Chapter I - The One And The Many
CHAPTER I
THE ONE AND THE MANY
Two problems are of importance for the understanding of later Platonism -- the problem of the one and the many, and the problem of divine immanence and transcendence. The first of these is philosophical and the latter theological. In the period that concerns us philosophy and theology are mixed together.
The problem of the one and the many is the problem of all philosophy, and was first explicitly stated by the Pythagoreans. But in Parmenides of Elea and in Plato an important distinction was made. When we say a thing 'is one' we may mean two different things. We may mean that it is one and nothing but one, a simple and bare unity, or we may mean that it is one complex whole of many parts. Parmenides showed that if we consider reality to be a simple unity, nothing can be made of the many things that are left. On the other hand, Plato's world of forms is a complex unity, a whole of many parts, both one thing and many things. The clearest statement of this distinction is found in Plato's dialogue, the Parmenides. The latter section of this dialogue indicates among other things the ambiguity of the terms
'one' and 'being'. 1 The first hypothesis is 'if there is a One' in the sense of simple unity, while the second hypothesis is 'if a One is' in the sense of complex unity.
The simple unity can be described only in negative terms. According to the first hypothesis, 'if there is a One of course the One will not be many. Consequently it cannot have any parts or be a whole.' 2 It is without beginning, end or middle, limits, shape. It is 'not anywhere being neither in itself nor in another (138B)'. It is
'neither at rest nor in motion (139B)'. It 'cannot be other than or the same as itself or another (139E)'.
____________________ 1The controversy concerning the interpretation of this dialogue does not affect the limited scope of its discussion here.
2Parmenides, 137C. Cornford's translation, Plato and Parmenides ( London, 1939), is used in this section.
It 'cannot be like or unlike either another or itself (140B)'. It 'will not be either equal or unequal either to itself or another (140B)'. It 'has nothing to do with time and does not occupy any stretch of time (141D)'. Finally 'the One in no sense is. . . . It is not named or spoken of, not an object of opinion or of knowledge, nor perceived by any creature (142).'
The complex unity has all the positive attributes which were denied to the simple unity. The second hypothesis considers the consequences of 'If a One is'. In this case the One has both unity and being, 'is a whole and also has parts (142D)', and 'must be unlimited in multitude'. Further, 'a "One which is" is both one and many, whole and parts, limited as well as indefinitely numerous (145)'. It will have a beginning, middle and end, and (some shape, straight or round or a mixture of both
(145A, B)'. 'As a whole the One is in something else, as all the parts it is in itself; and thus the One must be both in itself and in another (145E).' 'Therefore the One, being always both in itself and in another, must always be both in motion and at rest (146A).' It 'will be like and unlike the Others, like in so far as different, unlike in so far as the same (148C)'. The One 'both touches, and does not touch, both itself and the Others (149D)'. 'The One is alike equal to, greater than and less than both itself and the Others (151B).' 'The One will be alike equal to, and more and fewer than, both itself and the Others in number (151D).' 'This One is in time, has a past, a future and a present, can be known and perceived (155D).'
The value of these two hypotheses is that they bring out the ambiguity of 'unity' or 'oneness'. They show that 'a one' can be 'one and nothing but one', and that 'a one' can be 'one and many. They present us with a pattern of two unities -- a unity which is simple, bare, one and nothing but one, and a unity which is infinitely complex, one and many. These two unities provide the key to an understanding of the later stages of classical philosophy. In Stoicism and Middle Platonism, however, there are not only philosophical but also religious problems. A second question is always present. 'Is the divine transcendent or immanent?' Is God remote from the world, far beyond the
reach of human knowledge, unique and solitary, or is God present in, perhaps even identical with, the world? The two alternatives provide a second pattern of two contrasting parts -- transcendence, immanence. In Middle Platonism the two problems of the one and the one-many and of divine transcendence and immanence are joined together. The two patterns of the one and the onemany, transcendence and immanence, are blended in each philosopher. The one which is simple is transcendent and the one-many is immanent.
A brief account of the development of these ideas in and after Stoicism will show their importance. The Stoics gave to the concept of an immanent deity the form in which it persisted into Neo-Platonism. Yet even for them God was sometimes a being who stood over the world and made all things one. The God of the world is described by Cleanthes 1 ∈íςἔ . His work of providence is a unifying work, binding together the present and the future. 2 Aratos sees the world as 'full of God'. 3
Posidonius showed another bond of unity in the cosmos when he formulated his doctrine of sympathy. 4 The all-embracing living cosmic unity is the fundamental feature of his world system. The parts of the world are in sympathy with one another and bound together in a tension which makes them one. Man the microcosm exhibits the unity which the macrocosm strives to achieve. 5 Man does not bind together two separate worlds. The unity of the cosmos is immanent and a quality of its whole ____________________ 1Cleanthes apud Stobaeum, Eclogae, 1, p. 25, Wachsmuth.
2'Non seulement tous les êtres du Monde sont liés dans le présent mais tout le sort du Monde, qu'il s'agisse des événements humains ou des événements cosmiques, est lié dans le devenir. Le Monde forme un Tout un.' Festugière, La Révélation d'Hermès Trismégiste, II, Le Dieu Cosmique, p. 333.
