Separation

Use in the book

The Aristotelian report considers form abstracted from matter and matter considered without form; this is a conceptual account of what constitutes body. Porphyry distinguishes incorporeal activities separated from matter from those approaching bodies. The discussion of soul’s use of body compares it with a helmsman able to stand apart from his ship, then contrasts a rider’s shared journey. These passages ask different questions about independence.

Places to read

1. I.11.4.2Matter and form are considered separately in their definitions.
2. I.49.21.1Separation from matter qualifies incorporeal activity.
3. I.49.41.5Analogies distinguish degrees of soul’s association with body.

Translation in this edition

“Separate” does not always mean spatially distant. The kind of separation must be recovered from the argument rather than supplied by the English word alone.

Use in the book

B 172 alternates one growing from many with many growing from one. B 9 says that when the constituents separate, humans call the event ill-starred doom. These statements treat dissolution as a rearrangement of what exists, not its passage into nothing. The death of a compound may still be real at the compound's level; the enduring constituents are not thereby annihilated.

The physical consequences of separating are not uniformly negative. In B 62 separating fire raises forms from earth in seeking its like. B 37 makes earth increase its own frame and aither aither, showing aggregation by kind. These processes can be related to differentiation without being confused with a fully restored world-order. Conversely, in B 20 the cutting apart of limbs ends a living body's coherence. The same general movement must be evaluated at the scale and stage actually described.

The fragments do not support a neat modern formula in which Love only mixes unlike particles and Strife only attracts like particles. They do give evidence that separation, kinship, and regrouping are interconnected. A lexicon can identify those relationships while leaving the exact cosmic sequence disputed.

Places to read

1. B 8.3–4The noun diallaxis concerns what has been mixed, translated here as interchange.
2. B 9.4–5What humans call doom is described as the separation of previously mixed constituents.
3. B 17.1–13The one–many account repeatedly describes growing apart.
4. B 20.4–5Living limbs are cut apart by Quarrels.
5. B 62.1–6Fire being separated out raises forms and seeks its like.

Translation in this edition

“Interchange” in B 8 should not be silently corrected to one universal technical English noun. B 9 contains several supplements, including the negative in the criticism of ordinary naming, so its exact wording is less secure than an unmarked paraphrase suggests.

Use in the book

At A28 separation is the characteristic work of Strife, paired with Love’s combination. Aristotle at A37 and A40 argues that Love also separates, because portions of each root must leave their like in order to join unlike roots. The apparent reversal is thus an argument about the object of separation rather than evidence for a careless exchange of the two divine names.

A46 places Empedocles among thinkers who separate contraries out of an original one or mixture, and distinguishes his recurring sequence from Anaxagoras’ once-only process. A49 offers a particular cosmogonic order: aither, then fire, then earth, followed by water squeezed from earth and air exhaled from water. A53 calls the origin of stellar fire the “first separation.” The ordinal “first” belongs to that particular world-formation report; it does not, by itself, establish an absolute first event before an eternal cycle.

Separative language helps explain why the roots can persist while familiar bodies change. Yet it leaves open whether a particular testimony describes spatial sorting, release from a mixture, or the critic’s reconstruction of what the system requires.

Places to read

1. A 37 (polemical)Aristotle, Metaphysics A 4, 985a21. Attributes separation of like portions to Love as part of a charge of causal inconsistency.
2. A 46 (testimony)Aristotle, Physics A 4, 187a20. Describes periodic separation out of mixture.
3. A 49 (testimony)Aëtius II 6,3. Provides an ordered sequence of separations in world-formation.
4. A 53 (testimony)Aëtius II 13,2 (D. 341). Locates the expulsion of stellar fire at the first separation.

Translation in this edition

Do not silently convert every “separation out” into transmutation of one root into another. The reports’ invariant constituents make that inference especially consequential.

Use in the book

The text links the mind's ability to separate forms in thought with the existence of forms and minds separate from body. These are related but distinct claims. In one argument, even an opponent who grants only intellectual separation of otherwise conjoined forms must admit, Ficino says, that the minds performing this separation are themselves separate. Other arguments concern self-subsistence directly: incorporeal form need not depend on a material subject, and a superior mind can live apart from body and bodily motion. Absolutus often means free from a limiting attachment, not “absolute” in every later philosophical sense. A mind contracted to an embodied soul's capacity contrasts with a free and lucid mind existing in itself. Separation performed in thought and separation asserted as a mode of existence remain distinct parts of the argument. An object's mathematical generality alone is not the whole of the claim about independent being.

I.3.12 gives a precise ladder. Natural forms are bound to determinate kinds of matter; mathematical forms require only indeterminate matter; metaphysical forms require neither determinate nor indeterminate matter. The next comparison separates divisibility from position: dimensions require both parts and position; a point lacks parts but remains related to position; number has parts without spatial position; unity needs neither. The mind then rises beyond indivisible but accidental unity to substantial unity or form, the stable ground of changing accidents. Ficino argues from the limited human mind's ability to make this ascent to the greater power of the universal order from which that mind derives. This makes the passage an argument about degrees of independence and their real ground, rather than simply the extraction of a general feature from particular examples.

Further passage references. I.3.12, I.3.24–I.3.2923456; I.5.14–I.5.17234, I.5.23–I.5.272345; I.3.12–1423

Places to read

1. I.3.12–1423The mind ascends through kinds of form and through dimensions, points, number, and unity while distinguishing parts from position.
2. I.3.24–2923456Intellectual separation supports arguments for forms and minds not dependent upon bodily recipients.
3. I.5.16–172Conjoined minds and separately existing minds differ in completeness and characteristic objects.

Translation in this edition

“Free” and “separate” should retain their specified object of freedom. The ladder of natural, mathematical, and metaphysical forms explicitly contrasts determinate matter, indeterminate matter, and freedom from either; it is not just a generic process of forming broad concepts.

absolutus / adstrictus

absolutus / adstrictus. Printed forms: absolutasque; adstrictas.

Released from constraint, and bound to something. Universal forms and determinate natural materials are contrasted; release from a particular material constraint is not automatically complete divine independence. References: I.3.12. See Separation and abstraction.

discessus / seorsum / semovere

discessus / seorsum / semovere. Printed forms: discessum; discessus; semotum; seorsum; separari.

Departure, apartness, or separation from matter and its conditions. Intelligible objecthood and intelligent subjecthood are distinguished even as both are traced to immateriality. References: II.9.1. See Separation and abstraction.

fugere materiam

fugere materiam. Printed forms: materiam fugiat.

To withdraw from matter in intellectual operation. Angel is wholly mind, making direct substantial adherence to matter unsuitable to its characteristic activity. References: IV.1.30. See Separation and abstraction.

seorsum

seorsum. Printed forms: seorsum.

Separately or apart. Independence is tested through the possibility of existing apart from the conditions and limits of accidents. References: II.11.5. See Separation and abstraction.

Apart or separately. An instrument apart from its craftsman cannot carry out the art's form; separation concerns causal sufficiency. References: IV.1.3. See Instrument.

separo / seiungo

separo / seiungo. Printed forms: seiunctas; seiungi; separant; separatae.

To separate or abstract. Even the objection that separation occurs only through mental contemplation is turned into evidence that the separating minds are themselves independent of matter. References: I.3.24. See Separation and abstraction.