"These bodily members are, as it were, no more than garments; which, because they have been attached to us for a long time, we think are us, or parts of us [and] the cause of this is the long period of adherence: we are accustomed to remove clothes and to throw them down, which we are entirely unaccustomed to do with our bodily members."
— Avicenna [Ibn Sīnā] (c. 980-1037)
Date
c. 1016-1021
Metaphor
"These bodily members are, as it were, no more than garments; which, because they have been attached to us for a long time, we think are us, or parts of us [and] the cause of this is the long period of adherence: we are accustomed to remove clothes and to throw them down, which we are entirely unaccustomed to do with our bodily members."
Metaphor in Context
These bodily members are, as it were, no more than garments; which, because they have been attached to us for a long time, we think are us, or parts of us [and] the cause of this is the long period of adherence: we are accustomed to remove clothes and to throw them down, which we are entirely unaccustomed to do with our bodily members.
Categories
Provenance
Cited in Andy Clark's "Out of Our Brains," New York Times. Opinionator: The Stone. December 12, 2010. <Link to NYTimes.com>
Citation
Avicenna. Shif, a-abyt, Kitb an-Nafs (Psychology). In Avicenna’s De Anima (Arabic Text): Being the Psychological Part of Kitb al-Shif. Edited by Fazlur Rahman. London: Oxford University Press, 1959.
Date of Entry
12/30/2010
