might be “a married bachelor”). And since you’ve made no effort to provide a rationally consistent explanation of how this stipulation of “intent-less intentions” could make sense—but have so far affirmed that this is what so and so in fact affirmed—I find no reason to continue in my attempts to ask you how this might rationally be. Faith that contradicts logical possibility (or experience, for that matter) is not my strong-suit—and this includes faith in notions of "the One" being that which intentions in manners devoid of any and all intents.

I don't find anything objectionable in that quote. It's the same straightforward reading of Plotinus I have been pointing to in other scholars. The One is not a being, it is above being (super being). This does not mean "it is not" in terms of simple negation, that is to say "it is false." It does not act in the way that beings act. 6.8 among other places is also clear that this is not a simple negation though. For one, if it was a simple negation, i.e., "the One does absolutely nothing," then the One could not be responsible for any of the other hypostases.

To my main point:

While Plotinus suggests that the One subsists by thinking itself as itself

It's thought is not contentless and it can't "just be," without thought (see the quote from Perl). It doesn't act because in it, act and being (knowing and being) are not separate. Again, we have a lot of affirmation and negation here. This should not be taken as a straight forward negation of all act, a dead or mechanical God. God for Plotinus, as much as for Aristotle, must be pure actuality.

Hence:

Where-since we must use such words- the essential act is identical with the being- and this identity must obtain in The Good... Thus "acting according to its nature" does not apply; the Act, the Life, so to speak, cannot be held to issue from the Being; the Being accompanies the Act in an eternal association: from the two [Being and Act] it forms itself into The Good, self-springing and upbringing."

"Where-since we must use such words," because we are not talking about act in the creaturely sense here since we are talking about the Good.

Still, in assuming this is a forum of philosophy rather than a forum of Christian faith and various apologetics for it:

It's a forum on philosophy which is why I am correcting you on a misunderstanding of a famous philosopher. That's all. The section on divine freedom pretty much considers your exact argument, both:

1. The idea that the One cannot possess freedom (defined in terms of intellection) because intentionality entails being driven by something external to one's self or else being driven by 'one's nature' where 'nature' entails being a composite entity (violating divine simplicity).

2. The idea that the One cannot possess freedom or thought because this would require that it exist in time in order to will anything at all.

Plotinus explicitly rejects both of these, but you seemed to be laboring under the assumption that he accepts them. I am just trying to clear up this misunderstanding for you.

"intentional activity (or else acts) that is fully devoid of any intent"

The One wills itself, it isn't devoid of intentionality. How do you have thought devoid of all intentionality?

Part of the problem here is that you seem to assume that "intentionally requires acting towards some external telos," as a premise. This is exactly what Plotinus rejects at 6.8.8.

Intentionality is something like: "the quality of mental states (e.g., thoughts, beliefs, desires, hopes) that consists in their being directed toward some object or state of affairs." Thought without intentionality isn't thought, but the thought of the One is fullness, a pleroma, not empty.

The problem here is perhaps partly the analogia. You seem to be insisting on what holds for finite creatures for the One, particularly temporality.

This was not considered a problem for Christian Neoplatonists because God's contemplation of God includes everything that follows from God, and indeed created being "lives and moves and [has] its being," only in God (Book of Acts). What was a problem was divine freedom in terms of contingency. So Saint Anselm is still dealing with the issue of: "is the God of revelation just a contingent mask worn by the 'God of the philosopher?'"

The One wills itself, it isn't devoid of intentionality. How do you have thought devoid of all intentionality? — Count Timothy von Icarus

This questioning fully ignores that which I repeatedly have asked of you. This doesn't at this point come as a surprise. But, since you've asked as an open question, in non-metaphorical and what I take to be far more up to date terminology: by strictly consisting of literally pure, limitless, and absolute understanding (with strong emphasis on all three terms).

Understanding does not logically require intentioning - this, for example, in the way intentioning requires intent(s) - and yet is a rather pivotal aspect of what is termed "thought" in all cases.

