Do you? Hi, I'm Peter Adamson, and you're listening to the History of Philosophy podcast brought to you

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Simplicity itself, Platinous on the one and intellect.

Here's a trivia question you won't hear at any pub quiz night.

What do armies, houses, sunflowers, and giraffes have in common. Things painted by Van Gogh perhaps?

No, he inexplicably failed to capture the noble giraffe in any of his artworks and I don't believe he was particularly keen on armies either.

The right answer is that all these things are mentioned at the beginning of Plotinus's

treatise on the one, which was placed at the very end of the Eniads by his student and editor

Porphry.

Actually, he doesn't mention sunflowers or giraffes by name, speaking instead generally of plants and animals, but I think we all know at least

which animal he had in mind.

He mentions these things because of something else they have in common, they are all one.

Without unity, an army would just be a bunch of people standing around with an alarming amount of weaponry.

And nothing can be a giraffe without being one giraffe.

Indeed, to qualify as a thing of any kind is to be one thing.

Unity is a condition of being.

On the other hand, not everything possesses unity to the same degree.

Though you might say that each army is one army, just as much as each sunflower, is one sunflower, armies clearly have less unity than

sunflowers. Like all plants and animals, the bodies of sunflowers and giraffes are animated

by an internal principle of life. This explains

their ability to nourish themselves, to turn towards the sun, or lope gracefully towards

...