This book is part of a larger study of the problem of the one and the many in Aristotle's Metaphysics. Although this portion can be read and understood on its own, some remarks about the contents of the two sister volumes will be helpful.

Originally published by the Center for Hellenic Studies, this book investigates the extent to which the Presocratics were hamstrung by their lack of detailed conceptual framework in the case of the words "one" and "many." This investigation is based on Aristotle's analyses.

Meister Eckhart might have liked it. Indeed, many-one thinking is the idea that there is the one ultimate origin, coherence, spirit of it all... but not without a multitude and diversity emerging within, which is the evolving universe with planets like Earth, with its biosphere and humankind, with you and me living in it. The Many-One is thought of as the whole of the cosmos complementing and entangled with all its parts, as beings inside Being and Being inside (...) beings, as the Creator and “his” co-creating creatures. The both-one-and-many idea takes a strong stance against any ultimate either-or-reduction, against isms of all sorts. Being unity and plurality and duality all at once, the Many-One is neither monistic nor pluralistic nor dualistic in any way. Inside this broad frame, it is open for many specific approaches, not least those represented in this volume, which are cosmic holism, cultural-spiritual-evolution thought, Higher-We, integral thinking, the Metaphysics of Adjacency, panentheism, process theology, and transpersonal-participatory thinking. However, the many-one idea also chimes in with approaches not sampled here, like Roy Bhaskar's Critical Realism, Edgar Morin's Complex Thought, or metamodernism. (shrink)

This is the second volume of a three-volume study of one and many in Aristotle's Metaphysics. It covers Metaphysics 6, 7, 8, and 9. Chapter 4 summarizes the results of the textual analysis. Halper argues against three interpretations of form. Against the view that form is individual, he presents texts showing the universality and knowability of form. Form is universal because it is one in formula. Against the view that form is a kind of universal, he presents texts which (...) insist on the numerical unity of form. Form is individual because it is numerically one. The view that form is neither universal nor individual does not square with the requirement that form be the cause of unity in a thing. (shrink)

Unlike John Cobb, Jr., and others, I argue that the problems of pluralism cannot even be formulated accurately without a far more complicated thoery of religions than usually functions in the pluralism discussions. A thory of religious worldviews is sketched that shows that religious symbols need to the proximate, from the sophisticated to folk religion, from explicit values to implicit functioning values, from tight determination of the life to loose determination, from deep commitment to light commitment.

Halper's work develops a new approach to one of the most extensively studied philosophical classics. He removes Aristotle's Metaphysics from the medieval and contemporary lenses through which it is typically viewed and places it squarely within the context of Greek metaphysical speculation. As a result many passages become intelligible philosophical arguments.

What is truth? Michael Lynch defends a bold new answer to this question. Traditional theories hold that all truths are true in the same way. More recent theories claim that the concept of truth is of no real importance. Lynch argues against both these extremes: truth is a functional property whose function can be performed in more than one way.

Twenty years after the appearance of the first of his three-volume One and Many in Aristotle's Metaphysics, Edward Halper has produced his much anticipated prequel commentary on the opening books of the Metaphysics. Readers of the chronologically prior Central Books will not be disappointed here. The analytic detail, the remarkably comprehensive yet deftly critical attention to the vast history of Aristotle scholarship, the clarity and precision of compositional style—all hallmarks of Halper's earlier work—are here in abundance as he works (...) through his singularly sweeping vision of the unity of Aristotle's book.Halper's central argument is that the problem of the One and the Many is Aristotle's most crucial and pervasive concern in the Metaphysics. While Aristotle himself never declares this—not even in those passages on the Presocratic philosophers where this problem features most prominently—Halper argues convincingly that Aristotle's conviction about the possibility of a science as determined by a necessary degree of unity among the objects it studies must itself assume the solvability of the One and Many problem. As explicated in the. (shrink)

Modern art history practice often treats Buddhist icons or ritual objects as unique objects, focusing on their originality and uniqueness. This text investigates how the paradoxical Buddhist doctrine of ‘the one and the many’ was translated into visual language through manipulation of the relationship between copies and the original. It analyses the different tactics and strategies formulated around given socio-historical frameworks to visualise the notion of infinity, and ultimately the structure of the universe, and suggests that multiple copies of (...) a single design were more potent a vehicle than single objects in expressing ideas related to the Buddhist metaphysics. (shrink)

Uses the problem of the one and the many as a lens through which to examine the Central Books of Aristotle's Metaphysics.

A review of Edward Halper's brilliant exegesis of the middle books of Aristotle's Metaphysics, in which he shows that Aristotle keys his search for the hierarchy of senses of being to his quest for the hierarchical array of the senses of unity.

