Body

Use in the book

When Charmides, Plato's young uncle, comes into the wrestling-school, Chaerephon, Socrates' devoted friend, says that if the boy were willing to strip he would seem to have no face, "his figure is so perfectly beautiful"; Socrates turns the verb on the soul: "Then why don't we strip that very part of him … and take a look at it before we look at his figure?" (154d–e; see Beauty). With the boy beside him, Socrates recalls, he "saw inside his cloak" and was on fire (155d; see Cloak).

Critias, the boy's cousin and guardian, has passed Socrates off as a doctor with a remedy for his heavy head (155b–c), a leaf that goes with a charm (155e). Socrates explains the charm by the good doctors' rule: no cure for the eyes without the head, nor for the head "apart from the whole body" (156b–c; see Acceptance and taking over). The Thracian who taught him the charm, a doctor of Zalmoxis, god of the Getae (a Thracian people of the lower Danube), granted the Greeks this much. "But Zalmoxis, he said, our king, who is a god, says that just as one must not try to cure the eyes without the head, or the head without the body, so one must not try to cure the body without the soul either" (156d–e); the Greek doctors neglect the whole, and so most diseases elude them. "For everything, he said, bad and good alike, for the body and for the whole human being, starts from the soul and flows from there, as it flows from the head into the eyes" (156e–157a). The soul must be treated "first and foremost", with charms that are "beautiful words"; once temperance has come to be in it, "it is easy then to provide health for the head and for the rest of the body too" (157a–b). Bound by oath to the Thracian, Socrates will give the remedy only if Charmides first hands over his soul to the charm (157b–c2).

Along the chain, what counts as the whole moves outward. For the good doctors the body is the whole and the head a part; for the Thracian it is itself a part of "the whole human being", whose good and bad start from the soul. He also adds an order: where the good doctors treat the part along with the whole, he treats the soul first. The dialogue can be read as keeping that order: Charmides' soul is questioned, and his head is never treated. After 158c neither head nor remedy is mentioned again; the charm returns at the end (175e–176b2), the remedy never.

In the argument the body gives the plain cases against quietness, "all the actions of the body", where the quickest is finest; the soul follows, until "in the soul and in the body alike" quickness appears finer (159c–160b2; see Athletics). In Socrates' dream we would be "healthier in body than we are now" (173b). But take away the knowledge of good and bad, and medicine would make us no less healthy, though its work would no longer be done "well and beneficially"; and Critias agrees that health belongs to another craft than temperance (174c–175a2; see Art and craft). The prologue made temperance in the soul the way to health in the body (157a–b); the argument leaves health to medicine. Socrates' closing lament still joins the boy's looks and soul: "I am very aggrieved, if you, being such as you are in your looks and, besides, most temperate in soul, are to get no profit from this temperance" (175d–e).

Places to read

1. 154d–eChaerephon: stripped, the boy would seem to have no face, his figure is so beautiful; Socrates proposes to strip his soul and look at it before his figure.
2. 156b–cGood doctors will not treat the eyes without the head, nor the head apart from the whole body, and treat the part along with the whole.
3. 156d–157c2The Thracian doctor's teaching from Zalmoxis: the body is not to be cured without the soul, from which everything flows into the body and the whole human being; the soul is treated first, with charms, and then health is easy to provide for head and body.
4. 159c–dIn writing, lyre-playing, wrestling, running "and all the actions of the body", the quick and nimble are finest.
5. 160bIn the soul and in the body alike, quickness and sharpness appear finer than slowness and quietness.
6. 173bIn the dream, under temperance we would be healthier in body.
7. 174c–175a2Medicine would make us no less healthy without the knowledge of good and bad, but not well and beneficially; health belongs to another craft, and temperance is not its craftsman.
8. 175d–eSocrates is aggrieved for the boy, such as he is in his looks and most temperate in soul, if temperance brings him no profit.

Translation in this edition

Σῶμα is "body" at every place, in phrases such as "the whole body" for ὅλου τοῦ σώματος (156c), "the rest of the body" for τὸ ἄλλο σῶμα (157a–b), "all the actions of the body" (159c) and "healthier in body" for ὑγιέσιν … τὰ σώματα εἶναι μᾶλλον, literally "to be more healthy in our bodies" (173b). At 160b τὰ περὶ τὴν ψυχὴν καὶ τὰ περὶ τὸ σῶμα, literally "the things concerning the soul and those concerning the body", is "in the soul and in the body alike". "The whole human being" renders παντὶ τῷ ἀνθρώπῳ (156e). What the company admires has its own words. Εἶδος (eidos) is "figure" at both 154d and 154e, so that Socrates' "before we look at his figure" answers Chaerephon's "his figure is so perfectly beautiful"; ἰδέα (idea) is "looks" (157d, 158b, 175d); and Chaerephon's εὐπρόσωπος is "lovely face" and ἀπρόσωπος "no face at all" (154d).

