work_id,theme,provenance,created_at,text,reviewed_on,id,comments,metaphor,dictionary,updated_at,context
6411,"",Reading On the Soul,2003-06-12 00:00:00 UTC,"We have now given an answer to the question, What is the soul--and answer which applies to it in its full extent. It is substance in the sense which corresponds to the definitive formula of a thing's essence. That means that it is 'the essential whatness' of a body of the character assigned. Suppose that what is literally an 'organ', like an axe, were a natural body, its 'essential whatness', would have been its essence, and so its soul; if this disappeared from it, it would have ceased to be an axe, except in name. As it is, it is just an axe; it wants the character which is required to make its whatness or formulable essence a soul; for that, it would have had to be a natural body of a particular kind, viz. one having in itself the power of setting itself in movement and arresting itself. Next, apply this doctrine in the case of the 'parts' of the living body. Suppose that the eye were an animal--sight would have been its soul, for sight is the substance or essence of the eye which corresponds to the formula, the eye being merely the matter of seeing; when seeing is removed the eye is no longer and eye, except in name--it is no more a real eye than the eye of a statue or a painted figure. We must extend our consideration from the 'parts' to the whole living body; for what the departmental sense is to the bodily part which is its organ, that the whole faculty of sense is to the whole sensitive body as such.
(412b10-25, pp. 182-183) ",,16903,"•In Aristotle's discussion of entelechia. This entry should be included a few times. REVISIT.
•The ""first actuality"" or ""essential whatness"" of the living body is its beng the substance (ousia) in accord with the definition (logos), its being the essence of a certain sort of body, the besouled body of a person (see P.S. MacDonald, 58).
•On the eye, see Plato's Republic, Book VI. Light and vision in the Greek world.
REVISIT","The soul ""is substance in the sense which corresponds to the definitive formula of a thing's essence.""","",2010-10-02 21:46:23 UTC,""
6411,"",Reading On the Soul,2003-06-12 00:00:00 UTC,"Voice is a kind of sound characteristic of what has soul in it; nothing that is without soul utters voice, it being only by a metaphor that we speak of the voice of a flute or the lyre or generally of what (being without soul) possesses the power of producing a succession of notes which differ in length and pitch and timbre. The metaphor is based on the fact that all these differences are also found in voice.
(420b5-10, pp. 204-5)",2003-10-22,16904,"•META-METAPHORICAL. INTEREST. REVISIT.
•A kind of reversed metaphor, but see Book One discussion of the soul as harmony. This record doesn't belong in the proper database, but does belong in my dissertation on music metaphors.
","""Voice is a kind of sound characteristic of what has soul in it; nothing that is without soul utters voice, it being only by a metaphor that we speak of the voice of a flute or the lyre or generally of what (being without soul) possesses the power of producing a succession of notes which differ in length and pitch and timbre.""","",2009-12-30 18:36:35 UTC,""
6411,"",Reading On the Soul,2003-06-12 00:00:00 UTC,"It follows that the soul is analogous to the hand; for as the hand is a tool of tools, so the mind is the form of forms and sense the form of sensible things.
(432a, p. 235)",,16905,"","""It follows that the soul is analogous to the hand; for as the hand is a tool of tools, so the mind is the form of forms and sense the form of sensible things.""","",2010-03-11 16:11:07 UTC,""
6411,"",Reading On the Soul,2003-06-12 00:00:00 UTC,"To the thinking soul images serve as if they were contents of perception (and when it asserts or denies them to be good or bad it avoids or pursues them). That is why the soul never thinks without an image. The process is like that in which the air modifies the pupil in this or that way and the pupil transmits the modification to some third thing (and similarly in hearing), while the ultimate point of arrival is one, a single mean, with different manners of being.
