The Concept of God in Alcinous

Abstract

The article explores some of Alcinous’ stances on god from his work ”The Handbook
of Platonism”, showing instances of influence by Plato, and of the general philosophical
atmosphere of the middle Platonism. Some questions about the concept of Alcinous of
the Primary god and the possibilities of anticipation of Plotinus’ One are raised. The attention
is directed towards Alcinous’ concept of an ineffable god, graspable only through the
intellect, and towards his focus on god’s attributes, or rather on the ways in which some
aspects of god are knowable through the abstraction of attributes. The ways of knowing
god proposed by Alcinous are the negation or abstraction, analogy, and pre-eminence, and
the issue whether these make his approach apophatic will be reviewed in the article, especially
through his use of aphairesis (abstraction/negation).