Henads and Monads (from Twitter)
May. 2nd, 2014 11:41 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
endymions_bowerI see now exactly where the technical distinction in later Platonists between 'henads' and 'monads' arises. These terms are used seemingly interchangeably in Plato's Philebus, but that's not surprising, since the Philebus only gives us a glimpse of the more technical discussions that were going on within the Academy. But in Aristotle's discussions of the Platonic doctrine of "incomparable units" (e.g., Metaphysics 1080a), he uses 'monads' to refer to, for instance, the two 'monads' in the number Two, the three 'monads' in the number Three, etc. The number Two is an "incomparable unit", so the two 'monads' in it are not comparable to the two-of-three monads in the number Three.
This talk of numbers is just a conveniently abstract way of talking about characteristics of all kinds of units. If we take a unit in its "incomparable" respect, each of its attributes (its 'monads') will be peculiar, that is, they will be incomparable to attributes of another "incomparable unit", no matter how similar. (You can't get much more similar than the two monads in two and the two monads in three, hence the value of the mathematical terms.) It is these "incomparable units" that will come to be termed "henads", while their attributes will continue to be called "monads".
If the two monads in Two and the two monads in Three are incomparable, how much more so are any of the attributes of Aphrodite, say, with that of any other Goddess or God, however similar they may appear in our eyes? (Before anybody gets upset here, we're *grounding* comparison, not damning it.)
This talk of numbers is just a conveniently abstract way of talking about characteristics of all kinds of units. If we take a unit in its "incomparable" respect, each of its attributes (its 'monads') will be peculiar, that is, they will be incomparable to attributes of another "incomparable unit", no matter how similar. (You can't get much more similar than the two monads in two and the two monads in three, hence the value of the mathematical terms.) It is these "incomparable units" that will come to be termed "henads", while their attributes will continue to be called "monads".
If the two monads in Two and the two monads in Three are incomparable, how much more so are any of the attributes of Aphrodite, say, with that of any other Goddess or God, however similar they may appear in our eyes? (Before anybody gets upset here, we're *grounding* comparison, not damning it.)
