φωνή, phone (sound, voice), 33 (BTJS)

Φωνή (De anima II, chapter 8) is a type of sound that is made into something animate, a noise made by something living: ἡ δὲ ϕωνὴ ψόϕος τίς ἐστιν ἐμψύχου. A sound is made when something in something knocks on something: πᾶν ψοϕεῖ τύπτοντός τινος καί τι καὶ ἔν τινι. The voice, however, is in and with the being of something living: ϕωνὴ δ’ ἐστὶ ζῴου ψόϕος. For this, the voice’s being, it is necessary that there is something like a πνεῦμα (breath). Just as the tongue within a living being has two functions, namely, first, that of tasting and, second, that of enabling speech (something that, to be sure, does not occur in every living being as such), so, too, πνεῦμα has the task of providing the body with inner warmth and, secondly, of facilitating speaking. To have a voice is a distinctive type of being, namely, being in the sense of living. But not every noise emitted by something alive is, by that fact, already a voice (οὐ γὰρ πᾶς ζῴιου ψόϕος ϕωνή); one can also produce mere sounds with the tongue, such as coughing. The difference consists then in the fact that fantasy is contained in the sound, in the very middle of it (ἀλλὰ δεῖ ἔμψυχόν τε εἶναι τὸ τύπτoν καὶ μετὰ ϕαντασίας τινός (but it is necessary that the one knocking be alive and have some fantasy))—then it is a voice. Now, in ordinary language, “fantasy” means splendor, spectacle, appearing like something, thus, a completely objective meaning. Φαντασία—that something shows itself. The sound is a voice (the sound of speech) if, by means of it, something is to be perceived (seen). On the basis of the ϕαντασιία one designates the sound σημαντική. (GA17:14-15)