CHAPTER FIVE

HERMENEUTICAL-PHILOSOPHICAL SKETCH OF NOT-BEING

Iamblichus among the Neoplatonists is believed ⁽¹⁾ to be the first to have coined the phrase "One of the Soul," so it is with him, and particularly with the passage preserved by Hermeias in his commentary ⁽²⁾ on the Phaedrus (Fr.6 Dillon), that we take our start into the inquiry of what the Neoplatonists may have meant by their formula of the hen en emin . ⁽³⁾ The fragment reads in full:

YuChV kubernhth monw qeath [nw].‹ 247C.›

O qeioV IambliCoV kubernhthn to hen thV YuChV. akouei. hnioCon de ton noun authV. to de qeath ouC oti kaq eterothta epi ballei toutw to nohtw all oti enoutai autw kai outwV authV apolauei. Touto gar dhloi ton kubernhthn teleioteron ti tou hnioCou kai twn ippwn. To gar hen thV YuChV enousQai toiV QeoiV peFuken ⁽⁴⁾

Thereby Iamblichus is reported to have identified the "helmsman" with the "One of the Soul," and to have delimited it from the "charioteer" and the "horses," the traditional parts ⁽⁵⁾ of the Platonic Soul, insofar as there is no otherness in it, presumably like that of intellect and intelligible object, but rather a "being in being" ⁽⁶⁾ belongs to the "helmsman," a condition shared by the Gods as Gods. ⁽⁷⁾

The fragment does not explicitly raise the question whether the "helmsman" was grasped in relation to the other parts of the soul as another, separate part, such as a "fourth" part of the Soul separate and distinct from the intellect and the rest, or as some kind of "effervescence" or "flowering" of an already acknowledged part, presumably ⁽⁸⁾ the intellect, but the fragment does tell us that it was grasped as "more perfect in a way" ⁽⁹⁾ than the intellect. Nor correspondingly does the fragment tell us what role the intellect plays in relation to the helmsman, whether the step from the "otherness" of the intellect/intelligible object structure to the "being in being" that has no such otherness of the "helmsman" and is more perfect in a way than intellect happens through the intellect or by means of something else. Nor does the fragment tell us anything definite about the nature and kind of such a step, nor of the manner of such a way of perfection. ⁽¹⁰⁾

Let us, then, now turn to Proclus, particularly Proclus' Commentary on Plato's Parmenides, to see what light he may have there shed on the matter.

Proclus understands Plato's Parmenides to present a dialectic, and indeed, one which has no other aim than "of rousing up the most divine part" of the Soul. ⁽¹¹⁾

As a dialectic, Plato's Parmenides always has the same aim in view throughout all the individual steps of the dialogue that treat of the first hypothesis, from the first to the last, and that same aim, if Proclus is to be believed, is none but the "One in Us." And as a dialectic, the aim comes to its term at the very end, where, for the first time, we see what the preceding discussion was about. To our mind, such considerations as these justify a "reverse" interpretation of Proclus' commentary on Plato's negative dialectic of the One, along the lines of the interpretation we have attempted here, which starts from the end sections of Book VII, and moves backwards, skipping the intermediate sections, ⁽¹²⁾ and concludes back at the first sections of Book VI, hoping thereby to gather something of what Proclus may have meant by the formula of the "One in Us."

But what is remarkable is, that when all has been said, the dialectic of the One, as Proclus understands it, ends in silence, "It is with silence, then, that he [Plato] brings to completion the study of the One." ⁽¹³⁾

Such silence, for Proclus the end of the negative dialectic of the One, has no sense of "dumbness," ⁽¹⁴⁾ but rather, if we, lacking a better word, may so say, is very wisdom itself. ⁽¹⁵⁾

In the immediately preceding dialectical section at 62K et seq. of Book VII, Proclus says that learning the matter involves:

"a divinely inspired knowledge, that is better than natural knowledge and which leads the One in ourselves towards that One, ... and learning ⁽¹⁶⁾ it is the 'final discipline,' as Socrates rightly says (Rep VI 505a), because it is discipline in the final knowledge. But this final knowledge is not science, but is higher than science." ⁽¹⁷⁾

What are we to make of such silence, wherein lies the final discipline, the one which leads the One in ourselves towards the One? But this involves the prior question of what does Proclus mean by the formula of the One in Us, ⁽¹⁸⁾ and in the immediately prior dialectical section of Book VII, Proclus tells us two things about it.

