Metaphysics, Philosophy

Plato’s Metaphysical Answer to the One and the Many, Part One

by Dave Seng

Our philosophical reflection on the question of the one and the many brings us to the ancient Greek philosopher Plato (427 – 347 B.C). Plato is arguably the most influential philosopher in Western intellectual history and is most known for his theory of transcendent forms (Ideas or essences). Plato held that these transcendent forms are imperfectly mirrored in the sensible world and known through the intellect alone. Ideas, according to Plato, are the highest order of reality while matter is subject to the formative effects of the Ideas. We will get to the rest of Plato’s philosophy a little later. For now, we need to think about the importance of metaphysics in the first place, the question of the one and the many, and how Plato came to the discovery of Form or Idea. This will be the first post of three which will explore Plato’s attempt to resolve the metaphysical question of the one and the many.

Metaphysics is the study of the reality in which we find ourselves and the transcendent reality that makes this world possible. Sometimes philosophers define metaphysics as the study of ultimate reality. Of course, the study of ultimate reality generates many questions. Some of these questions include: How is reality connected to being and existence? What is the essential nature to being or the totality of all that exists? Is reality one or many? If it is many, how does it relate to the one? In fact, it is this question—the question or problem known as “the One and the Many” that puzzled Plato and ultimately caused him to formulate his metaphysical conception of Form. The problem of the One and the Many, is also related to questions of Universal and Particular and Being and Becoming. Plato was certainly perplexed by the question of the One and the Many, the idea of Being and Becoming, and through his investigation of these questions, he became the first systematic metaphysician. He also realized that in some way, metaphysics was basic to all other philosophical concerns.

With this foundation, it is important to understand Plato’s place in Western intellectual history as the foremost systematic philosopher. Although there were others before him, commonly known as the pre-Socratics, who explored interesting metaphysical theories regarding the nature of reality, Plato was the first to describe reality in a methodical and rationally compelling way1. The pre-Socratics, however, asked some fundamental questions about reality that perplexed Plato and influenced his metaphysical outlook. The pre-Socratics, for example, wondered what could be the essential nature of all things and how this essential nature relates to everything else. This question has come down to us as the problem of the One and the Many. The question of the One and the Many is an attempt to intellectually explore the structure of reality. It seeks to find unifying principles in the diversity around us. In other words, the question of the One and the Many is an attempt to make sense out of the world. From Plato’s perspective, the question explores the unities of goodness, justice, or the nature geometry and mathematics, and then tries to explain how these unities, which do not change, exist as diverse particularities in the world. This basic philosophical puzzle has to do with the nature of change and causation. The pre-Socratics, and Plato, were aware that many things change from one thing to another. After all, change is all around us – life, death, seasons, and time itself all are indications of change.

Plato was keenly aware of the problem of the One and the Many. In the Philebus, for example, Socrates says, “The principle which has just turned up, which is a marvel of nature; for that one should be many or many one, are wonderful propositions” (Plato 611). Later, Socrates explains:

A gift of heaven, which, as I conceive, the gods tossed among men by the hands of a new Prometheus, and therewith a blaze of light; and the ancients, who were our betters and nearer the gods than we are, handed down the tradition, that whatever things are said to be are composed of one and many, and have the finite and the infinite implanted in them: seeing then that such is the order of the world, we too ought in every enquiry to begin by laying down one idea of that which is the subject of inquiry; this unity we shall find in everything. (Plato 612)

The question of the one and the many is an attempt to discover the essential nature upon which everything else depends for its existence. The intuition to reduce reality to its essential nature is significant. Scientific theories that unite and make sense out of many other theories and concepts are generally accepted and considered superior models of explanation. It seems basic to human nature to take simplicity and unity as having explanatory power2. There is a rational human impulse to seek and discover a unity or system of thought that provides an answer for everything else related to it. The same is true for those who seek a foundation for reality. Even amidst change, things are interdependent. The question of the One and the Many provides a way to explore and discuss that which everything else depends on for existence. Plato brings this notion to light when he has Socrates discuss the nature of virtue in the Meno dialogue:

How fortunate I am, Meno! When I ask you for one virtue, you present me with a swarm of them, which are in your keeping. Suppose that I carry on the figure of the swarm, and ask of you, What is the nature of the bee? And you answer that there are many kinds of bees, because there are many and different kinds of them; or are they not rather to be distinguished by some other quality, as for example beauty, size, or shape? (Plato 175)

In this example, Socrates is investigating the nature of virtue by way of natural philosophy. Plato has Socrates explain that just as moral acts have the potential of reflecting the true nature of virtue, there is something in nature, as well, that can reflect the essential character or “Being” of the physical world. The One and the Many has interesting political ramifications too. In the political world, the great American experiment is an attempt to unite the many. For example, the motto on the Seal of the United States says “E Pluribus Unum” – from the many, one – in an attempt to describe the American ethos of bringing unity out of the diversity of the many. Not only politically, however, but in the physical world, the tension of the One and the Many holds true as well. In part two, we will discover how Plato attempts to resolve this question and why it is important for Western intellectual history and the implications for us today.