There are different approaches to the narrative self. I limit myself to one approach that argues narratives have an important role to play in our lives without it being true that a narrative constitutes and creates the self. My own position is broadly sympathetic with that view, but my interest lies with the question of whether there is truth in the claim that to create one’s self-narrative is to create oneself. I argue that a self-narrative may be multiply realised by (...) the inner self—impressions and emotions—and the outer self—roles in work and life. I take an optimistic attitude to the idea that narrative provides a metaphor that may stimulate insight into the nature of self if we accept a plurality of narrative selves. (shrink)

In Truth as One and Many, Michael Lynch offers a new theory of truth. There are two kinds of theory of truth in the literature. On the one hand, we have logical theories, which seek to construct formal systems that are consistent, while also containing a predicate which have as many as possible of the properties which we ordinarily take the English predicate ‘is true’ to have; salient examples include Tarski’s and Kripke’s theories of truth. On the other (...) hand, we have metaphysical theories, which seek to give a non-formal account of the nature of truth – of what truth consists in, of what it means to say that something is true; salient examples include correspondence, coherence and deflationary theories of truth. Lynch’s theory – functionalism about truth – is of the second sort.The theory takes its start from a number of principles which Lynch classifies as truisms about truth:Objectivity: The belief that p is true if, and only if, with respect to the belief that p, things are as they are believed to be.Norm of Belief: It is prima facie correct to believe that p if and only if the proposition that p is true.End of Inquiry: Other things being equal, true beliefs are a worthy goal of inquiry.Lynch argues that other familiar principles can be derived from these: for example, Objectivity together with some auxiliary principles and definitions yields versions of the T-schema, and of the principle that beliefs can be true without being warranted and vice versa. These principles are supposed to give the nominal essence of truth – to constitute our folk theory of truth. Lynch …. (shrink)

International Journal of Philosophical Studies, Volume 20, Issue 1, Page 105-114, February 2012.

Isaiah Berlin is widely acknowledged as a major figure in twentieth-century political philosophy and the history of ideas. His famous Oxford inaugural lecture, Two Concepts of Liberty, especially the last, crucial, section, entitled The One and the Many, has provoked a vast secondary literature. So it is surprising that until now there has been no substantial critical reader dedicated to his work.Editors George Crowder and Henry Hardy have admirably filled this need with this stimulating new volume, which provides a (...) systematic and comprehensive treatment of the main aspects of Berlin's work. The essays (all but two of which are newly commissioned) critically examine Berlin's work across its whole range, including his treatment of Marx, Russian thinkers, Jewish themes, liberty, pluralism, the Enlightenment and Counter-Enlightenment, nationalism, history, and religion.The contributors are: Jonathan Allen (University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign); Shlomo Avineri (Hebrew University, Jerusalem); Terrell Carver (University of Bristol); Joshua L. Cherniss (Harvard and Oxford Universities); George Crowder (Flinders University); William A. Galston (University of Maryland); Graeme Garrard (Cardiff University); Ryan Hanley (Marquette University); Henry Hardy (Oxford University); Michael Jinkins (Austin Presbyterian Theological Seminary); David Miller (Oxford University); Mario Ricciardi (University of Milan); and Andrzej Walicki (University of Notre Dame).Complete with a valuable bibliography, this outstanding collection of recent scholarship on a seminal thinker shows the continuing relevance and importance of Berlin's many contributions to the understanding of our contemporary predicament.George Crowder (Adelaide, Australia), associate professor in the School of Political and International Studies at Flinders University, Adelaide, Australia, is the author of Classical Anarchism, Liberalism and Value Pluralism and Isaiah Berlin: Liberty and Pluralism.Henry Hardy (Oxford, England), a Fellow of Wolfson College (Oxford, England), Isaiah Berlin's editor, and one of his literary trustees, has edited or co-edited 17 books by Isaiah Berlin, most recently Political Ideas in the Romantic Age, Flourishing: Letters 1928-1946, and The Soviet Mind: Russian Culture under Communism. He is currently working with Jennifer Holmes on an edition of Berlin's letters. (shrink)

The paper examines philosophical issues that arise in contexts where one has many different models for treating the same system. I show why in some cases this appears relatively unproblematic (models of turbulence) while others represent genuine difficulties when attempting to interpret the information that models provide (nuclear models). What the examples show is that while complementary models needn’t be a hindrance to knowledge acquisition, the kind of inconsistency present in nuclear cases is, since it is indicative of a (...) lack of genuine theoretical understanding. It is important to note that the differences in modeling do not result directly from the status of our knowledge of turbulent flows as opposed to nuclear dynamics—both face fundamental theoretical problems in the construction and application of models. However, as we shall, the ‘problem context(s)’ in which the modeling takes plays a decisive role in evaluating the epistemic merit of the models themselves. Moreover, the theoretical difficulties that give rise to inconsistent as opposed to complementary models (in the cases I discuss) impose epistemic and methodological burdens that cannot be overcome by invoking philosophical strategies like perspectivism, paraconsistency or partial structures. (shrink)

