In the previous entry Monism And Monotheism we observed how the great Pre-Socratic thinkers of Greece, who, as we should not forget, lived in a patently polytheistic society, were philosophically inclined toward monotheism, subjecting the gods of their culture, Zeus included, to a superior authority, manifested in the idea of fate, or necessity. It was fairly easy for us to connect the monistic tendency of Thales and others to the logical propensity for oneness of the supreme Deity, on their part, to which primordial oneness all the multiplicity of gods and heroes had to bow. Among the great monists we have mentioned Thales, who saw water as the first substance. The second Milesian philosopher on record, Anaximander, also a monist par excellence, disagreed with Thales on the nature of the first substance, apparently considering water as too mundane to merit such honor. In his judgment, it had to be some unknown primal substance, out of which all known substances were eventually to spring up. Anaximenes, the third Milesian philosopher, chose to return to the known, from Anaximander’s unknown, but, to distinguish himself from Thales, he called air the first substance, out of which every other substance originated. Heraclitus is yet another monistic philosopher, who proposes fire as the primal substance. He also believes in constant change, and in the struggle of the opposites (presaging Hegel), but his God is invariably one, even though encompassing within Himself all imaginable opposites: "God is day and night, winter and summer, war and peace, surfeit and hunger; but he takes various shapes just as fire, when it is mingled with spices, is named according to the savor of each."
But the epitome of Pre-Socratic monism was Parmenides of Elea, who rejected the everyday perception of multiple reality, as mistaken, arguing that the true reality of the world was the One Being, an unchanging, ungenerated, indestructible whole.
So far, we have followed the logical effects of monism on the philosophical rationalization of monotheism, demonstrating its sufficiency, but by no means its necessity, in such rationalization. In fact, monotheism is in no way a license for monism, as numerous examples illustrate.
The first explicitly monotheistic Greek philosopher was Xenophanes of Colophon. Starting with a severe denunciation of the Olympians ("Homer and Hesiod have attributed to the gods all things that are a shame and blameworthy among men, stealing and committing adultery, and deceiving each other!"), he rightfully concludes that these are not the real Deity, but are essentially man-made impostors: "But men consider that the gods are born, and that they have clothes and speech and bodies, like their own… The Ethiopians say their gods are snub-nosed and black, the Thracians that theirs have blue eyes and red hair…" (etc.)
Xenophanes’ God now emerges as one totally unlike any man or thing: "one god, greatest among gods and men, in no way similar to mortals either in body or in thought. Always remains in the same place, moving not at all; nor is it fitting for him to go to different places at different times, but without toil he shakes all things by the thought of his mind. All of him sees, all thinks, all hears."
Thus firmly establishing his monotheistic credentials, he is, however, not a monist: "All things are earth and water that come into being and grow… For we all are born of earth and water..." Earth and water, not one, but two substances. And yet, his God is one!
The philosopher Anaxagoras, a friend of Pericles, deviated from monism to such an extent that in his idea of infinite divisibility of matter the tiniest particles always contain all existing elements, but things appear to be that of which they contain the most. I would call him, however, the first explicit dualist, as alongside matter and above it he places the eternal and infinite mind, nous, which is pure (mixed with nothing) but enters into the composition of things, bringing life into them:
"Nous is infinite and self-ruled, and is mixed with nothing, but is alone, itself by itself. Nous has power over all things, both great and small, that have life. And Nous had power over the whole revolution, so that it began to revolve in the beginning. And it began to revolve first from a small beginning; but the revolution now extends over a larger space, and it will extend over a larger still. And all the things which are mingled together, and separated off, and distinguished, are all known by Nous. And Nous set in order all things that were to be, and all things that were and are not now and that are, and this revolution in which now revolve the stars and the sun and the moon, and the air and the ether that are separated off."
Aristotle is gleefully mocking Anaxagoras for failing to see the difference between nous and psyche, while Plato, before him, makes Socrates (in Phaedo, 98B) point out that the Anaxagorian nous is nothing but a deus ex machina, sorely deficient in both epistemological and teleological departments. But it is still obvious that Anaxagoras’s Nous possesses attributes which are sufficient to identify it as his monotheistic Supreme Being, and this is where this matter stands.
The most explicitly and forcefully anti-monistic was the flamboyant eccentric Empedocles, the materialist physicist, magician, mystical theologian, healer, democratic politician, a living god, and a fraud, who was the inventor of the four-element theory of matter (earth, air, fire, and water), with two cosmic forces, Love and Strife, engaged in an eternal battle for supremacy. There is no way to declare him monotheistic, as his philosophical offering contained at least one extra god to reckon with, himself.
And yet, assuming that much of Empedocles’ theory is chaotic and erratic, one ought to look for elements of a monotheistic tendency in his extant fragments, and one should not be disappointed, uncovering pieces like this: "Then neither is the bright orb of the sun greeted, nor yet either the shaggy might of earth or sea; thus, then, in the firm vessel of harmony is fixed God, a sphere, round, rejoicing in complete solitude." (Fr. 135.) Here is the unmistakable figure of One God, represented by the perfect geometrical figure of the orb! And the power through which God rules the world, the law, to which everything and everywhere bows, be that the four elements or the two cosmic forces, is necessity:
"There is an oracle of Necessity, an ancient ordinance of the gods, eternal, and sealed fast by broad oaths." (Fragment 115.) And here is more from Diels’ Doxographi Graeci: "Empedocles: The essence of necessity is the effective cause of the first principles and of the elements." (Aet. Plac. i. 26 321.)
