Across the depth-psychology corpus, ‘ordering principles’ designates those foundational structuring forces — whether cosmological, psychic, or conceptual — by which undifferentiated chaos is shaped into meaningful pattern. The terrain extends from the metaphysical to the clinical. Plotinus situates the ordering principle as soul itself, pure idea operating as an intermediary between the Intellectual-Principle and matter, circling perpetually about its divine centre. McGilchrist rehabilitates the Confucian concept of lǐ as dynamic pattern immanent in all living things — closer to the Heraclitean logos than to Platonic reason — insisting that genuine order is never static legislation but vital intelligibility. Von Franz presses the Jungian thesis that archetypes function as inborn psycho-physical ordering principles of human experience, connecting this to synchronicity and the special role of natural integers in structuring psychic reality. Hillman complicates the picture by identifying number-based ordering as a senex tendency, raising the question of whether systematizing impulses themselves constitute a psychological complex. Bosnak dissents from Jung’s ‘Self’ as central organising principle, following Hillman’s pluralist revision. Plato’s Philebus contributes the logical infrastructure: finite and infinite as co-constitutive principles, with the ‘mixed’ or measured standing as the site of genuine value. What links these positions is a shared recognition that ordering is never neutral — it reflects the psychological standpoint of the orderer and carries both creative and constricting consequences.
Lǐ, as the ordering principle in the world, is something like ‘reason’, according to Alan Watts, but not in the now normal, Platonic, sense of that word. It is perhaps more like what Heraclitus called the logos.
McGilchrist positions lǐ as an exemplary ordering principle that is dynamic and immanent rather than abstractly legislative, aligning it with Heraclitean logos over Platonic reason.
, The Matter With Things: Our Brains, Our Delusions and the Unmaking of the World, 2021thesis
Lǐ, as the ordering principle in the world, is something like ‘reason’, according to Alan Watts, but not in the now normal, Platonic, sense of that word. It is perhaps more like what Heraclitus called the logos.
This duplicate passage reaffirms that lǐ constitutes a living, relational ordering principle — dynamic pattern embodied in things — rather than a formulated, external law.
, The Matter with Things: Our Brains, Our Delusions, and the Unmaking of the World, 2021thesis
the ordering principle is no conjoint of matter and idea but is soul, pure idea, the power and energy second only to the Intellectual-Principle
Plotinus identifies the ordering principle with soul as pure idea — the intermediary between the Intellectual-Principle and multiplicity — thereby grounding cosmic order in a psychic rather than material source.
, The Six Enneads, 270thesis
this organization would be produced by the archetypes, which are inborn psycho-physical ordering principles of human experience.
Von Franz articulates the Jungian position that archetypes are not merely symbolic images but constitutive ordering principles structuring both psychic and physical experience.
, Psyche and Matter, 2014thesis
the forms of psychic orderedness are acts of creation in time…. We must regard them as creative acts, as continuous creation of a pattern that exists from all eternity, repeats itself sporadically, and is not derivable from any known antecedents.
Von Franz distinguishes psychic ordering from physical regularity, arguing that psychic ordering principles operate as spontaneous, time-bound creative acts rather than deterministic necessities.
, Psyche and Matter, 2014thesis
Jung, in his old age, turned particularly to number as ‘the archetype of order’ (CW 8: 870)… attempts a fundamental ordering of the psychic world by means of numbers.
Hillman contextualises Jungian number-based ordering within senex consciousness, suggesting that the drive toward numerical ordering of psychic reality carries a specific archetypal character.
, Senex & Puer, 2015supporting
I part company with Jung when he talks about Self with a capital S, the purported central organizing principle of soul.
Bosnak, following Hillman, contests Jung’s Self as the singular central organising principle of the psyche, advocating instead for a polycentric model of soul.
, Embodiment: Creative Imagination in Medicine, Art and Travel, 2007supporting
Every viewpoint of reality, whether religious or scientific, is a system of ordering and relating to things… the ordering process has limitations; which probably explains why after some time order is felt as a prison.
Von Franz argues that all systems of ordering — scientific or mythological — are both enabling and constraining, becoming imprisoning when applied beyond their proper domain.
, Creation Myths, 1995supporting
all that is Number and Reason-Principle is outside of boundlessness: these bestow bound and settlement and order in general upon all else
Plotinus equates Number and Reason-Principle as the primary ordering agents that impose limit and form upon undetermined matter.
, The Six Enneads, 270supporting
before our universe there exists, not expressed in the outer, the Intellectual-Principle of all the All, its source and archetype… a concordance, ordered so to speak into oneness.
Plotinus presents the Intellectual-Principle as the pre-cosmic ordering archetype — a concordance of all Reason-Principles — that precedes and grounds Providence.
, The Six Enneads, 270supporting
The root meaning linking these two senses is that of an ordering, distributing, or bounding: the melody is an ordering of the continuum of sound, law or convention an ordering of social life.
Nussbaum, via Euripides’ punning nomos, reveals ordering as the common root of musical, legal, and social structuring — and shows how its destruction precipitates not mere chaos but a new, destructive order.
, The Fragility of Goodness: Luck and Ethics in Greek Tragedy and Philosophy, 1986supporting
Kant… pictured people as being born with principles of ordering space and time, so that when other sensations are elicited… they are automatically interwoven in specific ways with space and time.
Kandel invokes Kant’s a priori ordering principles of space and time as the cognitive infrastructure into which all perceptual experience is embedded.
, In search of memory the emergence of a new science of mind, 2006supporting
The purpose of the operation is to create the beginnings of order in the massa confusa, as is suggested in III, i, 2: ‘in accordance with the rule of harmony.’
Jung reads alchemical dismemberment as an analogue to imposing ordering principles upon psychic chaos, with harmonic rule as the governing telos.
, Alchemical Studies, 1967supporting
whatever things are said to be are composed of one and many, and have the finite and infinite implanted in them: seeing, then, that such is the order of the world, we too ought in every enquiry to begin by laying down one idea
Plato establishes finite and infinite as the co-constitutive ordering principles immanent in all things, making their dialectical articulation the proper method of philosophical inquiry.
, Philebus, -360supporting
the celestial design ordering terrestrial affairs, the mind ruling the body, reason guiding desire
The Taoist I Ching presents a hierarchical analogy in which universal ordering principles cascade from Heaven through mind to body, structuring both cosmic and personal domains.
, The Taoist I Ching, 1986supporting
the celestial design ordering terrestrial affairs, the mind ruling the body, reason guiding desire
This parallel passage affirms the Taoist model in which understanding universal ordering principles enables the practitioner to align mind and action with Heaven’s structure.
, The Taoist I Ching, 1986supporting
Upon the principle of negation rest all the judgments of positive and negative in whatever sphere — moral, aesthetic, psychological.
Hillman identifies negation as a foundational ordering principle of senex consciousness, operative in all categorical distinctions across moral, aesthetic, and psychological domains.
, Senex & Puer, 2015aside
all is guided by Reason-Principles in their series; thus the creating power is in no sense subjected to experimenting, to perplexity
Plotinus describes Reason-Principles as the self-sufficient ordering series through which the creating power governs the All without deliberation or external constraint.
, The Six Enneads, 270aside