Abstract

Is not trying to define uniqueness somehow an aberration? Any definition implies a determination and an expression ; how is it possible to determine that which resembles no other thing and to express something that has no other expression but its own? A definition is a general form of thinking, a form that includes a generality; the larger this generality, the more valuable the definition. Thus, how could we hope it to include the unique, which is so unlike everything else that it cannot be contained in any generalization, and which, coinciding with the universal, breaks the particular/general relation? Since these two terms are not able to account for the unique, this one is not to be treated as a concept, but as an idea. Further, it is not too great an effort to recognize that the idea of the unique stems from the idea of the One. But who can define the One except by a tautology?