Sciences, virtues, and mutual containment

Use in the book

Many sciences and virtues coexist in one soul without displacing or confusing one another. A person can attend to one art's exemplar and make its appropriate work without producing the work of another. Ficino first uses this distinct coexistence against bodily mixture: such contents neither push each other out nor lose their identities through combination.

The next step is stronger. In an expert's geometry or theology, propositions lead to others; effects bear signs of causes, allowing inquiry backward as well as forward. Ficino describes each understanding as containing the others, since an acute knower can unfold the connected discipline from a proposition. This is a claim about ordered inferential implication and expert access, not an assurance that any novice instantly knows an entire subject after hearing one sentence.

Moral virtues similarly depend on one another. Justice fails under intimidation or servile appetite; courage requires resistance to enfeebling desire; temperance needs firmness against fear; and all need prudence's direction toward the proper end. Prudence in turn is obstructed by vice. Ficino presents perfected virtues as mutually implicated.

An extended bodily quality is distributed across different parts and is not whole in each. The alleged whole presence of connected knowledge and virtue therefore supplies another route to indivisibility. The chapter moves from distinct coexistence to mutual inclusion; these are related claims, not interchangeable descriptions.

Places to read

1. VIII.3.6Arts and virtues remain united and distinct without collision or confusion.
2. VIII.3.7Inferential connection among propositions and interdependence among virtues support whole-in-each containment.

Translation in this edition

VIII.3.7 retains the 1482 active quod docet, “what he teaches,” against the later passive reported in the apparatus. The teaching analogy supports a claim that what makes another known must possess it in an explanatory sense; it is not a new doctrine about physical storage.

acies mentis / caligo

acies mentis / caligo. Printed forms: acies; caligine; obnubiletur.

The mind's sharp gaze and the darkness that can cloud it. Vice obstructs prudence, completing the claim that the perfected moral virtues depend reciprocally upon one another. References: VIII.3.7. See Sciences, virtues, and mutual containment.

connexus

connexus. Printed forms: connexae.

Connected or interlinked; connexae describes feminine plural things linked with one another. The virtues are said to be so connected that each is wholly present in each, in parallel with the mutual implication of propositions. The claimed connection is ethical and intelligible rather than a spatial fastening of bodily parts. References: VIII.3.7. See Sciences, virtues, and mutual containment.

exemplar / fabricare

exemplar / fabricare. Printed forms: artificiorum; exemplar; exemplaria; fabricare; fabricat.

A model for a distinct art and the work made according to it. The mind can follow one artistic conception without producing the work proper to another, showing unity without confusion. References: VIII.1.3, VIII.3.6, VIII.3.8, VIII.15.3, VIII.16.2. See Sciences, virtues, and mutual containment.

gremium / detrudere / pellere

gremium / detrudere / pellere. Printed forms: detrudant; gremio; pellantque.

The soul's bosom and the pushing out associated with competing bodily occupants. Sciences and virtues coexist without displacing or blending into one another, so their containment is not spatial crowding. References: VIII.3.6. See Sciences, virtues, and mutual containment.

indicium / rimari

indicium / rimari. Printed forms: indiciis; rimari.

A sign or clue, and searching out what is disclosed through it. Later propositions and effects can help discover earlier principles and causes, so inferential passage need not run in only one direction. References: VIII.3.7. See Sciences, virtues, and mutual containment.

ingenium

ingenium. Printed forms: ingenii; ingenio; ingenium.

Native capacity, mental acuteness or resourcefulness. Food and wine would sharpen it under the rejected material hypothesis; disciplined ingenuity enables rapid inferences among scientific propositions. References: VIII.2.1, VIII.2.3, VIII.3.7. See Sciences, virtues, and mutual containment.

iustitia / suum cuique

iustitia / suum cuique. Printed forms: distribuet; iustitia; suum cuique; tribuit.

Justice, defined through rendering or distributing what belongs to each. The definition becomes an interdependence argument: a just distributor must also resist intimidation and disordered desire. References: VIII.3.1, VIII.3.7. See Sciences, virtues, and mutual containment.

propositio / docere

propositio / docere. Printed forms: docet; propositione; propositionem.

Proposition and its power to make another proposition known. Ficino models scientific connectedness on teaching and inferential possession, retaining the active 'what he teaches' in the source reading. References: VIII.3.7. See Sciences, virtues, and mutual containment.

sagacitas / elicere / delitescere

sagacitas / elicere / delitescere. Printed forms: delitescit; eliciantur; sagacitatem.

Acute discernment, drawing out implicit content and lying concealed. An expert can unfold a connected science from a proposition; the vocabulary does not imply that a novice instantly possesses every theorem. References: VIII.3.7. See Sciences, virtues, and mutual containment.

scientia

scientia. Printed forms: scientia; Scientia; scientiae; scientiam; scientiarum; scientias.

Settled knowledge; in the plural, distinct sciences or connected bodies of knowledge. It may mean a defining act, a discipline such as geometry, or an alleged part of knowledge whose object must be specified. References: VIII.3.6, VIII.4.1, VIII.4.8, VIII.4.10, VIII.4.11, VIII.4.12. See Sciences, virtues, and mutual containment.

temperantia / libido

temperantia / libido. Printed forms: cupiditates; libidine; libidini; libidinis; libidinis mollitiem; temperantia.

Temperance and the enfeebling softness of desire, libidinis mollitiem, which it counteracts. The virtue removes desire's impediment to honourable action and depends upon courage against fear, as the unity-of-virtues argument shows. References: VIII.3.1, VIII.3.7. See Sciences, virtues, and mutual containment.