the One

, its doctrine of the One, according to which all that exists (or is really true) is a static plenum of Being as such, and nothing exists that stands either in contrast or in contradiction to Being. Thus, all differentiation, motion, and change must be illusory. This monism is…

…Plotinus, in his Enneads, “The One is perfect because it seeks for nothing, and possesses nothing, and has need of nothing; and being perfect, it overflows, and thus its superabundance produces an Other.” This generation of the Many from the One must continue until all possible varieties of being…

…that being, which is presumably One, presents itself in many ways: as necessary and as contingent, as fixed and as relational, as eternal and as transient. Accordingly, Badiou’s central philosophical text, Being and Event (1988), opens with a meditation on the time-honoured ontological question concerning the relationship between the One…

…of which is that of the One or the Good, which are identical but indescribable and indefinable in human language. The next lower level is that of nous, or pure intellect or reason; the third is that of the soul or souls. There then follows the world perceived by the…

…was already occasionally called “the One”; the placing of the Platonic forms in the divine mind; a strongly otherworldly attitude demanding a “flight from the body,” an ascent of the mind to the divine and eternal; and a preoccupation with the problem of evil, attributed either to an evil…

…the soul by Intellect and the One was the permanent cause of humans’ ability to know eternal reality; and Augustine was at this point very close to Plotinus, though for him there was a much sharper distinction between Creator and creature, and the personal relationship between God and the soul…

…by the customary name, “the One,” Damascius declared that men cannot adequately describe its relation to derived reality. This first principle is beyond the reach of human thought and language and is utterly outside the hierarchy of reality. Because it is outside, everything, and particularly the soul of man, can…

…opposite principles, often called “the One” and “the indeterminate dyad,” terms meant to explain the presence of both unity and multiplicity in the universe. His colleagues, however, viewed “the One” and “the dyad” as principles of good and evil, respectively, but Speusippus denied the attachment of moral qualities. Using numerical…