Intelligible and sensible

Use in the book

Writing in metaphysics should make the abstract perceptible and palpable, not obscure the palpable by abstraction. Yet mere intelligibility is explicitly distinguished from clarity. Imagination can bridge the domains by embodying the intellectual without altering its nature. The intelligible world itself is also distinguished from the ideal world: minds and, “so to speak,” God see the first; poets compose the second from terrestrial knowledge and conjectures about the intellectual world.

The later account of metaphysics extends the task through several stages: perceptible, apparent, imaginable if possible, and finally intelligible to attention. A proposed distinction between imager and imaginer again separates bodily or perceptible things from spiritual or intelligible ones. It is a proposal with conditions, not an established terminology that the translator may apply retroactively throughout the notebooks.

Places to read

1. I, p. 135, entry 7, ¶1Metaphysical writing should make abstraction perceptible.
2. I, p. 264, entry 1, ¶1Intelligibility need not be clarity.
3. II, p. 493, entry 1, ¶1Imagination embodies the intellectual without distortion.
4. II, p. 566, entry 1, ¶1The intelligible world differs from the poet’s ideal world.
5. II, p. 860, entry 6, ¶1Metaphysics proceeds through several modes of accessibility.
6. II, p. 872, entry 4, ¶1A proposed verbal distinction separates perceptible and intelligible domains.

Translation in this edition

The English translation uses perceptible or perceptible to the senses for sensible in these contexts, and intelligible for intelligible. It preserves “so to speak,” “if possible,” “merely” and the conditional “would.” Intellectual or intelligible is not silently replaced by ideal, nor is conjecture converted into knowledge.