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Advaita and Neoplatonism (1961)

Advaita and Neoplatonism

(1961)–Frits Staal–rechtenstatus Auteursrechtelijk beschermd

A Critical Study in Comparative Philosophy


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3. Infinity and being

Is there anything in Neoplatonism which corresponds to the distinction between nirguṇa- and saguṇa-brahman? The only similar distinction is that between the first and the second hypothesis, i.e., between the One and the nous. Similarly, though not in exactly the same way, the One is unqualified and the nous is qualified.

 

The One is even called ‘beyond being‘, epékeina óntos, ousías,81 (as will be seen below), which certainly imphes that it

is beyond all qualifications. It is beyond qualifying or qualified thinking since it is beyond the nous: epékeina noû,82 kreîtton noû, ‘better than the nous’83 prò noû ‘prior to the nous’84 etc. Likewise it is devoid of a number of other specifications and hence an adequate denotation of neti, neti: it is ineffable, árrētos;;85 immutable, akinḗtos; ménōn;86 without any want or desire, anendeés;87 indivisable, améristos;88 adiéstatos;89 formless, aneídeos;90 infinite, ápeiros;91 etc. In short Plotinus says: ‘Nothing can be affirmed of the One, which is suitable to it’,92 as ‘it is even for itself nothing’.93

 

These negations were introduced by Pseudo-Dionysius Areo-pagita94 into the Christian and Muslim middle ages and led to Negative Theology. The negation can be traced far back beyond Plotinus to the Parmenides of Plato and to the poem of the historical Parmenides, as R. Klibansky has shown.95 The philosophical reason for negation is given by Proclus in his commentary on the Parmenides (in Plotinus this is unexpressed but understood), summarised by Bréhier as follows: ‘Affirmation indicates a limitation, whereas negation signifies an indefinite possibility. The domain of ‘not-man’ is much vaster than that of ‘man‘.96 This leads to Spinoza's famous ‘omnis determinatio est negatio’.

This is related to another topic. The One is called infinite, ápeiron. This is thus specified: ‘It is not finite; by what could it be limited? But neither is it infinite in size; where could it have need to proceed? .... But its dúnamis possesses infinity’.97 ‘It possesses infinity, because it is not a multiplicity and because there is nothing to limit it’.98 And elsewhere: ‘It has to be admitted that its infinity does not consist in lack of completion in size or number, but in lack of limitation in dúnamis’99 In other words, the One is not actual infinite but potential infinite. This is quite different from Śaṅkara, according to whom ananta means infinity in space, in time and in substance, i.e., actual infinity.

 

That Plotinus hesitates to attribute actual infinity to the One merely underlines that he was a Greek philosopher. The Greeks abhorred nothing as much as the infinite, indefinite, undetermined, indistinct, formless and unlimited. To the Greeks absolute negation, matter and non-being are ápeiron. This goes back to Pythagoras or the Pythagoreans, who recognised ten pairs of opposites in which the first of each pair was always good and positive and the second bad and negative. This list opens with the pair: (péras-ápeiron) ‘limit-unlimited’.100 In Plato the ideas are ‘forms’ (the appropriate translation of eídos), i.e., determinations and limitations. in the Philebus an attempt is made to explain the universe with the aid of four principles. The active and positive principle is again péras and the inert and matter-like one ápeiron. In Plato's unwritten doctrines, the ágrapha, recorded by Aristotle and by others, all numbers presuppose the same elements: the One (taking the place of péras) and ‘the great and small’ (taking the place of the ápeiron).101 The latter entity is also called ‘the indefinite dyad’ and is explained by Aristotle in the following words: ‘Plato made the indeterminable dual, because they are supposed to exceed all limits (cf. the ápeiron) and to proceed ad infinitum in the direction both of increase and of reduction’.102 A similar account is given by a Platonist of the first genera-

tion, Hermodorus, quoted in Simplicius' commentary on the Physics. According to Sextus Empiricus, ‘the One and the in-definite dyad emerged as the supreme principles of all things’.103

 

With Aristotle ‘matter’, húlē, is mainly described as ápeiron. Similarly in Plotinus ‘matter’ 'or ‘non-being’ is tò ápeiron (see below). For these reasons (for which there is abundant evidence) the One cannot be conceived as actually infinite. But the same reasons also give support to the opinion, that for Plotinus not only the One exists, as for Śaṅkara, but also other and lower realities.

