I think of the medie\u00adval Islamic phi\u00adlo\u00adso\u00adpher Avicenna\u2019s floa\u00adting man, who, denied all sen\u00adsa\u00adtion, still knows, as proof of the soul, that he exists.1 I am not sure I believe him. A bet\u00adter ans\u00adwer is found in the Roman poet Lucretius\u2019s argu\u00adment in his epic poem, De rerum natu\u00adra, that we can die inch by inch. Every cell is a king\u00addom of both sub\u00adstance and spi\u00adrit, and any king\u00addom can be over\u00adthrown. Our life force, like our flesh, never seems to issue away from us all at once. Anyone who has been half dead can attest to this. What we call our soul can die in small quan\u00adti\u00adties, just as our bodies can be worn, ampu\u00adta\u00adted, and poi\u00adso\u00adned away, bit by bit.2 The lost parts of our souls are no more repla\u00adceable than the lost parts of our bodies, life incre\u00admen\u00adtal\u00adly lif\u00adting from life, just like that. And there we are, most\u00adly dead, but still requi\u00adred to go to work.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I think of the medie\u00adval Islamic phi\u00adlo\u00adso\u00adpher Avicenna\u2019s floa\u00adting man, who, denied all sen\u00adsa\u00adtion, still knows, as proof of the soul, that he exists.1 I am not sure I believe him. A bet\u00adter ans\u00adwer is found in the Roman poet Lucretius\u2019s argu\u00adment in his epic poem, De rerum natu\u00adra, that we can die inch by [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"quote","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"wp_typography_post_enhancements_disabled":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[3188,133,3189,1973,3187,1772],"class_list":["post-22637","post","type-post","status-publish","format-quote","hentry","category-non-classe","tag-atome","tag-avicenne","tag-discret","tag-experience-de-pensee","tag-lucrece","tag-morcellement","post_format-post-format-quote"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/testanonpertinente.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22637","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/testanonpertinente.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/testanonpertinente.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/testanonpertinente.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/testanonpertinente.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=22637"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/testanonpertinente.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22637\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":22638,"href":"https:\/\/testanonpertinente.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22637\/revisions\/22638"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/testanonpertinente.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=22637"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/testanonpertinente.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=22637"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/testanonpertinente.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=22637"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}