Unity synonym1/26/2024 ![]() For example, 'upward' cannot exist unless there is a 'downward', they are opposites but they co-substantiate one another, their unity is that either one exists because the opposite is necessary for the existence of the other, one manifests immediately with the other. Yet rather than 'stasis' the identity of opposites, there being unity within their duality, is taken to be the instance of their very manifestation, the unity between them being the essential principle of making any particular opposite in question extant as either opposing force. If the opposites were completely balanced, the result would be stasis, but often it is implied that one of the pairs of opposites is larger, stronger or more powerful than the other, such that over time, one of the opposed conditions prevails over the other. ![]() Modern philosophy ĭialecticians claim that unity or identity of opposites can exist in reality or in thought. The idea occurs in the traditions of Tantric Hinduism and Buddhism, in German mysticism, Zoroastrianism, Taoism, Zen and Sufism, among others. Such insight into the unity of things is a kind of immanence, and is found in various non-dualist and dualist traditions. The term is also used in describing a revelation of the oneness of things previously believed to be different. Or, according to Paracelsus' pupil, Gerhard Dorn, the highest grade of the alchemical coniunctio consisted in the union of the total man with the unus mundus ("one world"). For example, Michael Maier stresses that the union of opposites is the aim of the alchemical work. In alchemy, coincidentia oppositorum is a synonym for coniunctio. Psychiatrist Carl Jung, the philosopher and Islamic Studies professor Henry Corbin as well as Jewish philosophers Gershom Scholem and Abraham Joshua Heschel also used the term. Mircea Eliade, a 20th-century historian of religion, used the term extensively in his essays about myth and ritual, describing the coincidentia oppositorum as "the mythical pattern". It is a neoplatonic term attributed to 15th century German polymath Nicholas of Cusa in his essay, De Docta Ignorantia (1440). Medieval philosophy Coincidentia oppositorum Ĭoincidentia oppositorum is a Latin phrase meaning coincidence of opposites. ( DK B126)Īn object persists despite opposite properties, even as it undergoes change. ![]() Heraclitus also uses the succession of opposites as a basis for change:Ĭold things grow hot, hot things grow cold, a moist thing withers, a parched thing is wetted. According to Heraclitus, everything is in constant flux, and every changing object contains at least one pair of opposites (though not necessarily simultaneously) and every pair of opposites is contained in at least one object. For, at the same time, this slanted road has the opposite qualities of ascent and descent. This is an example of a compresent unity of opposites. The road up and the road down are the same thing. An aphorism of Heraclitus illustrates the idea as follows: Thus, a unity of opposites is present in the universe simultaneously containing difference and sameness. That is to say, when an object moves from point A to point B, a change is created, while the underlying law remains the same. The universe of Heraclitus is in constant change, while remaining the same. Heraclitus, however, did not accept the Milesian monism and replaced their underlying material arche with a single, divine law of the universe, which he called Logos. According to Anaximenes, there was not so much a war of opposites, as a continuum of change. There was, according to Anaximander, a continual war of opposites.Īnaximenes of Miletus, a student and successor of Anaximander, replaced this infinite, boundless arche with air, a known element with neutral properties. Thus, the material world was said to be composed of an infinite, boundless apeiron from which arose the elements (earth, air, fire, water) and pairs of opposites (hot/cold, wet/dry). Anaximander posited that every element had an opposite, or was connected to an opposite (water is cold, fire is hot). Philosophers had for some time been contemplating the notion of opposites. ![]() The unity of opposites was first suggested to the western view by Heraclitus (c. 535 – c. 475 BC), a pre-Socratic Greek thinker. It defines a situation in which the existence or identity of a thing (or situation) depends on the co-existence of at least two conditions which are opposite to each other, yet dependent on each other and presupposing each other, within a field of tension. The unity of opposites (Latin unio oppositorum) is the central category of dialectics, said to be related to the notion of non-duality in a deep sense. Central category of dialectics, said to be related to non-duality in a deep sense
0 Comments
Leave a Reply.AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |