Curculio
Curculio

Monday: March 27, 2006

Aphorism of the Day

Filed under: — site admin @ 10:22 PM EST

El órgano del placer es la inteligencia.

The organ of pleasure is the intellect.

(Nicolás Gómez Dávila, Escolios a un Texto Implícito, 2.84)

3 Comments »

  1. NGD may have been a fine philosopher for all I know, but to call “intelligence” an “organ” is about as strange in Spanish as in English. Granted, there are less common acceptions, as in “party organ” for a political party’s newspaper, but organs usually have an element of the concrete. The rhetorical point of using the word órgano at all is that it sets up the expectation of a physical organ and then puts in an unexpected organ. Spanish-speakers do this all the time, but most do it correctly, by saying that “el órgano del placer es el cerebro” vel sim.

    Possibly — I wouldn’t know — NGD’s odd usage reflects familiarity with the
    original Greek sense of organ as `tool.’

    Comment by Alfred M. Kriman — Wednesday: March 29, 2006 @ 4:18 AM EST

  2. Donne, in a youthful exercise, discourses on the nose as the organ of love.

    Comment by Bob Zisk — Sunday: April 9, 2006 @ 4:49 PM EDT

  3. Thank you for providing some of the better scholia of Gomez Davila, some of his other writings he is a reactionary Catholic.

    Comment by Margaret — Thursday: September 22, 2011 @ 12:07 AM EDT

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