Mind

Use in the book

The first occurrence in the opening survey is easy to overlook because English naturally renders the whole idiom: the helpers in lawsuits are “paying attention” to characters (976b). Their possession and direction of attention do not establish wisdom. The problem is what they attend to and by what means: memory and the routine of opinion, while remaining outside the truth of what is really just. The lexical presence of nous therefore cannot by itself certify the activity in which it appears.

Soon afterward the counterfactual loss of number would render the human living being “most senseless and most unintelligent” (976d). The paired superlatives stress intellectual deprivation, yet retain two word families. Number is not introduced as one optional subject among many; losing it would undercut the capacities by which human beings understand and account for their experience.

The fully developed positive use comes in the account of the stars. A soul that has acquired sense rules, gives law, and deliberates what is best (982b–c). Its unalterable activity is explained through a settled best decision, not through an incapacity to change. In this argument nous is the standard according to which the best decision is made and the characteristic whose presence regular motion is supposed to reveal. One must distinguish the proposed inference from its vocabulary: saying that the stars “have sense” states the conclusion the Athenian is defending.

The phrase also has less exalted uses. Even the smallest acquisition of sense should restrain a lawgiver from ignorant innovation in established rites (985c). At 986e sufficient sense qualifies the leader of the three equal-speed motions in the edition's construal. At 988c κατὰ νοῦν means “to the liking of” the temperate. These local idioms resist a blanket translation of every occurrence as a technical metaphysical “Intellect.” The dialogue can use a familiar word both in practical judgments and in cosmic explanation without making those uses identical.

Places to read

1. 976bἤθεσιν προσέχοντες τὸν νοῦν — Forensic helpers direct their attention to characters
2. 976dἀνοητότατον — The human creature deprived of number would be most senseless
3. 982bψυχῆς … νοῦν κεκτημένης — Sense is acquired by the soul that rules
4. 982cτοῦ νοῦν ἔχειν ἄστρα — The stars' having sense is the disputed inference from regularity
5. 985cνοῦν κέκτηται καὶ τὸν βραχύτατον — Even minimal sense imposes caution on a lawgiver
6. 988cμὴ κατὰ νοῦν τοῖς σώφροσιν — An idiom of what fails to please the temperate

Translation in this edition

Nous is normally “sense”; “pay attention” and “to the liking of” render complete idioms. The absence of the English noun in these two places is not an omission of the Greek concept. The word “senseless” at 984a likewise belongs to the noetic family, not to the separately translated intelligence family.

Attention to characters — προσέχειν (prosechein)

προσέχειν (prosechein)

Attention to characters. With the mind as object, the participle describes directing attention to characters in persuasive practice. The idiom is translated as a whole. Attested: προσέχοντες (976b). Sense attention and the mind that rules.

Directed attention — νοῦς (nous)

νοῦς (nous)

Directed attention. In the idiom paying attention, nous is directed toward characters by forensic helpers. Its occurrence does not certify their possession of wisdom. Attested: νοῦν (976b). Sense attention and the mind that rules.

Loss of numerical understanding — ἀνόητος (anoētos)

ἀνόητος (anoētos)

Loss of numerical understanding. The superlative describes what human beings would become if the decisive knowledge were removed; it is paired with most unintelligent. Attested: ἀνοητότατον (976d). Sense attention and the mind that rules.

Use in the book

At 205b–c the phrase τὸν νοῦν προσέχειν means paying attention to the boy; at 211a Socrates says Lysis has been paying attention to the argument. The accusative νοῦν is part of that ordinary idiom.

At 210b acquiring νοῦς means attaining the understanding needed for responsible action. The term supports the competence argument without requiring a technical theory of intellect. Distinguish this local sense from mere desire: a person can want an activity while lacking the judgment that would persuade others to entrust it to him.

The attention idiom recurs while Lysis follows the discussion (213d) and when Socrates warns against deception (219b). At 223a ἐν νῷ εἶχον means “I had it in mind”, introducing his unfulfilled plan to question someone older.

Places to read

1. 210bνοῦν μὴ κτησώμεθα — we do not acquire sense.
2. 205b–c
3. 211a
4. 213d
5. 219b
6. 223a

Use in the book

The comparison between bodies and spirits on I.214 is an explicitly proposed account of what each can see: Joubert writes “I think,” not a neutral description of an established mechanism. Here translating esprits as spirits preserves its contrast with bodies. In the account of searching for words on I.251, esprit is instead the writer’s mind discovering a thought not yet whole. It is an activity still in formation, not a storehouse of finished sentences.

