Harmony and the strings

Use in the book

Ficino rejects a position he attributes to Aristoxenus and other musicians: soul is a harmony generated from bodily constitution. The proposal is more specific than saying that body and soul can be harmonious. It makes soul a product of bodily arrangement and therefore, in Ficino’s opening classification, an accident. This connects the chapter directly with chapter 9’s distinction between a constitution and the substance that makes its body.

The musical analogy separates three stages. An agent from elsewhere moves the strings; the moved strings produce sounding harmony; that harmony depends on their arrangement and movement. Ficino denies that the final stage supplies the prior agency that initiates or governs the others. The transferred claim is causal: a soul arising as the harmony of composed humors would be governed by those humors rather than govern them. The argument does not deny musical concord or condemn harmonious bodily order. It depends upon the assumed asymmetry between a produced arrangement and its directing source.

Ficino follows the consequences through productive, regulatory and cognitive activities. There would be no bodily motions beyond the humors’ condition and no works above their command. The body’s artful figure and disposition would lack the directing maker assigned to soul. Nor could soul resist bodily affections if the alleged resisting agent were wholly the bodily arrangement producing it. It could neither reflect upon itself nor turn from bodily things toward incorporeal objects as an independently active subject. These capacities are not all demonstrated anew here: Ficino appeals to earlier discussion and promises further treatment. Their present role is to specify what the harmony theory cannot explain if those capacities are established.

The reflexive phrases retain distinct objects. Turning back into oneself concerns self-relation; joining oneself to something incorporeal concerns the object or order of cognition. Separation from bodily things belongs here to an account of activity and should not automatically mean bodily death. The concluding link between acting through oneself and existing through oneself states the ontological requirement Ficino assigns to these activities. An effect wholly dependent on material configuration cannot supply that independent subject.

This opens a sustained sequence rather than completing the whole anti-harmony argument. Chapter 11 allows an opponent to specify vital concord and asks what determines and continually maintains it. Chapter 12 separates composition from proportion and tests each; chapter 13 examines the freedom from matter required by soul’s powers; chapters 14 and 15 distinguish moral concord from the degree of life and test soul’s persistence through discord. Ficino retains positive uses of coordinated order throughout. The target is the identity of soul with harmony, or the claim that bodily harmony sufficiently produces it, rather than every harmonious relation within a living being.

Places to read

1. VII.10.1Aristoxenus’s reported thesis is tested through the direction of dependence between strings and harmony.
2. VII.11.1The reply to a specially tempered harmony requires a superior inner cause.
3. VII.14.1Degrees of musical concord supply a further reductio of soul-as-harmony.

Translation in this edition

The attribution to Aristoxenus is Ficino’s report, not an independently verified quotation here. The edition retains singular extiterit with animus against later plural readings. Reflexive acting and existing belong to that same subject.

Aristoxenus / musici

Aristoxenus / musici. Printed forms: Aristoxeno; musicis.

Aristoxenus and other musicians as the attributed proponents of soul-as-harmony. The attribution is Ficino’s report; the musical dependence argument is his reason for rejecting the doctrine. References: VII.10.1. See Harmony and the strings.

conditio humorum / imperium

conditio humorum / imperium. Printed forms: humorum conditionem; illorum imperium.

The condition and governing reach of the humors. Soul-as-harmony could not explain activities exceeding those bodily powers, which Ficino says his earlier arguments establish. References: VII.10.1. See Harmony and the strings.

disiungere / copulare incorporeis

disiungere / copulare incorporeis. Printed forms: disiunctum; incorporeis copulabit.

To separate from bodily objects and join to incorporeal ones. The rejected theory lacks an independent subject capable of this cognitive orientation beyond humoral states. References: VII.10.1. See Harmony and the strings.

fides / chorda

fides / chorda. Printed forms: chordas; chordis; fidibus.

Strings of a musical instrument. Fides is not faith here. Strings moved from elsewhere produce harmony; harmony does not independently set them moving. References: VII.10.1. See Harmony and the strings.

fieri / facere

fieri / facere. Printed forms: facit; facitque; factum; fieri; fiet; fiunt; Fiunt.

To come about or be made, and to make or do. The passive/active contrast matters when a harmony is produced by moved strings, while soul is assigned the productive role in bodily organization. References: VII.1.3, VII.5.4, VII.6.1, VII.7.1, VII.10.1. See Harmony and the strings.

figura artificiosa / dispositio

figura artificiosa / dispositio. Printed forms: dispositio; figura artificiosa.

Artfully formed shape and ordered disposition. These organized bodily results require an active arranger, not a harmony wholly dependent on already arranged constituents. References: VII.10.1. See Harmony and the strings.

harmonia / progenitus

harmonia / progenitus. Printed forms: harmonia; harmoniam; progenitam.

Harmony and its being generated from another condition. The disputed view makes soul an outcome of constituted humors, which would leave it an accident dependent on them. References: VII.10.1. See Harmony and the strings.

motus / movere

motus / movere. Printed forms: motam; motis; motu; motui; motum; motus; movebit; moventur; movet.

Motus is motion or activity, ranging from bodily movement to inward living self-motion; movere is to move, and motam means moved in rem motam, the thing moved, at V.15.5. The first proof identifies inward movement with life, while V.2 distinguishes motion of operation from stable substance. References: V.1.1, V.1.5, V.2.1, V.12.13, V.15.5. See Motion and substantial stability.

Movement and the action of moving. The severed-fragment objection uses apparent continued movement; the harmony critique distinguishes moving constituents from the outcome they produce. References: VII.5.4, VII.6.1, VII.10.1. See Harmony and the strings.

pendere / oriri / sustinere / nasci

pendere / oriri / sustinere / nasci. Printed forms: nascitur; orietur; pendebit; sustinebunt.

To depend, arise, sustain, and be born or come into being, respectively. If soul were humoral harmony, the humors would generate and sustain it rather than receiving governance from it. References: VII.10.1. See Harmony and the strings.

per se exsistere / operari

per se exsistere / operari. Printed forms: exsistit; extiterit; operabitur; per se aliquid operabitur; per se exsistit; per se ipsum.

To exist or act through oneself. The closing inference links independent activity with independent existence, a relation lost if soul is merely an effect of strings or humors. References: VII.10.1. See Harmony and the strings.

repugnare / reflectere

repugnare / reflectere. Printed forms: reflectet; repugnabit.

To resist and to turn back upon oneself. Resistance to bodily affect and self-reflection are among the soul’s activities that the humoral-harmony hypothesis cannot explain. References: VII.10.1. See Harmony and the strings.

somniare

somniare. Printed forms: somniare.

To dream or imagine, used dismissively. Ficino’s polemical verb marks his rejection of the claim that soul is harmony generated by bodily constitution. References: VII.10.1. See Harmony and the strings.

Aristoxenus and Dicaearchus (authorities and interlocutors)

Aristoxenus and Dicaearchus. Ficino reports their account of life as a bodily temperament. Aristoxenus also figures in the classification of dependent soul-principles and in the later musical-harmony objection. The rejection concerns harmony as the sufficient producer or identity of soul. References: V.15.8, VI.1.5, VII.10.1. See Temperament and harmony; Constitution, localized point and harmony; Harmony and the strings.