σῶμα

Attested: σώματος (sōmatos; 156c, 156e, 157a, 159c), σῶμα (sōma; 156c, 156e, 159d twice, 160b), σώματι (sōmati; 156e, 157b), σώματα (sōmata; 173b). The body. In the charm's teaching it is the whole of which head and eyes are parts, and itself a part of "the whole human being", not to be cured without the soul (156c–157b2); in the argument it is the field of "all the actions of the body", where quickness appears finer than quietness (159c–160b2); in the dream we would be "healthier in body" (173b). Lemma: σῶμα.

ἀποδύω

Attested: ἀποδῦναι (apodynai; 154d), ἀπεδύσαμεν (apedysamen; 154e). To take off one's clothes, to strip; athletes exercised naked, and in a wrestling-school stripping was nothing strange. Chaerephon uses the verb of the boy's body, "if he were willing to strip" (154d); Socrates turns it on the soul, proposing to strip "that very part of him" and look at it before his figure (154e). Lemma: ἀποδύω.

Elsewhere in Plato

In the Alcibiades I Socrates leads the young Alcibiades, the future statesman and general, to agree that a man is not his body. The user is other than what he uses, and a man uses his whole body; so, Alcibiades agrees, a man is different from his own body. Man, Socrates tells him, is "what uses the body", and nothing uses and rules it but soul (129e–130a). Since man is what rules the body, and neither the body nor the two together rules it, what remains, Socrates thinks, "is either that man is nothing, or, if he is anything, that man turns out to be nothing other than soul" (130c). So, as Socrates puts it, "Socrates, using speech, talks with Alcibiades, addressing his words not to your face, it seems, but to Alcibiades; and that is the soul" (130e). The Charmides can be read as making the same turn in a scene: the boy's face and figure are praised, and Socrates proposes to look at his soul by talking with him (154d–e).

The Republic can be read as giving the Thracian's order without the charm. Turning from music to gymnastics, Socrates tells Glaucon, Plato's brother, that a sound body does not by its own excellence make the soul good, but the reverse: a good soul by its own excellence makes the body as good as it can be. Glaucon agrees, and agrees too that if they tended the mind well enough, they would do right to hand over to it the detailed care of the body, giving only the outlines themselves (403d–e).

In the Phaedo, on the day of his death, Socrates and Simmias of Thebes agree that death is nothing other than the release of the soul from the body (64c). Whenever the soul tries to examine anything with the body, Socrates says, it is deceived by it (65b); and genuine philosophers must say to one another that if we are ever to know anything purely we must be rid of the body and look at things with the soul by itself (66b–e). The Phaedo and the Thracian agree that the soul comes first, and go opposite ways from there. The Thracian treats the soul first if the head and the rest of the body are to be in good condition, and promises them health; the Phaedo's philosopher turns the soul away from the body as far as he can.

Use in the book

At first bodily beauty and stature are among Alcibiades' accepted advantages. Their reality is not denied: Socrates grants that anyone can see them. Their inadequacy as qualifications to advise the city is another matter. The later argument revises their importance, rather than discovering that they were imaginary.

The care analogies establish that a body has its own appropriate improvement. Gymnastics attends to feet, hands, and the body; shoemaking, engraving, and weaving attend to associated objects. This is a distinction between objects of expertise, not a rejection of bodily health. Indeed, the examples would fail if improving the body were not an intelligible and valuable activity.

At 129d–130c23 bodily members are brought under the user–instrument relation. A craftsman uses hands and eyes as well as external tools, and the whole body is then treated as what a human being uses. The body is said to be ruled rather than ruling itself. It therefore cannot, on the agreed criterion, be the human being under investigation. The exclusion is an argumentative result dependent on that criterion; it is not an independent physiological demonstration.

The body's status as something “of” the person explains the later contrasts. A doctor or trainer, considered solely in that capacity, knows bodily matters rather than the person himself; bodily tending is not sufficient care of the self. The bodily lover likewise attends to something belonging to Alcibiades and leaves when its bloom fades. None of these claims says that all doctors lack self-knowledge in every respect or that every affection for bodily beauty is identical with corruption. The qualification “insofar as” a practitioner exercises that craft is crucial.

