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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. + 183 ¢ Daréczi-Sepsi-Vassänyi_Initiation_155x240.indb 183 6 2020.06.15. 11:04:19
