THE PHILOSOPHICAL INTEREST OF THE HEBREW-CHRISTIAN MORAL TRADITION I. INTRODUCTION I BORROW this essay's title from the book I intend to discuss, Alan Donagan's The Theory of Morality, where it serves as the heading of an important section. 1 It is striking to find a philosopher of Donagan' s stature devoting an entire book to the reconstruction and defense of the moral content of a religious tradition. A survey of ethical theory would show that the question of why one might want to subject such a tradition to detailed ethical scrutiny has rarely been posed in this century, let alone answered in terms that would be convincing to a secular audience. Theologians, when addressing the faithful, usually either assume the answer will be obvious or give an answer only the faithful could take seriously as a source of motivation. The same theologians, when addressing a general audience on a specific moral problem, typically search £or common assumptions in a way that blurs whatever distinctive contribution their religious tradition might make. Secular students of religious ethics tend either to attempt value-free description or to argue on philosophical grounds that the relationship between religion and morality is basically invariant and can he discovered a priori. They thus either studiously avoid giving readers reasons for being interested in their subject or make historical investigation of actual religious traditions seem relatively insignificant.2 1 Alan Donagan, The Theory of Morality (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, Phoenix edition, 1979), p. !'l6. In the remainder of this article page references to Donagan's book will be given in parentheses in the text. 2 These tendencies in religious ethics are discussed in my book, The Flight from Authority: Religion, Morality and the Quest for Autonomy (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1981), chap. IO. 165 166 JEFFREY STOUT Theologians and those secular academicians who specialize in the field called religious ethics have, of course, studied the ethical aspects of the religious traditions; they have, however, said rather little to show why such study might be justified on grounds that are neither theological nor antiquarian. Philosophers, on the other hand, have, throughout most of this century, felt free to dismiss religious ethics as plainly fallacious and therefore not worthy of extensive historical study from a philosophical point of view. It was possible for many years to defend this dismissal merely by citing famous arguments from Plato, Hume, Kant, and G. E. Moore. These arguments demonstrated, so most philosophers thought, that religion must depend logically upon morality, as opposed to the other way around, and that attempts to derive moral judgments and concepts from theological judgments and concepts could not possibly succeed. Not everyone accepted all the arguments: occasional doubts were raised especially about the ones drawn from Hume and Moore, which seemed to threaten not only religious ethics but much else besides. Yet almost everyone accepted at least one of the arguments, and accorded religious ethical traditions a kind of neglect one could hardly term benign. Meanwhile, logical positivism and related doctrines gave independent reasons for deeming religious propositions meaningless or, at 'best, false. On many counts, then, religious ethics seemed an unlikely contender for philosophical attention. Virtually all those who did attend to it did so with polemical intent reminiscent of the Enlightenment's struggle with superstition. Most theologians either ignored the polemics entirely or were too busy retreating to put up a fight. Recently, however, much has changed in philosophy. The same developments in philosophy of language and epistemology that have undermined positivistic critiques of religion, and have thus helped revive philosophical theology as an acceptable vocation for professional philosophers, have also undermined confidence in the standard dismissals of religious ethics.q The 8 For an account of these developments and their impact upon philosophy of religion and ethics, see ibid., parts II and III. THE HEBREW-CHRISTIAN MORAL TRADITION 167 result has by no means been mass conversion of the moral philosophers. Nonetheless, the ethical interest of what Donagan calls the Hebrew..:Christian moral tradition does seem to have re-emerged as a philosophically respectable topic over the past two decades or so. One set of reasons for ascribing philosophical significance to the ethical heritage of Judaism and Christianity derives from what might be called contextualism. A contextualist account of ethical theory and the moral life, undertaken in our culture at this point in its history, must sooner or later come to grips with the massive influence of the religious traditions or else risk radical distortion. Our own culture is surely more secular than its predecessor. Still, it matters greatly that our culture not only retains vestiges of its predecessor's religious ethos but also bears the marks of its own attempts at secularization. This much at least must be understood if our moral thought and action are to be given a context in culture and history. I conclude that we had better study religious ethics. As Donagan writes, "That the Hebrew-Christian tradition, as a matter of historical fact, has determined the substance of the received morality of the Western world, is sufficient reason for studying it philosophically" (28). As Donagan implies, this