At 132c bodily care can be entrusted to others, while the soul receives primary attention. At 135a the example of a sick man with unrestricted license returns to bodily danger: without medical sense his body will be ruined. The dialogue thus continues to treat bodily welfare seriously, even after denying that the body exhausts the human person.

Places to read

1. 104aBeauty and stature are genuine but limited advantages
2. 128a–128d2Body is separated from its belongings as an object of care
3. 129d–130c23Whole body is used and ruled; body and composite are excluded as the self
4. 131a–132c23Bodily expertise and attachment are distinguished from knowing and caring for the person
5. 135aUninformed license threatens bodily destruction

Translation in this edition

The edition preserves the distinction between knowing “something about the body” at 131a and knowing “what belongs to the body” at 131b. Flattening both into the latter wording would collapse two levels of the argument.

σῶμα

Attested: παντὶ τῷ σώματι (panti tōi sōmati; 129e); σῶμα (sōma; 130b). At 129e: The whole body used by a human being, extending the instrumental relation beyond hands and eyes. At 130b: The body is ruled rather than its own ruler, so it fails the adopted criterion for identifying the person. Lexical identification: lemma: σῶμα. See Body.

Use in the book

At 230e Socrates explains why good food and bad food are both food: both are dry nourishment of the body. The drink parallel then supplies wet nourishment of the body. These definitions answer a classificatory question while already connecting the classified objects with use. They tell the companion what sort of common feature he should look for in decent and base gain.

The explicit body also prevents an overly commercial reading of the last part of the dialogue. The examples of gain are not confined to money or transferable property. A guest at a feast can acquire disease or health (231b), and the value of that acquisition is assessed by its consequence for the person. The body is therefore the practical setting in which “having more” can plainly fail to mean doing better.

At the same time, the bodily examples cannot settle every ethical distinction. Health is treated as a benefit and disease as a bad acquisition, but no developed account of human flourishing follows. In particular, moving from bodily benefit to the goodness of every gain does not by itself resolve whether a financial advantage acquired shamefully is a benefit in one respect and harmful in another. The body anchors an intelligible counterexample rather than supplying a complete measure of moral value.

The article thus treats a narrow noun with a wider argumentative consequence. An apparently ordinary genitive introduces the standpoint of a recipient; once that standpoint is admitted, mere addition to possessions becomes insufficient. What is acquired must be assessed in relation to the being who acquires it.

Places to read

1. 230eξηρὰ τροφὴ σώματός — The body is the recipient of dry nourishment.
2. 230eτῇ τοῦ σώματος ὑγρᾷ τροφῇ — The parallel definition of drink retains the same recipient.
3. 231bνόσον κτήσηται — Bodily disease makes an acquisition without expenditure undesirable.

Translation in this edition

The edition simply gives “body.” It does not introduce “physical organism,” “bodily self,” or “material body,” each of which would add a theoretical emphasis absent from the local wording. References to health and disease in this article explain the continuation of the example; they are not additional attestations of σῶμα.

Use in the book

The body provides the first relatively agreed domain in which an activity can be judged by its result. The love of exercise is conceded to be fine and good, and its practitioners are said to desire what makes their bodies well. Socrates can therefore ask whether a greater quantity of exertion reliably produces that result. The athlete’s answer gives measure priority over quantity.

Food then broadens the test beyond exertion. After agreement that moderate food is beneficial, Socrates presses the claim across all bodily matters. This expansion supports the subsequent move to the soul. The argument’s strength lies in moving from familiar practices toward a harder educational question; its vulnerable point is the breadth of the generalization. The interlocutor’s concession should not be mistaken for a detailed demonstration covering every possible bodily input.

The initial opposition of a bodily athlete and a cultured lover is unsettled along the way. The bodily expert supplies a sound principle, while the cultured man’s caricature of excessive eating and sleep returns against him as a caricature of sleeplessness and hunger. Neither bodily neglect nor bodily absorption is itself the recommended philosophical life. The dialogue’s positive question is how a pursuit benefits the person it shapes.

At 134e doctors and trainers can be named as appropriate advisers for bodily measure. Naming them makes the later inability to name an equivalent adviser for the soul a specific deficit in judgment, rather than a general inability to recognize expertise anywhere.

