ABSTRACT
According to Aristotelian cosmological theory, the sun is quite literally one of a kind. The existence of unique instantiations may seem rather trivial. Plotinus too tends to understand the universal/particular contrast in mereological terms. This is one reason why, as Riccardo Chiaradonna has pointed out, the contrast between universal and particular can be found both at the sensible and the intelligible levels. Plotinus, then, presents us with a metaphysics based not so much on particular and universal, as on part and whole. True wholeness, which involves the complete interpenetration of whole and part, is found only in the intelligible – and in this sense the word universal is appropriate to noetic being.