In summarizing this and the previous entry, regardless of whether philosophical monism leads our thinker to the Oneness of God (or vice versa the subconscious belief in the Oneness of God leads him to the monistic worldview), or else our thinker rebels against the monism of others and proposes a multiplicity of elements constituting the physical world and multiple forces at work within it, the philosophical mind is a genuinely monotheistic mind, and the great Pre-Socratic philosophers of Greece bear witness to this contention.
And now we turn to the most remarkable Pre-Socratic philosopher, who combines a scientific genius with a genius philosopher and a genius theologian, in one person, himself. I am talking about Pythagoras.
(See the next entry …And God Was Number.)
But the epitome of Pre-Socratic monism was Parmenides of Elea, who rejected the everyday perception of multiple reality, as mistaken, arguing that the true reality of the world was the One Being, an unchanging, ungenerated, indestructible whole.
So far, we have followed the logical effects of monism on the philosophical rationalization of monotheism, demonstrating its sufficiency, but by no means its necessity, in such rationalization. In fact, monotheism is in no way a license for monism, as numerous examples illustrate.
The first explicitly monotheistic Greek philosopher was Xenophanes of Colophon. Starting with a severe denunciation of the Olympians ("Homer and Hesiod have attributed to the gods all things that are a shame and blameworthy among men, stealing and committing adultery, and deceiving each other!"), he rightfully concludes that these are not the real Deity, but are essentially man-made impostors: "But men consider that the gods are born, and that they have clothes and speech and bodies, like their own… The Ethiopians say their gods are snub-nosed and black, the Thracians that theirs have blue eyes and red hair…" (etc.)
Xenophanes’ God now emerges as one totally unlike any man or thing: "one god, greatest among gods and men, in no way similar to mortals either in body or in thought. Always remains in the same place, moving not at all; nor is it fitting for him to go to different places at different times, but without toil he shakes all things by the thought of his mind. All of him sees, all thinks, all hears."
Thus firmly establishing his monotheistic credentials, he is, however, not a monist: "All things are earth and water that come into being and grow… For we all are born of earth and water..." Earth and water, not one, but two substances. And yet, his God is one!
The philosopher Anaxagoras, a friend of Pericles, deviated from monism to such an extent that in his idea of infinite divisibility of matter the tiniest particles always contain all existing elements, but things appear to be that of which they contain the most. I would call him, however, the first explicit dualist, as alongside matter and above it he places the eternal and infinite mind, nous, which is pure (mixed with nothing) but enters into the composition of things, bringing life into them:
"Nous is infinite and self-ruled, and is mixed with nothing, but is alone, itself by itself. Nous has power over all things, both great and small, that have life. And Nous had power over the whole revolution, so that it began to revolve in the beginning. And it began to revolve first from a small beginning; but the revolution now extends over a larger space, and it will extend over a larger still. And all the things which are mingled together, and separated off, and distinguished, are all known by Nous. And Nous set in order all things that were to be, and all things that were and are not now and that are, and this revolution in which now revolve the stars and the sun and the moon, and the air and the ether that are separated off."
Aristotle is gleefully mocking Anaxagoras for failing to see the difference between nous and psyche, while Plato, before him, makes Socrates (in Phaedo, 98B) point out that the Anaxagorian nous is nothing but a deus ex machina, sorely deficient in both epistemological and teleological departments. But it is still obvious that Anaxagoras’s Nous possesses attributes which are sufficient to identify it as his monotheistic Supreme Being, and this is where this matter stands.
The most explicitly and forcefully anti-monistic was the flamboyant eccentric Empedocles, the materialist physicist, magician, mystical theologian, healer, democratic politician, a living god, and a fraud, who was the inventor of the four-element theory of matter (earth, air, fire, and water), with two cosmic forces, Love and Strife, engaged in an eternal battle for supremacy. There is no way to declare him monotheistic, as his philosophical offering contained at least one extra god to reckon with, himself.
And yet, assuming that much of Empedocles’ theory is chaotic and erratic, one ought to look for elements of a monotheistic tendency in his extant fragments, and one should not be disappointed, uncovering pieces like this: "Then neither is the bright orb of the sun greeted, nor yet either the shaggy might of earth or sea; thus, then, in the firm vessel of harmony is fixed God, a sphere, round, rejoicing in complete solitude." (Fr. 135.) Here is the unmistakable figure of One God, represented by the perfect geometrical figure of the orb! And the power through which God rules the world, the law, to which everything and everywhere bows, be that the four elements or the two cosmic forces, is necessity:
"There is an oracle of Necessity, an ancient ordinance of the gods, eternal, and sealed fast by broad oaths." (Fragment 115.) And here is more from Diels’ Doxographi Graeci: "Empedocles: The essence of necessity is the effective cause of the first principles and of the elements." (Aet. Plac. i. 26 321.)
In summarizing this and the previous entry, regardless of whether philosophical monism leads our thinker to the Oneness of God (or vice versa the subconscious belief in the Oneness of God leads him to the monistic worldview), or else our thinker rebels against the monism of others and proposes a multiplicity of elements constituting the physical world and multiple forces at work within it, the philosophical mind is a genuinely monotheistic mind, and the great Pre-Socratic philosophers of Greece bear witness to this contention.
And now we turn to the most remarkable Pre-Socratic philosopher, who combines a scientific genius with a genius philosopher and a genius theologian, in one person, himself. I am talking about Pythagoras.
(See the next entry …And God Was Number.)
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