Sensation as attentive activity

Use in the book

Ficino invokes Augustine and Plotinus for an account in which soul does not suffer bodily affections but acts more attentively amid them. Its activities are easy where the instrument is congruent, difficult where it is incongruent; awareness of that activity constitutes sensing. The underlying sensory capacity remains even when nothing is presently sensed. Capacity, attentive exercise and awareness of exercise must therefore remain distinct.

The soul gives the bodily instrument an appropriate temperament. The account associates sight with a luminous medium, hearing with clear mobile air, smell with something misty, taste with moisture, and touch with something earthy and muddy. These are elements of the historical sensory physiology reported here. Quiet health is the harmonious coherence of the organism. An encounter with something unlike it provokes more attentive activity fitted to particular organs: congruent things are associated willingly and incongruent ones resisted painfully.

The ear makes the argument vivid. In silence soul already animates the organ; when sound strikes the airy spirit, it animates it more attentively. Acting more attentively is not itself undergoing the bodily impact. The soul knows its own activity, and that awareness is sensing. Ficino’s final formulation offers sensation as awareness of attentive operation or judgement of bodily affection awakened by it. Earlier in the chapter phantasia named attending to and judging a perception. The closely connected descriptions should be retained, not forced into an inflexible taxonomy that the passage does not supply.

The surgical example gives the positive account a demanding task. It must preserve actual awareness of bodily disturbance without transferring the destructive bodily process unchanged into the knower. That is why Ficino does not stop at saying that the judge is impassible. An entirely inert principle would not yet explain why an injury becomes known, why the affected organ receives attention, or why a remedy is directed to that place. The answer is increased activity by the same soul that already sustains the organ’s life.

“Even when nothing is sensed” qualifies the presence of the sensory power. The power is not generated anew each time a sound strikes or a color appears. There is an ongoing relation between soul and instrument, and the instrument has been tempered for an attentive response. Quiet animation and explicit sensing are thus related stages of activity rather than the presence and total absence of a soul. In the ear example, the contrast is not between a dead ear before sound and a living ear afterward; it is between its prior animation in silence and its more attentive animation under impact.

The five sensory media contribute to this account of fitted instruments. Luminous material is acted upon in the eyes; clear mobile air in the ears; a misty medium in the nostrils; moisture in the mouth; something earthy and muddy in touch. Each is described as what the soul activates. Their enumeration therefore does not merely catalogue the external objects of sight, hearing, smell, taste and touch. It specifies the differing bodily settings in which a common animating source operates. The differences belong to Ficino’s inherited natural philosophy and should be preserved without substituting modern sensory anatomy.

Agreement and disagreement likewise concern the fit of an operation. While the bodily constituents cohere in health, the soul acts quietly. An affecting difference prompts activities accommodated to particular locations or instruments. Bringing like things together and repelling the noxious are directed responses, not passive copies of the stimulus. The pleasant association of congruent things and painful resistance to incongruent things show how the account can include feeling without making feeling identical with a lesion in the soul’s substance.

The definition through awareness is deliberately reflexive: the attentive operation does not escape the operating soul. Yet the text does not say that every sensation requires an explicit verbal thought, “I am now attending.” Non latere states that the activity is known or manifest to its subject. It should not be expanded into a demand for discursive reflection by a second separate subject, which would risk repeating the very regress of judges the preceding argument was meant to terminate.

The chapter’s final alternatives require their own restraint. Sensation is described either as awareness of the attentive operation or as judgement of the bodily affection and quality awakened by that operation. These descriptions stress respectively the soul’s activity and what it discerns through that activity. Earlier, attending to and judging perception was assigned to phantasia. The supplied passage does not explicitly reconcile these formulations into a fixed multi-stage chart. A useful reading preserves the local distinctions and the broader active account while leaving the precise boundaries between sensing, attending and imagination open to further textual comparison. It would be less accurate to enforce a rigid definition that suppresses one of Ficino’s own concluding descriptions.