rationale does not presuppose that a version of religious ethics, either in its metaphysical commitments or its specifically moral content, is acceptable. On my view, religious ethics would remain philosophically significant even if all its major variants turned out to be unjustifiable in our context, provided only that the context itself cannot be fully described and explained without reference to religious tradition. On Donagan's view, however, a stronger case can be made. For he believes that both the metaphysical commitments essential to the development of Hebrew-Christian moral tradition and the specifically moral content of that tradition are true. He therefore sets himself the following tasks: to identify the crucial metaphysical presuppositions of the tradition, deferring their justification to another occasion; to derive the 168 JEFFREY STOUT moral content of the tradition from a single fundamental principle of respect; to defend the resulting system of moral precepts as both internally consistent and superior to its major systematic competitor, consequentialism; and to defend the fundamental principle by grounding it in a theory of practical reason. In carrying out these tasks, Donagan is simultaneously standing within the tradition, giving a systematic interpretation of what the tradition is, taking sides in various disputes within the tradition itself (not least of all by proposing the interpretation he does), and championing the tradition against external attack. II. DEFINITE ARTICLES AND SINGULAR NOUNS Definite articles and singular nouns predominate in Donagan' s prose. The title promises the theory of morality. Our ethical heritage is said to be that of the Hebrew-Christian tradition. This heritage consists in the common morality, the content of which can be derived from the fundamental principle, which in turn involves the concept of respect. To speak in this way does not rule out the possibility of diversity. Donagan remains free to refer to competing versions of the theory, to various strands within the tradition, to differing interpretations of the common morality, the fundamental principle, or its concept of respect. But Donagan only rarely allows such hints of plurality into his speech, and when he does, he always t:ikes plains to convey a sense of underlying uniformity. There may be competing versions of the theory, various strands of the tradition, and differing interpretations of the whole and its parts, but these are presented as entirely commensurable differences, largely matters of detail. A great deal has been thought, said, and done within what Donagan portrays, apparently without strain, as a single coherent tradition. We must ask how, in his hands, such a thorough integration of seemingly diverse phenomena has been achieved, and, further, whether this integration has been achieved at too great a cost. Donagan's book can be read as THE HEBREW-CHRISTIAN MORAL TRADITION 169 an extended figure of speech-a literary critic would call it a metonymical reduction-in which some phenomena are systematically excluded from consideration as inessential and the rest are reduced to a single idea thrut guarantees the essential unity of the whole. We need to understand how this procedure of exclusion and reduction is carried out and to ask whether, in the final analysis, it can be justified. What is a theory of morality a theory of? A theory of morality, according to Donagan, proposes a rational standard for judging systems of mores, and mores are " generally accepted norms of individual conduct" (1). This delimitation of concern may seem harmless enough, but notice that Donagan has already made an important choice, one that elevates individual conduct and its regulation by precepts to a privileged position while implicitly consigning such notions as character and community to relative insignificance. The theory of morality is the truly rational standard for judging mores. It establishes the limits within which " everybody ought to live, no matter what the mores of his neighbors might be." As such it has the form of law, though without presupposing a divine lawgiver. Despite Donagan's contention that the "conception of morality as virtue is not an alternative to a conception of it as law" (3) , his own theory clearly occupies only a small part of the territory encompassed by traditional theories of the virtues. It is not, in other words, a theory of the traits of character required for living well. Neither does it seek completion, as Aristotle's ethics does, in political theory, in consideration of the kinds of community in which human beings might flourish. The theory limits what pursuit of the good life can be and what forms of community can be tolerated. It therefore has implications for theories of virtue and of politics, but its scope is considerably narrower. It is, moreover, prior to and separable from such theories: they do not place constraints on it as it does on them. The theory of morality constitutes an independent domain, not a cha;pter that gathers up significance from all 170 JEFFREY STOUT that we believe about human excellence and communal life. The specifically moral virtues, in Donagan's sense (though surely not in Aristotle's) , " are those without which you cannot, conformably to your rationality, pursue any goal whatever" (12) . This much said, it comes as no surprise to hear that " The Stoics, rather than Aristotle or Plato, are to be credited with forming the first reasonably clear conception of morality: not because