Plato. The Dialogues of Plato. Trans. Benjamin Jowett. Great Books of the Western World. Vol. 6. Chicago: Encycyclopedia Britannica, Inc., 1996.

1 On occasion, Plato references the pre-Socratic thinker Heraclitus. Plato was certainly aware of and in discussion with the ideas that came before him and was also influenced by Parmenides.

2 This is why many metaphysicians use Occam’s razor to decide among competing theories of reality.

Intellectual History, Logic, Metaphysics, Natural Theology, Philosophy, Philosophy of Science

The Pre-Socratics: What Have We Learned?

by Dave Seng

For this post, we will conclude our series on the pre-Socratics and the problem of the one and the many.

Part one can be found here, part two here, and part three here.

I want to provide a short summary of what we have learned about the metaphysical thinking of the pre-Socratics and provide a short note about what I have in mind for the next couple of essays.

In our recent series exploring the intellectual contributions of the pre-Socratics, we focused on the ancient problem of the one and the many (what I will call the one-many problem, OMP). The OMP is the underlying theme of Western metaphysics. When philosophers examine the intelligible along with the sensible, the definite and infinite, the universal and particular, the nature of change, or the role of the state and the individual, the question of the OMP is always underneath the inquiry.

As we have seen, the OMP is central to Being, Nonbeing, Becoming, and the nature of change in the physical world. In this sense, metaphysics is closely related to physics. (One of the best books on this topic is Roger Trigg’s Beyond Matter: Why Science Needs Metaphysics.)

We also learned that the OMP is a question that relates to the nature, character, and origin of the cosmos. The earliest philosophers where exploring the metaphysical foundations of the universe as they looked for the source of Being and the nature of Becoming in our world. The field of metaphysics seeks to discover, explicate, and lay out the most basic principles and properties of the world (and all of Being) and the pre-Socratics were the first ones to apply reason and develop this method. Since it is impossible to deny that something such as the universe is, the next question is, “is it one or many?” Errors occur when either unity or the many is made primary. We also saw that the pre-Socratics were the first to apply the laws of logic, such as the law of identity and the law of noncontradiction, to the nature of reality (the Being-Becoming relationship) and discovered the metaphysical emphasis of the laws of logic. The OMP only makes sense in a world governed by logic, order, and uniformity in the natural world and the pre-Socratics understood this point. It is also the reason Aristotle focuses so much of his attention on it in his Physics.

Although it not always explicit in every philosopher, the OMP is the underlying central metaphysical concern of much of Western intellectual history. In the next couple of essays, we will discover how the OMP leads Plato to the discovery of form and how it enlightens Aristotle in his doctrines of immanent form, change, act, and potency.

Metaphysics, Natural Theology, Philosophy, Philosophy of Science

The Nature of Reality and The One and The Many, Part Three

by Dave Seng

Part one of the series can be found here.

Part two of the series can be found here.

It is impossible that what is, can also be what is not. (Restatement of the Law of Noncontradiction.)

Do you believe that all of reality came from one source? If you do, you are in agreement with one of the oldest cosmological and metaphysical theories of all intellectual history. You also might find yourself in agreement with the pre-Socratic monists who believed that Being is unified into one essential metaphysical scheme. If you disagree with the monists, however, you too might find yourself at home with the pre-Socratic pluralists whose understanding of reality also enjoys an ancient provenance. At this point, we will not answer this important conversation but I do hope to point out some things that we can learn from it. First, the question itself, whether reality ultimately came from one source, is one in nature, or is simply a collection of random diverse things, is still alive and with us today. We see this in debates about the fine-tuning of the universe (mostly from physicists), and various intelligent design theorists (generally from biology), who point to a theistic God as the source of reality, and those who would fall into a similar category as the pluralists who point out the diversity, randomness, and chaotic aspects of the natural world. The great question of the one and the many just will not go away. The other thing we can learn about this conversation is how it centers on what the ancient philosophers called Being (the nature of all reality). As we will see in future posts an important reformulation of the question of the one and the many has come to be known as Being (the one) and Becoming (the many). We can use the terms interchangeably. Everything we discussed in parts one and two about the problem of the one and the many can be applied to the concepts Being and Becoming. This brings us to the important discussion between Heraclitus and Parmenides.