This, then, would render "the One thinks itself in manners utterly devoid of any separateness/division between thinker and the thought(s) it thinks - for it is absolute Unity" into the logically valid "the One understands (which is one validly possible semantic of the term " to know") itself in manners utterly devoid of any separateness/division between understand-er and that which is understood - this in an absolute Unity". [Although, given common interpretations of the word, you might note that the term "itself" can here only be fully metaphorical - an inescapable aspect of communicating via the limitations of the English language as it currently stands.]

The problem here is perhaps partly the analogia. You seem to be insisting on what holds for finite creatures for the One, particularly temporality. — Count Timothy von Icarus

As facts go, I don't. The exact opposite.

But, as others before me, I do not interpret Neoplatonism to be its own form, or else brand, of Creationism. Via which I mean that, in my interpretations of Plotinus' writing, Neoplatonism is not about a Creator and his/her/its creation.

I've by now come to believe that we will staunchly disagree on this point of Neoplatonism not being a form of Creationism. To which I cannot help but shrug and move on.

This questioning fully ignores that which I repeatedly have asked of you. This doesn't at this point come as a surprise. But, since you've asked as an open question, in non-metaphorical and what I take to be far more up to date terminology: by strictly consisting of literally pure, limitless, and absolute understanding (with strong emphasis on all three terms).

Understanding does not logically require intentioning - this, for example, in the way intentioning requires intent(s) - and yet is a rather pivotal aspect of what is termed "thought" in all cases.

Go back and read how Plotinus describes freedom across 6.8, which he explicitly ascribes to the One (as I have shown.) Or go read the quotes by two respected scholars I have shared that also explain this.

Like I have said, Plotinus is dealing with something very similar to your argument here and rejecting it. When the Good/One is determined by goodness it is not being determined by something outside of itself or by a mere part of itself (denoting a lack of simplicity). Nor is it striving after something not yet attained (denoting temporality).You are assuming a sort of univocity between act vis-á-vis infinite subsistent being and finite beings, which Plotinus explicitly rejects. This is why analogical talk, affirmations and negations, are required. And this seems to me to be the source of confusion.

Understanding does not logically require intentioning - this, for example, in the way intentioning requires intent(s) - and yet is a rather pivotal aspect of what is termed "thought" in all cases.

Intentionality, not "intentioning." I feel like sticking to the well defined term will (hopefully) help with the slide towards univocity. Understanding requires thought to have content, a content described in terms of "nothing through excellence," or "nothing through infinity," not "nothing in virtue of privation." The One does not emanate the way one domino knocks over another nor in the way a toddler wets himself.

I've by now come to believe that we will staunchly disagree on this point of Neoplatonism not being a form of Creationism. To which I cannot help but shrug and move on.

I've asserted no such thing, nor have I been engaged in "Christian apologetics," as you seemed to suggest earlier. I have simply pointed out that you have a very confused idea about Neoplatonism if you think the One is mindless principle, devoid of intellection and freedom, since Plotinus explicitly rejects this, and Proclus, Porphry, etc. follow this point. Likewise, this predates Plotinus in the influences he alludes to, e.g. Aristotle's Metaphysics Book XII:

The First Principle upon which depend the sensible universe and the world of nature.And its life is like the best which we temporarily enjoy. It must be in that state always (which for us is impossible), since its actuality is also pleasure.54(And for this reason waking, sensation and thinking are most pleasant, and hopes and memories are pleasant because of them.) Now thinking in itself is concerned with that which is in itself best, and thinking in the highest sense with that which is in the highest sense best...

The created/uncreated distinction is a common way to discuss that which exists by virtue of its essence—what exists necessarily—and that which does not. This is the difference between subsistent being, which depends on nothing else and "is what it is in virtue of nothing else," and non-subsistent being.

Creationism," is a modern term. In a one sense, the One is "responsible for," "the source of," or even "creates" the world. Likewise, there is a sense in which the One "has being" or "the One is." A strict negation of these terms is clearly not what Plotinus' means, else he would be talking about a fiction, pointing out the impossibility of what he is talking about.