they had a theory of divine law, but because they conceived the divine law as valid for all men in virtue of their common rationality" (4). Morality certainly becomes more distinct, and in that sense clearer, in the Stoic conception than in the Aristotelian. An Aristotelian would want to know why this distinctness should be thought an advantage if it has been gained largely by severing connections with a broader theoretical context and by shifting attention away from the polis of an actual society to an abstraction like our c01nmon rationmity. Someone who sides with Aristotle against Donagan and the Stoics need not be seen as guilty of unclear thinking-a failure to bring the true concept of morality into focus. He or she may simply have reasoned objections to the Stoic conception as impoverished, antipolitical, and abstract. 4 Yet in Donagan's reconstruction of the tradition, the debate between Aristotelians and Stoics is barely visible. It does not really take place within the tradition at all. Aristotle and his followers do not fit clearly within the tradition because they do not clearly identify the topic of their theories as moral in Donagan's sense. 'While the clear conception of morality is " less obvious " in Judaism and Christianity than it is in Stoicism, there are many signs of its presence-enough, at any rate, to dub the tradition Hebrew-Christian. Both Judaism and Christianity have since antiquity distinguished the moral -law from " special divine commandments addressed to particular individuals and groups" 4 See Sheldon Wolin, Politics and Vision (Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1960), chap. 3, esp. pp. 93-94; and Alasdair Macintyre, After Virtue (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1981), pp. 131, 157-158, THE HEBREW-CHRISTIAN MORAL TRADITION 171 (4) and from the requirements of pursuing nonmoral religious ideals (246). Part of the Mosaic Halachah was, from biblical times forward, held to apply "to gentiles and ,Jews alike." Similarly, St. Paul made mention in Romans 2: 14-15 of a kind of natural law written in the hearts of all men (5). Theolo15ians as otherwise different as Aquinas and Calvin developed theories of morality as natural law. Moreover, the voluminous casuistry of the religious moralists provides ample evidence of something like the Stoic conception. What makes the clear conception less obvious in Jewish and Christian materials, says Donagan, is the fact that it usually matters rather little to someone endeavoring to live a religious life whether something is required for strictly religious reasons or is required of any rational creature merely in virtue of his or her rationality. Thinking "of a religious way of life as a seamless whole, in which common morality is comprehended and sanctified," tends to blur the line between religion and morality (7) . Once again, however, we must try to take note of what has Leen passed over or pushed toward the periphery. Not everything in Judaism and Christianity that might be thought to have moral implications belongs at the center of the tradition Donagan has in mind. The early Eastern Church 5 and Stanley Hauerwas, among many others, will be judged peripheral on the same grounds that Aristotle was: their devotion to virtue theory leaves the conception of morality insufficiently defined. So too will anyone, like Maimonides and the Ockhamists, who finds that natural human reason does not suffice to establish the "common" morality. Thinkers preoccupied with divine commands, as opposed to the requirements of universal human reason, will not be counted as significant precursors in the moral tradition. The notion that a religious way of life and the common morality form a seamless whole from: which morality cannot be abstracted without suffering distortion is not a central part of the heritage Donagan intends to plumb. 5 Frederick (1981): 88. S. Carney, "Living the Truth in Love," Perkins Journal 85/1 172 JEFFREY STOUT In fact, Donagan is determined to bypass theology altogether. He is interested in the "Hebrew-Christian moral tradition," but the stress falls on moral, and anything that cannot be reformulated in strictly secular terms does not qualify. "Fortunately," he writes," ... the part of Hebrew-Christian morality that depends on beliefs about the nature of God (for example, the prohibition of idolatry) is separable from the part that has to do with the duties of human beings to themselves and to one another " (28) . The moral tradition may have been passed on mainly by people who were in point of fact religious, but it possesses a " philosophical core " (27) " which covers all the topics with which secular moral theory has to do " (28) . The philosopher undertakes to isolate that core, not to set forth the related theological traditions in all their complexity. Admittedly," It is only a slight exaggeration to say that the ages of faith brought forth the idea of a pure moral philosophy but not the thing" (8) . Theologians, after all, are prone to " treat the moral law theologically," and this sometimes leads to fuzzy thinking about what unaided natural reason requires: How else can the Jewish conviction be accounted for that the seventh Noachite commandment is part of common morality? It does not appear to be contrary to our nature as rational creatures to eat a part cut from a living animal, for example, to eat a live oyster, unless it involves cruelty. And how else can the Christian conviction be accounted for that Jesus' severer pronouncements