Same and Other
Same and Other
One of the “persistent problems” of philosophy which goes back at least to Parmenides and Heraclitus (q.v.). In its most general form it raises the questionIs reality explicable in terms of one principle, ultimately the same in all things (monism), or is reality ultimately heterogeneous, requiring a plurality of first principles (pluralism)? Plato really developed the problem (in the Sophist, Parmenides and Timaeus) by suggesting that both sameness and otherness are required for a complete explanation of things. It is closely related to the problems of One and Many, Identity and Difference, of Universal and Individual in Mediaeval Scholasticism. With Hegel and Fichte the problem becomes fused with that of Spirit and Matter, or of Self and Not-self. — V.J.B.