Carl Jung, Synchronicity: Forerunners to the Idea of Synchronicity 3.927

According to Theophrastus (371-288 BC) the suprasensuous and the sensuous are joined by a bond of community.  This bond cannot be mathematics, so must presumably be God.  Similarly in Plotinus the individual souls born of the one World Soul are related to one another by sympathy or anipathy, regrdless of distance.  Similar views are to be found in Pico della Mirandola:

“Firstly there is the unity in things whereby each thing is at one with itself, consists of itself, and coheres with itself.  Secondly there is the unity whereby one creatre is united with the others and all parts of the world constitute one world.  The third and most important (unity) is that whereby the whole universe is one with its creator, as an army with its commander.”

By this threefold unity, Pico means a simple unity which, like the Trinity, has three aspects; “a unity distinguished by a threefold character, yet in such a way as not to depart from the simplicity of unity.”  For him, the world appears as the corpus mysticum of God, just as the Church is the corpus mysticum of Christ, or as a well disciplined army can be called a sword in the hand of the commander.  The view that all things are arranged according to God’s will leaves little room for causality.  Just as in a living body, the different parts work in harmony and are meaningfully adjusted to one another, so events in the world stand in a meaningful relationship which cannot be derived from any immanent causality.  The reason for this is that in either case the behaviour of the parts depends on a central control which is supraordinate to them.

Commentary on Forerunners to the Idea of Synchronicity 3.927

  1. ambrose_mnemopolous Post author

    Count Giovanni Pico della Mirandola (1463-1494) was an Italian Renaissance philosopher. He was an adherent of the system of “natural magic” devised by his contemporary, Marsilio Ficino (who, on behalf of Cosimo Medici, was in turn responsible for translating much of the ancient wisdom at the core of the Renaissance).

    Pico della Mirandola was known for publicly defending his 900 Theses on religion, philosophy, natural philosophy and magic. His 900 theses were an early example of the Renaissance program to catalog and synthesize Classical knowledge. His famous Oration on the Dignity of Man has been called the “Manifesto of the Renaissance,” and a key text of Renaissance humanism.

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Themes
Carl Gustav Jung (1875-1961), often referred to as C. G. Jung, was a Swiss psychiatrist and psychotherapist who founded analytical psychology. Jung proposed and developed the concepts of extraversion and introversion; archetypes, and the collective unconscious.