L’'intellect amoureux' et l’'un qui est': Une doctrine mal connue de Plotin

This study, published in 1997, attempted to re-examine Plotinus theory of the emergence of consciousness and its return to its principle, the One, that is, the foundations of Plotinus' epistemology and mystical teaching, so-called. Starting with the analysis of the famous passage on "intellect in love" (VI. 7 [38], 35. 19-25) it shows that while it is true Plotinus attributed a double activity to the intellect, one, with which it contemplates its own content - the ideas - and one with which it enters in contact with the One, yet this latter activity is also twofold: it consists of a moment of concentration - which Plotinus calls ἐπιβολή - and of reception - παραδοχή -, the latter being the result of the first. In the moment of concentration the intellect is in complete union (there being no "with" in unity), which corresponds to the "one being" in the second hypothesis of Plato's Parmenides. This metaphysical state, representing the remaining - μονή - of the intellect in the One can also be called its "one". The vicissitudes of Plotinian scholarship and of the translations - starting with Ficino's translation into Latin, which distorted Plotinus in an Augustinian direction - made this metaphysical doctrine forgotten, so much so that the "one of being", or "one being" is more often than not confounded with the One, which is a general tendency in the modern translations. A recognition of this "little known", or rather, forgotten, metaphysical element returns its doctrinal coherence to Plotinus' system and liberates us from the inconclusive debate about Plotinus' "theist" or "monist" mysticism. Neither of the two terms work, as Plotinus tries, following in this Plato, to map up the frontiers of reality, consciousness and speach, which cannot be expressed in the usual oppositional categories.