We will begin with Parmenides. Parmenides (ca. 475) was a philosopher who lived in Italy, founded the Eleatic school of philosophy, and taught that it is rationally necessary that reality be one and immutable. Parmenides went as far as to deny motion and change, teaching that such things are an illusion. Being (the principle which unites all reality) must be one. If Being is one, it can not change, and it can not be many. Being can not include nonbeing or becoming as that would be a defect in Being. For Parmenides, change involves imperfection, temporality, and mutability. Change in particular things must be counted among the many (the diversity of all things around us). If change is imperfect, according to Parmenides, it can not be one. If all reality is essentially one, change must be illusory. Parmenides is famous for such pronouncements as “It is necessary to say and think what is. For Being is, and Not-Being is not” and “whatever is, is.” Essentially, Parmenides utterly denied the reality of the sensible world along with all plurality and motion. As radical as Parmenides sounds, there might be an element of truth in his position. He was, after all, making a statement about reality and the essential nature of things. Most philosophers think things have an essential nature that makes them the kind of things they are. A cat has an essential nature that makes it different from a cephalopod. If the essential nature of a cat changes, it is no longer a cat but something else. This is known logically to us by way of the logical laws of identity and the law of noncontradiction (here we notice the metaphysical implications of the laws of logic). Something can not be what it is and something else in the same way and the same relationship. Essence, essential being, is what it is. This has to be for things to make conceptual sense to us.

On the other hand, it would seem foolish to deny that things change. After all, cars, airplanes, and great Blue Whales (among other things) are all capable of traversing large amounts of land, airspace, and water. We understand that movement, motion, growth, and change are part of everyday experience and it does not seem reasonable to deny this aspect of reality. This brings us to Heraclitus (ca 500 B. C.) who taught that all things are in a state of flux governed by a divine, cosmic Law. Several of Heraclitus’s statements have been preserved. He is known for saying things like, “the sun is new every day,” “we are and we are not,” and in reply to Parmenides, “whatever is, is changing.” He is probably most famous for the phrase, “you can not step twice into the same river.” The idea is that once you put your foot into a river, different water will be flowing by the time you put your other foot into it. For Heraclitus, all reality is constantly changing, dynamic, and in flux. It is important to realize that, Heraclitus too, is making a statement about reality. As we move and do things throughout our day, we are changing. As all things exist in time, everything we experience is in a different segment or time frame. In some sense, things are constantly changing.

The tension remains, however, that if everything is in a state of becoming as Heraclitus taught, what is it that perdures when things change? Things do not change into nothingness because nothing (or non-being) is not a thing. Nothing in the physical cosmos can violate the law of conservation. On the other hand, if things have an essential nature and are not completely changing, then rational communication, law and justice, and science are possible. These are important metaphysical concerns that are sometimes overlooked by scientists and others working in the social and behavioral sciences.

This is the difficulty—the tension between Being and Becoming—that was given to Plato to address in his day and has become a central part of the Western intellectual tradition and how we understand that nature of the world around us. The tension is still with us today and the conversation is still alive. In our next post, we will see how Plato attempted to answer the question of Being and Becoming and then we will look at how Aristotle answered the problem.

Metaphysics, Natural Theology, Philosophy, Philosophy of Science

The Nature of Reality and The One and the Many, Part Two

by Dave Seng

We cannot stop at a principle containing separate parts; there must always be a yet higher, a principle above all such diversity. – Plotinus.

In a recent post, I discussed the metaphysical problem of the one and the many. Although this question of reality has largely been forgotten in contemporary philosophical literature, it is very significant and does not seem to go away. After all, the human impulse to make sense of the many different and changing things around us is deep and profound. We can see this drive in almost every human endeavor. Whenever a historian creates a powerful story of the past using a multiplicity of evidence, he or she is confronting the question of the one and the many. When an attorney seeks an action in the court of law and gives diverse reasons or causes for that action, we see the question of the one and the many at work (or the legal question “how ought justice be correctly distributed?” is another form of the same question). The whole point of science is not to leave us with a diverse set of facts but to attempt a singular unified theory that makes the most sense out of those facts. That is why Aristotle devotes the first part of his Physics (a work about the foundation of science and the natural world) to the question of the one and the many. Even the postmodern critical theorist who wants to privilege the diversity of things to the detriment of unity and coherence still provides a narrative of why that is so (for to reject a “metanarrative” or to provide a “metanarrative” of another kind, is still to give a narrative in the attempt to make sense out of things). The question of the one and the many is with us today.

Some scholars think that the question of the one and the many was the original question of philosophy. One of the reasons for this is that it was the central question of the pre-Socratics who handed it over to Socrates, Plato, Aristotle and the rest of Western intellectual history. As the name suggests, the pre-Socratics were a group of philosophers that lived before Socrates. In fact, this group laid out the basic question that all philosophy and other fields still attempt to answer today. But who are these philosophers?

