The One and the Forms; At a Glance

The One and the Forms are metaphysical entities, that have been weth western philosophy almost since its begining in Classical Greece. Eventhough they were not connected in their orgins, the One and the Forms rer most often found thgether in philosophical systems. We shall examine the One first and then the Foums. Xenophanes lived in the fifth century B.C.E. He was the precursor to the doctrine of the One. Ge taught that God was one. He was also a strong opponet to any anthropomorphism in religion. Xenophanes also taught that God abides in the same place, never moving and never changing. These teachings are important precusrors the the One. The One is most often divinized into being God, and the One is always seen as unchanging, immutable, and incorruptable. It is true Xenphanes is more theologian than philosopher; he was probably the first theologian in history. It is wi8th Parmenides that the One really makes its appearance in western philosophy. In an important distinction from Xenophanes; Parmenides comes up with the One through the use of logic. Parmenides reasons that there cannot be nothing; so there must be something. This something is the One. Like Xenophanes's God , the One does not move or change; it is uncorruptable, and immutable. Paumenides does not stop; he insists there is nothing except the One. Philosophy made an important distinction with Parmenides; appearance and reality. All change, movement, growth, and decay are illusion. So in its first incarnation the One is passive. The way to achieve a vision of the One is th use reason to cut through the illusion. When all illusion is dissipated, all that is left is the One. The wat to the One is through logic. Anything that change or moves is an illusion. Parmenides has set a high standard for reality. Ultimate of absolute reality must be immutable and uncorruptable. The important point to remember is that the vision of the One is reached through logic and reason. This shall become a mark of the One whether it is a passive or active One. Of course, the ONe ia a logical entity that has no existential reality. The One is always reached through logic; the One is an endpoint for any thinker that takes the law of non-counterdiction as the centerpiece of their epistemology. Whenever the law of non-counterdiction is taken as the centerpiece of epistemology a One is always reached; unless logic is cut off at somepoint. We shall observe this later. A One has to be reached; it is the place where all conflicts, divisions, and counterdictions are resolved. Now that we have observed the passive One; let us turn to Plotinus and the active One. In the system of Plotinus, again the One is the ultimate reality, but appearances and material objects are not pure illusion as in Parmenides's philosophy. Instead all entities have a partial reality, because they are all productions of the One. In Plotinus this prodution or creation is done by emanation. The One is always creating, but each emanation is less perfect than its predecessor. This can be symbolized as a ladder from the highest to hte lowest. In western philosophy this is known as the "Great Chain of Being." In Plotinus the first three emanations are considered divine and identified as God. Plotinus also asserts that the way to the One is through the use of logic and reason. Instead of the end point being at the bottom, the endpoint is at the top. All conflicts and divisions are resolved at an endpoint at the top, because the One is active. Depending on whether the One is passive or active the endpoint is either at the bottom or the top. We shall now turn to Proclus a neoplatonic that followed Plotinus. What interests us in the philosophical system of Proclus is that he asserted there was a One at the bottom as well as at the top. Proclus held that the One was active like all neoplatonics, but that at the very lowest rung of existence there was a passive One, that was a mirror image of the active One at the top. It must be said that Proclus never worked out the implications of this assertion of two Ones. And for very good reason. The only two other thinkers that flirted with this idea of an active and passive One were Nicholas of Cusa and Giordano Bruno, but both backed away from the implications of this assertion. The reason being is that having two Ones is a counterdiction. If maintained it would invalidate the law of non-counterdiction that centerpiece of their epistimology that led the position. It is not a good thing to invalidate your own epistemology. It is hard to hold that the law of non-counterdiction is the basis of your epistemology, but your metaphysics asserts that reality is a counterdiction. It seems Immanuel Kant should have made this counterdiction into one of his antimonies. That it could be proved there is both an active and passive One, through the use of logic. This is probably why no one has worked out all the implications of having both a passive and active One the same system. Instead Kant wisely cut logic off, and asserted that logic cannot be used to go beyond observataions. Before moving to the Forms it is interesting