Notes are in alphabetical order of the word or passage noted.
Álgos. This word is the root for English words like analgesic and neuralgia. Aristotle’s word for pain, lúpē, appears towards the end of the play when Hercules brings Alcestis back from the underworld and gives Admetus the gift of an unidentified woman, who Admetus does not recognize as Alcestis. Much too late, Admetus is loyal to Alcestis and refuses the gift repeatedly. At one point Admetus exclaims: “But if I do take her, pain [lúpē ] will tear at my heart.” (Beye, line 1100)
Aquinas references use the standard references for the works and sections. So, ST I-IIae q. 41 a.4 refers to the Summa Theologica, first section of the second part, question 41, article 4.
Aristotle references use the standard abbreviations for works and the Becker line numbers that make it possible to find a citation in any edition. Abbreviations used here are: NE, Nicomachean Ethics. R, Rhetoric. de A., On the Soul. Unless otherwise noted all quotes are from the Complete Works, edited by Jonathan Barnes.
“Bodily and mental pain.” We’ll talk more about what we’re doing when we make mind-body distinctions. For the moment, suffice it to say that no fixed or final divisions are implied here. These are just more commonly used and understood terms (physical, mental, body, mind) that should be red-flagged, but we’ll just proceed with caution.
Buddha dhamma references like the Aristotle references will use standard abbreviations and section numbers. DN stands for the Digha Nikaya. Unless otherwise indicated, quotes from the DN come from Maurice Walshe’s translation of The Long Discourses of the Buddha.
Delbo’s “Thirst.” When considering (theōrein/voir) Delbo, we need to avoid dualism, dualism between voir and savoir, between making (poiēein) and doing (prássein), dualism between reading and living, between living and theorizing. The reader does not do what the writer makes until the reader stops reading what the reader makes of what the writer has made. Speaking of doing, what are we doing when we do dualism? What’s the verb for “dualism”? Divide, separate, cut, close, open. No dualism between open and close.
The dart. “The person who is searching for his own happiness should pull out the dart he has stuck in himself, the arrowhead of grieving, of desiring, of despair.” Sutta Nipata 3.8.19. (Saddhatissa, trans.)
Haśśātān. I’m using the Hebrew haśśātān instead of “Satan” because, as has amply been demonstrated by Day, Pagels (1995), and Newsom (2003), the adversary (śātān) in Job should not be mindlessly equated with the Satan of the Christian scriptures. Day (15) puts the point very succinctly:
… if anything, we must divest ourselves of the notion of Satan … the noun śāṭān could mean both ‘adversary’ in general and ‘legal accuser’ in particular, … refer to various beings both terrestrial and divine … not one celestial śāṭān in the Hebrew Bible, but rather the potential for many.
Imagining. I use the verb “imagine” or the gerund verb form “imagining” where Aristotle’s translators use “imagination.” I want to emphasize the activity or the process. Aristotle is concerned whether something is a movement, an activity, a faculty, a state, or a capacity. He wants to categorize them that way. “… imagination is that in virtue of which an image arises for us ….” He then questions whether imagination is a “single faculty or disposition” with respect to images that we use to “discriminate” and can, therefore, be correct or not. (de A. 428a) This is not my concern here, not even to dispute his concern. For the record, I said before that I was not going to attempt the impossible, in English at least, of communicating without using nouns. But, I repeat my recommendation: avoid nouns ending in –tion or –ness.
Lǎozǐ is more commonly known in the West as Lao Tzu. For the most part I will use pinyin to break the connection between familiar terms and all-too-familiar cultural and racial stereotypes. For instance, quoting the Lúnyǔ of Kǒngzǐ does not bring fortune cookies to mind, as would quoting the Sayings of Confucius. I will also tend to use Pali words, such as kamma, when the Sanskrit words, such as “karma”, might confuse the issue. If I use words like “Confucius” or “karma,” I am deliberately talking about how they have come to be (mis)used and (mis)understood in modern English. For the same reasons I use the pinyin Zhōuyì to refer to the Chinese classic commonly known as the I Ching.
Lúpē. Occurrences of lúpē in the New Testament. From http://biblehub.com/greek/3077.htm. λύπη, λύπης, ἡ (from Aeschylus and Herodotus down), sorrow, pain, grief: of persons mourning, John 16:6; 2 Corinthians 2:7; opposed to χαρά, John 16:20; Hebrews 12:11; λύπην ἔχω (see ἔχω, 1. 2 g., p. 267a), John 16:21; Philippians 2:27; with addition of ἀπό and genitive of person, 2 Corinthians 2:3; λύπη μοι ἐστιν, Romans 9:2; ἐν λύπη ἔρχεσθαι, of one who on coming both saddens and is made sad, 2 Corinthians 2:1 (cf. λυπῶ ὑμᾶς, 2 Corinthians 2:2; and λύπην ἔχω, 2 Corinthians 2:3); ἀπό τῆς λύπης, for sorrow, Luke 22:45; ἐκ λύπης, with a sour, reluctant mind (A. V. grudgingly) (opposed to ἱλαρός), 2 Corinthians 9:7; ἡ κατά Θεόν λύπη, sorrow acceptable to God, 2 Corinthians 7:10 (see λυπέω), and ἡ τοῦ κόσμου λύπη, the usual sorrow of men at the loss of their earthly possessions, ibid.; objectively, annoyance, affliction (Herodotus 7, 152): λύπας ὑποφέρειν (R. V. griefs), 1 Peter 2:19.
Plato references, unless otherwise noted, are all to the Complete Works. They also use standard abbreviations and line numbers. So Euthphr. 12c refers to Euthyphro line 12c. Grg, Gorgias.
Pregnant fugee. We will discuss the significance of that pregnancy under “I will miss you,” when we consider Samuel Scheffler’s Death & the Afterlife, which uses this movie and the P.D. James novel on which it is based as examples of what he calls the “afterlife conjecture,” the assumption that human life will continue after we’re dead..