3Quoted Festugière, op. cit. p. 338.
4Cicero, De Nat. Deorum 7. 19, and also Sext. Emp., Adv. Phys. 1, 75-122. Cf. Reinhardt, Kosmos und
Sympathie, p. 53: 'Erst Poseidonios hat die Sympathie . . . zu einem physikalischen, das ganz Weltbild ganz und gar durchdringenden, bestimmenden, erleachtenden Begriff erhoben.'
Festugière, op. cit. p. 418; 'Le ceci que tout ce qui en affecte une partie affecte les autres parties.'
5Cf. Reinhardt, Poseidonios, p. 352.
structure. 1 'The whole of reality was for him [Posidonius] contained within the envelope of fiery aether, one world knit together by a natural sympathy between all the parts.' 2 Just as a cut finger has its effect on the whole body, so what happens to one part of the cosmos affects the whole. 3
The pseudo-Aristotelian De Mundo describes a God who is one, but whose names are many, 4 and whose power produces and sustains the whole universe. 5 God is far above the earth and his power, which is manifest in the order of the heavens, diminishes in its ordering effect as it approaches the earth. 6 God is like the ruler of an army, city, or house. He is a great king who allots inferior tasks to his subordinates. 7 Yet all depends on him, all is his work. All things are one in a harmony 8 which depends upon God as a choir depends upon its choir master. 9
Our knowledge of Antiochus, the originator of Middle Platonism, is limited; 10 but we can trace the contrast between what is 'simple and of one kind, and such as it is', and what is in a state of constant flux, 11 and we learn that the Platonic forms are thoughts in the mind of the creating god. 12 It was questioned whether matter was a first principle and a reality. While its reality was largely allowed, it was certainly distinct from the other first principles and inferior to them. 13
____________________ 1Cf. Reinhardt, Poseidonios, p. 346.
10Theiler, op. cit. pp. 37-8. Cicero, our chief source of information concerning Antiochus, was interested chiefly in his ethics and epistemology.
11Cicero, Acad. 30, quoted Theiler, p. 38.
12Seneca, Epist. 65, 7: 'haec exemplaria rerum omnium deus intra se habet . . . ideae. . . . immortales, immutabiles, indefatigabiles', quoted Theiler, p. 15.
13See Theiler, part I.
2Bevan, Stoics and Sceptics, p. 114.
ìἀ ἔοτιν,εïγε ἀ öλονοννἀ ἐ ὁ . The influence of this doctrine of 'sympathy' on Plotinus has been demonstrated by Theiler, Die Vorbereitung des Neuplatonismus, pt. II, especially p. 97.
4De Mundo, 401, a 12.
5Ibid.397, b 20.
6Ibid.397, b 24-398, a 1.
7Ibid. 398, a 8, 10.
8Ibid.399, a 12.
9The De Mundo combines Stoic immanence with Aristotelian transcendence. The contradictory conclusions of Festugière and Zeller have both some justification. Festugière, op. cit. p. 585, 'Dans le
De Mundo par exemple, il n'y a point trace de dualisme.'
Zeller, A History of Eclecticism (English trans., London, 1883), p. 134: 'Still less, of course, can he admit the identification of God and the world: a Stoic definition which expresses this he only adopts after having altered its pantheistic language.'
In Plutarch, the purely good God is far above the world, which contains good and evil. The good God is not the cause of evil but the opponent of it. 1 The great gap between gods and men is bridged by the demons whose function is to unite. 2 The transcendent God alone has Being 3 and is timeless, eternal, unchanging. What is, must be one, and what is one, must be. 4 God's names emphasise the divine unity - - Apollo (not-many), Ieius (One ἴα), and Phoebus (pure and undefiled). This divine unity is pure and unmixed. 5 Men are made of many different elements of experience which are loosely connected and mixed up together. 6
Maximus of Tyre echoes the description of God which was given in the De Mundo. 7
God has many names according to his many activities which supply providentially the needs of men. 8 There is one God who is king of all and many gods who are his sons. 9 Man has two faculties, one of them simple which we call mind, and the other multiple and called sense. 10 These work together but are essentially separate. They are similar to their objects, so that what is perceived by the mind differs from what is perceived by the senses, as mind differs from sense. God belongs among the things perceived by the mind, which are more stable and firm, free from change and flux. 11 We must ascend to the acropolis of the intellectual world to find the place for God. He knows all things in an eternal, timeless knowledge. 12 Without name or magnitude he is beyond the reach of all our faculties, being in himself unseen, ineffable, impalpable, unknown. Yet he may be seen by pure mind which ascends beyond the heavens to the place of truth and the calm that is there'. 13 God is the ____________________ 1De Iside et Osiride, 46.
10Ibid. p. 135.
11Ibid. p. 137.
12Ibid. p. 139.
13Ibid. p. 141.
2De Defec. Orac. 10: οἱ ἐ ῳ ἀ ἡ ἰ ἐ .
3De E apud Delphos, 20.
5Ibid.
