3.68
The One is the great leveller: all is made the same—all bows the same—before the One; the One ensures uniformity in non-human nature and, equally, in us through common and good sense.[1]
This One, however, isn’t part of the binary one/many; rather, it rules this through and through. The One is both the one and the many, for the many, the all, gain their sense in reference to the One.[2]
The One rules over all such binaries. This is why a mere revaluation of values—if, say, we value matter equally to or more than form—is insufficient because the suture of the binary is sewn by the One.
[1] Common and good sense ensure that identity and sameness penetrate into each person: “Good sense determines the contribution of the faculties in each case, while common sense contributes the form of the Same” (Deleuze, Difference & Repetition, p. 134). See p. 131–7.
[2] While there are some commonalities between how I and Plotinus use the term (Plotinus, The Essential Plotinus, ed. and trans. Elmer O’Brien, S.J. (Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company, Inc., 1978), p. 68, 73–88, 92, 96–100, 102, 106–8, 170–4), my use of ‘the One’ isn’t tied to an emanationist metaphysics. While the One is a kind of a priori for us, i.e., for our particular disclosure, it isn’t an a priori outside this. The One, as I use it, is generally a presupposition of our way of being: i.e., that all things must have a unitary principle. This principle is, in line with Plotinus, prior to things, Soul, Intellect, and even Being (i.e., in the sense that Being, for us, must be one (i.e., non-metaphoric)), and it is the Good. The One explains and ‘emanates’ multiplicity (i.e., in the sense that, for us, the many or the multiple derives from the One). As with Plotinus, for us, weakness results and increases as we descend from the principle itself. My use, however, is different because for me ‘the One’ is always connected to particular disclosures.