 

By calling the One aneídeos, ‘formless’, Plotinus seems to withdraw further from the Greek heritage, due to the following arguments: ‘The essence (ousía), born from the One, is form (eídos); not a particular form, but the universal form, leaving oustide itself no other form. Thus necessarily the One (which is beyond essence: epékeina ousías) is formless’.104 Elsewhere Plotinus makes a concession and discloses his Greek background: ‘The principle (arkhḗ, i.e. the One) is formless; not that it lacks form (ou tò morphēs deoménon), but in the sense that every intellectual form comes from it’.105

 

The Greek preference for what is limited continues to live in Western culture. It can be traced everywhere and can be easily exemplified, e.g. in Goethe's saying ‘It is by limiting himself that a master shows his mastership’.106 Alongside this monistic mystics and metaphysicians stressed under Neoplatonic or Christian influence the infinity of the Divine. In Christianity, especially in Protestantism, God's infinity does not signify that he is the only reality; it is moreover potential rather than actual. That actual infinity does not exist is a recurrent thesis of Western philosophy (defended even in modern intuitionistic mathematics). Regarding the temporal aspect, the Christian God is eternal, but he creates once and manifests himself at special times (kairós). Likewise he is not infinite in space, nor omnipresent. An important modern theologian and phenomenologist of religion, Rudolf Otto, says: ‘This doctrine of the ‘omnipresence’ of God, as if he had to be at each

place and at all time because of a necessity of his nature, as a natural force in space, is a barren invention of speculative metaphysics, of which scripture knows nothing. Scripture does not know of ‘omnipresence’, neither of the expression, nor of the thing; but it knows the God, who is where he wants to be and is not where he does not want to be-the Deus mobilis....’.107

 

In Advaita, Brahman is all-pervading and omnipresent: sarvagata, vibhu. It has to be so since Brahman is the only reality. In the Enneads two treatises which go under the same title: ‘That what is one and identical can be at the same time omnipresent (pantakhoû, everywhere)’.108 Plotimus follows in the beginning of these a discussion in Plato's Parmenides, where the same thesis is forwarded and where it is shown how there is no contradiction between unity and omnipresence. With regard to time Plotinus also agrees with Śaṅkara and opposes Christianity. Neoplatonism and Advaita believe in eternal cyclical time and do not recognize (as we will see below) creation in the ordinary sense. J. Guitton, who especially dealt with this question,109 comes to the conclusion that in Neoplatonism time is not real and the real is intemporal.110 Thus formulated this doctrine supports the secondary ‘Advaitic’ trend in Plotinus' thought. In terms of the hierarchy there is reality at a lower level than that of eternal being.

 

Though there is no Neoplatonic parallel to the cit of saccidānanda, since the One is beyond the nous, also in Śaṅkara's inter-

pretation cit loses the characteristics of nous. What can be said with regard to sat and ānanda? Starting with the latter, Plotinus often calls the One the Good (tàgathón) and declares that both are exactly the same: ‘When we say the One and when we say the Good we must think about the same nature and we must affirm it as one".111 Once it is further specified, that ‘the One is not a good for itself but for the other things’112 it follows that the One is the highest Good and for that reason the most desirable goal for mankind (which the abstract philosophical One need not be) just like the felicity of ānanda, bliss. Plotinus carefully elucidates-and Śaṅkara would agree with him-that this does not signify that the One is good in the ordinary moral sense: tàgathón is not good,113 it is super-good.114 Its being the Good is different from the goodness which the soul may possess.115 Or it is said: ‘Because it is prior to all beings, we call it the Good’.116 Plotinus has taken the term tàgathón from Plato (especially the Republic), just as tò hén is probably taken from the dialogue Parmenides interpreted in a Neoplatonic, ‘hypostasing’ sense. The term tò hén must also have played an important part in Plato's unwritten doctrines, which deal extensively with the ‘ideal numbers’. Also Plotinus' equation of the One and the Good may go back to Plato, for the latter seems to have identified both in his lectures on the Good, of which we possess only some records by others. Aristoxenus, in describing these lectures, used the phrase kaì tò péras hóti agathòn éstin hén117 translated by Ross as: ‘and the lecture culminated in the statement that there is one Good’.118 ‘But’, adds Ross, ‘it is equally possible .... that what Plato main-

tained was that the One is good-the doctrine which Aristotle in two passages attributes to him. We do not know and it would be fruitless to guess.’

