The One

The One (Greek to hen) is the first principle of Plotinus’s philosophy and of the Neoplatonic tradition after him. Everything that exists is a unity of some kind, and depends on unity to be what it is; the source of all unity cannot itself be one thing among others, and so cannot be a being, a thought, or anything that can be described. Plotinus also calls it the Good, since it is what everything desires and turns back toward.

Because the One is beyond being (a phrase Plotinus takes from Plato’s Republic) and beyond intellect, it can be spoken of only by negation and analogy. Even “one” is not its name but a denial of multiplicity. From it proceed Intellect (nous) and Soul, not by choice or making but as light from the sun; and the soul’s highest good is to return to it, in a union (henōsis) that Plotinus describes as a contact or vision beyond knowledge.

Later Neoplatonists, especially Proclus, elaborated the One into a more complex system of intermediate principles. Christian thinkers took up the language of the One beyond being, above all through Pseudo-Dionysius, while insisting that God is also personal and creates freely.