Nonetheless, he denies that the One "creates" and denies it being. This is because the One is nihil per excellentiam (“nothingness on account of excellence”) or nihil per infinitatem (“nothingness on account of infinity”). This as opposed to nothing through privation” (nihil per privationem). Hence the need for "unknowing," and apophatic praxis to approach it. There is, however, not a lack of what finite entities possess in the One, but rather an analogical superabundance.

At any rate, "creationism" would be a strange term to apply to much the early Christian Neoplatonistic tradition as well, since many of the Patristics hew close to a view consistent with emanation, which is indeed something later thinkers need to try to iron out because there are conflicts here (although not in the way you describe).

Your earlier posts seem to suppose a sort of Biblical literalism, which in turn leads to positing a univocity of being, God as just a very powerful entity sitting over and against the world. But these ideas are almost always explicitly denied in those thinkers who are called Jewish/Christian/Islamic Neoplatonists, because it would indeed lead to serious incongruites if not outright contradictions.

I followed this exchange with one part interest and three parts bafflement, but I also remembered a book I have saved in my Google Books library which may be of interest as it seems to be very much about the substance of your disagreement - Modes of Knowledge of the Transcendental, Henri Oosthout. The reason I call attention to it, is from my very brief reading, the is very much concerned with he problem of reflexivity in transcendental knowledge - how the self can know the self.

Modes of knowledge are tricky as are final causes. I don't think it makes sense to talk of the "God of the philosophers" "creating the world with a purpose," in the way man creates hammers "for the sake of driving in nails." The late Scholastic distinction between intrinsic/extrinsic final causes and exemplary/objective causes is helpful here. Deely's work on Poinsot and some other Scholastics and C.S. Peirce is a good example here.

The reason I call attention to it, is from my very brief reading, the is very much concerned with he problem of reflexivity in transcendental knowledge - how the self can know the self. — Wayfarer

Other's stern enough affirmations of my interpretations being unquestionably wrong aside, it might be of interest that the Ancient Greek term for "to know", γιγνώσκω • (gignṓskō), can have the sense of "to be aware (of)" and "to understand".

For my part, I find Plotinus's writing to be very metaphorical, non-analytical, and at times equivocal, and so I find a literalist interpretation of it to in many ways be nearly as nonsensical as a literalist interpretations of most any poem's true intended meaning. Nor do I interpret anyone as being infallible, Plotinus as no exception. Notwithstanding, Plotinus repeatedly affirms the One to be pure Unity devoid of any and all multiplicity/duality and, as previously quoted, to have the Intellectual-Principle "overflowing" from it - hence not being it itself. I myself find questionable the extent to which Plotinus wants to say that the One thinks/knows itself rather than the intellectual-Principle so thinking/knowing itself; again, as the two quotes that follow to me illustrate, I myself don't find a univocal clarity in his writings regarding this matter. All the same:

As an excerpt from the 5th enniad:

1. Are we to think that a being knowing itself must contain diversity, that self-knowledge can be affirmed only when some one phase of the self perceives other phases, and that therefore an absolutely simplex entity would be equally incapable of introversion and of self-awareness?

No: a being that has no parts or phases may have this consciousness; in fact there would be no real self-knowing in an entity presented as knowing itself in virtue of being a compound- some single element in it perceiving other elements- as we may know our own form and entire bodily organism by sense-perception: such knowing does not cover the whole field; the knowing element has not had the required cognisance at once of its associates and of itself; this is not the self-knower asked for; it is merely something that knows something else.

Either we must exhibit the self-knowing of an uncompounded being- and show how that is possible- or abandon the belief that any being can possess veritable self-cognition. — THE FIFTH ENNEAD: THIRD TRACTATE: Section 1

And then there are passages such as this one:

5. Does it all come down, then, to one phase of the self knowing another phase?

That would be a case of knower distinguished from known, and would not be self-knowing.

What, then, if the total combination were supposed to be of one piece, knower quite undistinguished from known, so that, seeing any given part of itself as identical with itself, it sees itself by means of itself, knower and known thus being entirely without differentiation?