(431a15, p 233)",2003-10-23,16906,•Eyes become froglike when I frog is perceived... but why is this so hard to parse?,"""The process [of thinking] is like that in which the air modifies the pupil in this or that way and the pupil transmits the modification to some third thing (and similarly in hearing), while the ultimate point of arrival is one, a single mean, with different manners of being.""",Eye,2009-12-30 18:31:39 UTC,""
6411,"",Reading On the Soul,2003-10-14 00:00:00 UTC,"Some say that what originates movement is both preeminently and primarily soul; believing that what is not itself moved cannot originate movement in another, they arrived at the view that soul belongs to the class of things in movement. This is what led Democritus to say that soul is a sort of fire or hot substance; his 'forms' or atoms are infinite in number; those which are spherical he calls fire and soul, and compares them to the motes in the air which we see in shafts of light coming through windows; the mixture of seeds of all sorts he calls the elements of the whole of Nature (Leucippus gives a similar account); the spherical atoms are identified with soul because atoms of that shape are most adapted to permeate everywhere, and to set all the others moving by being themselves in movement. This implies the view that soul is identical with what produces movement in animals. That is why, further, they regard respiration as the characteristic mark of life; as the environment compresses the bodies of animals, and tends to extrude those atoms which impart movement to them, because they themselves are never at rest, there must be a reinforcement of these by similar atoms coming in from without in the act of respiration; for they prevent the extrusion of those which are already within by counteracting the compressing and consolidating force of the environment; and animals continue to live only as long as they are able to maintain this resistance. The doctrine of the Pythagoreans seems to rest upon the same ideas; some of the declared the motes in air, others what moved them, to be soul. These motes were referred to becuase that are always seen in movement, even in a complete calm.
(403b30-404a15, p. 160) ",,16907,"•See also Appendix of Sedley's essay on Phaedo
•Is Democritus the first to assert that the soul is a sort of fire?","""This is what led Democritus to say that soul is a sort of fire or hot substance; his 'forms' or atoms are infinite in number; those which are spherical he calls fire and soul, and compares them to the motes in the air which we see in shafts of light coming through windows.""","",2010-10-02 21:47:52 UTC,Motes in the air
6411,"",Reading On the Soul,2003-10-14 00:00:00 UTC,"Some say that what originates movement is both preeminently and primarily soul; believing that what is not itself moved cannot originate movement in another, they arrived at the view that soul belongs to the class of things in movement. This is what led Democritus to say that soul is a sort of fire or hot substance; his 'forms' or atoms are infinite in number; those which are spherical he calls fire and soul, and compares them to the motes in the air which we see in shafts of light coming through windows; the mixture of seeds of all sorts he calls the elements of the whole of Nature (Leucippus gives a similar account); the spherical atoms are identified with soul because atoms of that shape are most adapted to permeate everywhere, and to set all the others moving by being themselves in movement. This implies the view that soul is identical with what produces movement in animals. That is why, further, they regard respiration as the characteristic mark of life; as the environment compresses the bodies of animals, and tends to extrude those atoms which impart movement to them, because they themselves are never at rest, there must be a reinforcement of these by similar atoms coming in from without in the act of respiration; for they prevent the extrusion of those which are already within by counteracting the compressing and consolidating force of the environment; and animals continue to live only as long as they are able to maintain this resistance. The doctrine of the Pythagoreans seems to rest upon the same ideas; some of them declared the motes in air, others what moved them, to be soul. These motes were referred to becuase that are always seen in movement, even in a complete calm.
(403b30-404a15, p. 160) ",2009-12-30,16908,"•See also found again in appendix of Sedley's essay on Phaedo.
•Aristotle connects Democritus with ""some"" Pythagoreans. Fascinating fluid dynamic notion of life and respiration. ","""The doctrine of the Pythagoreans seems to rest upon the same ideas; some of them declared the motes in air, others what moved them, to be soul.""","",2010-10-02 21:48:58 UTC,""
6411,"","Reading; found again in M.H. Abrams, The Mirror and the Lamp: Romantic Theory and the Critical Tradition (London: Oxford UP, 1953), 57. And again, in Margreta de Grazia’s ""Imprints: Shakespeare, Gutenberg, and Descartes,"" in Printing and Parenting in Early Modern England (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2005): 29-58, p. 30.",2013-06-06 21:02:56 UTC,"12. Generally, about all perception, we can say that a sense is what has the power of receiving into itself the sensible forms of things without the matter, in the way in which a piece of wax takes on the impress of a signet-ring without the iron or gold; what produces the impression is a signet of bronze or gold, but not qua bronze or gold: in a similar way the sense is affected by what is coloured or flavoured or sounding not insofar as each is what it is, but insofar as it is of such and such a sort and according to its form.