on divorce are morally definitive? It is not absurd to maintain that the Christian conception of marriage as monogamous and indissoluble is a higher and better one than any other; but that is not to declare it binding upon all human beings as rational. (7) According to Donagan, such fuzzy thinking can be ignored as inconsistent with the moral tradition at its best. Like the Aristotelian insistence upon treating the moral precepts as ancillary to the virtues, it results from a kind of blurred mental vison. Donagan's reference to Kant as "the first major philosopher to work out a complete philosophical theory of morality" (8) and his conscious use of Kant's practical philosophy as exem- THE HEBREW-CHRISTIAN MORAL TRADITION 173 plary for the execution of his own project (9) should be no more surprising than his decision to place the Stoics but not Aristotle and Plato at the heart of the tradition. A tmdition construed along Donagan's lines could not help but culminate in Kant. Indeed, it is hard to avoid the impression that such a tradition as this could be pieced together only retrospectively -only, that is, after Kant had been chosen as precursor par excellence. This is intellectual history in the classic neo-Kantian style, where apparent similarity to Kant's conclusions functions as the basic criterion for centrality to the tradition and inclusion in its list of canonical works.6 The Hebrew-Christian moral tradition turns out to be something less than we might have thought. Whatever fails to anticipate Kant's conception of pure practical reason or the system of precepts that for him defined the moral law, falls outside the tradition. The tradition, in other words, is the Kantian tradition. Its uniformity is guaranteed by a criterion of selection that excludes in advance the possibility of significant discord. A broader tradition, inclusive of many traditions and much conflict, and attentive to a host of interests just beyond the bounds of a" clear" conception of morality, has been curtailed. And without any evident sense of loss. III. THE FUNDAMENTAL PRINCIPLE We have seen how Donagan excludes what he deems inessential to morality and to the moral tradition. We need now to examine how he reduces what remains to its underlying essence, the fundamental principle of respect from which the entire content of the common morality, as Donagan interprets it, can be derived. What is the fundamental principle? It is, roughly speaking, the principle that you should love your neighbor as yourself (59). But since philosophers shohld not speak roughly and are enjoined by their secular calling to steer clear of the 6 See Richard Rorty, Phuosophy and the Mirror of Nature (Princeton: University Press, 1979), pp. 148-149. Princeton 174 JEFFREY STOUT theological virtue of agape or caritas (61-62), Donagan prefers to avoid the term love. Kant, he tells us, had it right: Act so that you treat humanity, whether in your own person or in that of another, always as an end, and never as a means only (63). And, "Since treating a human being, in virtue of its ralionality, as an end itself, is the same as respecting it as a rational creature," an equivalent formulation would read: Act always so that you respect every human being, yourself or another, as being a rational creature (65) . Yet another, bringing in the concept of moral permissibility, is " the canonical form " used in reconstructing the system of moral precepts: It is impermissible not to respect every human being, oneself or another, as a rational creature (66). This principle, says Donagan, " is fundamental to an independent field of inquiry" (210) . From it, together with the various additional premises required to specify what " falls under the concept of respecting a human being as rational " (66), the precepts of the common morality can be derived. The precepts are of two types. "In the Hebrew-Christian tradition, as I understand it, all questions of common morality are either first-order ones about the permissibility or impermissibility of actions or intentions, or second-order ones about the culpability or inculpability of agents" (56). Second-order precepts depend upon first-order precepts. First-order precepts depend upon the fundamental principle and the specificatory premises that unfold its meaning. What can be said, then, in favor of the fundamental principle itself? Many of those Donagan identifies as predecessors in the tradition were intuitionists. They claimed, that is to say, that the foundation of the common morality, whether it consists in one principle or more than one, is self-evidently true (l 7-9l5) . But Donaga::::i, being no intuitionist, cannot appeal to self-evidence to stop the regress. He therefore sets out to show that " it is intelleclually impossible to get on without " the fundamental principle (210) . He elaborates a theory of practical reason that, while neither intuitively self-evident nor dependent on a THE HEBREW-CHRISTIAN MORAL TRADITION 175 priori demonstration, aims to give adequate reason for affirming our own rational nature as an end in itself. The theory is less certain than the principle, but it does, according to Donagan, legitimate it. Because neither the principle nor the theory of practical reason invoked to support it is self-evident, there is some room for doubt about them. Yet Donagan feels he can vindicate his proposals with sufficiently compelling arguments, in part by showing where the leading alternative proposals go wrong. Consequentialists offer a new