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MYSTICISM AND RATIONALITY. A NEOPLATONIC PERSPECTIVE
Ultimately, then, philosophy has the final say: our reason seeks further.
It judges the merits of all terminologies (including Plato’s, which has now
lost its privileged position) in terms of accessing the truth that lies beyond
language. In this operation, however, rational language cannot ultimately
maintain itself, as Proclus had already pointed out (see above).
Does this destroy the power of language and reason altogether, as
the aforementioned reference to scepticism might suggest? No: without this
philosophical enquiry, the mystic would never attain the stage where discourse
is turned against itself. The object of mystical experience, whatever it may
be, is never without context. It is not as if anyone could go and sit out there,
waiting for a mystical experience to happen, apart from their engagement
within a specific cognitive and dogmatic tradition. The Sufi mystics strive
for perfection of their worship of Allah, mediated through the text of
the Quran, just like Jewish mystics come to an elevated understanding of
the revelation of the Torah, and Christian mystics worship the Triune God.
Likewise, Neoplatonic mystics come to unity with the First Principle, or the
One, which is not completely unknown to them. On a psychological level,
one can obviously maintain that, in the end, they have all had a similar
experience in which they have united with a point of no reference. Yet they
would not have come so far without the rationality of their theological or
philosophical doctrines. In Damascius’ case, this means more in particular
that he is following the lines of the late Neoplatonic system as established
by Syrianus and Proclus. That is the rational and cognitive starting point he
always presupposes. He then continually interrupts this system, by stating
that this and that discursive analysis cannot apply literally to a level where no
distinctions can be made.
Ifone wants to call this a “scepticism”, one should eschew the easy assumption
that Damascius would take the standpoint of the Ancient sceptics, let alone of
Hume’s scepticism. He is certainly not saying that there is an epistemological
problem with the way in which our sense perception and cognition come into
contact with the world. But it is not even a case of mitigated scepticism, which
would have it that rationality cannot unravel the final mysteries of reality.
For rationality does have a role to play. The discursive analysis of the different
levels of the system is not doubted, not even at the highest levels of the system.
Damascius elaborates new distinctions on this level, precisely to indicate that
one can and should climb very high up, before \dyoc is overturned. Whereas
Proclus was saying that the One as a First Principle is ineffable, Damascius
tells us that “One” still is a term that has a definite meaning; contrary to his
predecessors, he even accepts a differentiation between two levels of the One:
up again the discussion surrounding the investigation of multiplicity and of plurality. Then
perhaps [we can discuss] whether plurality pertains to that intelligible order or not, and how
it would or would not pertain.”
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