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from Part I - Historical Context
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 25 May 2022
With Plotinus, Neoplatonism was inaugurated with the positing of a radical transcendence: the first principle, the One, or the Good,1 is beyond the essence, epekeina tēs ousias. In book 6 of the Republic, Plato already designated the Good as beyond essence, which it surpasses in seniority and in power, ‘epekeina tēs ousias presbeiai kai dunamei huperekhontos’ (509b9–10), but whereas in Plato this formula is found only once, and its interpretation is, moreover, disputed,2 it is recurrent and systematized in Plotinus.3 It also allows a series of variations; beyond essence, the One-Good is also ‘beyond thought’, ‘beyond knowledge’, ‘beyond life’, and, again, ‘beyond act’.4
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