This paper defends Plotinus’ reading ofSophist248e-249d as an expression of the togetherness or unity-in-duality of intellect and intelligible being. Throughout the dialogues Plato consistently presents knowledge as a togetherness of knower and known, expressing this through the myth of recollection and through metaphors of grasping, eating, and sexual union. He indicates that an intelligible paradigm is in the thought that apprehends it, and regularly regards the forms not as extrinsic “objects” but as the contents of living intelligence. A meticulous reading (...) ofSophist248e-249d shows that the “motion” attributed to intelligible being is not temporal change but the activity of intellectual apprehension. Aristotle’s doctrines of knowledge as identity of intellect and the intelligible, and of divine intellect as thinking itself, are therefore in continuity with Plato, and Plotinus’ doctrine of intellect and being is continuous with both Plato and Aristotle. (shrink)

Dans son De Principiis, Damascius propose une définition originale de la «connaissance» . Les développements doctrinaux qui y sont exposés semblent rompre avec la conception plotinienne, principalement issue de l’exégèse du De Anima d’Aristote, lequel envisageait la connaissance, du moins dans sa modalité supérieure qu’est l’intellection , comme une «identité» du connaissant et du connu. Cette étude se propose de clarifier la gnoséologie de Damascius et de montrer que la connaissance y est envisagée comme une altérité surmontée sans pour autant (...) être abolie. (shrink)