On the one hand, Proclus says at 48K et seq. of the One in Us that it:

"is rightly said in the Letters (VII, 341d), as we have said, that it is to be learned in a different way; that when we have given much care and attention to it, a divine light is kindled in us through which there comes about -- in such a way as is possible to us -- a glimpse of it, which makes us participate in it in respect of that part of ourselves that is most divine. But the most divine thing in us is the One in Us, which Socrates called the illumination of the Soul, just as he called the truth itself light. ⁽¹⁹⁾ This illumination is our individual light, and so, if it is not impious to say this, here also like is apprehended by like; ...so by the One in ourselves do we apprehend the One, which by the brightness of its light is the cause of all beings, by which all participate in the One" (emphasis mine).

and on the other hand, Proclus says at 54K et seq. of the One in Us that it:

"does not come from knowledge, since if it did, what has no share in knowledge could not seek after it; but everything has a natural striving after the One, as also has the Soul. What else is the One in ourselves except the energy and operation of this striving?" (emphasis mine).

The "One in Us," then, for Proclus has two determinations; the "One in Us," Proclus takes to be eros, innate, constituting the very nature of desire, and the "One in Us," Proclus takes to be the light of truth. What the unity of these two determinations is Proclus does not explicitly say, nor does he explicitly say what the manner of their unity is, beyond indicating at 58K that it is what Socrates too meant when he said that it occurs for "he who inclines his own light towards it,"⁽²⁰⁾whereby, the one so inclined, we are also told at 58K et seq., "does not know the One by direct vision (i.e. intuitively) or intellectually, but is united with it, 'drunk with its nectar' (Symp. 203b), for its nature, and what is in it, is better than all knowledge."

Proclus tells us little directly in the commentary proper about what this "drunk with its nectar" ⁽²¹⁾ that is not "direct vision" is to signify, that presumably being the unsaid fruit of undergoing the individual steps of the negative dialectic of the One, so we conclude our consideration of the commentary by jumping back to the very first sections thereof, where Proclus does seem to tell us something directly of it, but this time, in terms of a "choral dance" at 1071 et seq., where, in Book VI, the commentary of Proclus on Plato's negative dialectic of the One properly begins. We present the passage in full:

"Let this, then, be reckoned as the subject of the First Hypothesis: the ascent from One Being to the very One itself in the truest sense, and the consideration of how it is transcendent over all things, and how it is to be reckoned together with none of the divine orders.

Secondly after this let us consider what type of discourse will suit such a subject as this, and how we might properly take a grasp of the exegesis of the present topic, and how we may be able, I would say, to operate logically and intellectually and at the same time with divine inspiration, in order that we may be able to grasp the demonstrative power of Parmenides and to follow his conceptions, dependent as they are upon real Being, and that we may ascend by divine inspiration to the unspeakable and incomprehensible consciousness of the One. For we do possess, inasmuch as we rank as souls, images of the primal causes, and we participate in both the whole Soul and the plane of Intellect and the divine Henad; and we must stir up the powers of those entities within us for the comprehension of the present subject matter. Or how else are we to become nearer to the One, if we do not rouse up the One of the soul, which is in us as a kind of image of the One, by virtue of which the most accurate of authorities ⁽²²⁾ declare that divine possession most especially comes about? And how are we to make this One and flower of the soul shine forth unless we first of all activate our intellect? For the activity of the intellect leads the soul towards a state and activity of calm. And how are we to achieve perfect intellectual activity if we do not travel there by means of logical conceptions, using composite intellections prior to more simple ones? So then, we need demonstrative power in our preliminary assumptions, whereas we need intellectual activity in our investigations of being (for the orders of being are denied of the One), and we need inspired impulse in our consciousness of that which transcends all beings, in order that we may not slip unawares from our negations into Not-Being and its invisibility by reason of our indefinite imagination, but rousing up the One within us and, through this, warming the soul (cf. Phaedrus. 251b) we may connect ourselves to the One itself and, as it were find mooring, taking our stand above everything intelligible within ourselves and dispensing with every other one of our activities, in order that we may consort with it alone and perform a dance around it, leaving behind all the intellections of soul which are directed to secondary things. Let this, then, be the manner of our discourse, logical, intellectual, and inspired, for in this way one might take the grasp that one should of the present hypothesis" (emphasis mine).

The inspiration that guides the rousing up of the One in Us, an inspiration that is to safeguard precisely against the "slip unawares from our negations into Not-Being," is such that by it the One in Us is awakened and in such a way as to connect with and moor about the One, whereby the One in Us is said to"dance" around the One.

So what are we to make of this "dance," which describes the "mooring" of the One in Us about the One, and which, if our interpretation does not go too far wrong, names the same matter as that "silence" which, as the "final knowledge," somehow brings to unity the "light of truth" and the "desire" prior to all understanding?