Places to read

1. VII.6.1Perception is distinguished from the attentive judgement called imagination.
2. VII.6.3An enduring capacity, more attentive activity and awareness of activity explain active sensation.

Translation in this edition

The attribution “Augustine and Plotinus confirm” introduces the ensuing account; the first-person “it seems to me” should not be used to claim an independently verified direct quotation. “Otherness” for alteritas names an affecting difference here, not an unrelated doctrine of metaphysical Otherness.

actio / operatio / opus

actio / operatio / opus. Printed forms: Actio; actio; actione; actionibus; operantem; operatio; operationes; operationis; operatur; operi; opus.

Activity, an operation, and a work or function accomplished. An active sensory operation is distinguished from the bodily passion that occasions it; a nutritive work is distinguished from heat’s contribution to it. References: VII.6.3, VII.8.1. See Sensation as attentive activity.

adiungere / repellere

adiungere / repellere. Printed forms: adiungat; repellatque.

To join together and repel. The soul’s activity joins like to like and resists what harms the living organization. References: VII.6.3. See Sensation as attentive activity.

agere / pati

agere / pati. Printed forms: actiones; agendas; agere; Agit; agit; agitur; pati.

To act and to undergo modification. The soul’s heightened animating activity is distinguished from the bodily impact that occasions it. References: VII.6.3. See Sensation as attentive activity.

alteritas

alteritas. Printed forms: alteritate.

Otherness or affecting difference. The encounter with something unlike the body’s established condition calls forth more attentive organ-specific activity. References: VII.6.3. See Sensation as attentive activity.

attentio / attentior

attentio / attentior. Printed forms: attentione; Attentior; attentiore; attentiores; attentioris; attentius.

Attention and heightened attentive activity. Soul already animates the healthy organ; stimulation calls forth an activity that it apprehends more distinctly. References: VII.6.3. See Sensation as attentive activity.

auris / nares / os

auris / nares / os. Printed forms: auribus; auris; aurium; naribus; ore.

Ear, nostrils and mouth as distinct sensory organs. The reported active account assigns airy, misty and moist media to their respective activities; the nouns name organs rather than powers themselves. References: VII.6.3. See Sensation as attentive activity.

congruus / incongruus / obsistere

congruus / incongruus / obsistere. Printed forms: congrua; incongruis; obsistit.

Congenial and uncongenial, and opposing what is uncongenial. The soul associates the former gladly and resists the latter painfully through its active responses. References: VII.6.3. See Sensation as attentive activity.

convenientia / inconvenientia

convenientia / inconvenientia. Printed forms: convenientiam; inconvenientiam.

Congruence and incongruence between what affects the body and its appropriate operation. These mark easy and difficult activities, rather than simply pleasure and pain as separate bodily substances. References: VII.6.3. See Sensation as attentive activity.

excitatum iudicium

excitatum iudicium. Printed forms: excitatum; iudicium.

A judgement awakened or elicited by a more attentive action. The final account defines sensation through awareness of activity or judgement of bodily affection prompted by that activity. References: VII.6.3. See Sensation as attentive activity.

humidus / terreus / lutulentus

humidus / terreus / lutulentus. Printed forms: humidum; lutulentum; terreum.

Moist, earthy and muddy. The first describes the mouth’s medium, the latter pair touch’s medium; they should not be modernized into anatomical discoveries. References: VII.6.3. See Sensation as attentive activity.

luminosus / aereus / caliginosus

luminosus / aereus / caliginosus. Printed forms: aereum; aereus; caliginosum; luminosum.

Luminous, airy and misty sensory media. These are assigned respectively to sight, hearing and smell in the reported historical account. References: VII.6.3. See Sensation as attentive activity.

non latere

non latere. Printed forms: latere; latet; non eam latere; Non latere; non latet.

Not to escape awareness. Ficino uses this idiom to describe the soul knowing its own activity, and hence sensing. References: VII.6.3. See Sensation as attentive activity.

perceptio / animadversio / phantasia

perceptio / animadversio / phantasia. Printed forms: animadversionem; animadvertit; perceptionem; percipit; phantasiam.

