If you are not subscribed to parhypostaton’s Substack Waking Soliloquies, you should be. The recent ‘On Volitive Knowing‘ is a banger, and it inspired too many thoughts in me to record anywhere else than here. So, guess who has to hear them now?

In particular, I want to focus on the inexistence of the One, and how best to articulate our knowledge of the One–there’s so much more, but let’s face it, we’re squirrel brains and you’re here for dazzling insights, not homework. We’ll see which you end up with.

The Inexistence of the One

‘On Volitive Knowing’ (OVK) does a really great job of articulating the Platonic vision of the One, or Unity, as being the ultimate enabling condition of things; the principle of thinghood, rather than as being itself another thing–even one of the uttermost or unsurpassable dignity or privilege.

But, really, what does this mean?

Most naturally we might think that if x does not denote anything at all, then it is simply empty: it is nothing. But, as OVK notes of In Parm VI, 1082, Proclus denies that the One is sheer nothing-ness, preferring instead to regard it as ‘Not-Being’.

The claim, then, to clarify, is that One-ness as such is not itself any one thing in particular but that neither is it sheer nothing-ness at all. Putting it so starkly and conjunctively like this might make the mind reel because it thinks it is being told in one breath what it is denied in the next: that there is something there via not being sheer nothing-ness, but that there is nothing there via not being any one thing in particular. OVK’s discussion of inverse insights is illuminating here: the mind naturally expects some intelligibility, but discovers that this expectation is a symptom of fundamental confusion.

What I’d like to do here is to identify several different proposed ways of understanding what is going on here; models of what it is to be neither anything in particular, nor nothing-ness at all: there is the Each-Thing model, the Arbitrary Object model, the Horizon model, and lastly, the Classical Theist model.

The Each-Thing Model:

According to this model, the One is not itself a thing; a unit, a substance, or any other way of denoting an integral ‘whole’, and neither is it sheer nothing-ness. Rather, it is wholly and singularly ‘this’ thing, for each thing.

Some of you may remember ‘Swirl‘, where I put it in (13) as follows: “If Unity is not reducible to the thing that it wholly is because it is as yet still something else, then, for each thing that it is, it is wholly and singularly that one.” There, I try to deduce that “Unity is wholly and singularly each thing whatsoever.” This is a deduction I had to abandon, frankly, but that I really do believe was inspired. The way I tried to articulate the promptings at that particular point, of course, could be spelled out in different, even better, and more comprehensible terms without compromising or surrendering the controlling intuition: that the ‘net’ holding and suspending everything whatsoever; what ‘totalizes’ this superstructure of ‘everything’, is not itself an additional thing outside the totality, but rather each thing, immediately and wholly.

On the Each-Thing model, the reason why the One is neither sheer nothing-ness, nor any one thing in particular is precisely because it is wholly and singularly each thing, without any leftover or remainder of itself after.

The Arbitrary Object Model:

According to this model, the One is like what logicians refer to as an arbitrary object: something which signifies all and only those features within its range. So, the arbitrary dog is not itself another dog, and the arbitrary even number is not itself a specific even number. Similarly, the arbitrary Unit is not itself another unit. To deepen this model, I even performed a Russellian analysis once upon a time on the phrase ‘the One’ to see what insights fell out of reading it as a ‘definite description’, and found that it called for a category all its own since it did not meet the uniqueness condition – it did not signify a distinct, particular thing.

The One, on this model, is neither sheer nothing-ness, nor anything in particular, because it signifies units indistinctly, or arbitrarily.

In fact, I used to rely on this model to articulate polytheism: since ‘unity’ is real, Unity is being participated in. But since ‘Unity’ as such is nothing in particular, what is getting participated in is not some abstract Unity as such, but concrete, particular Unities (the sacred, holy Ones).

But, of course, this would require that no God have an innermost respect apart from its participants, thereby making fundamental reality coordinate, relational, and thus violating the basic Platonic charter that One precedes Many.

The Horizon Model:

The Horizon model does not commit itself to thinking of the One as the Each-Thing, or as an Arbitrary Object, whether either or both of those turn out to be the case. Rather, it just sees Unity as the horizon against which each and every single thing, no matter what, stands out. This is the periphery, or background that things require for boundedness, definition, distinction.

On this model, the reason why the One is peculiarly between being sheer nothing-ness and being anything in particular, is (if you pardon the spatial metaphors) because the horizon is that in relation to which things are even enabled to be individuated.

Classical Theism:

So-called classical theist thinkers purport to see a respect to God in which there is nothing coordinate with or next to him by which he can stand out against or amongst. This is the state of absolute precedence. Without the contrast of differentiation, he has no definiteness, no shape, no numerical distinctness: in an important sense, no intelligibility. Without these things, he lacks the indefinite article, so that he is not ‘a’ thing’, ‘a’ being, or ‘a’ anything. God is wholly non-articular, in this sense.

