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GERD VAN RIEL transcendence, and of a via negativa and via eminentiae, whereby the highest is always seen as more than we can achieve. Is this, ultimately, a form of scepticism? No: as we have seen, a via negativa presupposes that there are things to be negated. And negating an affirmation comes down to recognizing the value of the affirmation in the first place. Accepting the terms of the negation implies an ontological promotion of the reality that is negated. If a mystic denies God’s being or beauty, he or she is saying that being or beauty is a valuable marker along theway, that they are intelligible realities of high rank which we need to unravel in full before it will even make sense to deny them of God. In that sense, mysticism exists by the grace of positive affirmations, the nature of which needs to be examined by reason. That is where negations and affirmations play their role: they are markers, arrows that point us in a direction, and which we can and must fully unravel in a rational way before we finally surrender to the mystical experience. The Wittgensteinian dichotomy is not an accurate description of what is going on. The point is not whether one is either rational or mystical. If you do not apply both, then mysticism does not work. BIBLIOGRAPHY ARNASON, Johann P., The Idea of Negative Platonism: Jan Patocka’s Critique and Recovery of Metaphysics, Thesis Eleven, 90 (2007), 6-26. DAMASCIUS, In Phaedonem, Leendert G. Westerink (ed. and transl.), The Greek commentaries on Plato’s Phaedo, vol. 2. Damascius, Amsterdam-OxfordNew York, North-Holland Publishing Company, 1977. PATOCKA, Jan, Sebrane spisy, 1: Pece o du$i, | [Collected Works, vol. 1: Care of the Soul, Part I], Praha, Oikumene, 1996. RAPPE, Sara, Reading Neoplatonism. Non-discursive Thinking in the Texts of Plotinus, Proclus and Damascius, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2000. VAN RIEL, Gerd, Le divin Platon: texte et sacralité dans le néoplatonisme grec, in D. De Smet — G. de Callatay - J.M.F. Van Reeth (eds.), Al-Kitab: la sacralité du texte dans le monde de l'Islam, Bruxelles, Société belge d'études orientales, 2004, 83-92. + 184 ¢ Daréczi-Sepsi-Vassänyi_Initiation_155x240.indb 184 6 2020.06.15. 11:04:19
