I suggest that the constructivist shares with the theorist of the Great Chain of Being a commitment to the non-negotiable centrality of metaphysical descriptions of reality and metaphysically grounded analyses of individuals experiences of that reality. This is surely the ultimate import of the constructivists insistence on mediation. This is surely the ultimate basis for the interest in the last decade in the problem of pure consciousness. In recent commentary on Plotinus this tension between metaphysical theory and experiential mysticism has been handled in different ways. Thus, Pierre Hadot tends to treat the tension as an ineluctable dimension of the paradoxical, existential condition of the human self.
Language becomes indefinite and open-ended.
No closure is reached. Each saying demands a further unsaying. The first thing that seems clear is that the process of self-deconstruction is itself thoroughly mediated by the cultural context of the tradition within which the deconstruction is carried out. What this means is that the very process of self-deconstruction is inconceivable apart from a particular delineation and articulation of the nature of reality. In other words, a very specific articulation of the Great Chain of Being is itself inscribed in the procedures by means of which the individual might attain to the mystical experience from which the Great Chain may no longer seem an essential or even true description of reality.