The One sure is weird! One can absolutely regard it as both everything and nothing. This post was kinda a meditation on applying Neoplatonist answers to Zen questions, and in Zen the Void is the top of the chain, so that's why I went that route for this post. You can go the other way, too, but I do think it's important to try to grasp both (insofar as one can!) so one doesn't get caught up in models. (Both are wrong, after all! "The Tao that can be spoken of isn't the eternal Tao.")
If you want more food for meditation, Plotinus has two models of number: in one model, the One is one, the Intellect is two, the Soul is three, and Nature is four; in the other model, the One is the entire number line, the Intellect is one, and all the other natural numbers are the various souls. What I think is interesting is, in the second model, division is how you go "up" the chain of being: a composite, when divided, yields its primes; a prime, when divided, yields one (the Intellect); and one, when divided, yields only itself (the Intellect is the top of existents). In that sense, zero does kinda work as the One—you can't divide by zero, because doing so in a sense yields all numbers all at once. (Nonetheless, it's still kinda weird and you have to add a whole mess of special-case axioms to make it work. I'm with you that zero isn't really a number, just like "infinity" isn't a number—it's just a placeholder concept.)
(If you want even more food for meditation, the Pythagoreans had lots of models for how to apply numbers to the metaphysical realms and I'm frankly having a lot of trouble trying to understand and reconcile them all. The Theology of Arithmetic seems to be the go-to source here, and skimming it was fun, but it's gonna take me ages to unpack it.)
Still, either way, these are all just models that are intended to help point the way. The One, the Intellect, etc. aren't really numbers any more than I'm a fish. It's interesting and perhaps instructive to consider but I don't think it's good to get too hung up on it. I'm really glad you found it food for thought!
(And goodness, I'm not sure I'll ever understand Butler. Even Thomas Taylor is easier to read than he is! Still, I'll have to hazard another attempt sometime...)
no subject
If you want more food for meditation, Plotinus has two models of number: in one model, the One is one, the Intellect is two, the Soul is three, and Nature is four; in the other model, the One is the entire number line, the Intellect is one, and all the other natural numbers are the various souls. What I think is interesting is, in the second model, division is how you go "up" the chain of being: a composite, when divided, yields its primes; a prime, when divided, yields one (the Intellect); and one, when divided, yields only itself (the Intellect is the top of existents). In that sense, zero does kinda work as the One—you can't divide by zero, because doing so in a sense yields all numbers all at once. (Nonetheless, it's still kinda weird and you have to add a whole mess of special-case axioms to make it work. I'm with you that zero isn't really a number, just like "infinity" isn't a number—it's just a placeholder concept.)
(If you want even more food for meditation, the Pythagoreans had lots of models for how to apply numbers to the metaphysical realms and I'm frankly having a lot of trouble trying to understand and reconcile them all. The Theology of Arithmetic seems to be the go-to source here, and skimming it was fun, but it's gonna take me ages to unpack it.)
Still, either way, these are all just models that are intended to help point the way. The One, the Intellect, etc. aren't really numbers any more than I'm a fish. It's interesting and perhaps instructive to consider but I don't think it's good to get too hung up on it. I'm really glad you found it food for thought!
(And goodness, I'm not sure I'll ever understand Butler. Even Thomas Taylor is easier to read than he is! Still, I'll have to hazard another attempt sometime...)