If, then, the "dancer" is the One in Us, the "dance" its "mooring" about the One, and the "choir director" is the One, how does Proclus describe the "mooring," or in other words, how does Proclus describe the dance as dance? We believe that Proclus gives the answer ⁽²³⁾in the section captioned ⁽²⁴⁾"Suitability of Negations to the First Cause" in the same Book VI, where, in a word, he explicitly finds "negations" to be "productive" ⁽²⁵⁾: "In the case of the One, the negations reveal its superiority as a causal principle." ⁽²⁶⁾ And to clarify what he means thereby, Proclus goes on in the very next sentences of the passage we are quoting to give several examples; we quote here the first one:

"For this reason also the causal principles among those entities following upon the One have negations of what is secondary to them predicated truly of themselves. For instance, when we say that the Soul neither has the power of utterance nor is silent, we do not say these things about it in the sense that we would about stones or pieces of wood or any other thing without sensation, but in the sense that it produces voice and silence in the living being" (emphasis mine). ⁽²⁷⁾

As Proclus says in the commentary at 54K, since we are among "our own peers," we make bold and say that the "mooring" of the One in Us about the "One" as "dance" is none but the revelation ⁽²⁸⁾of the absent ⁽²⁹⁾ One -- the idea of the Good. ⁽³⁰⁾ Proclus, so far as we are aware, nowhere says this as such, ⁽³¹⁾ but as we shall see immediately below, this is precisely what Plotinus in no uncertain terms does seem to say of the One in Us, and in the very context of a "choral dance."

In Ennead VI.9, sections 8 and 9, ⁽³²⁾ Plotinus expresses the matter more clearly, more eloquently and more beautifully than we could ever hope to do, and so, letting Plotinus speak for himself, we end our considerations of what the Neoplatonists may have meant by the formula of the One in Us by quoting the passage in full:

"Every soul that knows its history is aware, also, that its movement, unthwarted, is not that of an outgoing line; its natural course may be likened to that in which a circle turns not upon some external but on its own chantry, the point to which it owes its rise. The soul's movement will be about its source, to this it will hold, poised intent towards that unity to which all souls should move and the divine souls always move, divine in virtue of that movement; for to be a god is to be integral with the Supreme; ⁽³³⁾ what stands away is man still multiple, or beast.

Is then this 'chantry' of our souls the Principle for which we are seeking?

We must look yet further: we must admit a Principle in which all these centers coincide: it will be a chantry by analogy with the chantry of the circle we know. The soul is not a circle in the sense of the geometric figure but in that its primal nature (wholeness) is within it and about it, that it owes its origin to what is whole, and that it will be still more entire when severed from body.

In our present state -- part of our being weighed down by the body, as one might have the feet under water with all the rest untouched -- we bear oourselves aloft by that intact part and, in that, hold through our own chantry to the chantry of all the centers, just as the centers of the great circles of a sphere coincide with that of the sphere to which all belong. ⁽³⁴⁾ Thus we are secure.

If these circles were material and not spiritual, the link with the centers would be local; they would lie round it where it lay at some distant point; since the souls are of the Intellectual, and the Supreme still loftier, we understand that contact is otherwise procured, that it is by those powers which connect Intellectual agent with Intellectual object; ⁽³⁵⁾ indeed soul is closer to the Supreme than Intellect to its object -- such is its similarity, identity, and the sure link of kindred. Material mass cannot blend into other material mass: unbodied beings are not under this bodily limitation; their separation is solely that of otherness, of differentiation; in the absence of otherness, it is similars mutually present. ⁽³⁶⁾

Thus the Supreme as containing no otherness is ever present with us, we with it when we put otherness away. It is not that the Supreme reaches out to us seeking our communion: we reach towards the Supreme; it is we that become present. We are always before it: but we do not always look: ⁽³⁷⁾ thus a choir, singing set in due order about the conductor, may turn away from that chantry to which all should attend; let it but face aright and it sings with beauty, present effectively. We are ever before the Supreme -- cut off is utter dissolution; we can no longer be -- but we do not always attend; when we look, our Term is attained; this is rest; ⁽³⁸⁾ this is the end of singing ill; effectively before Him, we lift a choral song full of God.

In this choiring, the soul looks upon the wellspring of Life, wellspring also of Intellect, beginning of Being, fount of Good, root of Soul.⁽³⁹⁾ It is not that these are poured out from the Supreme, lessening it as if it were a thing of mass. At that the emanants would be perishable; but they are eternal; they spring from an eternal principle, which produces them not by its fragmentation but in virtue of its intact identity: therefore they too hold firm; so long as the sun shines, so long will there be light.

