Humors, Passions, and Consciousness in Descartes’s Physiology: The Reconsideration through the Correspondence with Elisabeth

In Andrea Strazzoni & Marco Sgarbi (eds.), Reading Descartes. Consciousness, Body, and Reasoning. Florence: Firenze University Press. pp. 59-80 (2023)
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Abstract

By pushing Descartes to more clearly explain the union of body and soul beyond the functioning of a ‘strong’ passion, namely sadness, Elisabeth wants Descartes to review his idea of the passions, and his understanding of the ‘theory of the four humors’. This chapter aims at showing that Descartes turns away from Galen’s theory of the humors, which he globally adopts in the 1633 Treatise of Man. With the shift in his conceptualization of the humors between this Treatise and the Treatise of the Passions (1649), Descartes analyzed more specifically the inner feelings, consciousness, and the passions, by considering that a man is not simply a body, but a psychophysical being, with a body and a soul.

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Jil Muller
Paderborn University

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References found in this work

Descartes and the Passionate Mind.Deborah J. Brown - 2006 - New York: Cambridge University Press.
Descartes's Concept of Mind.Lilli Alanen - 2003 - Harvard University Press.
Saturn and Melancholy: Studies in the History of Natural Philosophy, Religion, and Art.Raymond Klibansky, Erwin Panofsky & Fritz Saxl - 1964 - Chicago: McGill-Queen's University Press. Edited by Raymond Klibansky, Erwin Panofsky & Fritz Saxl.
Descartes passions of the soul and the union of mind and body.Lisa Shapiro - 2003 - Archiv für Geschichte der Philosophie 85 (3):211-248.

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