Perception, attentive awareness and imagination. The passage first calls perception sensation, then calls attending to and judging that perception imagination. References: VII.6.1. See Sensation as attentive activity.

phantasia

phantasia. Printed forms: phantasia; Phantasia; phantasiae; phantasiam.

Imagination, identified here with internal sense. Its material consists of bodily figures and qualities received through sense, explaining why it cannot alone define incorporeal soul. References: VI.2.2. See Habit, purification and intellectual experiment.

Imagination as an attending and judging sensory power. It judges bodily events and shares distress; its sorrow or joy can affect the same soul’s nourishment. References: VII.6.1, VII.6.2, VII.9.2. See Sensation as attentive activity.

Particularizing recognition and judgment operating upon an imagined presentation. It recognizes Plato as this good or beautiful friend but remains bound to his singular circumstances and does not recognize its intentions as incorporeal. References: VIII.1.1, VIII.1.2, VIII.1.4, VIII.1.5. See Images, intentions, and conjecturing substance.

Plotinus / Augustinus

Plotinus / Augustinus. Printed forms: Augustinus; Plotinusque.

Authorities invoked for the active, nonpassive account of sensation. The source attributes confirmation to both; the lexicon does not claim an independent verification of the quotation’s historical wording. References: VII.6.3. See Sensation as attentive activity.

quies / valitudo / consensio

quies / valitudo / consensio. Printed forms: consensione; quiete; valitudinis.

Quiet activity, health and coordinated agreement. The soul already animates cohering organs in quiet health before a stimulus increases its attention. References: VII.6.3. See Sensation as attentive activity.

sensus / sentire

sensus / sentire. Printed forms: sensum; Sensus; sensus; sentiendi; sentient; sentire; sentiremus; sentit; sentitur.

Sensory power, its exercise, or sensing itself according to construction. Chapter 6 distinguishes an enduring capacity from attentive sensing and awareness of that activity; this is not one unchanging use of sensus. References: VII.4.2, VII.6.2, VII.6.3. See Sensation as attentive activity.

serenus / mobilis

serenus / mobilis. Printed forms: mobilissimum; serenissimum.

Very clear and very mobile. The qualities of the ear’s airy medium help explain its responsiveness to sound in this physiology. References: VII.6.3. See Sensation as attentive activity.

sonus / percussio / silentium

sonus / percussio / silentium. Printed forms: percussionem; silentio; sono.

Sound, its impact, and silence. The organ is already animated in silence; impact produces more attentive animation, not the first existence of sensory capacity. References: VII.6.3. See Sensation as attentive activity.

vegetare

vegetare. Printed forms: vegetabat; vegetat.

To animate or sustain a bodily organ’s living activity. The same soul animates the ear before and during sound, doing so more attentively when sound strikes. References: VII.6.3. See Sensation as attentive activity.

verberare

verberare. Printed forms: verberantis; verberatur.

To strike or beat upon. Light strikes bodies and sound strikes the ear’s airy spirit; neither bodily impact is identified with the soul’s own passive deformation. References: VII.1.3, VII.6.3. See Sensation as attentive activity.

Augustine (authorities and interlocutors)

Augustine. Augustine supports direct divine creation, the stable mind directing bodily movement, whole presence and active sensation in different passages. These local appeals have distinct argumentative functions and should not be collapsed into a single quotation. References: V.13.1, V.15.5, VII.5.2, VII.6.3. See Divine production and the third essence; Time, memory and expectation; Whole presence and vital intensity; Sensation as attentive activity.

Plotinus (authorities and interlocutors)

Plotinus. The volume reports angelic production, lower-soul immortality and descent in passages where Ficino’s own endorsement varies. Other passages use Plotinus on vegetative power, active perception or a tentative analysis of being. Attribution and assent are not interchangeable. References: V.13.1, V.14.8, V.14.9, VI.10.1, VII.6.3, VIII.4.12. See Divine production and the third essence; Platonist disagreement and descent; Seminal power, fish eggs and the tree; Sensation as attentive activity; Analysis, mangling, and fictive construction.