Number and Being

In the treatise “On Numbers,” as well as in Ennead V.5, Plotinus considers the place and the ontological status of number within being and thinking, taking number to be a mediation between the original unity of the one and the multiplicity of the infinite and making an important distinction between essential and quantitative number. Yet he does not explicitly address the question of the constitution of number, leaving the problem without a definitive answer. The chapter reconstructs the constitution, derivation, and construction of number in its various representations, doing so with reference to the hints and arguments provided in the texts of the Enneads.