To begin with, the distinction in one self thus suggested is a strange phenomenon. How is the self to make the partition? The thing cannot happen of itself. And, again, which phase makes it? The phase that decides to be the knower or that which is to be the known? Then how can the knowing phase know itself in the known when it has chosen to be the knower and put itself apart from the known? In such self-knowledge by sundering it can be aware only of the object, not of the agent; it will not know its entire content, or itself as an integral whole; it knows the phase seen but not the seeing phase and thus has knowledge of something else, not self-knowledge.

In order to perfect self-knowing it must bring over from itself the knowing phase as well: seeing subject and seen objects must be present as one thing. Now if in this coalescence of seeing subject with seen objects, the objects were merely representations of the reality, the subject would not possess the realities: if it is to possess them it must do so not by seeing them as the result of any self-division but by knowing them, containing them, before any self-division occurs.

At that, the object known must be identical with the knowing act [or agent], the Intellectual-Principle, therefore, identical with the Intellectual Realm. And in fact, if this identity does not exist, neither does truth; the Principle that should contain realities is found to contain a transcript, something different from the realities; that constitutes non-Truth; Truth cannot apply to something conflicting with itself; what it affirms it must also be.

Thus we find that the Intellectual-Principle, the Intellectual Realm and Real Being constitute one thing, which is the Primal Being; the primal Intellectual-Principle is that which contains the realities or, rather, which is identical with them.

But taking Primal Intellection and its intellectual object to be a unity, how does that give an Intellective Being knowing itself? An intellection enveloping its object or identical with it is far from exhibiting the Intellectual-Principle as self-knowing.

All turns on the identity. The intellectual object is itself an activity, not a mere potentiality; it is not lifeless; nor are the life and intellection brought into it as into something naturally devoid of them, some stone or other dead matter; no, the intellectual object is essentially existent, the primal reality. As an active force, the first activity, it must be, also itself, the noblest intellection, intellection possessing real being since it is entirely true; and such an intellection, primal and primally existent, can be no other than the primal principle of Intellection: for that primal principle is no potentiality and cannot be an agent distinct from its act and thus, once more, possessing its essential being as a mere potentiality. As an act- and one whose very being is an act- it must be undistinguishably identical with its act: but Being and the Intellectual object are also identical with that act; therefore the Intellectual-Principle, its exercise of intellection and the object of intellection all are identical. Given its intellection identical with intellectual object and the object identical with the Principle itself, it cannot but have self-knowledge: its intellection operates by the intellectual act which is itself upon the intellectual object which similarly is itself. It possesses self-knowing, thus, on every count; the act is itself; and the object seen in that act- self, is itself. — THE FIFTH ENNEAD: THIRD TRACTATE: Section 5

To be clear, I do not ascribe to everything Plotinus states as thought it were a necessary truth. Nevertheless, given the Ancient Greek term for "to know", one can then understand Plotinus as a affirming that (be the "Primal Intellection" intended as something that pertains to the One or else strictly to the Intellectual-Principle that overflows from the One) the addressed knower or thinker of itself holds absolutely no duality between the subject of awareness/understanding (hence, of knowledge/thought) and its object of awareness/understanding. This such that the subject of awareness and the object of awareness are one and the same, in a state of absolute Unity.

Here, then, there will be no intetionality in the sense of "aboutness": the awareness is utterly reflexive without any differentiation between awareness and that which it is aware of. Nor will there be any intention upon any intent. Instead, there will be a pure awareness that holds absolute understanding of what it as pure awareness is - again, without any differentiation between that which understands and that which is understood.

Though others have disagreed with this interpretation and will in all likelihood continue to do so, I so far do not find any logical reason to discard it outright. And I likewise can so far find no logical inconsistency in it - this in a non-physicalist cosmos. At any rate, it's the perspective I hold with which I'd answer the question you've raised: namely, regarding "the problem of reflexivity in transcendental knowledge - how the self can know the self". And this subject to me in many a way parallels the Kantian notion of the transcendental ego ... but I've probably written enough as it is.

