The question of the ‘one and many’ is an issue that encompasses different traditions, localities and periods. Throughout time, it has offered a means to constructively explore issues of unity and diversity, identity and difference, and immanence and transcendence. Equally, it has offered a means to account for pluralism while engaging the challenge of relativism. We encourage contributions that explore the emergence and development of this and cognate issues from its initial development in Presocratic thought to the present day, and constructively, for instance, in relation to current themes as examined in the unit’s recent publication, Christian Platonism (eds. Alexander J.B. Hampton, John Peter Kenney, Cambridge 2021).
This paper enlists Henry More’s view of divine space in order to argue that space is not complex but is rather the meeting place where the metaphysical simplicity of God touches the complexity of matter. For More, space has an asymmetrical relation to matter, whereby it enables and intimately relates to distinctions and parts without itself being rendered distinct nor parted. This view will be defended by re-evaluating analogous language and the temporalizing of space, as well as proposing a new vision of the compatibility More saw between holenmerian simplicity and divine space. Far from creating a problem for simplicity, this Cambridge Platonist’s view of divine space actually reveals creative ways to solve afresh the ancient problem of the one and many. All our complexities, divisions, and squabbles occur among humans who unknowingly live, dwell, sleep, eat, and stride through a space that is simply divine and divinely simple.
Astell’s account of the one and the many arises in service to her work as spiritual director in _A Serious Proposal to the Ladies, Part I_ (1694). Addressing increasingly secular and materialistic White English gentry and noble women, Astell recommends prayer practices that will allow them to attend to the "divine within” themselves, each other, and their social body. These practices will help the self—which is profoundly relational and porous given its “horizontal” union with a body and its “vertical” union with the divine—prepare to receive the divine grace that will afford it proper vocation, freedom, and friendship.
Origen of Alexandria uses ‘participation’ to reconcile the relationship between the ‘one and the many’ and to justifying the diversity of the cosmos. Like many ancients, Origen adheres to the ‘principle of prior simplicity’; thus, it is incumbent upon him not to justify God’s existence, but, rather, to justify the diverse and contingent nature of being found throughout the cosmos. Origen, thus, employs participation to explain the relationship between contingent (per accidens; κατὰ συμβεβηκός), created being and non-contingent (per se; οὐσιώδης), divine being. Moreover, given Origen’s commitment to the principle that bonum est diffusivum sui, participation emerges as a way not only to justify the cosmos’ existence, but also its goodness. Accordingly, this paper 1) establishes Origen’s distinction between contingent and non-contingent being; 2) demonstrates the Son’s participatory relationship to the Father; 3) shows how Origen uses the Son to mediate the Father’s supremely simple being to the cosmos.
In recent decades, one task analytic philosophers have focused on is the analysis and assessment of certain medieval metaphysical frameworks. This growing body of scholarship has helped clarify and reduce the distortion of medieval and ancient writers. However, contributors to this work frequently express opposing claims or fail to note substantial differences between ancient and medieval figures. This is the case regarding the comparison of Thomas Aquinas to others thinkers. For example, many have considered Thomas’ thought to be essentially reducible to Aristotle’s, while others have proposed a heavier influence from Plato. Arguably, however, each of these claims is inadequate. One area of Thomas thought where this is evident and noteworthy is in Thomas’ accounts of being and unity. Here he relies on but moves beyond both Plato and Aristotle. This makes his work distinctive in a way that is significant for the comparison and assessment of medieval thought.