Abstract

The paper follows the development of the concept of transcendence ‹e)pe/keina› from the time when it first entered philosophy in Plato’s The Republic up to Plotinus, who thought it through in all its essential dimensions. In common with some thinkers before him, Plotinus thought of the concept of transcendence in the light of the absolute one Plato analyzed in the first hypothesis of Parmenides. The paper also shows how Plotinus understood transcendence with regard to Being and to thinking. The paper aims to show how Plotinus, by his criticism of the onto-theo-logical structure of philosophical thought, already announced the criticism of traditional philosophy for which Martin Heidegger and Ludwig Wittgenstein became known in the 20th century.