 

One of the most characteristic doctrines of Plotinus is that the One is not being, sat. It is often mentioned that the One is epékeina óntos, ‘beyond being’. This is elucidated as follows: ‘If everything is contained in what has come into being, with which of these beings could one designate the One? As it is none of those things, we can only say that it is beyond them. These things, however, are the beings and being; the One is therefore beyond being’.119 This signifies only that it is not ‘something definite’ (to toûto).120 In other words, that the One is beyond being means that it is not qualified and individualised in a particular being; it is not a ‘Seiendes’-in the German terminology. Ὁn in Plotinus does not denote being in general, sat, but denotes qualified being and each particular, individual being. It does not denote the kind of being of a being, being qua being, ón ḕi ón, as in Aristotle's Metaphysics121 or as Sein in German thought. Ὁn belongs to the second hypostasis, to the realm of the nous. Both are explicitly equated: ‘The nous and the ón are the real and first world’.122 ‘Both are one’.123 Elsewhere the nous is called the law of being.124 In short tò ón denotes definite, qualified being, and nous represents its definiteness and intelligibility. The reason for this is the same as the reason for the fact that the One in unintelligible: for Plotinus being is always intelligible (as for the Scholastics the intelligibility of being will be the main assumption). But then we are entitled to compare the duality sagunanirguṇa with that of nous-One, for nous is qualified and intelligible being. There is no contradiction between Śaṅkara's affirmation that Brahman is sat ‘the plenitude of unqualified being’, and Plotinus' thesis that the One is beyond ón, i.e., beyond qualified and intelligible being.

 

Despite the fact that this Plotinian expression is consistent with his system, it is somewhat misleading since we should not

think that the One is a non-entity, a blank, a śūnya. The śūnyavādins had to undergo the same interpretation. Even excellent interpreters of Plotinus' thought have been startled by this doctrine, e.g. Arnou, who is of the opinion that ‘Plotinus ought to have admitted the identification of the One and of being’.125 Such a judgment evidently results from the Christian identification of being and God which the medieval philosophers saw expressed in the biblical: ‘I am that I am’.126

 

Also this expression of Plotinus has its roots in the Corpus Platonicum: the epékeina ousías of the Republic has been mentioned already. Also the difficulties of the dialogue Parmenides can be interpreted in such a way that the highest entity is beyond being; this was done by the Neoplatonists and also by some modern scholars.127 One of the successors of Plato in the Academy, Speusippus, and some Neopythagoreans called the supreme principle huperoúsion, ‘the supra-essential’ or anoúsion, ‘the non-essential’.128 Also one of the Gnostics, Basilides, conceived of a divine non-being.129

 

These expressions result from a desire to protect the transcendent. One against all earthly impurities. The same applies to the attitude with regard to concepts like principle and cause, which Śaṅkara relegated to the vyāvahārika realm. Plotinus sometimes calls the One hḕ arkhḗ, ‘the principle’.130 Elsewhere he hesitates to apply this concept, which presupposes the notion of relationship: ‘It is the principle of all things; and still, in another way, it is not a principle’.131 The Neoplatonist Damascius held for the same reason that we have to assume above the One the ‘Ineffable’, ‘of which it can not even be affirmed that it is a principle’.132

Śaṅkara refuses to call Brahman a cause, as this concept belongs inherently to the vyavahāara or pariṇāma realm. Brahman can be called that, from which the origination, subsistence and dissolution of this world proceed-according to the taṭastha definition at least. In Plotinus the same idea is expressed in au entirely different way: ‘When we call the One cause (aítion), this does not mean that we attribute anything to it, but that we qualify ourselves with an attribute; we receive from it, but it remains in itself’.133 Elsewhere the One is called aítion toû aítiou,134 which might be translated as ‘cause of causation’, i,e., an entity beyond the realm of causation.135.

 

Resuming, we are entitled to speak also in Plotinus' case about a highest nirguṇa One and a lower saguṇa being or nous. Is the second entity ultimately, as in Śaṅkara, unreal, or only real in so far as identical with the One? And does this hold for the third hypothesis, the soul, and for húlē, ‘matter’136 too? In order to solve this central problem the architecture of the hypostases may first be considered in general.137

 

The origination of the second hypostasis from the first, or of multiplicity from unity, rightly called by Merlan ‘the most fundamental difficulty characteristic of what is called Neoplatonism’,138 is dealt with by Plotinus mainly in images, as logic seems to fail here. In these passages the central difficulty for Plotinus is not that something different from the One can come into an apparent kind of being, but that something different from it can actually

come into being without affecting the One. ‘It has to be said that whatever comes from the One, comes from it without any movement’.139 When the nous comes into being the reality of duality is presupposed, e.g.,: ‘each produced being desires its producer and loves it, especially when the producer and the produced are alone’.140 Elsewhere Plotinus derives conclusions from the following hypothesis: ‘If something exists after the first thing....’.141 In another context he says about thinking: ‘that it came into being because the Good made it exist’,142 etc. All these passages show that what comes from the One is itself real. The reason given is that nothing is separate from the One (cf. Rāmānuja's apṛthaksiddhi)143 though nothing is identical with it either: ‘Nothing is distant or separated from what is prior to it’.144 Elsewhere; ‘Nothing is separated, which originates from the One, but nothing is identical with it either’.145


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