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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.” + 181 + Daréczi-Sepsi-Vassänyi_Initiation_155x240.indb 181 6 2020.06.15. 11:04:19
