Indeterminate and indefinite

Use in the book

The aphorism that everything beautiful is indeterminate gives the quality a positive role. The defense of verbal indeterminacy likewise makes flexible words necessary for exact expression of mobile affections. Yet the account of an unnamed older philosophy lists the indeterminate and formless among unfavorable senses of the infinite. The reported terminology cannot be made into Joubert’s unqualified definition of beauty.

The unfinished question about an indefinite number of excellent books asks whether language has a fixed productive limit; it does not answer itself by asserting infinity. The conditional argument about indefinite perfectibility considers what endless approach would mean for ever reaching perfection. Keeping these modalities visible matters as much as choosing the English adjective.

Places to read

1. I, p. 301, entry 8, ¶1Beauty receives an unrestricted but undeveloped association with indeterminacy.
2. I, p. 305, entry 7, ¶1Verbal flexibility enables exact expression.
3. I, p. 412, entry 2, ¶1An unnamed philosophy gives indeterminacy an unfavorable sense.
4. II, p. 539, entry 1, ¶1An unfinished question considers the limits of language’s productivity.
5. II, p. 788, entry 6, ¶1Indefinite perfectibility is considered under an explicit condition.

Translation in this edition

The English translation separates indeterminate/indeterminacy from indefinite. The school at I.412 is not named; the journal and Y. at II.788 remain unexpanded. That entry’s uncertain hyphen-like mark is retained without making it meaningful punctuation.