Monad

Use in the book

The arithmetic extracts call the monad the beginning of number. Another report expressly distinguishes the monad, as beginning of numbers, from the One, as beginning of numbered things. In a comparison about intellect, the same noun functions as a unit without parts.

Places to read

1. Arith.2bThe monad is a generative principle and beginning of numbers.
2. Arith.9Monad and One are distinguished in a particular numerical report.
3. I.48.6.6Intellect is compared with a unit and a point.
4. Arith.5aMonads compose number in the fragmentary account.

Translation in this edition

“Monad” is used when the numerical principle is prominent; “unit” can serve a direct comparison. Neither is automatically synonymous with every occurrence of “the One.”

The monad as unit

“Unit” often makes the counting function of monas clearer than leaving “monad” unexplained. Arith.5a says that number is composed of monads, then moves into a fragmentary account of a principle. “Units” suits the first statement, but does not resolve the gap or establish that every predicate later in the fragment applies directly to ordinary counted units.

Use in the book

The soul is called a monad in a passage that simultaneously acknowledges our difficulty conceiving it without boundaries. The soap-bubble question leaves the argument deliberately imagistic: an indivisible whole is being imagined, not anatomically located. The later question about Leibnitz’s monad asks whether it can be full of ideas of which it is unaware. Finally, literary atoms and monads share clear-cutness and indivisibility “in a way.” These uses are related by unity, but should not be collapsed into a complete exposition of Leibnitz.

Places to read

1. I, p. 267, entry 1, ¶1The explicit gloss is “Monad means unity.”
2. I, p. 236, entry 3, ¶1The bounded yet indivisible soul is compared with a soap bubble.
3. II, p. 831, entry 3, ¶1The monad’s unawareness remains a question.
4. II, p. 896, entry 11, ¶1The term joins atoms in a literary comparison.

Translation in this edition

The English translation keeps “monad” and the printed spelling Leibnitz. Its note does not authenticate a particular philosophical source behind the question. The feminine pronoun in the French refers to the monad, not to Leibnitz.

Use in the book

Hippolytus’ A31 says that the intelligible fire of the monad is god, and that everything is constituted from fire and will be resolved into it. He follows this with a comparison to Stoic expectation of conflagration. The combination places the report in an assimilating philosophical frame, not in the unmediated language of an Empedoclean verse.

The passage should not be used to replace the four persistent roots with a single fiery substance. Other testimonia insist on the endurance of all four; the very same notice begins with Love and Strife as principles. The monad-language also should not be simply identified with the One or Sphairos in A32. Such comparison is possible, but the reports do not supply an explicit equation, and A32’s unity is itself textually supplemented and philosophically compressed.

The headword thus records a notable transformation of Empedocles in later reception: a root-and-powers account is recast through the terminology of unity, intellect and divine fire. The transformation is evidence about the witness’s interpretation, not a secure additional line of Empedoclean doctrine.

Places to read

1. A 31 (testimony)Hippolytus, Refutatio I 3 (D. 558), §1. Calls the monad’s intelligible fire god and moves directly to an all-from-fire account and Stoic comparison.

Translation in this edition

The edition itself identifies the phrase as later Pythagorean-Platonist vocabulary. The translation “intelligible” should not make an exact technical distinction from “intellectual” that the short excerpt does not explain.