ABSTRACT
The theme of docta ignorantia, a “learned ignorance” or an ignorance that transcends knowledge, is a familiar one to students of Neoplatonism. It is perhaps most closely associated with the 15th century philosopher Nicholas of Cusa, but of course appears much earlier in the Neoplatonic tradition. Among these earlier appearances is the discussion of a “knowledge beyond knowledge and ignorance” (gnōsin exō gnōseōs kai agnoias) in a fragment of the Commentary on the Parmenides attributed to Porphyry (Hadot 1968, 2:78, ln.10-11). In the Arabic tradition, a doctrine of learned ignorance appears for the first time in a text known as the Theology of Aristotle. Mistakenly attributed to Aristotle, the Theology is in fact part of a paraphrase of passages from Plotinus’ Enneads, apparently produced by a member of al-Kindī’s circle of translators in 9th century Baghdad.1 We no longer have this paraphrase in its entirety, but it has been preserved for us in three texts. The first, the most well-known and by far the longest of the three is the so-called Theology of Aristotle (hereafter Th.A). The second, and shortest, is the Letter on Divine Science (hereafter DS). The third and final “text” actually consists of a number of fragments attributed to “the Greek Sage (al-shaykh al-yūnānī),” and which are collectively referred to as the Sayings of the Greek Sage (hereafter GS). The three texts together represent the Arabic Plotinus corpus (hereafter AP).2 Since I cannot here provide arguments as to the actual identity of the author of this paraphrase, I will refer to him simply as the Adaptor.
