A Great Question

Can ultimate reality be known?

Between apophatic silence and claims of direct knowledge.

Framing

If the ultimate is beyond every concept, it seems it cannot be known. Yet the traditions that insist most strongly on its unknowability are often the ones that speak most confidently of knowing it: of a vision, a union, a realization. The paradox is not a confusion. It is a claim that there is a kind of knowing that is not knowing about.

The traditions describe that knowing differently. Some speak of a knowledge beyond knowledge, reached when every concept is set aside; some of a knowledge that is identity, in which knower and known are not two; some of a knowledge that is love; some deny that there is any ultimate object to be known, and speak instead of a release from the search for one.

Philosophers ask a further question: what, if anything, could justify such a claim, and how could it be communicated? The perspectives below answer from within their traditions.

Perspectives

Voices from several traditions, each in its own terms. They are set side by side to be compared, not ranked.

Christian Mysticism, Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite
Scholarship
God is known most truly by unknowing: having denied of God every name, the soul enters the divine darkness and is united with the One beyond all, knowing beyond mind by knowing nothing.
Sources: Dionysius the Areopagite on the Divine Names and the Mystical Theology
Christian Mysticism, The author of The Cloud of Unknowing
Scholarship
God can be reached by love but never by thought; between the soul and God there is always a cloud of unknowing, pierced only by a naked intent of love.
Sources: A Book of Contemplation the Which is Called The Cloud of Unknowing
Neoplatonism, Plotinus
Scholarship
The One is not known by reasoning but by a presence higher than knowledge, in which the soul no longer sees an object but is one with what it sees.
Sources: The Enneads
Advaita Vedānta, Śaṅkara
Scholarship
Brahman cannot be an object of knowledge, because it is the knower; the scriptures do not describe it but remove ignorance, and what remains is the self, known by being it.
Sources: The Vedânta-Sûtras, with the Commentary by Sankarâkârya
Madhyamaka, Nāgārjuna
Scholarship
There is no ultimate object to be known: the ultimate truth is the emptiness of all things, realized when every view is let go, including the view that there is something beyond views.
Sources: Mūlamadhyamakakārikā

Reflect

What do you know that you could not put into words?

Cite this entry

Chicago (bibliography): “Can ultimate reality be known?” Question. The Library, Unitive Knowledge Society. Last modified November 7, 2026. https://www.unitiveknowledge.org/questions/can-ultimate-reality-be-known.
Chicago (note): “Can ultimate reality be known?” question, The Library, Unitive Knowledge Society, last modified November 7, 2026, https://www.unitiveknowledge.org/questions/can-ultimate-reality-be-known.
MLA: “Can ultimate reality be known?” The Library, Unitive Knowledge Society, 7 Nov. 2026, www.unitiveknowledge.org/questions/can-ultimate-reality-be-known.
BibTeX: @misc{questions-can-ultimate-reality-be-known, title = {{Can ultimate reality be known?}}, howpublished = {The Library, Unitive Knowledge Society}, note = {Question. Last modified November 7, 2026}, year = {2026}, url = {https://www.unitiveknowledge.org/questions/can-ultimate-reality-be-known} }

Can ultimate reality be known?

Framing

Perspectives

Christian Mysticism, Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite

Christian Mysticism, The author of The Cloud of Unknowing

Neoplatonism, Plotinus

Advaita Vedānta, Śaṅkara

Madhyamaka, Nāgārjuna

Reflect

Concepts involved

Traditions

Continue the inquiry

Authors