Talk:Monad (philosophy)

What's This Supposed to Mean?

"Pythagorean and Platonic philosophers like Plotinus and Porphyry condemned Gnosticism (see Neoplatonism and Gnosticism) for their treatment of the monad or one." Really? There's no source for this and, moreover, the sentence is idiotically vague. What was their treatment on the monad? And were they treating the monad poorly or the idea of it? Did they get rid of the monad at a garage sale? Or did they just have a different idea of it different from Pythagorus? It is an annoyingly stupid sentence. Gingermint (talk) 00:04, 27 July 2010 (UTC)

Accuracy - possible factual error

quote "according to the Pythagoreans, [monad] was a term for Divinity or the first being, or the totality of all beings" - is this correct - ie the association of the "monad" with "god" in the eyes of the pythagoreans? As far as I know the "monad" was the 'first thing' - but not necessarily god. eg in the book

• "The true intellectual system of the universe: wherein all the reason and philosophy of atheism is confuted, and its impossibility demonstrated : with a treatise concerning eternal and immutable morality, Volume 2 Ralph Cudworth, Johann Lorenz Mosheim, 1845, p.10 google books

- it states that some others considered the monad to be god - which suggests the connection was infered not explicit - are the people mentioned considered to be "pythagoreans"? - is this a more modern or greek interpretation? What does pythagrorus actualy say etc etc.Imgaril (talk) 05:13, 31 October 2011 (UTC)

That's according to Hippolytus: "And so he proclaimed that the Deity is a monad; and carefully acquainting himself with the nature of number..." (http://christianbookshelf.org/hippolytus/the_refutation_of_all_heresies/chapter_ii_pythagoras_his_cosmogony_rules.htm) If this a correct description of what the Pythagoreans though I know not. Rune X2 (talk) 20:58, 6 December 2011 (UTC)

Comparison with German article

(Original section title: "A joke?")

Compare this tiny page with its equivalent on the German wiki: http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monade_(Philosophie) --75.154.246.100 (talk) 16:30, 3 January 2012 (UTC)

Interesting comparison. No, this is not a joke. It just is a consequence of different focus and division of topics in the two Wikipedias. The term "monad" has been used by

1. the Pythagoreans ...
2. ... people in between ...
3. ... Leibniz ...
4. ... and after.

In English en:Monad (philosophy) describes #1, while #3 - what you are looking for - is covered by en:Monadology. (That is mentioned in parentheses in the last section; maybe it should be made clearer.) #2 and #4 are not covered at all here; maybe someone could translate that from German.

In German, content is arranged very differently. Strangely, #1 seems to be not covered at all; the section "Die Monas bis zu Leibniz" in de:Monade (Philosophie) starts right with Plotin. Conversely, #3, Leibniz's monads, are fought over by two articles, de:Monade (Philosophie) and de:Monadologie, the reasons for which escape me. (This has been raised as an issue at WikiProjekt Philosophie, but there seemed to be no conclusion.) — Sebastian 18:25, 3 January 2012 (UTC)

Having said the above, I looked at this article to see if I could improve it. But it is so bad that it may be better to discard most of its current content and change it to a redirect to Monadology, and add the missing bigger picture of monads there. — Sebastian 18:45, 3 January 2012 (UTC)

I don't think it should be discarded. I think it just needs a complete revision and rewrite. --142.33.66.178 (talk) 03:33, 11 January 2012 (UTC)