Jun 22, 2015 10:25
8 yrs ago
1 viewer *
French term

surplombante

French to English Other Philosophy
From an academic text on Medieval philosophy. This part talks about Thomas Aquinas' critique of the Averroists:

"On reproche ceci :
a) la séparation substantielle de l’intellect matériel : l’intellect ne serait pas, comme le veut l’hylémorphisme d’Aristote, une « âme », forme d’un corps (ou du moins, la meilleure puissance d’une âme forme d’un corps), mais une substance, une réalité par soi, autonome et ***surplombante***, ontologiquement indépendante de ce corps."

Discussion

tatyana000 (asker) Jun 26, 2015:
the difficulty here is what the term means in this context.
ormiston Jun 23, 2015:
very interesting My link talks about the role of emotions in this context. My suggestion does give the idea of predominance but maybe something better can be found...
Francis Marche Jun 22, 2015:
It may not be so manifest from the look of it but the French verb "surplomber" conveys the notion of having a general view over the object considered or beheld, such as from a balcony or "belvedere", i.e. to take a scopic view on it. Hence "Etre en surplomb de quelque chose" essentially means not to be part of it, which is a key notion in this comparison between Aquinas' and Aristotle theories of the intellect. I'm not sure the two proposed translations reflect this notion. "Overriding" appears as a clear over-translation, while overarching is used too broadly in other, unrelated contexts ("the overarching objective", etc.).

There is a strong sense of "vertical control" in "surplomber" by an entity ontologically distinct from what it controls. I can't suggest a translation right now. Maybe later.
Jonathan MacKerron Jun 22, 2015:
prevailing, dominanting, taking precedence ??
John Holland Jun 22, 2015:
Asker Could you please say whether the difficulty concerns: 1) the possible definitions of the term in your question, 2) how to handle the syntax of the sentence, or 3) something else?
Thanks in advance

Proposed translations

+2
22 mins
Selected

overarching

I think this might work, having looked into the concept a little.
Or possibly "unifying".

And these might help:
"The soul is an immaterial substance, according to Aquinas, but this does not commit him to dualism. He argues that though the soul can be considered to be an intellectual principle in its own right, and, in being the principle through which we gain knowledge of the material or sensory world, we can distinguish it from the body, nevertheless, it is so united to the body that
we say that the man knows, rather than that the soul knows (ST, I, 75, 2 and 4). As Copleston (1955, p. 155) explains in his commentary on Aquinas, the human person is not a combination of two substances, body and soul, but one substance which forms one human person."
http://www2.hawaii.edu/~pesaconf/zpdfs/55ozonlins.pdf

"According to Aquinas, a substance possessed only one form, and its matter was the essentially characterless prime matter. In other words the informed parts of an object – in the case of a living creature, its organs, and the various kinds of stuff that constituted it (in the end, quantities of earth fire air and water) did not possess their own forms, but were informed by the overall substantial form."
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/substance/

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/aquinas/
Peer comment(s):

agree Barbara Cochran, MFA
38 mins
Many thanks Barbara!
neutral Nikki Scott-Despaigne : Unless I've misunderstood the basic idea, this particular point in the text here is about separation and domination. Also, the choice of "overarching" seems too literal here.
1 hr
Going by the texts I quote, as well as the text in question, I understand it as intellect = the "overall substantial form", and that there is an ambiguity, separate and yet not separate.
neutral ormiston : You suggest overarching as equivalent to unifying?
6 hrs
No, as another option.
agree Melissa McMahon
13 hrs
Thanks Melissa!
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4 KudoZ points awarded for this answer. Comment: "Selected automatically based on peer agreement."
+2
11 mins

overriding

http://www.informationphilosopher.com/solutions/philosophers...
Could express this definition of the role of the intellect
Peer comment(s):

agree Verginia Ophof
1 hr
agree Nikki Scott-Despaigne : I read it this way. An idea of domination, superiority, hierarchy.
1 hr
neutral Melissa McMahon : This is ambiguous to me, because "to override" technically means to have power of veto over something.
13 hrs
Something went wrong...
11 hrs

vertically embracing

A suggestion. See my notes.

There is a strong risk to extrapolate, overtranslate or deviate when grappling with the term in this context. Staying literal can be a fair option since the term itself is surrounded by other words that fine-tune and set out the semantics and spell out the meaning intented : -- "réalité en soi", "autonome", "ontologiquement indépendante".

"Surplombante" is there for the image, to reinforce the message and therefore can be modestly translated literally.
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Reference comments

1 hr
Reference:

More generally on Thomistic active intellect

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