What is meant
What is meant by “the chest” here is not the organic chest connected to the lungs, but the brain and the seat of thought. Shahrur thus makes the word “chest” refer to the domain of reason and thinking.
The atom’s structure in the atlas
- Type of argument: interpretive
- Movement of the argument: it carries “the chest” to mean the brain and the seat of thought.
- Central terms: chest, brain, thinking, reason.
- Degree of centrality: subsidiary.
It offers a metaphorical reading of the word “chest,” linking it to the center of thinking instead of its direct organic meaning, thereby expanding the term’s semantic field.
Links that help with reading
Basis
- Supporting text: “The chest: the brain and the seat of thinking, not the organic chest in the sense of the lungs.”
Degree of documentation
- Level: directly documented
- Meaning of the level: the atom relies on an explicit witness close to the wording of the claim.
- Limits of the reading: the formulation above is an analytical summary, and is not treated as a verbatim quotation unless the witness is transmitted word for word.
Its function in the book
Its function here is definitional; it fixes a meaning or conceptual distinction on which Shahrur relies in building the idea.
Editorial note
The reading here is a retrieval of the rational meaning.