We have not been cut away; we are not separate, what though the body nature has closed about us to press us to itself; we breathe and hold our ground because the Supreme does not give and pass but gives on forever, so long as it remains what it is.

Our being is the fuller for our turning Thither; this is our prosperity; to hold aloof is loneliness and lessening. Here is the soul's peace, outside of evil, refuge taken in the place clean of wrong; here it has its Act, its true knowing; here it is immune. Here is living, the true; that of today, all living apart from Him, is but a shadow, a mimicry. Life in the supreme is the native activity of Intellect; in virtue of that silent converse it brings forth gods, brings forth beauty, brings forth righteousness, brings forth all moral good; for of all these the soul is pregnant when it has been filled with God ⁽⁴⁰⁾ This state is its first and its final, because from God it comes, its good lies There, and, once turned to God again, it is what it was. Life here, with the things of earth, is a sinking, a defeat, a failing of the wing" (emphasis mine).

Let us now turn to Heidegger, particularly to the part VII of the Beiträge captioned "Der letzte Gott," ⁽⁴¹⁾ to learn something of what Heidegger can tell us about the matter of our inquiry. Part VII of the Beiträge is unique among the eight parts thereof, in that it alone bears an inscription on its cover page. Immediately following the title, "Der letzte Gott," the inscription reads "Der ganz Andere gegen die Gewesenen, zumal gegen den christlichen." ⁽⁴²⁾

Let us take Heidegger at his word. The "ultimate God," he tells us, is other to the God that has been, particularly the Christian God, so that if we on the one hand had some sense of the Christian God and on the other knew what sense of "other" Heidegger had in mind, then we would be in a position to discover the "ultimate God" precisely by applying that very sense of "otherness" to the Christian God.⁽⁴³⁾

Heidegger's analysis, in the section 254 entitled "Die Verweigerung," ⁽⁴⁴⁾ is as simple as it is mysterious, and, to our mind, turns the question of the nature of this "other" about the ruling concept of "negation." In the past, and that means now, the "no" of negation is thought of as something "not at all"; but, as such, as Heidegger tells us, it appears in "the mask of non-being." ⁽⁴⁵⁾ This, though, Heidegger goes on to tell us, is not nothing at all, but rather is precisely "Being's abandonment," ⁽⁴⁶⁾ as "the disfiguration, and laying-waste of Being." ⁽⁴⁷⁾ And indeed Heidegger goes on to tell us that this "no" of the "nothing at all" as "Being's abandonment":

"is not empty arbitrariness and disorder, to the contrary: everything and everyone are now inset into the planned interlockability and assurance of sure progress and its 'unstoppable' hegemony. Everywhere already industry takes that which is not into the protection of the illusion of beings, and the despoliation of humankind inevitably compelled thereby gets compensated through the 'life experiences' [it makes available]." ⁽⁴⁸⁾

As to how the God who has been, and is now, is to be conceived along this way of negation, ⁽⁴⁹⁾ Heidegger does not say in the part of the Beiträge we are considering, ⁽⁵⁰⁾ but he does speak of the Gods who have been, and of them says: "[Both their] flight and arrival now move together [no longer distinguished] into what has been and have withdrawn into the [simply] past." ⁽⁵¹⁾ Of the significance of this undistinguished moving together of flight and arrival we shall see more below, but in terms of the context of Heidegger's characterization of "space-time."

Let us now consider what Heidegger may tell us of the sense of the "no" of "negation" that is not the "not at all." ⁽⁵²⁾ He says in the same section that it is:

"the highest nobility of the bestowal, and the undertow of that which keeps itself hidden, its revealability is what constitutes the original essence of the truth of Being. In this way alone is Being able to present itself in its strangeness [so unfamiliar to us today], [that is, as] the stillness [of the silence wherein there is the rest and the calm] of the passing by [that alone opens up the truth] of the ultimate God."⁽⁵³⁾

And of this "no" of the "negation" which opens the self-hiding as such into its open manifestation, Heidegger tells us even more. In section 255 entitled "The Turn-About in the Ereignis," ⁽⁵⁴⁾ Heidegger speaks of this "no" in terms that imply no sense of detachment from things or affairs of the world, as may belong to certain Eastern meditations, but rather speaks of it in terms and in a context that have the opposite force, namely, that it "first enables to prepare the contest of world and earth, the [very] truth of the there, and through this [truth], the [coming to light of the] momentary place of decision, and thus of the struggle, and with that, the sheltering in beings." ⁽⁵⁵⁾

Indeed, the "calm" to which this "no" belongs is so little like Buddhist detachment that Heidegger tells us later on in the same section that rather it indeed is "the simple and never calculable arrival into the full presence of the totality of space-time." ⁽⁵⁶⁾

At this juncture of the characterization of space-time, perhaps it is well to briefly pause, and explicitly consider some possible interpretations. For one may argue, doesn't Heidegger by the foregoing construction of the "no" then really involve himself with some kind of pantheism, inasmuch as by his own argument the ultimate God is somehow to be found in space-time, or, someone else may argue, doesn't this finding of the ultimate God in space-time really privilege sight, so that, in the end, Heidegger would have to align himself with those who held the Intellect to be the highest over against those who posited a higher still?