I can only give a brief overview of the pre-Socratics here. I will provide a list of resources at the end of this post for those who want to explore the topic further. For our purpose, and by way of introduction, I will discuss the important schools and ideas of the pre-Socratics, and in our next post, I will discuss the primary significance of Heraclitus and Parmenides. For now, let us examine the earliest of Western philosophers, Thales.

Thales, the first metaphysician in recorded history, lived around 600 B.C. and came from what is called the Ionian tradition. He lived in the city of Miletus on the western coast of Ionia (now Turkey). Thales and his followers have come to be known as the “Miliesian Monists” due to the fact that as they sought an answer to the question of the one and the many, they emphasized that all reality can be reduced to one basic principle. (Monism is the idea that all reality is in some sense one and unified in its essence or nature.) If all things have an essence or basic nature, they reasoned, so does the cosmos. In Thales’ case, he posited water as the basic essence of reality. It might seem odd that such an ancient thinker has become famous due his idea that water is the essence of reality. However, Thales is among the first thinkers in the Western intellectual tradition to ground his thinking on evidence, examination, common sense perception, and evaluation as authoritative in all matters of belief and conduct, what is now called rationalism. He did not turn to the Greek anthropomorphic gods, goddesses, or other mysterious forces to explain the natural world around him. He was the first to provide an argument based on evidence and reason regarding the natural world. We do not, however, know exactly why he chose water and not some other element. Perhaps he chose water due to the fact that all living things need it to survive, or that it exists in three different states (liquid, gas, solid), or that it is the most plentiful substance on the planet. After all, it is reported that Thales wrote a book about navigating the seas. The important thing to understand at this point is that Thales emphasized unity and “the one” when it came to the question of the one and the many and chose water as the essential nature of reality. Other early monists lived and worked in this tradition as well, such as Anaxemines (550 B. C.), who proposed that air was the basic essence of reality because it is a sort of life-principle, and Heraclitus (500 B. C.), who taught that although reality is always changing, fire was the one element that holds all things together and provides balance and order in the cosmos.

There also were pre-Socratics who emphasized change, the many, and the diversity we see all around us. These thinkers are known as “the Pluralists” because they sought to identify reality with a plurality of substances while maintaining that each particular thing is a Being and one and immutable. Of this school is Empedocles (450 B. C.), who taught that reality is combined of the four elements of earth, fire, water, and air and are held together by the force of Love which combines things, and torn apart by the power of Strife which separates. Among the Pluralists, we find the first atomists, Democritus (425 B. C.) and Leucippus (450 B. C.) who identified reality with an infinite number of indivisible material particles (atoms) moving randomly in space. The Greek word atomos means “uncuttable” or something that is irreducible. These thinkers believed that the universe came about by a mechanical combining or coagulation of an infinite number of atoms.

No matter which school of thought these pre-Socratic philosophers came from, it can now be understood why they are considered the first metaphysicians and cosmologists due to their investigation of nature and their desire to find a unifying reason or cause for the universe.

Things get really interesting when we come to Parmenides and Heraclitus. It has been said that all of Western philosophy is just a series of footnotes to Plato and Aristotle. (Dr. Mortimer Adler once joked that it was Aristotle who wrote the footnotes.) Nonetheless, the metaphor might be more complete to say that all of philosophy is a series of footnotes to Parmenides and Heraclitus because of the foundational questions they raised about reality. The discussion between Parmenides and Heraclitus is so important that it will be the topic of my next post. For now, it is important to know that the problem of the one and many can also be understood as what philosophers call Being and Becoming, universal and particular, appearance and reality, unity and diversity.

Science still struggles to maintain a balance between these concepts (and we will talk more about that in future posts). For now, just one quick example of this tension between the one and the many can be seen in “chaos theory” and similar fashionable theories we see today. When scientists say things like chaos is an agent of order or that there is a thing called “sensitive chaos” they are really violating the law of noncontradiction and speaking nonsense. If chaos were to be an organizing process of a whole, or a creative agent, it would not be chaos. It is really a reformulation of the problem of the one and the many. If the one is many, it is not one. If reality is one, it is not many. The problem persists and it was the pre-Socratics who first pointed out this metaphysical situation. In additional posts, we will explore how Plato and Aristotle attempted to solve this problem (through the discovery of form or essence) and we will learn that how we answer this problem will affect how one does science and ultimately shapes our world view.

To dig deeper into the pre-Socratics, explore these resources:

Jonathon Barnes. The Presocratic Philosophers. Revised ed. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1982

James N. Jordan. Western Philosophy: From Antiquity to the Middle Ages. Macmillan Publishing Co., 1987.

John Burnet. Early Greek Philosophy. Fourth Ed. Macmillan Publishing Co., 1930. (One of the best standard treatments of the pre-Socratics, although from a positivist perspective. Excellent selected fragments and commentary.)

Fredrick Copleston. A History of Philosophy. Baltimore: Newman Press, Vol. 1.