I'll also add in far more poetic verse - per my best interpretations of Plotinus's perspectives (which, I again should mention, I don't take to be infallible) - for anyone to fully and truly "know thyself" is for that psyche to engage in a complete henosis whereby it becomes one with the One in perfect Unity, thereby gaining a full and perfect cognizance of that upon which all Being is contingent. Which to my mind, when thus interpreted, can parallel at least certain Eastern teachings, such as that of Moksha: the obtainment of absolute liberation and, hence, absolute freedom (from any and all constraints).

Not that this is anything but a perspective, one I so far deem to be philosophically cogent within its own contexts.

Plotinus could certainly have ideas that are incoherent or don't cash out well, although I don't think this is true. However, I would say Wayfarer's source also has a fairly standard summary on this issue (along with the admonition that Plotinus not be turned into a "proto-Hegel.") Plotinus does argue both sides of his case, pro and contra, but I don't think he's refused to lay down a position in any sense.

If a Neoplatonist slides towards proto-Hegelianism it is the Irish monk Eriugena.



St. Augustine's early attempts to reconcile Plotinus is an interest case of the evolution of Neoplatonism (although Augustine is far from the first to attempt this). He initially maps the three persons of the Trinity to the Plotinian hypostases. The Father is the unified One. The Son (Logos/Word) holds within itself the divine eidos/ideas/logoi as Nous. This allows the Father to have the Son as the object of its love and attention and for differentiation in the knowing relation. The role of Holy Spirit/Paraclete is less clear here. It is either logoi, the specific instantiating power of Nous in the world, or it is the World Soul, the ability of creatures to know. In a few cases it is reduced to simply that which allows creatures to know truth.

But Augustine eventually abandons this for two reasons. First, in the Plotinian cosmology the hypostases are in a clear hierarchy, but post-Nicean orthodoxy dictates that the three persons of the Trinity are co-equal. Second, it's a straightforward denial of divine simplicity.

Augustine turns away from strictly philosophical work by this point to theology and the practicalities of being an influential bishop in an area of the Empire riven by schism. Thus, all his later working out of this is buried in theological treasties like De Trinitate, which leads to philosophers ignoring them.

But I find his solution incredibly creative. It's a semiotic solution. Augustine realizes that for there to be any meaning at all (and thus any being) there must be a triadic relation of: object known/ground/Father, sign through which then object is known/Logos/Son, and that which knows/interpretant/Spirit. Thus, his later solution has the Godhead necessarily in a triadic semiotic relationship, one Augustine finds mirrored in the human soul itself, and in the interactions of the created world—a sort of pansemiosis. Although Augustine avoids the problem of an equivocity of the semiosis involved in inanimate non-living interactions, he does so at the cost of a sort of demotion of the relevance of the material world (and we might say plausibility as well). Material things are so just signs of their ultimate cause here; all things point up the Great Chain of Being (an idea that existed only in germ at the time)


Does this introduce multiplicity into divine unity? Or is the sign relation a unified gestalt that can nonetheless be analyzed by discursive reasoning without being truly reduced into parts (i.e. the whole is more fundemental than any parts)?

Jacob Böehem is another example of this issue. He has all of God's creativity and the Divine Persons springing from the undifferentiated Unground, which is nonetheless unstable because, existing alone and totally undifferentiated its being and non-being are identical. But Böehem's differentiations and process in the Divine Nature are to be thought of not as occuring in time but as a sort of logical implication. There is still unity, but the human mind can only know such unity through discursive reasoning (much like St. Thomas says). There is also Jan van Ruusbroec's conception of the Unground/Divine Darkness beyond all thought continually breaking forth out of itself in the Divine Utterance before returning to itself in Spirit, where the process is a dynamic unity.

I have always found the attempts to grapple with this very fascinating. The personalist idea that persons, not mere thought, are ontological bedrock is another relevant shift here.

Imagine a snake that sees it's own tail, but doesn't recognize that it's seeing itself. At the point of meeting, there are two, but it's also only one.

Or imagine a diamond with many faces. Each face is the whole diamond.

Unity and duality are in opposition and two sides of the same coin. It can't be one, but not the other.