The text we are considering here does not raise these possible interpretations, but perhaps to take into account some such interpretations as these, the concluding section 256 entitled "The Ultimate God" of the part of the Beiträge we are considering is prefaced with a sentence whose sense would exclude these interpretations as misinterpretations, for, as Heidegger tells us there, "the ultimate God is not [identical with] the event [of arrival into the full presence of the totality of space-time] itself but rather has need of it as that by which the one who founds the there belongs [to God through what is]." ⁽⁵⁷⁾

Of this need, we shall see more below, but let us now consider what else Heidegger tells us about this "no" and its "space-time" in the part of the Beiträgewe are considering.

Heidegger goes on, not only like Proclus and Plato and Plotinus to think the "no" of negation "productively," and indeed explicitly in the sense of a "fountain," or "headwater," as we have seen above in our consideration of the Neoplatonists, but also to explicitly delimit the sense of "space-time" itself by doing so. ⁽⁵⁸⁾ He says of the "no" in the section we are now considering that in it:

"Being itself comes to its term. [Such a] term means the readiness to bear fruit and to be a gift. [As fruit bearing and gift giving, there is to be seen] therein the ultimate, [as ultimate, such fruit bearing and gift giving is itself] that which is essential [presence], demanding [an origination out of] an origin, not that of being carried along to its end.

Here [in space-time] the innermost finitude of Being reveals itself [,which finitude is at one with]: the "wink" ⁽⁵⁹⁾ of the ultimate God. Immediately therein lies the most hidden essence of the no, as still-not and no-longer, in the term, [understood as] the empowering to bear fruit and in the greatness of what is given[-forth]. ⁽⁶⁰⁾

The inwardness and inness [of the showing up] of that which has the character of the not in Being is thereby to be seen." ⁽⁶¹⁾

So far so good, for unless we are wholly mistaken, we think the foregoing analysis suggests that Heidegger with his "der Zeit-Raum der Stille des Vorbeigangs des letzten Gottes" and the Neoplatonists with their " " were concerned with the same problem horizon, but also has given us a glimpse of what directions Heidegger moved in to strike out explicit paths in that very horizon. But what remains to consider is what Heidegger may have to tell us about the Neoplatonic "dance" as dance in the part of the Beiträge we are considering.

In this connection, and if we are to be permitted the direct comparison, whereby we would take the Dasein as the dancer and the dance director as the "no" of Being in the sense outlined above, then what does Heidegger have to tell us that may bear on what the Neoplatonists spoke of in terms of the being "drunk with its nectar," the "mooring" of the One in Us about the One, which is to say, if we are not too far wrong, about the dance as dance?

Further on in the same section, if Heidegger is to be believed, the proper "evaluation" ⁽⁶²⁾ of the ultimate God depends on the way "its Vorbeigang demands a coming-to-stand of things and our stand within the midst of them," ⁽⁶³⁾ and in such a way that "beings (as works, instruments, things, deeds, sights and words) withstand the Vorbeigang in the won-back simplicity of their essence, not by letting it lie fallow, but rather by letting it unfold." ⁽⁶⁴⁾

What is the nature of this "unfolding" that not only holds beings in its folds but also unfolds man himself within it? In the next sentence of the same section, Heidegger says that it is the "inset and onset of a more original essence (to-be-grounding the there) in Being itself: the acknowledgment of the belonging of mankind in Being through God, who loses nothing of himself or his greatness through acknowledging this need of God for Being." ⁽⁶⁵⁾

In such need, and the acknowledgment it implies, Heidegger goes on to tell us in the very next sentence "Being in its self-concealment reveals itself as that 'ring-dance,' ⁽⁶⁶⁾ in which belonging's encountering of need and need's looming in encountering [so circle as to be something originating]: Being as Ereignis, that happens out of this turning overflow of itself, and thus becomes the "wellspring" ⁽⁶⁷⁾ of the tension between God and man, between God's Vorbeigang and man's Geschichte." ⁽⁶⁸⁾

Thus, if Heidegger is to be believed, the originating character of the wellspring is interior to the God and the man which are what originates (presences), precisely as the tension between them, which is to say, as God's Vorbeigang and man's Geschichte.