Places to read

1. 133eεὖ ἔχειν τὸ σῶμα — The end attributed to those who love exercise.
2. 134cτὴν εὐεξίαν ἐμποιεῖν τοῖς ἀνθρώποις — The noun good condition restates the effect of moderate exercises.
3. 134dτὰ περὶ τὸ σῶμα — Socrates generalizes from exercise and food to bodily matters.

Translation in this edition

The edition preserves the idiom “have their bodies in good condition” and the noun “good condition,” making the repeated goal audible. This differs from the “health” sought in the later illness example, where the Greek uses another term. The body-soul pairing here should also be kept local: no argument for the soul’s immortality or separation from the body appears in this passage.

Use in the book

Socrates says that Lysis benefits no more from his fine body than from his wealth, since someone else shepherds and tends it. The genitive σώματος depends on the preceding expression about obtaining no benefit.

The body is thus something the boy possesses without fully controlling, paralleling the wealth managed by others. The remark develops the paradox of restricted freedom; it is not a general doctrine that the body is alien or worthless. Its attractive quality is acknowledged even as its governance becomes the issue.

At 217a–b the body, insofar as it is a body, is neither good nor bad: disease is the bad present to it, and medicine the good it welcomes. The bearer is therefore distinguished from its condition. At 218b–c the hypothesis extends to soul and body; at 219a and 220c the body continues to test causal need and the imagined removal of badness.

Places to read

1. 209aοὔτε τοῦ σώματος οὕτω γενναίου ὄντος — nor from your body, fine as it is.
2. 208e–209a
3. 217a–b
4. 218b–c
5. 219a
6. 220c

Use in the book

The Stoic notice that perceptions are of bodies identifies their objects. It does not itself say that perceptions are bodies. Aristotle’s definition of soul describes a natural body equipped with organs and capable of life, while Porphyry distinguishes bodily alteration from incorporeal activity.

Places to read

1. I.50.10Bodies are the objects of perception in a Stoic report.
2. I.49.1a.3Soul is defined with reference to a natural organic body.
3. I.49.21.1What bodies undergo is compared with what is said of incorporeal things.
4. I.3.50Nails and eyes illustrate a contrast in the value of bodily and moral goods.

Translation in this edition

Sōma is normally “body”; asōmaton is “incorporeal.” The English preserves this vocabulary even when authors disagree about what qualifies as bodily.

Nails in an ethical comparison

Onux is a nail or claw. In I.3.50, sound nails are contrasted with lost eyes to illustrate how superficial advantages can coexist with a much greater loss. The bodily comparison supports an argument that moral degradation is worse than loss of wealth or strength. It does not offer a detailed anatomical classification.

Use in the book

The comparison of pain and pleasure with iron, lead, and marble uses bodies as apparently solid external realities; inward experiences are provocatively called more existent. The criticism of Condillac’s statue then calls it a body without a soul, a house without an inhabitant, and a place without a master. In the threefold account of things, body is the case of essence. These distinct images—solid object, uninhabited house, and enclosing case—clarify local relationships without settling how soul and body interact throughout the notebooks.

Places to read

1. I, p. 242, entry 4, ¶1Bodies provide the contrast with experienced pain and pleasure.
2. II, p. 475 bis, entry 1, ¶2The soulless statue is also an empty house and masterless place.
3. II, p. 501–502, entry 15, ¶1Body encloses essence as a case.

Translation in this edition

The English translation uses “bodies” for the material objects and “body” for the statue and enclosing case. Idioms such as à corps perdu are translated idiomatically elsewhere; their presence in a word search does not make them evidence for a theory of body.

Hand

French: main.

The early Platonic summary calls hands instruments rather than parts. Later, the hand supplies a measure of material resistance: marble does not obey it, and a clear seal imprint requires enough pressure from it. The examples give the hand a practical relation to tools, force, and receptive matter. The early classification is expressly a source-layer summary, not a modern anatomical judgment.

Places to read: I, p. 35–36, entry 1, ¶7; II, p. 757, entry 10, ¶1; II, p. 645, entry 5, ¶1.

Tongue, mouth, and lips

French: langue; bouche; lèvre.

The tongue that writes is a physical organ: the fragment imagines it repeating movements behind the teeth while the mouth stays closed, with only the lips’ service missing from speech. Elsewhere the mouth and kiss become organ and instrument in a comparison prompted by Milton’s fruitful lips. The English translation translates Joubert’s French phrase rather than borrowing wording from an English Milton edition, and leaves the act performed by that organ unnamed.

