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MYSTICISM AND RATIONALITY. A NEOPLATONIC PERSPECTIVE
the full truth about the first principle (the unmoved mover, self-thinking
thought), and even if Aristotle admits that we cannot contemplate all
the time, he would accept that, if and when our contemplation is successful,
we do become gods by performing this divine activity." One could represent
this type of metaphysics as a pyramid with a closed top, where the principles
gradually become more encompassing, until one finally reaches the highest
principle itself.
By contrast, an open metaphysics is a system that has an open top, where
our cognition leads us towards metaphysical principles, but where the ultimate
meaning of reality remains hidden, as there is no closed rooftop. In my
reading, this is the view of Plato: his metaphysics is not a closed hierarchical
system that would culminate in our knowledge of the idea of the Good—even
though I am well aware of the fact that many interpreters are convinced of the
opposite. I think, rather, that Plato’s Good is ultimately indeterminate. We
have some markers along theway, as Plato says in the Philebus: as the Good
cannot be captured in one form, it reveals itself through three instances at its
threshold (éni toic tod aya8o0bd mpo8vpotc, Phil. 64 c): beauty, proportion and
truth (Phil. 64 a-66 a). This allows Plato to say, for instance, that “the force
of the Good has taken refuge in an alliance with the nature of the beautiful”
(64 e). That amounts to saying that the Good remains hidden for us, and
that no one can claim to have final knowledge about the highest principle,
which is situated “beyond being” (Rep. VI, 509 c). The metaphysical system
is thus open-ended, whereby there is always more to be said than what we
have reached." The same basic view has been taken over in Neoplatonism:
the names of “One” and “Good” are not determinations of the First Principle,
but only names derived from our own categorial understanding, whereby
the true nature of the highest principle will always transcend these notions.
I believe a closed metaphysical system leaves no room for mysticism. For
indeed, the rules of the game of this type of metaphysics allow fora full coverage
of reality by our cognitive faculties. An open metaphysics, on the other hand,
is the enabling precondition for mysticism: a mystic must acknowledge the
fact that our knowledge always falls short of fully revealing the nature of
the highest principle. It has to do, in other words, with the recognition of
15 See Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics X 8, 1178 b 20-32.
16 Similarly, as Arnason (Negative Platonism, 19) indicates, Patocka does allow for a positive
role to be played by an “appeal of transcendence” (Patocka, Pece o dusi I, 333, quoted by
Arnason), which opens the way to a questioning of the ultimate meaning of human
existence. Pato¢ka does not allow for an objectification of this transcendence, which
indeed is a necessary condition for having an open metaphysics. My point is that every
tradition, be it intellectual, religious, ideological or philosophical, has its own objectified
tools (vocabulary, conceptualisation, etc.) by which it reaches this point of transcendence.
Hence, no access to transcendence will ever be possible without an objectified referential
framework through which reality is interpreted.
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