The mind can also receive a moral or literary character. The “she-ape mind” attributed to Voltaire has pleasing movements without the sense whose appearance it imitates; the “gentle mind” is fire attractive at the right intensity and dangerous when too ardent. These are different evaluative metaphors, not successive definitions. Elsewhere Joubert separates the soul’s nourishment from the mind’s occupation: âme and esprit should therefore not be automatically collapsed.

Places to read

1. I, p. 214, entry 2, ¶1Spirits and bodies are compared through their supposed objects of sight.
2. I, p. 251, entry 2, ¶3The writer’s mind pursues words to find an incomplete thought.
3. II, p. 608, entry 7, ¶1The she-ape image distinguishes pleasing movement from genuine sense.
4. II, p. 765–766, entry 8, ¶1Gentleness controls the mind’s figurative fire.
5. II, p. 724, entry 10, ¶1The soul feeds on the mind’s repose.

Translation in this edition

The English translation uses spirit in the body/spirit contrast and mind in the intellectual and temperamental passages. Its unusual “she-ape mind” and repeated fire terms preserve Joubert’s comparisons. The date at I.251 has a damaged day; it supplies no secure chronological milestone.

Use in the book

A mind is in frame when it prizes things according to their real value. To resemble God inwardly is therefore to adopt a truthful ordering of attention and esteem, rather than merely repeat approved statements. The divine works and attributes make the giver’s thought accessible through what they disclose.

II.84 develops the mind as an active presence to objects. Human minds resemble the divine Mind when their powers become exercised knowledge and wisdom, filled with the world rather than remaining empty capacity. The Latin singular and plural preserve the relation without merging the participants. The mind’s enlargement must finally appear in action, since the meditation ends with becoming like God in what one does.

Places to read

1. I.10Thinking well is inward service and the setting of the mind in a divine frame.
2. I.13Likeness to God depends on rightly valuing objects.
3. II.84Mentes and mens express created minds’ likeness to the eternal Mind through active knowing.

In this edition

In frame means rightly disposed or ordered. The Latin mens and mentes are mind and minds, not names for separate faculties.

Use in the book

Aëtius groups Empedocles with Parmenides and Democritus in identifying mind and soul. He then draws the consequence that no animal would be irrational in the strict sense. The notice is concise and comparative: it does not explain whether “same” concerns substance, capacity, or the rejection of a separate intellectual principle.

Theophrastus's account of thinking uses the phronēsis family more extensively, while his last objection says a blood-blend is without dianoia. The latter judgment belongs to his criticism, not to Empedocles' own definition of unintelligent matter. Caelius Aurelianus uses mentis when describing mental derangement from a bodily cause among Empedocles' followers. That medical Latin adds a later context rather than a direct translation supplied by the poet.

A lexicon can bring these witnesses into conversation while preserving their differences of vocabulary, genre, and attribution. Their juxtaposition supports inquiry into embodied thought; it does not establish that every ancient mind-word in the volume names precisely the same technical entity.

Places to read

1. A 96 (testimony)Aëtius. Groups three thinkers under the identity of mind and soul.
2. A 86 § 24 (polemical)Theophrastus, On the Senses 24. Calls the blood-blend without intelligence while challenging its explanatory sufficiency.
3. A 98 (testimony)Caelius Aurelianus, On Chronic Diseases. Describes derangement of mind attributed to bodily causes by followers of Empedocles.

Translation in this edition

The translation “mind” in A96 should not make the doxographer's nous an unmediated Empedoclean word. The notice reports a position in later conceptual terms without quoting a verse.

Use in the book

The Latin mens is not always interchangeable with anima. The Proem can speak broadly of human minds, but the later analysis makes mind the highest part or eye of soul. Soul also has powers of imagination, sensation, generation, and bodily government, and is therefore not wholly mind. Ficino reasons from its partial possession of intelligence toward a higher being that is mind wholly and alone. Angel supplies that model, though it still receives truth and goodness from above.

A human intellectual faculty, the embodied subject possessing it, and a separate intellectual being are consequently distinct uses or applications within the discussion. Even incorporeal human mind operates under the conditions of an embodied soul and normally looks toward sensible things. Nor does mind have a uniform causal efficacy at every level: human understanding cannot produce every external effect or command every effective power of its soul merely by thinking. Ficino uses this limitation to argue for a more powerful intellectual cause above it. Translating every mind as soul, or every soul as mind, would conceal that transition.