Places to read: I, p. 416, entry 6, ¶1; I, p. 341, entry 4, ¶1.

Skin and outer skin

French: peau; surpeau.

The unfinished skin, outer skin, flesh list keeps surpeau distinct from peau without assigning it a precise modern tissue layer. In the account of stripping envelopes from the spermatic animalcule, removing outer skins does not guarantee reaching essence or the true principle of life. The translation note explains the period outer-skin usage, while the earlier passage retains its unfinished conclusion. Neither witness certifies the speculative account of generation.

Places to read: II, p. 792, entry begun p. 791, no. 6, ¶5; I, p. 253–254, entry 8, ¶1.

Use in the book

Traherne's strongest contrasts can sound hostile to embodiment. Flesh and bones are confined, able to receive few pleasures, while love extends through all worlds. But the same passage calls the body a lantern for inward love and identifies its powers of seeing, feeling, eating, and drinking. Its worth depends on the life it makes possible rather than on bulk alone.

Other meditations openly celebrate bodily gifts. Eyes, ears, speech, and limbs exceed gold in value, and the smallness of the body is itself a work of wisdom. An endlessly large body would lack workable figure, motion, and relation to other beings. The soul is made greater by having an appropriately limited bodily instrument. This is not a simple contrast between evil matter and a good spirit.

The body of Christ puts the relation between visibility and inward meaning under the greatest pressure. It is called a pillar manifesting love, not a cloud hiding it. The broken visible form conveys a love whose full comprehensiveness requires understanding. Bodies can therefore reveal persons while never exhausting their value. To know oneself as more than a body is to enlarge the account of embodiment's purpose, not to abolish its gifts.

Places to read

1. I.19Self-knowledge requires knowing the soul’s powers beyond facial and bodily features.
2. I.66Limbs and senses are celebrated as living treasures beyond precious metals.
3. I.90Christ’s body is the pillar through which love is manifested.
4. II.51Bodily confinement is contrasted with love’s reach, while the body remains love’s lantern.
5. III.19The poem argues that appropriately small bodies make human life more complete.
6. III.94The earthly tabernacle belongs to the account of David’s overflowing praise.

In this edition

The disparaging “carcase” and “heavy clay” are local comparisons of reach and usefulness, not adequate summaries of the book's anthropology. III.19 is verse and should be read as a sustained argument through imagined bodily scale.

The earthly tabernacle

The bodily dwelling is an earthly tabernacle in III.94, where David’s joy in the works of God seems to make the whole world a celestial temple. The edition identifies the bodily phrase through 2 Corinthians 5:1. Here the dwelling is filled with praise rather than treated merely as a prison: the speaker’s inward abundance seeks outlets through instruments, nations and created things.

Use in the book

Body is the lowest of the five principal grades and is analyzed through matter and quantity. Ficino's claim that body does nothing by its own nature concerns body precisely as body: extended bulk receives, divides, and is moved by another. Ordinary bodies nevertheless heat, cool, nourish, and move through their qualities and living powers. His account locates the active source beyond mere bulk rather than denying the observable effects of heated bodies or living animals.

Bulk disperses efficacy across parts, delays motion, and obstructs interpenetration. Fire, air, sparks, density, and falling wood illustrate these claims within Ficino's natural philosophy. Bodily quantity also makes one part occupy one position and another part another. This establishes the contrast with soul, which neither touches only a single bodily point nor distributes separate portions of itself among bodily portions. Body and soul consequently differ in their mode of existence and causal presence, not simply as visible and invisible objects. Bodily divisibility also differs from the temporal succession of soul's operations.

In the opening exhortation, the human body is described as a dark prison from which philosophical contemplation can turn toward the soul's divine origin and destiny. This evaluative image has a different function from the technical analysis of extension. The account of bodily matter and quantity supplies metaphysical distinctions; the prison image gives the reader an exhortatory orientation toward the inquiry.

Further passage references. I.1.1–I.1.323, I.1.7; I.2.1–I.2.102345678910; I.3.33; III.1.1–323, 9, 16, 19–23; III.2.9–182345678910

Places to read

1. I.1.1–323Bodily prison language gives the inquiry an exhortatory orientation.
2. I.2.1–52345Extension, dispersion, density and delay make bulk a source of passivity and obstruction.
3. I.2.8–1323456Ordinary bodily effects are explained through form and quality rather than denied.
4. I.3.33Independence from bodily parts and material support marks the higher third essence.

