The One as First Principle of All
Résumé
Though “beyond the essence”, and as such radically transcendent, Plotinus’ first principle can be given in an experience usually designated as “mystical”. The aim of this chapter is to show how those two apparently contradictory aspects can be reduced to the same theoretical foundation. We shall see first how the positing of the One epekeina tēs ousias obeys a rigorous logical argumentation which leads to affirm that the arkhē of all things is none of the things of which it is the arkhē. But one is then confronted to a difficulty inherent in the very concept of arkhē and in its twofold determination, as principle, and as cause: if the first principle has nothing in common with what it produces, how can it have effects ? Plotinus’ answer to this question presupposes the elaboration of the notion of “power of everything” (dunamis pantōn), as well as of a causal model that makes transcendence the very condition of causality. This model, which can be called “model of the power of the perfect”, not only governs procession as a whole, but also comes to account for conversion. Finally, we shall see how the ontological and causal structure that turns power into a mediation is also the basis of the possibility of the mystical experience.