And in this dance, if dance is what it be, there are not two things, not dancer and dance director, but rather, again if we follow Heidegger, as he says a little further on in the same section, "Being as the innermost between is equal to the nothing, [wherein] God overpowers man and man encounters God, immediately as it were, but both only in Ereignis, as which the truth of Being itself is." ⁽⁶⁹⁾

What more can be said? Heidegger, like Proclus, who ends his commentary on Plato's negative dialectic of the One with "silence," says "from here ⁽⁷⁰⁾ all speech of there-being draws its origin, for which reason it is in essence of the silence," ⁽⁷¹⁾ but he, unlike Proclus, goes on to say towards the end of section 256, after denying that what is at stake is "system" or some kind of "learning," that rather it is:

"That which is necessary, which only opens itself to those who, themselves of abysmal origin, belong to the compelled. But what is compelling is alone the incalculability and non-produceability of the Ereignis, the truth of Being. Blessed is he who should attend the unholiness of the emergence in order to be a listener in the always originary dialogue of the solitary, in which the ultimate God inwardly gives a sign, because he through it is indicated in his passing by." ⁽⁷²⁾

1. In Proclus, tr. Glenn R. Morrow and John M. Dillon, Proclus' Commentary on Plato's Parmenides (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1987), 425 n. 49. Hereinafter the "commentary."

2. In Phaedrum 150, 24ff.

3. One in Us.

4. "The divine Iamblichus takes the 'helmsman' as being the one of the soul; its Intellect is the charioteer; the term 'spectator' is used not to signify that it directs its gaze on this object of intellection as being other than it, but that it is united with it and appreciates it on that level; for this shows that the 'helmsman' is a more perfect entity than the charioteer and the horses; for it is the essential nature of the One of the soul to be united with the gods." Translation Dillon's, in John Dillon, ed. and tr., Iamblichi Chalcidensis, In Platonis Dialogos Commentariorum Fragmenta (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1973) 97.

5. Usually taken as intellect, anger and the passions.

6. enoutai

7. enousQai toiV QeoiV peFuken

8. Because it is the acknowledged "highest" part of the Soul.

9. teleioteron ti

10. The alternatives are undecidable without more, since no answer is given in the fragment under consideration, but howsoever the matter is properly to be resolved, the foregoing fragment makes at least one thing clear, that what we are dealing with is no ordinary matter, but rather, what is required for its resolution requires insight into what constitutes the gods as gods.

11. Commentary at 988 et seq.

12. The individual steps, of course, are indispensable, to the extent that, without undertaking them, there can be no "rousing up," if that indeed is what Plato had in mind.

13. Commentary at 76K.

14. In this connection, compare the commentary at 1028 et seq. "For those who avidly cling to the divine, there is prepared an ungrudging dispensation from that source. ... It is, after all, a property of the God-like cause and of divine power to be available to all who are able to partake of it."

15. Although, so far as we are aware, Proclus does not use the word in our context in that portion of his commentary that treats the dialectic of the One as such, Proclus does use the word in the introductory portion thereof, indeed on the very first page of the Book I, when he invokes the intelligible Gods precisely for "fullness of wisdom."

16. Compare the commentary, at 44K et seq., where Proclus refers to the Seventh Letter's "learning different from all other kinds of learning," of which we will hear more immediately below.

17. Of course, for Aristotle too, it is wisdom that is higher than science in the sense of cognizing first principles (Nicomachean Ethics VI, 7), but that only raises the question of what wisdom may have meant for Aristotle, a question outside the scope of the present inquiry.

18. Since, after all, it is what is led to the One, as Proclus in the foregoing quote puts it.

19. That is, the Platonic , as Proclus specifically says in the commentary at 44K et seq. that "it is the light of truth which brings the intelligible before the intellect." Perhaps herein lies a way towards the resolution of the aporia we faced when we left our consideration of Iamblichus, for the at least unites intellect with intelligible without any "otherness" in it, but we still are left without explicit clue as to what the "helmsman" may have to do with such light, save perhaps that it is what first comes to light there.

20. Cf. the Republic at 518d, where Plato characterized paideia not as signifying the kindling of sight and light in otherwise blind eyes but rather as the proper direction of eyes already seeing in a light.

21. Cf., also, Plotinus, Enn. VI 7, 35.

22. Possibly a reference to Iamblichus.

23. Though he does not explicitly formulate our question there, or anywhere else for that matter, so far as we are aware.

