Problems Concerning First Principles

Not so, however, but we also see our own throes suffering these things regarding the One, and in a similar manner, becoming perplexed and turned about. For truly the One, says Plato, if it is, is not even one. And if it is not, no account will fit it, so that there is not even a negation, but not even a name; for not even this is simple, nor is any opinion, nor knowledge. For not even these are simple, nor is the mind itself simple, so that the One is in every way unknown and ineffable. What then? Do we seek something else beyond the ineffable? Or did Plato perhaps lead us through the midst of the One, ineffably, to the ineffable now before us, which is beyond the One? For by the very negation of the One, just as by the negation of the others, he led us around to the One. For he revealed in the Sophist what the One is when it is purified in a certain position, having demonstrated it as pre-existing by itself before Being. But if, having ascended to the One, he remained silent, this is also becoming to Plato: to be silent in the ancient manner about things altogether unspeakable. For even in the case of Being, the discourse is most perilous, falling out into the ears of the ignorant. Surely, having also stirred up the discourse concerning that which in no way, in no manner exists, he was turned about and risked falling into the abyss of unlikeness, or rather, of an insubstantial emptiness. But if the demonstrations do not fit the One, it is not strange. For they are human, divided, and more complex than they ought to be. These, at any rate, do not even fit Being, being eidetic; and indeed, they do not even fit the forms.