/lit/ - Literature

>>14383430
Apart from these considerations, if the One is that which brings together all things (for to the One belongs the property of making one, and of being the cause of the mixture),10 but that which makes one and that which brings together all things is prior to and also superior to that which is collected
or made one, clearly the One is the principle of all things, just because it is contradistinguished with respect to all things in the way that cause is contradistinguished with respect to effect, and this is what we are familiar with as One.
But is nothing else one, as for example the so-called generic one?
We must say that the one as genus is a one with which we are familiar in the sense of a one among all things, in the way that the many are one, by which I mean one form, the form of Good or of Beautiful. In any case, the determinate concept corresponds to a determinate reality. We must understand that One not as bringing about unity, but as bringing about the many. For it is
actually the cause of multiplicity, cause of the good, cause of beauty, cause of the whole, and there is nothing for which it does not function as a cause by virtue of its unique simplicity. If it brings about unity, then it cannot be called One in the strict sense. If the epithet “One” does not belong to it properly, then
we are entitled to call each one [by a different name], that is, not only cause of unity, but also cause of multiplicity, and if you wish One and many, or rather all things before the many and before the all.
What then?...