Translation in this edition

“Body precisely as body” preserves quatenus corpus at I.2.1. Omitting that restriction makes the denial of bodily action contradict the subsequent examples unnecessarily. The prison metaphor and the technical matter/quantity analysis answer different questions.

commigro

commigro. Printed forms: commigrare.

To migrate together into one place. Bodies cannot merge into a single place in the argument about their mutual obstruction; the verb concerns spatial occupation, not migration of souls. References: I.2.2. See Body and bulk.

corpus / corporalis

corpus / corporalis. Printed forms: corpora; corporalis; corpori; corporibus; corporis; corpus.

Body and bodily, extended subjects distinguished from incorporeal efficacy. Bodily contact is dimensional; bodily instability points to a sustaining incorporeal source. References: II.6.1, II.6.4, II.7.8. See Body and bulk.

Body / bodily. A body’s divided extension contrasts with soul’s mode of being wholly present to each part; corporalibus in III.2.29 remains textually delicate. References: III.2.9, III.2.11, III.2.29. See Body and bulk.

impedimentum / impedio

impedimentum / impedio. Printed forms: impedimento; impedit; impedita.

An obstacle and to hinder. Bulk obstructs perfect action; bodily bonds also hinder the mind’s ascent. The contexts distinguish physical obstruction from the analogy for intellectual limitation. References: I.2.2, I.3.13. See Body and bulk.

impleo / prohibeo

impleo / prohibeo. Printed forms: impleat; prohibent.

To fill and to prevent. Bodily occupation of place and resistance to penetration constrain the perfect-action model; the verbs name concrete obstacles rather than metaphysical nonexistence. References: I.2.2. See Body and bulk.

lignum / acutus / latus

lignum / acutus / latus. Printed forms: acutum; latum; lignum.

Wood, pointed, and broad. A pointed piece of wood is said to fall faster than a broad one; the example isolates shape within Ficino’s case about resistance and motion. References: I.2.2. See Body and bulk.

moles / piger

moles / piger. Printed forms: molem; moles; pigram; pigrius.

Bulk or mass; sluggish in its own nature. Bulk is the passive and dispersive aspect of body, not a denial that qualified bodies have observable effects. References: I.1.3, I.2.2. See Body and bulk.

mutua offensio

mutua offensio. Printed forms: mutua offensione.

Mutual obstruction or interference. Two bodies cannot coexist in one place without obstruction; the contrast concerns bodily occupation, not disagreement or moral offence. References: I.2.15. See Body and bulk.

penetro / penetratio

penetro / penetratio. Printed forms: penetrationem; penetrationisque; penetret.

To enter or penetrate; penetration. Thickness prevents bodily interpenetration, whereas power through quality can reach matter without merely occupying a larger spatial extent. References: I.2.2, I.2.3. See Body and bulk.

quatenus corpus

quatenus corpus. Printed forms: quatenus corpus.

Precisely insofar as it is body. The qualification confines the denial of action to body as matter and quantity; subsequent actions belong to its qualities and higher powers. References: I.2.1. See Body and bulk.

retardo / differo

retardo / differo. Printed forms: differt; retardat.

To slow or postpone. Greater bulk delays motion and action, while later distinctions separate slow completion in the patient from delay across the intervening distance. References: I.2.2, I.2.4. See Body and bulk.

soliditas / densitas / crassitudo

soliditas / densitas / crassitudo. Printed forms: crassitudo; densitateque; soliditate.

Solidity, density and thickness. They explain resistance to mutual bodily penetration, not every form of metaphysical dependence. References: I.2.2. See Body and bulk.

Cyrenaics (authorities and cited works)

Cyrenaics. Grouped with followers of Democritus and Epicurus as confining inquiry to bodily bulk. This is Ficino's argumentative classification. I.1.3; I.2.8. See Body and bulk; Ascent.

Democritus and his followers (authorities and cited works)

Democritus and his followers. Assigned to the bodily stopping point in the ascent and associated with explaining bodies' action from bulk. Ficino argues instead for the efficacy of quality and higher causes. I.1.3; I.2.8. See Body and bulk; Quality.

Epicurus and the Epicureans (authorities and cited works)

Epicurus and the Epicureans. Appear at the bodily stopping point of the ascent, in the objection that divine activity would entail burdensome deliberation, and in the polemic about divine knowledge of lowly things. I.1.3; I.2.8; II.8.1; II.9.20. See Body and bulk; Choice and deliberation; Universals and individuals.