fundamental principle, usually the standard utilitarian one, either as a means of criticizing traditional morality or as a means of systematizing it properly. Donagan spends a chapter dismantling consequentialism, which he views as a radical break with the tradition. And while he at times uses allegiance to some version of his principle as a criterion for membership in the tradition, this does not deter him from recognizing the Golden Rule (All things whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do ye even so to them) as a traditional, though inadequate, competitor. The problem with the Golden Rule and with its philosophical expression in the Kantian principle of universalizability (Act only according to that maxim by which you can at the same time will that it should become a universal law) is insufficient substance. Such a principle prescribes impartiality and no more. " But, obviously, no principle of impartiality that is common to different systems of mores can serve as the substantive first principle that distinguishes any one of them from the others " (59). It is the second formulation of the categorical imperative, not the first, that Kant should have given pride of place: the principle of respect, not the principle of universalizability. Kant was further mistaken, Donagan concludes, in thinking the two equivalent; they are not. I am happy to grant that if there is a fundamental principle of morality, it is probably not to be found in consequentialism or in appeals to universalizwbility. But Donagan seems to have a harder time with Aquinas than with consequentialism and 176 JEFFREY STOUT universalizability. For Aquinas also focuses on the biblical injunction that you should love your neighbor as yourself, while nonetheless arriving at a formulation of the principle that does not coincide with the version Donagan borrows from Kant. On the interpretation of Aquinas Donagan accepts, which comes from Germain Grisez, the Thomistic formulation would he: Act so that the fundamental human goods, whether in your own person or in that of another, are promoted as may be possible, and under no circumstances violated (61). Donagan prefers the Kantian principle of respect to the Thomistic formulation for three reasons: its simplicity; the simplicity of the derivation of precepts it allows; and its connection with the preferred (Kantian) theory of practical reason (65) . Someone with stronger commitments to Aquinas will rightly want to ask, however, whether all this simplicity -including that of the theory of human nature connected with Donagan's theory of practical reason-has unduly impoverished the resulting reconstruction of the tradition. Consider, for example, Margaret Farley's diagnosis of what she calls" the poverty of content in Donagan's first principle." 7 Donagan's theory of practical reason stresses the concept of negative freedom. Rational agency is determined by nothing other than itself: neither external causes, nor natural inclinations and desires. We are, in this sense, autonomous. Human beings are ends-in-themselves. "What this tells us about the principle of respect for human persons as ends-in-themselves," writes Farley, "is that it is autonomy that is the key to something's being an end-in-itself. Autonomy, in fact, is not only the reason why a person is intrinsically valuable, it is itself constitutive of what is valued in the person." 8 Despite some recognition that there is more to being human than just possessing autonomy, Donagan makes autonomy " the sole aspect of the human person that is directly incorporated into the 7 Margaxet Farley, review of Alan Donagan, The The]; There exists a Principle which transcends Being [To this is The One, whose nature we have sought to establish in so far as such matters lend themselves to proof. Upon The One follows immediately the Principle which is at once Being and the lntellectual-Principle.1 The Unity, then, is not Intellectual-Principle but something higher still: Intellectual-Principle is still a being but that First is no being but precedent to all Being; it cannot be a being, for a being has what we may call the shape of its reality, but The Unity is without shape, even shape Intellectual.2 For Plotinus Nous is the unity of subject and object, of thinker and thought. As such, it is both one and potentially many, both To 5v and Ta 5VTa. The One, on the other hand, stands beyond the Many, beyond Being, beyond Mind. But what sense, if any, does it make to speak of something beyond Being? Perhaps it is at least intuitively sensible for 1 Plotinus, The Enneads, trans. Stephen MacKenna, with an introduction by Professor Paul Henry, S.J., 4th ed., rev. (New York: Random House, 1969), v, l, 10, p. 378. 2 Jbid., VI, 9, 3, p. 617. 