Salve amici,
I’ve recently begun a study of Neoplatonism and have probably started in the proverbial deep end. To give you an indication I’m still reading the introduction section included by the translator J
But I do have a few questions that perhaps some of the more learned amongst us can answer.
1) The One
As one of its titles the One is called the First. However Stephen Mackenna (the gentleman who translated this copy I have) states, “It is not the Creator: it is scarcely even to be rightly called the First-Cause: its lowly majesty rejects all such predication of action: in this realm of the unknowable the First-Cause is, strictly speaking, a lower principal than the First, which is not to be spoken of in human terms.” (p. 32)
If this is the case, then there appears to be a clear distinction between the One and the First-Cause. Whilst the One itself appears to be by definitions unknowable, how is the One itself, by its very supra-existence (to quote a phrase from Mackenna) not the First-Cause? Should they not be one and the same?
2) If Intellectual-Principal is the first ‘thing’ of the One, and a mediation between us and the One, then wouldn’t the Intellectual-Principal be the result of the First-Cause?
3) Is the Intellectual-Principal the combined Minds of all Beings? Similar to All Soul in its collectivist nature? Or is Reality (in terms of Matter) a reflection of the Intellectual-Principal as in turn passed down from the One?
4) If the One is not the First Cause, then by Plotinus’ explanation of each Hypostases ‘generations’ and ‘reflections’ then logically shouldn’t the One itself be a reflection of something else?
5) Where do the Gods fit into all this?
Any help would be appreciated. Any advice on studying Neoplatonism would also help.
Vale,
A. Flavius