7Cf. Soury, Apercus de philosaphie religieuse chez Maxime de Tyr, platonicien éclectique, p. 59.
8Maximus ( Hobein ed.), p. 142.
9Ibid. p. 132: ὅ ἱ+
source of all beauty, and it is only by participation in him that anything is perceived.
He is found by a process of stripping or abstraction, a via negativa. 1 If one lacks the ability to find God in this way, then one should content oneself with God's works, his many offsprings, his divine children and friends, such as the stars and demons. 2 For there is an ordered series descending from God to earth. 3
Albinus describes three first principles -- matter, ideas, God. 4 Matter is the indeterminate stuff of the world to which the ideas give form. The ideas are the patterns of things, thoughts in the mind of God. God is eternal, ineffable, completely perfect. He is divinity, being, truth, proportion, and the good. 5 He is all these things in one complex unity, 6 but has no parts. Nothing can be predicated of him, as he has neither genus, species, differentia, nor attribute. He is known by abstraction of all sensible qualities, by analogy 7 and by ascending vision. 8 While
God contains nothing, the cosmos contains everything. 9 It is the only begotten of God, modelled on the pattern of unity, untouched by disease or age, in need of nothing, a complete rounded sphere. It is alive. 10
Numenius speaks of three Gods -- Father, Creator, and Creation. 11 The first God is one, transcendent, remote from material things, ineffable 12 and simple. The second
God is the Creator who brings the third God, the Cosmos, into unity in spite of the duality and instability of matter. 13 He is the pilot who steers his ship by the heavenly stars, the ship being matter and the stars being the ideas. In this way he perceives the harmony which keeps the cosmos together. 14 He is himself dependent on the first ____________________ 1Maximus, op. cit. p. 143.
10Ibid. XIV, 4. The distinction is later made between the ἐ .
11Numenius, De Primis Causis. Test. 24 (XXXVI).
ἀγαΘοũ, frag. 11 (X).
13Ibid. frag. 20 (XXVI).
14Ibid. frag. 27 (XXXII).
2Ibid. p. 144.
5Ibid. X, 3.
6Ibid.
8Albinus, x, 6.
9Ibid. XII, 3.
God in whom he participates. 1 In the cosmos everything is mixed up together and nothing is simple. 2
In Philo God is very close to us and very far from us, close in his powers, far removed in his essence. 3 God is a simple bare unity. 4 He cannot be named, spoken of, or conceived. 5 On the other hand, God fills all things and is one and all. 6 He is not contained anywhere, but is present everywhere by his powers which bind the world together with invisible, unbreakable bonds. 7 God is the mind of the universe.
8 In this respect he is mostly spoken of as the Logos who is the uniting bond of the universe. Things do not come together by themselves. Their unity is due solely to the Logos. 9
In the Hermetic writings God is unlike all else in his solitary unity. 10 He who made all things exists eternally and is one alone. 11 He is the monad, the first principle and root of all things, present in them all. 12 He is praised for his perfect purity, and his transcendence as sun, king, father. 13 His immanence and transcendence are found together where he is described as Lord, Creator, Father, and as Encirclement,
One-many, Pleroma. 14
Plotinus distinguishes three hypostases: The One which is a simple unity, and Mind and Soul, which are complex unities. The One is transcendent, 15 beyond knowledge and speech, without name and unnameable (VI, 9, 4-5). It is distinguished by its simplicity and its purity (VI, 9, 5). It is not one and many (v, 5, 4)) but one and only one (VI, 2, 9). On the other hand Mind is one
____________________ 1Ibid. frag. 28 (XXXVIII).
13C.H. XVIII, 11-13; XVI, 10.
14C.H. XVI, 3.
15Enn. III, 2. VII.
2De Primis Causis. Test. 28 (XL.). Of Numenius, Ueberweg-Praechter, Die Philosophie des Altertums, p. 521: 'Orientalisch-griechischer Synkretismus, Harmonisierung von Pythagoras und Platon, möglichste Steigerung der göttlichen Transzendenz, die wieder die Setzung eines Mittelgliedes zwischen der (obersten) Gottheit und der Welt veranlasst, Schärfung des Gegensatzes zwischen
Höherem und Niederem.'
3Post Cain. 20.
4Leg. All. 11, 2.
5Somn. I. II, 6, 7.
6Leg. All. 1, 44.
7Conf. Ling. 136.
8Op. Mundi, 8.
9Quis Heres. 188.
and many (IV, 8, 3), is all things (V, 1, 4), and a multiple god (V, 1, 5). Again Soul is one and many (IV, 8, 3; IV, 8, 1), present everywhere, and penetrating all things.From this survey two things may be seen:
(1) The structure of Middle Platonism, as that of NeoPlatonism in which it culminated, is determined by the antithesis of the one and the one-many combined with the antithesis of the transcendent and immanent divinity.
(2) While a great part of the story is the ingenious balancing of one and many, transcendence and immanence, the growing tendency was not to look for a via media between transcendence and immanence, but to emphasise on the one hand the transcendence of the one, and on the other hand the immanence of the one-many. 1
____________________ 1Cf. Ueberweg-Praechter, Die Philosophie des Altertums, p. 590.