Conversion, desire and compulsion

Use in the book

At V.15.19 Ficino returns explicitly to Augustine and opens a question the preceding survival arguments do not yet answer: could mind avoid annihilation but become an inferior essence, such as body? The purpose is to protect determinate rational life, not merely insist that something remains after death.

The opening qualification is a useful model of Ficino's argumentative discipline. He grants that someone might reasonably think the earlier proof excludes only reduction to nothing. A lower surviving substance would escape that conclusion while forfeiting rational life. The closing pages must therefore secure the identity and rank of what survives. His distinction between necessary and sufficient conditions shows that the willing/compulsion division is only a test of possible routes, not an assertion that any sufficiently intense desire could actually transform a mind into a body.

The argument about desire is equally specific. Desires directed toward body are analyzed as actions upon or for it: possessing, vivifying, fashioning and caring. A body could be an object of each act without being the subject that performs it. If the agent became mere body, it would lose the superior activity by which the desired relation was to be achieved. Ficino extends this through introspection to acting, knowing, sensing and, at minimum, living. He is not claiming that no one ever speaks of wanting to be an animal or an object. He is identifying what he takes to be the active good implicitly sought by a rational appetite.

The compulsory route is branched rather than dismissed in one sentence. The proposed cause must be stronger than its target. A body cannot outrank rational soul on the hierarchy already assumed. A stronger soul can exercise leverage only where the weaker soul's desires make it subject, and a transformation eliminating all desire cannot satisfy that dependence. The would-be ruler's own purpose also fails: care seeks the other's good, while malicious dominion seeks control over a mind, a more valuable object of rule than a body.

V.15.22 then separates a disembodied compeller from an embodied one and, within the latter case, an embodied target from a released target. Ficino's premises about disembodied goodness and superiority to bodily coercion must remain visible; they are not demonstrated anew in this paragraph. The conclusion about what is above rational soul being divine supplies a final appeal to benevolent action. This is why the account should not be detached as universal social psychology about interpersonal force.

The next two tests address weaknesses the division might leave. Sleep seems to overcome a person involuntarily, but only closes bodily sensation and does not abolish the truth accessible within a dream. More fundamentally, the final mediation proof argues that soul's conversion into body would require removing the form by which body can be produced. These are distinct arguments converging upon determinate continued life, rather than repetitions of the bare claim that nothing becomes nothing.

Places to read

1. V.15.19, V.15.20Nonannihilation is distinguished from identity preservation, and necessary from sufficient conditions.
2. V.15.21, V.15.22Desire and coercion are tested against the proposed conversion.
3. V.15.23, V.15.25, V.15.26, V.15.27Sleep and natural mediation provide the final related tests.

Translation in this edition

The source’s solutus at V.15.22 means freed from bodily subjection in this argument, not dissolved into nonexistence. The chapter invokes Augustine and then returns to him by name; this companion treats the reasoning as Ficino’s Augustinian presentation without claiming independent textual collation.

cogere

cogere. Printed forms: coactus; cogatur; cogens; cogente; cogi; Cogit; cogit; cogitur.

To compel or force, here tested as a route to ontological change. The analysis considers bodily and psychic agents; it is not a general claim that victims consent to real-world coercion. References: V.15.20, V.15.21, V.15.22. See Conversion, desire and compulsion.

cupiditas

cupiditas. Printed forms: cupiditatem; cupiditates; cupiditatibus; cupiditatis.

A directed desire through which one mind may exercise leverage over another in this account. Ficino denies that becoming mere body could satisfy desire, because the change would abolish the capacity to desire. References: V.15.21, V.15.22. See Conversion, desire and compulsion.

in deteriorem essentiam

in deteriorem essentiam. Printed forms: in deteriorem commutetur essentiam.

Being transformed into a worse kind of essence. Ficino explicitly recognizes that excluding annihilation does not yet exclude the soul's degradation into body. References: V.15.19. See Conversion, desire and compulsion.

necesse / oportere

necesse / oportere. Printed forms: necessario; necesse; Oportere; oportet.

Necessary or required within an argument. The necessity follows the stated conditions; the final conversion argument carefully denies that willing or compulsion is sufficient for the change. References: V.4.1, V.5.2, V.12.2, V.13.18, V.15.20. See Conversion, desire and compulsion.

possidere / consulere / imperare

possidere / consulere / imperare. Printed forms: consulat; consulere; consulit; imperare; possideat.

To possess, care for or rule, different relations one agent may seek toward another. Desire for bodily possession or care requires soul's agency; a ruler's interest in another mind does not support turning it into mere body. References: V.15.20, V.15.22. See Conversion, desire and compulsion.

potestas

potestas. Printed forms: potestas; potestate; potestatem; potestati.

Power or control over an action or another being. The coercion analysis asks what a stronger mind can actually control and through what dependence. References: V.15.21, V.15.22. See Conversion, desire and compulsion.

solutus

solutus. Printed forms: solutus.

Released or free from bodily subjection in the local argument. It does not mean destroyed or dissolved; the disembodied state is invoked in one branch of the coercion dilemma. References: V.15.22. See Conversion, desire and compulsion.

sponte

sponte. Printed forms: sponte.

Of one's own accord. Ficino denies that soul voluntarily departs from its own form and separately excludes external compulsion. References: V.8.3, V.8.4. See Conversion, desire and compulsion.

velle / voluntas

velle / voluntas. Printed forms: velit; velle; vellet; volet; voluntate.

To will and willing, one proposed cause of conversion into body. The argument distinguishes the necessary cause of a hypothetical conversion from a sufficient condition for its possibility. References: V.14.2, V.15.20, V.15.21, V.15.22, V.15.23. See Conversion, desire and compulsion.