This volume in the Political Theory and Contemporary Philosophy series examines one of the most important topics in contemporary political theory: how to conceptualize the relationship between the one and the many. The essays discuss how to reconcile multiple ontologies without subsuming them to a totalitarian unity. While one school of thought seeks to create a new ontology based on the many instead of the one,, another proposes to understand the "one" as the "ultra-one" of the event. In (...) this groundbreaking work, leading thinkers explore these debates and offer alternative concepts. Building on Jean-Luc Nancy's essay who proposes an ontology of "singular plurality," contributors aim to synthesize the one and the many and suggest different ways of forming collectives, beyond the dominant representative political forms. An original and challenging work, Politics of the One addresses new possible ways of bringing people together, integrating philosophy with theoretical and practical problems of politics. (shrink)

In Book K of the Metaphysics Aristotle raises a problem about a very persistent concern of Greek philosophy, that of the relation between the one and the many , but in a rather peculiar context. He asks: ‘What on earth is it in virtùe of which mathematical magnitudes are one? It is reasonable that things around us [i.e. sensible things] be one in virtue of [their] ψνχ or part of their ψνχ, or something else; otherwise there is not one (...) but many, the thing is divided up. But [mathematical] objects are divisible and quantitative. What is it that makes them one and holds them together?’. (shrink)

We discuss Aristotle's "Categories" as an answer to Plato's One-over-Many argument. For Plato, F-ness is something "over against" particular F things; to predicate "F" of these things is to assert that they all stand in a certain relation to F-ness. Aristotle answers that predication is classification; and there being a classification of a certain sort is a fact correlative with there being things classifiable in the way the classification in question would classify them.

For someone who is inclined towards truth monism and moral realism, reading this book is like journeying through a foreign country: somewhat disconcerting, but nonetheless enjoyable. Michael Lynch’s world is a stoutly naturalistic world, in which representation is conceived in terms of causal or teleological relations. This is a world in which it is hard to fit normative facts. Thus, the reader is told that there are good reasons to think that ‘moral properties, should they exist, would not be the (...) sort of properties with which we enter into causal contact’ (p. 161). But it is also a world in which thought is conceived of as unified, in the sense that propositions of all kinds, whether about middle-sized dry goods, mathematical objects, or morals, are truth-apt and cognitive, so that they can intermingle in reasoning. What we have, then, is the following: no moral facts in any serious sense of that term, but ordinary moral truth nonetheless. This is an interesting, but difficult, position. What it requires is a decidedly original account of truth, which Lynch dubs the functionalist theory of truth, according to which truth is both one and many. (shrink)

The question of where ultimacy lies should be central to the Christian. It is easy to see the social implications of allowing priority to fall to either the one or the many. This volume examines in-depth the Christian solution to the problem of the one and the many - the Trinitarian God. Only in the godhead is this dilemma resolved. Only in the Trinity does there reside an equal ultimacy of unity and plurality. Rushdoony examines the history of (...) Western thought from the standpoint of the one and the many and demonstrates clearly that the most astute thinkers were unable to resolve this philosophical conflict. What is needed now is a complete return to the Trinitarian view of God and its implications for a Christian social order. (shrink)

This book seeks to find creative and transformative relationship among roots and routes and create a new dynamics of awakening so that we can overcome the problems of closed and xenopbhobic roots and rootless cosmopolitanism. The book draws upon multiple philosophical and spiritual traditions of the world such as Siva Tantra, Buddhist phenomenology and Peircean Semiotics and discusses the works of Ibn-Arabi, Thoreau, Tolstoy, Gandhi and Raimon Panikkar,among others.The book is transdiscipinary building on creative thinking from philosophy, anthropology, political studies (...) and literature. It is a unique contribution for forging a new relationship between roots and routes in our contemporary fragile and complex world. (shrink)

Lo studio intende mettere in evidenza l'ambiguità della nozione di unità, intesa come entità numerica, con la nozione di unità quale sinonimo di essere. Sul primo concetto verte la parte iniziale dello studio, alla quale segue l'esame del significato ontologico di «uno». Le considerazioni fatte guidano l'A. a valutare i rapporti di relazione fra le nozioni di essere e uno, e quelle di sostanzialità, identità e semplicità in Tommaso. La gerarchia ontologica che ha al vertice l'essere assoluto e l'assoluta unità (...) implica la paradossale impossibilità di «significare» e definire la divinità. (shrink)