Flesh

Use in the book

The discussion of habituation describes bodies initially disturbed by foods, drinks, and exertions, then developing flesh adapted to them. A later change can disturb the acquired familiarity again. Flesh is thus involved in a temporal account of bodily accommodation, rather than treated as an inert covering.

Places to read

1. I.47.7.2Flesh develops in relation to a familiar regimen.

Translation in this edition

“Flesh” preserves the material sense; “body” would erase the distinction between whole and constituent.

Use in the book

At the cross, flesh is the visible place of suffering and a veil before the inward greatness of Christ. Yet simply removing the veil would not reveal a spiritual object to bodily sight. Understanding must answer understanding, and love must read love. In the comparison of body and soul, flesh can seem heavy and narrowly capable, but its senses still serve the life of love. The argument places embodiment within a hierarchy of powers; it does not make every bodily function an evil.

Places to read

1. I.62Christ’s bleeding flesh is contemplated as the expression of a saving love.
2. I.88Fleshly sight must be accompanied by an understanding of Christ’s inward life.
3. II.51The body’s limited powers serve as a lantern and instrument for more expansive love.

In this edition

Do not assume that “flesh” always means sin. In these passages it can mean Christ’s suffering body or ordinary embodiment, while its restrictive connotations arise from particular comparisons.

Use in the book

B98 gives blood and the forms of other flesh a common compositional account. The phrase “other flesh” places blood close to, or within, the broader category of soft bodily substances, instead of treating solid tissue and fluid as unrelated kinds. Small variations around equal shares help explain plurality within the category.

In B1002 flesh is organized into pipes near the body’s extremities. These structures are scant of blood, keep blood within, and allow aither a route through. Flesh is consequently not an undifferentiated mass: its configuration matters to its function. The hearing fragment similarly preserves “fleshy sprig,” a phrase whose organic image identifies a small structured part rather than generic meat.

B76 presents another bodily arrangement, with earth uppermost over flesh in shells. Here the placement of materials is as important as their presence. Flesh can therefore be considered by composition, passage structure, and position relative to harder surfaces. These are complementary explanatory questions, not interchangeable definitions.

The alien tunic of flesh in B126 belongs to the discussion of embodiment and daimones. It gives the material a different evaluative and figural role without supplying a second physiological recipe. The distinction prevents the physical account from being either reduced to metaphor or isolated from the poem’s broader language of embodied life.

Places to read

1. B 98Mixture produces blood and the forms of other flesh.
2. B 100.1–5Flesh is arranged in pipes relevant to breathing.
3. B 76Earth lies at the outermost parts above flesh in shelled creatures.
4. B 99 (report)The fleshy-sprig expression is preserved in a report on hearing.

Translation in this edition

“Flesh” can sound narrowly muscular in contemporary English. The linked passages require a broader bodily-material sense, and B98 expressly permits different forms. No modern tissue classification is supplied.

Use in the book

A782 contrasts flesh with sinew, nails, and bone through their manner of composition. Flesh is generated from an equal blending of all four constituents, whereas the other tissues receive different recipes or transformations. Aristotle makes this difference argumentative: if the soul is identified with the ratio of mixture, the distinct ratios of flesh and bone would yield multiple souls distributed through a body. That is a challenge to a proposed identity, not an unqualified assertion that Empedocles explicitly defined every tissue's soul. A43 supplies another issue, where Aristotle treats flesh as the outcome of juxtaposed, preserved elemental parts and questions whether this amounts to true mixing. Numerical equality in A782 does not by itself refute that criticism, since a juxtaposition can also have a determinate proportion. The questions of ratio and mode of combination must be kept separate.

Places to read

1. A 78 (testimony)2Aëtius. Assigns flesh equal shares of the four constituents in mixture.
2. A 78 (polemical)2Aristotle, On the Soul. Uses the different ratios of flesh and bone to challenge the soul-as-ratio proposal.
3. A 43 (polemical)Aristotle, De gen. et corr. B 7. Makes flesh an example in the criticism of mixture as small-scale juxtaposition.

Translation in this edition

The crucial isōn, “equal,” is Wyttenbach's correction of the manuscript esō. Equal composition is the reading adopted by the edition, not an untouched numerical datum independently preserved in its source.