But, then, it is not the case that God’s unity would involve Unity being itself a unit, or a being, or ‘a’ anything. It would not put Number prior to Deity, via demarcating him as singular or one, nor involve him being an example of what he is supposed to be the principle of. Neither would it subordinate Unity as such to a specific kind of unity, like numerical unity.

On this model, Unity as such is not sheer nothing-ness, but neither does it ‘have’ unity, let alone as any particular ‘thing’. Perhaps it can also permissibly be regarded as the ultimate horizon, or its last point of contact with utterable reality as the Each-Thing, after which it is untethered, and we can no longer track. But, they will insist, it is God.

Pseudo-Dionysius was oddly enthusiastic or comfortable saying things like God does not exist, or is nothing, or is wholly ineffable, etc. Thomas Aquinas embraced this Dionysian maxim as well, but explained things thusly:

“Reply Obj. 4: All the other names signify existence according to some determinate account, just as “wise” says being something, but the name “he who is” signifies absolute being, being undetermined by something added to it. This is why Damascene says that it does not signify what God is; rather, it signifies a certain infinite and, as it were, undetermined sea of substance. Whence when we approach God through the path of removal, we first deny bodily things of him, and second even intellectual things insofar as they are found in created things, such as goodness and wisdom. And then there remains in our understanding only that he exists, and nothing more. Thereby he exists as in a certain confusion. Moreover, at the end, we remove even existence itself, insofar as it is found in created things; and then one remains in a certain darkness of ignorance. According to this ignorance, as far as pertains to the state of the earthly path, we are joined to God best, as Dionysius says, and this is a certain fog wherein God is said to dwell,” – Scriptum super libros Sententiarum I, d. 8, q. 1, art. 1, response.

This would in a sense be to stop ‘considering’ the One. When you set aside all predicates whatsoever, you do not so much continue to speak predicate-lessly, you simply cease speaking (and all these philosophers speak of silence at this point).

So, here are a handful of models to continue this conversation and hopefully spark brighter minds to bring us to greater clarity and truth. I bring all this up because I think this is where some of the most important and cutting edge future work will be done: is the One wholly inexistent? What does that mean? Each suggestion I have given has its issues, and I do not propose them as somehow equally warranted. In fact, I believe more models could be proposed. My point is this: let’s roll up our sleeves!

Our Knowledge of the One:

In a way, this was the whole point of OVK: to clarify what it means to know the One, especially in light of its inexistence, or imparticularity. OVK does a fantastic job of drawing out this Platonic thesis: that there is this ‘One in us’, and that this consists of the very striving on our part to be one. Incidentally, I think this accords particularly well with the Each-Thing model.

I enjoyed this aspect of OVK especially because it brought much light to my own attempted grasps at the subject.

Iamblichus speaks in the De Mysteriis about how our knowledge of the Gods is not inferential or even propositional. It is existential, unitive, ontological–something like a matter of constitution, or connection. In my posts on this subject here, I tried to flesh this out in terms of the law of mean terms: if there is any gap in the procession of Being, then something comes from nothing. The strata of reality have to be connected or linked in such a way that the ceiling of one just is the roof of another, so to speak. There can be no sharp breaks. In effect, each successive stratum must be, dimunitively or secondarily, what the prior is primarily. That makes everything into a unified, integral whole with… moments. What we are, then, most fundamentally, are the enactions of the One at this level, and that identity is our knowledge of the Gods.

But this is not all that satisfying, really! Why call this union ‘knowledge’? If there is no distinction between subject and object, no duality, then why strain to call it by a name that inherently denotes such duality? The Platonists like Plotinus explicitly reject the equation of the One with Intellect precisely because the latter is dualistic.

Well, someone out there could definitely put this better, but we might draw out by the reasoning outlined above, that the reason why something of the character of Intellect arises at all is because this literally just is what it is to enact Unity dividedly, finitely, partially, or whatever. That is, what one-ness or union looks like when it is enacted at a divided level is intellection: it’s why the knower and the known are classically said to be one.

So, maybe our connection with the Gods is called ‘knowledge’ because an epistemic term best captures the outermost sense in which we are ‘one’: our intellectual aspect, part, or respect.

But ‘On Volitive Knowing’ seriously challenges this, and keeps things more… Platonic, frankly! It talks instead about the striving in us for integration, for Unity. This appetition is our fundamental order to the One, our enaction of it.

This last part is more of an expression of gratitude than a contribution, but I hope something in this overall post will work as a conversation starter or continuer.

Cheers, y’all, it’s a good time for Platonism.