24. By the modern editors.

25. The epekeina as arche or aitia! Cf. the Republic, at 509a,b, where the sun as epekeina is explicitly understood as cause of light, warmth, and so growth.

26. Commentary, at 1076 et seq..

27. Commentary, at 1076 et seq..

28. As "production"; aitia or arche.

29. As "negated"; epekeina.

30. Such at any rate would be consonant with Plato, in as much as the "final knowledge" could be none but knowledge of the Good, which would be obtained by that paideia which turns "our light" towards the One, and which, interestingly enough, is such that in it there is no "direct vision" of the One, but rather that which Proclus described as a being "drunk with its nectar."

31. Though he does equate the One and Good at 58K, calling them the "same," and says of the latter, also at 58K, that what Socrates means by "light" is none but "the One that is in the soul," and goes on to explain that "the Good can be compared with the sun, and that this light is like a seed from the Good planted in souls."

32. Plotinus, The Enneads, tr. Stephen MacKenna, abridged with an introduction and notes by John Dillon (London: Penguin Books, 1991).

33. Here we find the same talk of "unity" as we found in Iamblichus, the one which characterizes the nature of the Gods as Gods, but which goes on to point out that its nature lies in the way the soul circles about its center, which, if we are right in our considerations of Proclus, means as much as to say the revelation of the hidden One as the idea of the Good, whereby the "negations" involved in the "silence" of the "ineffable One" become "productive," which is to say, as the One in Us "dances" about the One, giving knowledge and truth, warmth and growth.

34. Note that Plotinus here invokes the cosmology of Ptolemy, presumably to emphasize that the circling of the soul, the "dance" of the One in Us about the One, is not in some isolated region beyond the heavens and earth, but rather to indicate that the soul in such a condition is inextricably involved in the very dance of the cosmos itself.

35. For Plotinus too, as it would seem, it is the Platonic , that "unifies" intellect with intelligible object, which does the work of "contact," and which, although Plotinus does not use the phrase in our context, is the same, at least for Proclus, as the One in Us.

36. Cf. The non-otherness of the "speculative" of the Iamblichus quotation we considered above, which Iamblichus left unspecified, and which we then surmised to be opposed to the "otherness" of the intellect/intelligible object structure, but which Plotinus now seems to fill in as "similars mutually present," over against the "otherness" of that which has "material mass." What this means, Plotinus explains in the next sentence.

37. Cf. The Platonic paideia that turns "our light" towards the One; Republic, Book VII, 518c et seq.

38. Cf. The "silence," supra, with which Proclus ends his commentary on the negative dialectic of the One.

39. In this connection, compare the kallichoron preserved of the rites of Demeter at the ruins of Eleusis, where her dancers danced about a center that contained a fountain, in James Miller's, Measures of Wisdom, the Cosmic Dance in Classical and Christian Antiquity (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1986) 37.

40. Note that for Plotinus, too, as it would seem, the negations are productive, and indeed, if Plotinus is to be believed, it is the very intellect's "activity" whose "silent converse" begets none but the idea of the Good.

41. "The ultimate God."

42. The "ultimate God" is "completely other than the god of the past, particularly, other to the Christian God." It is interesting to speculate at the outset that the Neoplatonists may, from the other side of history, have intended to say the same, after the manner of Proclus or Damascius, who habitually dismissed the Christians as a-theists. Compare J. Dillon, "'A Kind of Warmth': Some Reflections on the Concept of 'Grace' in the Neoplatonic Tradition," in The Passionate Intellect, essays presented in honor of I. G. Kidd (New Brunswick: Transaction Publishers, 1996) 323-332 n. 10.

43. And vice versa, granting that by "other" Heidegger did not intend merely to indicate the total novelty of his conception of the "ultimate God," vis à vis the history of the concept of God.

44. "Negativized," in a broad sense.

45. "Die Verschleierung des Unseienden."

46. "Seinsverlassenheit."

47. "Die Losgebundenheit und Verschleuderung des Seyns."

48. "ist nicht leere Willkür und Unordnung, im Gegenteil: Alles ist jetzt eingefaßt in die geplante Lenkbarkeit und Genauigkeit des sicheren Ablaufs und der >>restlosen<< Beherrschung. Die Machenschaft nimmt das Unseiende unter den Schein des Seienden in seinen Schutz, und die unumgänglich damit erzwungene Verödung des Menschen wird wettgemacht durch das >> Erlebnis<<."

49. The "bad" negation.

50. Presumably because He, as everybody knows, is dead.

51. "Flucht und Ankunft der Götter rücken jetzt in das Gewesene zusammen und werden dem Vergangenen entzogen."