Differences within soul must also remain visible. Book IV distinguishes the celestial soul's intellectual possession of ideas together from the successive actualization of seeds in its lower animating power. Its middle reason can be absorbed into mind because the lowest power suffices to administer its perfect body; human reason remains more occupied with bodily demands. The temporal activity characteristic of soul therefore does not mean that every one of its powers must exercise every content successively.

A separate excursus in II.6.14–24234567891011 attributes to Anebon, Abamon, Plotinus, Iamblichus, and Julian the claim that every angelic or animating mind is wholly present throughout immensity without mutual confusion. Rational spirits, on that theory, have neither dimensions nor attachment to a determinate dimension; their activity reaches immeasurable objects and their essential inclination reaches God. Several candles filling one hall illustrate distinct sources whose illumination shares a space. Particular operations can be more manifest in particular regions: angelic minds govern and animating minds vivify. A mind might mistake its principal sphere of operation for its limit, as philosophers can locate themselves in the heart.

Ficino explicitly closes this as their account before returning to God. The attribution prevents the excursus from becoming an unqualified statement that every soul is demonstrably omnipresent. Here animales means animating or belonging to soul, not exclusively nonhuman animal.

Further passage references. Proem.1, Proem.7; I.5.10–I.5.172345678; I.6.7–I.6.13234567; II.6.14–24234567891011; IV.2.9–IV.2.12234.

Places to read

1. I.5.16Embodied minds are contrasted with separated intellectual beings
2. II.6.14The named priests and Platonists introduce a theory of all minds present through immensity
3. II.6.24Localized manifestation, candlelights, and heart-belief close the attributed theory
4. II.9.12Angel is properly mind while divine naming is qualified
5. IV.2.10The intellectual part of celestial soul differs from its lower motive powers

Translation in this edition

The apparatus confirms animalem and animales as animating rather than bestial. The universal-presence account begins with named authorities in II.6.14, is introduced as “their position” in II.6.15, and ends “So much for their account of mind” in II.6.24. That attribution is structurally indispensable.

caput / capacitas

caput / capacitas. Printed forms: capacitatem; caput.

Head or governing summit, and capacity. Mind is the soul’s head but contracted to that soul’s capacity; its higher head is free and lucid mind existing in itself. References: I.5.14. See Mind.

ingenium

ingenium. Printed forms: ingenia; ingenio.

A mental disposition or native intellectual capacity. The Proem contrasts perverse dispositions resisting law with Lorenzo’s praised ingenuity; the word is not uniformly a technical term for intellect. References: Proem.8, Proem.11. See Mind.

machinatio / machinari

machinatio / machinari. Printed forms: machinationem; machinatur.

The mind’s devising or ranging conception. The reach of thought enters the argument that its source cannot be absent from the immensity it conceives. References: II.6.6, II.6.22. See Mind.

mens

mens. Printed forms: Mens; mentem; menti.

Mind as intellectual subject or power, with human, angelic, and animating uses. Universal mental presence belongs to a framed attribution; angel is properly mind while God is above the genus. References: II.6.14, II.6.22, II.9.12. See Mind.

Mind. Mind’s willing and knowing are distinguished explanatorily; the second mind receives formation rather than being the first source. References: II.11.30, III.1.12. See Mind.

Abamon and Anebon (authorities and cited works)

Abamon and Anebon. Egyptian priests named among the authorities for the account that angelic and animating minds are present throughout immensity. Ficino closes this as their account before returning to God. II.6.14–24234567891011. See Mind; Omnipresence and place.

Iamblichus (authorities and cited works)

Iamblichus. Appears with Proclus in the account of angelic numerical orders and among the named authorities for universal mental presence. I.5.27; II.6.14–24234567891011. See Angel; Mind.

Julian (authorities and cited works)

Julian. Named as a Platonist in the attributed account of all minds present throughout immensity. The local text supplies this role without requiring a more specific identification. II.6.14–24234567891011. See Mind.

Plotinus (authorities and cited works)

Plotinus. Invoked for matter and qualities as passive, God's self-directed intellection, universal mental presence, divine inward self-production, and celestial reason's motion. These passages have different attribution and qualification needs. I.3.19; I.6.12; II.6.14–24234567891011; II.12.9–1123; IV.2.11. See Matter; Intellect and intellection; Mind; Generation and corruption.