(424a18-424a23 p. 674)",,20460,"","""Generally, about all perception, we can say that a sense is what has the power of receiving into itself the sensible forms of things without the matter, in the way in which a piece of wax takes on the impress of a signet-ring without the iron or gold; what produces the impression is a signet of bronze or gold, but not qua bronze or gold: in a similar way the sense is affected by what is coloured or flavoured or sounding not insofar as each is what it is, but insofar as it is of such and such a sort and according to its form.""",Impressions,2013-10-07 19:08:05 UTC,""
6411,"","Reading; found again Margreta de Grazia’s ""Imprints: Shakespeare, Gutenberg, and Descartes,"" in Printing and Parenting in Early Modern England (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2005): 29-58, p. 30. ",2013-10-07 19:16:27 UTC,"One might ask how it is possible that though the affection is present, and the fact absent, the latter--that which is not present--is remembered. It is clear that we must conceive that which is generated through sense-perception in the soul, and in the part of the body which is its seat,--viz. that affection the state whereof we call memory--to be some such thing as a picture. The process of movement stamps in, as it were, a sort of impression of the percept, just as persons do who make an impression with a seal. This explains why, in those who are strongly moved owing to passion, or time of life, no memory is formed; just as no impression would be formed if the movement of the seal were to impinge on running water; while there are others in whom, owing to the receiving surface being frayed, as happens to old walls, or owing to the hardness of the receiving surface, the requisite impression is not implanted at all. Hence both very young and very old persons are defective in memory; they are in a state of flux, the former because of their growth, the latter, owing to their decay. Similarly, both those who are too quick and those who are too slow have bad memories. The former are too moist, the latter too hard, so that in the case of the former the image does not remain in the soul, while on the latter it is not imprinted at all.
(450a26-450b10 p. 715 in Oxford Translation)",,22928,"","""The process of movement stamps in, as it were, a sort of impression of the percept, just as persons do who make an impression with a seal.""",Impressions,2013-10-07 19:16:27 UTC,""
6411,"","Reading; found again in Margreta de Grazia’s ""Imprints: Shakespeare, Gutenberg, and Descartes,"" in Printing and Parenting in Early Modern England (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2005): 29-58, p. 30. ",2013-10-07 19:18:16 UTC,"One might ask how it is possible that though the affection is present, and the fact absent, the latter--that which is not present--is remembered. It is clear that we must conceive that which is generated through sense-perception in the soul, and in the part of the body which is its seat,--viz. that affection the state whereof we call memory--to be some such thing as a picture. The process of movement stamps in, as it were, a sort of impression of the percept, just as persons do who make an impression with a seal. This explains why, in those who are strongly moved owing to passion, or time of life, no memory is formed; just as no impression would be formed if the movement of the seal were to impinge on running water; while there are others in whom, owing to the receiving surface being frayed, as happens to old walls, or owing to the hardness of the receiving surface, the requisite impression is not implanted at all. Hence both very young and very old persons are defective in memory; they are in a state of flux, the former because of their growth, the latter, owing to their decay. Similarly, both those who are too quick and those who are too slow have bad memories. The former are too moist, the latter too hard, so that in the case of the former the image does not remain in the soul, while on the latter it is not imprinted at all.
(450a26-450b10 p. 715 in Oxford Translation)",,22929,"","""This explains why, in those who are strongly moved owing to passion, or time of life, no memory is formed; just as no impression would be formed if the movement of the seal were to impinge on running water; while there are others in whom, owing to the receiving surface being frayed, as happens to old walls, or owing to the hardness of the receiving surface, the requisite impression is not implanted at all.""",Impressions,2013-10-07 19:18:16 UTC,""
6411,"","Reading; found again, Margreta de Grazia’s ""Imprints: Shakespeare, Gutenberg, and Descartes,"" in Printing and Parenting in Early Modern England (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2005): 29-58, p. 30. ",2013-10-07 19:19:36 UTC,"One might ask how it is possible that though the affection is present, and the fact absent, the latter--that which is not present--is remembered. It is clear that we must conceive that which is generated through sense-perception in the soul, and in the part of the body which is its seat,--viz. that affection the state whereof we call memory--to be some such thing as a picture. The process of movement stamps in, as it were, a sort of impression of the percept, just as persons do who make an impression with a seal. This explains why, in those who are strongly moved owing to passion, or time of life, no memory is formed; just as no impression would be formed if the movement of the seal were to impinge on running water; while there are others in whom, owing to the receiving surface being frayed, as happens to old walls, or owing to the hardness of the receiving surface, the requisite impression is not implanted at all. Hence both very young and very old persons are defective in memory; they are in a state of flux, the former because of their growth, the latter, owing to their decay. Similarly, both those who are too quick and those who are too slow have bad memories. The former are too moist, the latter too hard, so that in the case of the former the image does not remain in the soul, while on the latter it is not imprinted at all.
(450a26-450b10 p. 715 in Oxford Translation)",,22930,"","""The former are too moist, the latter too hard, so that in the case of the former the image does not remain in the soul, while on the latter it is not imprinted at all.""",Impressions,2013-10-07 19:19:51 UTC,""