52. The "good" negation.

53. "Die Verweigerung ist der höchste Adel der Schenkung und der Grundzug des Sichverbergens, dessen Offenbarkeit das ursprüngliche Wesen der Wahrheit des Seyns ausmacht. So allein wird das Seyn die Befremdung selbst, die Stille des Vorbeigangs des letzten Gottes."

54. "Die Kehre im Ereignis

55. "vermag erst dem Streit von Erde und Welt, der Wahrheit des Da, durch dieses die Augenblicksstätte der Entscheidung und so der Bestreitung und somit der Bergung im Seienden zu bereiten."

56. "Beständnis des einfachen und nie errechenbaren Ereignisses aller Zeit-Raum." It is interesting to note in passing that perhaps here is where one may first gain access to the phenomenon (or related phenomena) of what the Greeks called pronoia/heimarmene, for insofar as to this calm the "ultimate god" belongs, there could be providence, and insofar as time and space and decision belong to it too, there could be fate.

57. "Der letzte Gott ist nicht das Ereignis selbst, wohl aber seiner bedürftig, als jenes, dem der Dagründer zugehört."

58. Proclus in the commentary at 1224 et seq. reports that "the Pythagoreans used to term it 'Occasion,' and Orpheus calls his first principle of all, 'Time'." Occasion" here translates , the right or critical moment of time.

59. "Der Wink" as essentially intended to preserve the "no," as the next sentence underscores.

60. To take the ontic example of a natural spring, not only the flowing of the waters is given into presence, but the springhead as well, but precisely as "not" showing itself, wherein lies the sense of origin, of ultimate.

61. "kommt das Seyn selbst zu seiner Reife. Reife ist Bereitschaft, eine Frucht zu werden und eine Verschenkung. Hierin west das Letzte, daswesentliche, aus dem Anfang geforderte, nicht ihm zugetragene Ende. Hier enthüllt sich die innerste Endlichkeit des Seyns: Im Wink des letzten Gottes. In der Reife, der Mächtigkeit zur Frucht und der Größe der Verschenkung, liegt zugleich das verborgenste Wesen des Nicht, als Noch-nicht und Nicht-mehr. Von hier aus ist die Innigkeit der Einwesung des nichthaften im Seyn zu erahnen."

62. "Würdigung."

63. "sein Vorbeigang eine Beständigung des Seienden und damit des Menschen inmitten seiner fordert;"

64. "eine Beständigung, in der erst das Seiende je in der Einfachheit seines zurückgewonnenen Wesens (als Werk, Zeug, Ding, Tat, Blick und Wort) dem Vorbeigang standhält, ihn so nicht still legt, sondern als Gang walten läßt."

65. "die Einsetzung des ursprünglicheren Wesens (Da-seinsgründung) in das Seyn selbst: die Anerkennung der Zugehörigkeit des Menschen in das Seyn durch den Gott, das sich und seiner Größe nichts vergebende Eingeständnis des Gottes, des Seyns zu bedürfen."

66. "kehrige Mitte."

67. "ursprung."

68. Cf. "enthüllt erst das Seyn in seinem Sichverbergen als jene kehrige Mitte, in der die Zugehörigkeit das Bedürfen übertrifft und das Bedürfen die Zugehörigkeit überragt: das Seyn als Er-eignis, das aus diesem kehrigen Übermaß seiner selbst geschieht und so zum ursprung wird des Streites zwischen dem Gott und dem Menschen, zwischen dem Vorbeigang des Gottes und der Geschichte des Menschen."

69. "das Seyn als das innigste Zwischen gleich dem Nichts, der Gott übermächtigt den Menschen und der Mensch übertrifft den Gott, unmittelbar gleichsam und doch beides nur im Ereignis, als welches die Wahrheit des Seyns selbst ist."

70. That is, from "the great stillness of the most-hidden self-knowledge," "die große Stille des verborgensten Sichkennens" (sec. 255).

71. "Von hier nimmt alle Sprache des Da-seins ihren Ursprung und ist deshalb im Wesen das Schweigen" (sec. 255).

72. "das Gemußte, das sich nur jenen eröffnet, die selbst, abgründiger herkunft, zu den Gezwungenen gehören. Das Zwingende aber ist allein das Unberechen- und Unmachbare des Ereignisses, die Wahrheit des Seyns. Selig, wer der Unseligkeit seiner Zerklüftung zugehören darf, um ein Höriger zu sein in der immer anfänglichen Zwiesprache der Einsamen, in die der letzte Gott hereinwinkt, weil er durch sie in seinem Vorbeigang erwunken wird."