197 198 EUGENE F. BALES the metaphyscally inclined Pythagorean to speak of a One beyond duality and plurality; but what intuitive sense does it make to speak of the Beyond-Being? Two approaches have been taken in answering this question. The first approach is to stress the radically negative character of The One as Non-Being. Most commentators acknowledge the validity of this approach, especially since Plotinus more often than not characterizes The One in such negative tenns. However, few have gone this route without qualification-and for good reason. For if The One is really Non-Being, nothing at all, then The One can be reduced to Matter, which Plotinus also understood as nothingness. The Good (The One) and Evil (Matter) thus become one and the same, and the entire meaning of Plotinus's philosophy disappears in a fog. It seems very unlikely that Plotinus should he understood in such a way. While it is true that negative characterizations of The One predominate in the Enneads, it is perfectly legitimate to speak of The One as real, even if beyond Being; whereas Matter cannot even be said to be real. But we have not justified this claim, and indeed its justification remains problematic. There is a second approach which historically has been more attractive to philosophers and theologians. This approach is just the opposite of the previous one. It is that The One is really Being in some sense, that Plotinus exaggerates the negativity of his ultimate principle. I shall call this approach "Hegelian," since it was Hegel who first proposed this interpretation of Plotinus in a definitive fashion. But the approach itself had a long history before Hegel pronounced on the matter. Among the first to understand Plotinus's thought along these lines was Marius Victorinus. Victorinus, as R. A. Markus has pointed out, telescoped Plotinus's three hypostases into one, concluding that the first hypostasis-does in fact have formless being (esse), though this is to be distinguished from 3v or the formed being of the second hypostasis. 3 Thus, as Markus con3 R. A. Markus, " Marius Victorinus and Augustine," from The Cambridge History of Later Greek and Early Medieval Philosophy (ed. A. H. Armstrong), (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1967), p. SS6. NEGATIVE THEOLOGY IN PLOTINUS 199 eludes, " absolute transcendence is brought into the realm of being." 4 Victorinus was, not coincidentally, the source of St. Augustine's contact with Neoplatonism, for it was Victorinus's translation of Plotinus which may have converted Augustine from hls materialism. Augustine, influenced by his Christian faith, also engaged in the telescoping of the three hypostases in order to be able to predicate unity univocally of each of the three persons in the Trinity. 5 Augustine's influence on this, as on so many questions, was decisive for subsequent Christian thinkers. But the influence of Aristotle in the 12th and 18th centuries also helped to eliminate the idea that the supreme reality was really beyond Nous or Being. The scholastic tradition is in this sense quite unfaithful to Plotinus, however indebted it may be to N eoplatonism in other respects. It was this scholastic and Aristotelian tradition that formed the basis of modern idealism beginning with Descartes and especially Spinoza. For Spinoza, reality was itself absolute Being, not Non-Being or the Beyond-Being. And it is significant that Hegel's notion of the Absolute was molded in the image of Aristotle's and Spinoza's God. Hegel's chief claim is that thinking and being are the same, and that negativity, nothingness, is what makes for the dynamic, internal life of the Absolute. One cannot speak of what is beyond the Absolute Being in Hegel's sense. 4 Jbid. History of Dogma, Vol. IV, trans. by Neil Buchanan (New note: "Augustine was positively York: Dover Publications, Inc., 1961), p. and negatively influenced by Neo-Platonism as represented by Plotinus and Porphyry. Negatively, in so far as he was there confronted with a doctrine of the Trinity, but with one which was based on a descending series of emanations; positively, in so far as he took over from Plotinus the thought of the simplicity of God and attempted actually to make use of it. To Augustine as a philosopher the construction of a doctrine of the Trinity was already a matter of course. All the more was it necessary for him to strive to construct a peculiarly Christian doctrine of the Trinity, and, because of the idea of simplicity which could no longer be referred to the Father alone, to bring the other two persons into unity with the Father." 5 Adolph Harnack, 200 EUGENE F. BALES Perhaps even more significant and influential was Hegel's explanation of Plotinus in his epoch-making Lectures on the History of Philosophy. Hegel consistently refers to Plotinus's The One as Being (Sein): The first, the absolute, the basis, is here, as with Philo, pure Being, the unchangeable, which is the basis and the cause of all Being that appears, whose potentiality is not apart from its actuality, but is absolute actuality in itself.6 This unity has no multiplicity in it, or multiplicity is not implicit; unity is only as it was for Parmenides and Zeno, absolute, pure Being ... 7 Hegel's interpretation of Plotinus is entirely misleading on this point, for Plotinus's The One cannot with fairness be characterized by the infinitive-noun Sein.. To do so is to merge The One with Nous so as to make them indistinguishable. This misinterpretation by Hegel has not helped to clear the air. As late as 1921, one finds the Plotinian scholar Fritz Heinemann saymg: Thus the One is the Unity of Being and Nonbeing, of the Rational and the Irrational, of the All and the Nothing. 8 In this respect the notion of The One is a dialectical concept " which at its root is identical with the Hegelian concept of pure being, except Hegel regards it as immanent, Plotinus as transcendent." 9 Thus the spirit of Hegel continues to obscure the real Plotinus. If common sense cannot recommend the first approach (the reduction of The One to Non-Being), neither can historical 6 G. W. F. Hegel, Lectures on the History of Philosophy, tr. Elizabeth S. Haldane and Frances Simson (London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Truebner, & Co., 189296)' p. 413. 