to note that the One unlike the Forms is still alive in western philosophy. It is the passive that has survived. It seems after two thousand years of being forgotten, the passive One has made a comeback in the systems of F,H. Bradley, Jean-Paul Sartre, and Martin Heidgger. The Forms The Forms first appear in the philosophy of Plato. Plato posited that all material objects have an immaterial archetype. That material entities are ectypes of the archetypes. The archetypes are more real than the material ectypes. Plato accepted Parmenides definetion of reality as being immutable and uncorruptable. The uncorruptable and immutable archetypes are the Forms. Plato did not accept Parmenides's monism. Instead Plato posits a pluristic reality in the divinized mental realm of the Forms. Plato never gave an adequate account of how the Forms participate in the material or the world of becomming as he called our everyday world. He did give some hints of how the Forms interact with each other. The realm of the Forms or the intelligible world is hierarchical with the Form of the good being the master Form. The Forms are connected through logic. As with Parmenides's One the way to gain a vision of the Forms is through logic and reason. We must now ask the question: Why did Plato posit the Forms? The answer is the teachings of Protagoros. Protagoros splet subject and object. Protagoros did this by his teaching of the relativity of perciption. Two men could stand in a wind. One man could feel the wind as warm, the other man as cold. According to Protagoros thet are both right. This split subject and object,There was now an external and an external realm, they were no longer the same. Even worse there did not seem to be much correspondence between the two. This situation was intolerable for Plato. It meant there was no absolute truth or absolute good. This is why Plato ploited the realm of the Forms. For when a person grasped the Form, he grasped the truth. There was no ambiguity as in sensory perception. When a person achieved a vision of the good the intellect knew the good. Plato posited a real world with no ambiguity. We must now move to Plotinus. For it is with Plotinus that the threads we have been discussing come together into one philosophical system. Plotinus combined Parminides's One and Plato's Forms into a single philosophical system. Plotinus my not have been the first to combene the One and the Forms, but he did it better than anyone else. Everyone who followed was influenced by Plotinus. Parmenides's passive One becomes an active One in Plotinus. Plotinus does this by making the One creative. Plotinus's One is constantly creating, or to use Plotinus's term "emanating." The first emanation from the One is the Forms. The Forms then emanate Souls, and here ends the divine. Souls emanate matter . Matter is not seen as being divine, it is not part of Plotinus's Godhead. The frason is because matter does not have any active or creative power. Matter is just a recepticle for the Forms, whicg are brought into matter by the active power of Souls. Souls are the intermediary between matter and the higher realms of hte One and the Forms(Nous). The realmo of the Forms (Nous) is seen as being the mind of God. In christian theology, much of which is based on neoplatonism, The realm of the Forms (Nous) is identified with the Son of the Trinity. The best analogy for the Forms in Plotinus's system is a computer program. In this analogy matter is the computer screen or monitar. The Forms determine what appears on the monitar. Let us move to an example: humanity. The reason there are so many differences in humans is that no particular human can express all the traits in the Form humanity. There are men, women, light skinned, dark skinned humans, and so on. Any defects are the fault of matter to receive the Form. So if a person is boun without arms, it is the fault of matter to realize the Form. For the Forms are perfect. Plotinus like Parmenides and Plato also asserted that the only way to gain a vision of the eternal realm of the Forms was through the use of reason and logic. This is the mark of all top-down systems: that abstractions are more real than material entities. The Forms are of course, abstractions form material entities. And now we arrive at the destruction of the top-down system and the Forms. The total destruction of the top-down system happened in1859 with the publication of " The Origin of the Species" by Charles Darwin. Although there were serious cracks and gaps before Darwin in the top-down world view. So how does the theory of evolution totally undermine the top-down system and the Forms? Instead of Forms of abstractions being the active cause, it is matter that is active and generates material entities. Even worse mutations are not due to divine will, but random. There are no immutable uncorruptable Forms for the mind to grasp. When humans understand an abstraction, it is not grasping reality it is only a tool for manipulating circumstances. A tool that may turn out to be partial, inadequate of simply wrong. There is no correspondence for the to grasp: there is no ultimate absolute truth.