Abejo

1.Explain the basic problem of the One and the Many.

- The dilemma of the One and the Many on the huge scale of the infinite cosmos of real beings:
how all beings, relative to one other, are at once many and various, but participate in the shared
quality of current existence that unites them in one big all-embracing community of existents
that we call "the real order" or simply "reality," so the entirety of the real is somehow both one
and many. There are two basic issues: either we embrace just one element and reject the other
as merely an image, an illusion, or a mental projection, or we fail to take both the plurality and
the unity of beings properly.

2. Explain the basic positions of (a) Radical Monism; (b) Mitigated Monism; (c) Radical Pluralism; and (d)
Participation doctrines.

- Radical monism is the denial of all variation and plurality in existence as an intellectual and
spiritual illusion that must be overcome. Being is fundamentally one; only the pure, undivided
Oneness exists and is actually real. It disavows all variation inside a being, and with variation
before and after, all change. Nothing has actually changed. Hinduism is one example. Mitigated
monism, which does acknowledge diversity but only as modifications or components of a single
all-encompassing Divine Being or material rather than as independent creatures with their own
autonomous existence, would fall under this category. Only the diversity and multiplicity of
things that are actual are what radical pluralities is. They are not united in any way that goes
beyond their irreducible particularity, not even by the unity of a single shared source. Unifying
concepts like "being" are only word constructs that our minds invented to facilitate speaking
about them all at once in our limited language; they are empiricists. Mitigated Pluralism
acknowledges a certain oneness of being, but only as a bare minimum reality serving as an
impartial yardstick for my honest evaluations. They are unable or unwilling to probe any deeper
into the causes or foundations of the objectivity of our knowledge. The philosophical focus is
entirely on what it is, its nature or essence, and how it functions; they are essentialists; there is
no longer any interest in it as it is. Participation Doctrines are the rich, intricate, and synthetic
doctrines that are appropriate for both the actual diversity and multiplicity of creatures as well as
their inherent connection to one another. This inherent oneness is typically seen as some sort of
"participation" in a fundamental characteristic that unites all people.

St. Thomas’s Solution

3. Why must we take seriously both the one and the many?

- The difficulty of locating the one thing at the center of all cosmic occurrences is known as the "one and
the many issue." The one and the many problem is essentially caused by the notion that the cosmos is
one thing. Given that there is just one element involved, there must be a single, underlying component.

4. The Argument: a) Basic data of problem? b) Why must there be a real distinction of co-principles in all
beings save perhaps one? c) Nature of this “real metaphysical composition”? d) How best name the
components? e) Relation between the two?
- The fundamental issue is that, inasmuch as they exist, all actual beings are identical to one
another. Nothing is distinct if the co-principles are identical. They are incompatible with one
another and cannot be reduced to one another by nature. The elements are referred to as the
similarity and dissimilarity principles. Both parts are as though "married" to one another and
cannot live without the other, failing which the creature ceases to exist.

5. Main Objections: (a) Misunderstanding of “composition”? (b) Misunderstanding of participation “in

the act of existence”? (c) Misunderstanding of “essence as limit”?

- a) the erroneous conception of existence, essence, and co-principles. they consider

themselves to be independent creatures, each of which is real in its own right. They cooperate
to create a single actual entity that, in theory, may still be divided.

b) It is believed that the act of existence is distributed among species are like threads
interconnected from a spider web.
c) The limitation of the principle cannot be the same as the existence it restricts because if it
were, then everything that existed would have to have the same limit, which is obviously false
as several distinct entities exist at once and are not similar to one another.

6. Key Implications?

- The cosmological argument for the presence of God is one of the sorts of argument presented in
Aquinas's first three arguments, which are the arguments from motion, causality, and contingency. Each
one starts with a broad fact about natural events and moves on to the idea that the cosmos has a
supreme creative source.

7. Sit back now and try to get a synoptic vision of the whole universe as both Many yet somehow One:
Can you get a feel for this whole vast universe of real beings as somehow a single great community of
actual existents joined together by the same bond of similarity that is their sharing, each in its own
distinctive way, in the one great central perfection, analogically common to all—actual existence, co-
presence in some way to all the others?

- The vision I see is like a webbed connection that each and every individual is interconnected, just like a
spider web. Each individual working, playing, and living their own lives but each are which essential to
one another, despite kilometers of distance from each other. All individuals are similar in one particular
thing, and that is the soul. It is the bond that everyone can never deny whether they believe or not as
we are all beings living in the physical realm. We can deem this phenomenon as a central perfection
based on how deeply connected, we are towards one another, due to the actual existence that we all
share.