7 Ibid. s Fritz Heinemann, Plotin: Forschungen ii.ber die plotinische Frage, Plotins Entwiclclung und sein System (Leipzig: Felix Meiner, 1921), p. 253. My translation. The original reads: " So ist das Eine die Einheit von Sein und Nichtsein, von Rationalem und Irrationalem, von Allem und Nichts." 9 Jbid. My translation. The original reads: " ... der in seinem Kern identisch ist mit dem hegelschen Begrifl' des reinen Seins, nur dass Hegel diesen immanent, Plotin transzendent denkt. . ." NEGATIVE THEOLOGY IN PLOTINUS 201 accuracy recommend the Hegelian reduction of The One to Being. But what is left after this apparent failure? The first approach, more faithful to the spirit of Plotinus, would seem to be ultimately fatal in its ontological implications. Hence, one is driven to the second approach, which does seem more in accord with traditional metaphysical sensibilities. Yet this approach clearly waters down the negativity of Plotinus's theology. Is it possible to understand The One as Being in some sense, and still preserve the radical negative theology that is so characteristic of Plotinian mysticism? I believe that this is possible. I would like to explore such an alternative, inspired in part by Heidegger's later writings. I believe that such an approach will clarify both Plotinus's real position and illumine his significance in the history of philosophy. Heidegger has pointed out the primordial Greek interpretation of the Being (ovu£a) of beings as the presencing of presence ('1rapovu{a) •10 The meaning of this interpretation is that which resides in the very meaning of presence: " to be present is to come close by, to be here in contrast and conflict with to be away." 11 The presencing of presence, Heidegger goes on to explain, is a rise from unconcealment. Being, as the presencing of presence, is an entry into a duration of unconcealment. Unconcealment usually translated as truth, suggests something which is concealed, in the same way the enlightenment of King Oedipus suggests his own blindness. What is concealed remains: what is unthought, even by the Greek thinkers. For Greek thought began with the forgetting of the concealed precisely in what is unconcealed. The duration of the unconcealed was experienced by the Greeks " as a luminous appearance in the sense of illumined, radiant self-manifestation." 12 10 Martin Heidegger, Being and Time, trans. Johrr Macquarrie and Edward Robinson (New York: Harper & Row, Publishers, 1962), p. 47. 11 Martin Heidegger, What ls Called Thinking?, with an Introduction by J. Glenn Gray ("Harper Torchbooks "; New York: Harper and Row, Publishers, 1968)' p. 236. 12 Ibid., p. 237. EUGENE F. BALES But this original unconcealment of Being as presence is, "more and more obscured in different ways." 13 One of the first and most important ways in which Being is obscured is in the reduction of the duration of unconcealment-Presence-into the now, in relation to which one may speak of a " no longer now" and a "not yet now." Thus the duration of unconcealment becomes the unity of temporal moments-past and future-grounded in a perpetual passing away of the present. It is this sequence of present moments that allows us to calculate time and accordingly calculate what occurs in time. Another important development in the obscuring of Being is the separation of presencing (the verbal) from what-is-present (the nominal) . There comes into view the distinction between essence and existence, subject and object. With the grounding of metaphysics in the thinking about subjects and objects, the stage is set for the scientific and technological domination of the planet by the will to power. The will to power can be understood as the absolute objectification of reality for the sake of the reign of absolute subjectivity. This last development marks the advent of nihilism and possibility of worlddestruction. Hence Heidegger feels it of infinite importance to overcome this development into nihilism, a development which began with the forgetting of Being in Greek civilization. Heidegger has throughout his writings an aim which is only at first sight twofold: to understand the Greek interpretation of Being, and to begin along the path toward Being today. In fact, these two aims are closely interrelated. For to begin along the path toward Being today we must, as Heidegger says, ... pursue more originally what the Greeks have thought, to see it in the source of its reality. To see it so is in its own way Greek, and yet in respect of what it sees is no longer, is never again, Greek.a 18 Martin Heidegger, On "Time and Being", trans. Joan Stambaugh (New York: Harper & Row, Publishers, 197Q), p. 9. 14 Martin Heidegger, On the Way to Language, trans. Peter D. Hertz (New York: Harper & Row, Publishers, 1971), p. 39. NEGATIVE THElOLOGY IN PLOTINUS But what has all this to do with Plotinus? If Plato and Aristotle have already forgotten Being as it was before its revelation as presence, has not Plotinus, six hundred years after them, done the same? To that I would answer: no, he has not, or at least, not entirely. I would like to offer an interpretation of the meaning of Being in Plotinus's thought which is indebted to the suggestions that Heidegger offers as briefly outlined above. I shall interpret Plotinus's thought about The One's relation to Being or Nous as parallel to Heidegger's thought about the relation between Being in its concealment to Being revealed as the presencing of presence in a duration of unconcealment. But this thesis must be