Henosis, Empowerment, Enlightenment

One prominent Ancient Monadist, properly Monist, unlike Leibniz, is Plotinus, whose system is probably best known for the Emanation that is his characterization of the Monad's creativity of the Universe.  Now, within this Universe, the peak experience of a created being is Henosis--its fusion with the Monad--an experience that Plotinus reportedly attributes to both Plato and Aristotle, as well.  But, Henosis is not to be confused with the retrospective interpretation it, e. g. in Plotinus' case, the moment of a created being's awareness of its own divine creativity, retrospectively reduced to a mere Intuition.  Likewise, Plato does not thereby do Good when encountering the Form of the Good, but merely knows it, while Aristotle's Active Mind is most fulfilled when merely contemplating eternal principles.  In Modernity, too, the unity of a Spinozist Mode with its creative deity is Intuition, as is Bergson's experience of Creative Energy.  In other words, Plotinus epitomizes the long-standing philosophical tendency of reducing Henosis from a moment of Empowerment, to that of Enlightenment, i. e. from a dynamic moment with consequences, to a self-contained static one.

Monad, Dyad, Circle, Ellipse

It is unclear if Leibniz is aware of the historical precedent of his use of the term Monad.  That is Pythagoras', and it is the name of his diety, the simple and original entity from which all else follows, including the Dyad, his term for Matter.  So, Leibniz' use is perhaps doubly ironic--the existence in his system of a plurality of Monads is contrary both to what the term connotes, as well as to the Monism of his ancient predecessor.  Now, the Pythagoreans represent the Monad as a point within a circle.  So, the irony in their case is that these pioneers of Geometry seem unaware that a Circle is a special case of an Ellipse, and, specifically, of a figure with two foci.  In other words, the image of an Ellipse with two foci could represent the Dyad, which therefore precedes the Monad.  Indeed, the reduction of an Ellipse to a Circle could represent one of the most ancient of philosophical endeavors--the attempt by a complex entity to posit the prior existence of a simple entity from which it is derived.

Monad and Dyad

Leibniz' Monad is the Soul of a Body, the Unity of a Multiplicity, the experiences of which are a succession of Perceptions, each itself a Unity of a Multiplicity, driven by Appetition.  Now, a problem with this model is signified in the formulation 'the Monad is the Soul of a Body', since it suggests a separation of Monad from Body.  Furthermore, since Experience is constituted by Perceptions, the model is subject to the challenge raised by Descartes, and amplified by Phenomenalists--the supposition that the Body even exists is ungrounded, and, hence, is problematic.  But, that challenge abstracts from another dimension of Experience--Motility, the product of Volition, constituted by setting in motion multiple corporeal parts, e. g. each of the legs.  In other words, the Monad is a Formal Principle that abstracts from its complementary Material Principle, i. e. the Monad is half a Dyad.

Active Mind and Practical Syllogism

Aristotle' contrast of Active Mind vs. Passive Mind is that of created particulars vs. received particulars, or, in other words, Knowledge from Deduction vs. Knowledge from observation, e. g. that Socrates is mortal as a conclusion from the proposition that all men are mortal vs. watching him die.  So, Mind is Active only to the extent that there exists at least one non-empirical Major Premise.  And, for such to exist, it can only be discovered in Reflection, i. e. in the self-contemplation of Mind, perhaps aka 'Intuition', a term that he occasionally uses.  Now, he recognizes that a Syllogism can be either Theoretical or Practical, though he does not seem to go so far as Spinoza or Kant in recognizing the existence of Practical Particular propositions derived purely from Reflection.  Accordingly, his concept of Active Mind has a lesser extent than do theirs.  Likewise, he cannot recognize that Active Mind is fundamentally Practical, as is Reflection, from which passive Contemplation is abstracted.

Particulation and Re-formation

The process, attributed by Aristotle to Active Mind, of creating a particular can be called Particulation.  It can also be called Materialization, since a Class is the Form of its Particulars, though that term is laden with other connotations.  And, since the addition of a new member varies the given Class, the process is a variety of Diversification, as well.  So, for example, by Particulation in 1959, the United States created the State of Alaska.  But, at the same time, Alaska has its own Particulars, i. e. its inhabitants.  Furthermore, the addition of a new side to a rectangle can be accompanied by a re-formation, resulting in a pentagon.  These familiar examples illustrate that the Formal Principle and the Material Principle are complementary processes, in contrast with the many uses of 'material' and 'matter' throughout history that connote them as antithetical to some corresponding term, e. g. to Spirit, to Mind, etc.

Mind and Binarity

The binarity of Mind is evident in the sensory-motor duality of the brain, i. e. is the end-point of the reception of information, and the origin of motility, from which follow the pairs of Cognition-Volition, and Theory-Practice.  Furthermore, Motility is itself constituted by a coordinated multiplicity of motions, even simple walking, and, hence, combines the Material Principle, i. e. multiple particular impulses, and the Formal Principle, that unites them in a pattern.  However, what has complicated the study of these twofold phenomena is a commitment to reductionism that forces the suppression or subordination of one of the principles, usually the Material one, e. g. the subordination of Practice to Theory, the effort to attribute causal efficacy to mere Contemplation, etc.  But, the abandonment of often strained Monism, implicit or explicit, leaves the binary character of Mind easier to recognize.

Mind, Formal Principle, Material Principle

Aristotle likens Mind as the Form of Forms, to the hand as the tool of tools.  But a tool is not just ready-to-hand, to borrow from Heidegger; the hand builds it.  Likewise, as Spinoza observes, Mind creates its intellectual tools.  Thus, the relation of Mind to its Forms is twofold: it is their model, and it produces them.  In other words, Mind is both their Formal Principle and their Material Principle, a binarity that is difficult to conceive clearly without the introduction of the latter.