Discernment

Use in the book

The question whether anything is better than judgment is answered with a sequence: seeing, the mind’s eye, penetration, prompt discernment and natural sagacity. The terms illuminate one another without constituting a formally ordered set of separate faculties. At the theater, shared emotion is said to sharpen tact and discernment until everyone has taste. This claim gives discernment an affective setting rather than making it necessarily dispassionate. The note on Cicero separates taste and discernment from criticism, allowing excellence in the former without an equivalent achievement in the latter.

Places to read

1. II, p. 813, entry 7, ¶1Prompt discernment belongs to a series of powers valued above judgment.
2. I, p. 46, entry begun p. 45, no. 3, ¶8Emotion at the theater sharpens discernment and taste.
3. II, p. 701, entry 2, ¶1Cicero’s discernment is distinguished from criticism.

Translation in this edition

Discernment is retained, while tact is rendered intuition in the theatrical passage. “Spiritual” on II.813 preserves the intellectual/spiritual range of spirituël; the sentence does not restrict sagacity to a specific theology.

Tact

French: tact.

Tact keeps an association with touch while extending to fine discrimination. The two-philosophies passage includes it among the soul’s necessary resources; the moral-evidence fragment opposes self-evidence of touch to self-evidence of sight. The English translation accordingly uses tact in the first and touch in the second. Neither should be restricted to social politeness.

Places to read: I, p. 259, entry 6, ¶1; II, p. 688, entry 2, ¶1.