qualified in several important respects. First of all, the interpretation concerns only the negative characteristics of The One---those characteristics in virtue of which The One transcends radically every being and even Being itself. Secondly, and complementarily, I am not claiming to offer an interpretation of The One which would fully explain all of its characteristics, especially those such as l.11lpy£ia,16 It is these predicates, mentioned not infrequently and in the Enn:eads, which characterize The One as an ontological or metaphysical reality, and thus prepare the way for the blurring of the distinction between Nous and The One. Thirdly, the interpretation offered here does not take into account the way in which Plotinus understands The One as both efficient and final cause of Being and beings. In both respects, The One is a metaphysical reality once again. Thus, I am concerned here only with coming to terms with a single, although a very important, aspect of Plotinus's doctrine of The One---its transcendence, its negativity, its station as "beyond being and beings." I am indirectly suggesting that Plotinus's understanding of The One is on the whole partially Enneads, V, 5, l!il, p. 418; VI, 8, 9, p. 60!il. Enneads, VI, 8, !i!O, p. 61!il; VI, 1, !il6, p. 466; V, 5, S, p. 406. 11 Cf. Enneads, VI, 8, 18, p. 606. 15 Cf. 1 5 Cf. EUGENE F. BALES metaphysical, and partially trans-metaphysical. By transmetaphysical I mean: pertaining to that region which allows for the possibility of the presencing of what-is-present. My interpretation of Plotinus's The One begins with a consideration of The One as beyond both eternity and time. That The One should transcend time seems obvious; but that it transcends Eternity seems outrageously strange. Fully to understand the latter point, however, it is necessary to see clearly what is involved with the notion of time itself. For Plotinus Time arose when the All-Soul sought to govern itself and realize itself, and in so doing " chose to aim at something more than its present [ro 7rAl.ov rov 7rapovro>]. •• " 18 Out of this attempt to realize itself grew the insufficiency of the present into a succession of present moments, each of which passes away into a past, and each of which anticipates a future. By contrast, Eternity, the principle of the life of Nous itself, is fully satisfied, fully realized in the presencing of what-ispresent: Eternity, therefore-while not the Substratum (not the essential foundation of the Divine or Intellectual Principle)-may be considered as the radiation of this Substratum: it exists as the announcement of the Identity in the Divine, of that state-of being thus and not otherwise-which characterizes what has no futurity but eternally is.19 It is clear from this that, just as Time manifests the life of the Soul, so Eternity announces the life of the Intellectual Principle itself. Eternity is a shining forth (f.KA) and nature (Ov) of " the perfect and all-comprehensive essence ofi..ri]" 20 is of the Authentic Existent [TOU OVTO> III, 7, 11, p. 234. III, 7, 8, p. 224. <'eo-n el11ctL rOV alo/va m'J TO V1rOKolµevov, &.XXa TO 18 Enneads, 19 Ibid., cuiTOV TOV V1rOKeXµevov olov IKXaµ1roP Ka.Ta r7Jv [Toil] ifv eµa."("(EAAETCl.t 7repl TOV µr, µe"h.Xonos, &.'A.XO. if81J l>v-rvuis oifrw 11"0.'"'/K&."A,, Ko.t cU/>os 11"ept 'TO b KO.t d.11". EKeftvov Ko.t 1rpils eKeivo, 0Me11 eK{Jo.lvoVO"CI. d.11"' d.tlToO, µevoVO"CI. /Se &.et 1rept ciKeivo Ko.t EV EKell'o/ KO.I KCl.'T • EKeivo ••• 206 EUGENE F. BALES iv iK£tV'I') , Because Eternity eternally abides with The One and never steps away from it, it lives (as life itself) according to The One (Cwua Kar' lKEivo). It is clear from this that Eternity is distinct from The One, living by it, dwelling with it, around it, and facing towards it. Eternity radiates from The One. The relation between the two is much like that between Eternity and God mentioned earlier in the same treatise: imvo . . . it may fitly be described as God made manifest, as God declaring what He is, as existence, without jolt or change, and therefore as also the firmly living. 24 Eternity is God as becoming visible, becoming lighted up (lµalvwv) and as bringing forth into the light (11"poalvwv). But that which comes forth into the light (eternity) is different from that which precedes this enlightenment (God or The One, in this case). For the former is that which is abidingly present, which presents itself everlastingly to us; the latter is that out of which and from which what is presented arises. The One is thus beyond (l11"lK£iva) Eternity, beyond presencing and that which-is-present. The relation between The One and Eternity is not that between apples and oranges, or between Cartesian minds and Cartesian bodies, but one of abiding or dwelling, where that which is from, around, and in The One always abides with The One. This understanding of The One as beyond-Eternity, beyond the presencing of what-is-present, sheds light on the previous approaches to the negative theology of The One as I outlined earlier. The first approach, it will be recalled, emphasized the negativity of The One, the transcendence of the latter over everything that is. The One transcends the Being of Aristotle, the Being of metaphysics, and in this is its very negativity. But this negativity cannot be a radical negativity whereby The One is reduced to the nothingness of Matter. Rather,. the negativity 24 Ibid., III, 7, 5, p. !'lfl6. Kai av M:yoiro 8 alwv Debs eµrpal11w11 Kai vporpalw11 eavroJJ o£6s eO'TL, TO el11a.1