Connected
Metaphysics
Is reality ultimately one or many, and how do unity and plurality hang together?
If the One simply is, it cannot be many; yet whatever is at all is already both one and many.
Being and unity are the same: each substance is a one, and the world is an ordered many.
The One is beyond Being; everything else is a one-many flowing forth from it.
God is one simple substance in three persons, and creation is a many held in being by the One.
Unity is a transcendental (convertible with being) and God alone is absolutely simple.
There is only one substance, infinite and indivisible; every finite thing is a mode of it.
The true unities are monads: simple substances without parts, and the world is their infinite plurality.
Every perception is a distinct existence; the unity we think we find is only the mind's habit of connection.
The manifold of sense becomes one world only through the transcendental unity of apperception.
The one and the many pass dialectically into each other; the truth is the whole that contains both.
The universe is pluralistic: really many, loosely connected, an each-form rather than an all-form.
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