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CHAPTER 6 The Temporalizing Event “. . . what is purely and simply singular, what, by its singularity, is unique and, as unique, is the sole and unifying one that precedes all number.”11 —Heidegger The one is not a being, not a something. This is clearly indicated in the first lines of Plotinusʼs treatise On the One: “It is due to the one that all beings are beings.” (En. VI, 9 [9], 1, 1). Why can one not say of the one that it is something, a being? “The one is in all respects first, but Intelligence, ideas and beings are not first.” (ibid. 2, 30; my emphasis). The derivative status of beings follows from their chief quality, intelligibility. All that is or exists can be understood. But the one, which is what is most intimate for us, nonetheless escapes our comprehension. Hence it is not a being. Conversely, beings are secondary since they are of the same order as Intelligence (noûs) and the ideas. By thus upholding the incognizability and the non-being of the one (ibid. 3, 39), henology turns Plato against himself. Agreeing with Plato, Plotinus holds that to be is to be intelligible. But contrary to Plato, he discovers that when we speak of intelligible things we always speak of multiple things, be it only of the duality of knowing and known. Now, nothing which implies otherness—or, even more so, multiplicity—can be first. Intelligence and being will be derivative because they are intrinsically multiple . This is why, in the Plotinian universe, no being can claim supreme standing. Thus, if it is “due to the one” that all beings are beings, the one is not itself to be found among them. The one is without content, it owes nothing to the mechanics of maximization: therefore it is not a thesis. Rather, it centers all things, a centering in which one can recognize pure natality. To be a centering is less than to be a being. Intelligence, the second hypostasis, gives beings their being (more precisely, borrowing from Heidegger , their “beingness”). But the one gives a simple direction. The expression “supreme Being” thus amounts to nonsense, and the expression “supreme being”—which is perfectly adequate for the maximizing metaphysics of the Good, the Beautiful, and the Truth—is here a contradiction in terms. Only a hasty reading will see in the declarations concerning incognizability and non-being a negative discourse about a divine First, a negative theology in the train of Philo. Nevertheless, such is the received opinion about the Neoplatonists: Since the one transcends Intelligence and beings, it is “above” them, more intelligent, “more of a being” than them. Its simplicity makes it unknowable to us, but supreme vis-àvis what is other than itself. The distinction between the one and intelligible beings 144 PART ONE: THE GREEK HEGEMONIC FANTASM results in a few conceptual equations for which one would find ample support in the Neoplatonist corpus, be it Christian or non-Christian: To be one is to be inconceivably actual, spiritual, intelligent, permanent, powerful, causative, eternal, a being . . . . Henology would be a metaphysics of radical transcendence, but the one would remain something after all. It would only be beyond the reach of intellection: being beyond being, mind beyond mind, cause beyond causes. Despite its negations, such an exaltation remains squarely onto-theological, a discourse about being “as such” which derives its legitimization from a being—from a being that is inaccessible, but foundational nonetheless: supreme and divine. Yet by distinguishing between the one and being, Plotinus disrupts the collusion between the function of an ultimate focal point and the official charge of grounding. He thereby retrieves a trait of being that had been lost under the predominance of etiology—of the discourse on causes—ever since Plato. The English participle “being ” and the Greek participle on harbor an ambiguity. A participle is the grammatical form that “participates” in both the noun and the verb. On, or the archaic eon, is an essentially equivocal concept. About this equivocity, Heidegger writes: “‘Onʼ says ‘beingʼ in the sense of ‘to beʼ a being; at the same time it names a being which is. In the duality of the participial significance of on the distinction between ‘to beʼ and ‘a beingʼ lies concealed.”12 In Plotinus, the ‘onʼ of the second hypostasis is meant as a noun: beingness, hence its derivative character. It “is” par excellence. In the subsisting Intelligence, beingness coincides with beings; in this...

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