scholarly journals Medicine, connoisseurship, and the animal body

2020 ◽  
pp. 007327532094900
Author(s):  
Alexander Wragge-Morley
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
The Body ◽  
Aesthetic Theory ◽  
Lower Body ◽  
Animal Body ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
Disembodied Mind ◽  
The Mind ◽  
Medical Therapeutics ◽  
Bernard Mandeville

This essay reconsiders the links between medicine, connoisseurship, and aesthetic theory in early eighteenth-century Britain. Taking a satire on the body of the physician and collector John Woodward as its starting point, I show that medicine and connoisseurship shared a deep preoccupation with the possibility that the animal body could excessively influence the workings of the mind. Pursuing this line of argument, moreover, I will reconsider the place of mind–body dualism in eighteenth-century British medicine and aesthetics. With the exception of materialists such as the philosopher-physician Bernard Mandeville, medics and aesthetic theorists tended to identify the exercise of judgment with the operations of a disembodied mind, unsullied by the embodied mechanisms of the lower body. In practice, however, the insistence that the most refined forms of judgment depended on the presence and activity of a disembodied, immaterial soul was less meaningful than it seems. When confronted by failures of judgment, medics and connoisseurs alike sought explanations in the mechanisms of the animal body. Whether or not they believed in the immateriality of the soul, they pictured the mind as a malfunctioning animal machine, to be cured through the material agency of medical therapeutics.

Revaluations through Dance: Friedrich Nietzsche's Thought in Isadora Duncan's Speech The Dance of the Future

2019 ◽  
Vol 37 (2) ◽  
pp. 206-219
Author(s):  
Meindert E. Peters
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
The Body ◽  
Eternal Recurrence ◽  
Early Twentieth Century ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
The Future ◽  
The Mind

Friedrich Nietzsche's influence on Isadora Duncan's work, in particular his idea of the Dionysian, has been widely discussed, especially in regard to her later work. What has been left underdeveloped in critical examinations of her work, however, is his influence on her earlier choreographic work, which she defended in a famous speech held in 1903 called The Dance of the Future. While commentators often describe this speech as ‘Nietzschean’, Duncan's autobiography suggests that she only studied Nietzsche's work after this speech. I take this incongruity as a starting point to explore the connections between her speech and Nietzsche's work, in particular his Thus Spoke Zarathustra. I argue that in subject and language Duncan's speech resembles Nietzsche's in important ways. This article will draw attention to the ways in which Duncan takes her cues from Nietzsche in bringing together seemingly conflicting ideas of religion and an overturning of morality; Nietzsche's notion of eternal recurrence and the teleology present in his idea of the Übermensch; and a renegotiation of the body's relation to the mind. In doing so, this article contributes not only to scholarship on Duncan's early work but also to discussions of Nietzsche's reception in the early twentieth century. Moreover, the importance Duncan ascribes to the body in dance and expression also asks for a new understanding of Nietzsche's own way of expressing his philosophy.

‘More sensual Delights’

2021 ◽  
pp. 115-141
Author(s):  
James A. Winn
Keyword(s):  
Visual Arts ◽  
Political Ideology ◽  
Scientific Discourse ◽  
The Body ◽  
Sexual Pleasure ◽  
Aesthetic Theory ◽  
Same Sex ◽  
Definitive Evidence ◽  
The Mind ◽  
English Opera

There is a palpable difference between Addison’s stimulating and thoughtful remarks on literature or the visual arts and his scattered, unconvincing, and dismissive comments on music. His unease about music, the chapter argues, stemmed from ignorance, disappointment, and a tendency to link musical pleasure with secret or illicit sexual pleasure. By basing his aesthetic theory on sight, Addison was able to make contact with scientific discourse, indirectly express his political ideology, and avoid extensive discussions of music, the art about which he knew least. His attempt at an English opera (Rosamond, 1707) failed, and the libretto does not suggest that Addison gave much thought to what it might be like to set or sing his words. As a young man, he wrote two St Cecilia odes, closely following the conventions established in Dryden’s ode for 1687. Printed in the Annual miscellany for 1694 is his translation of an episode from Ovid that purports to explain ‘the secret Cause’ that makes the River Salmacis weaken those who bathe in it. Something about the power of music, its emotional and sensual influence on the body and the mind, was evidently connected in his mind with secret pleasures that he did not wish to acknowledge or reveal. Same-sex love was probably among such pleasures. While there is no definitive evidence that Addison had strong homosexual feelings, or that he acted upon them, there is reason to believe that he associated such feelings with music, an association which shaped his consciousness and therefore his aesthetics.

Edward W. Blyden, W. E. B. Du Bois, and the ‘Color Complex’

1992 ◽  
Vol 30 (4) ◽  
pp. 669-684 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael J. C. Echeruo
Keyword(s):  
Black People ◽  
The United States ◽  
The Body ◽  
African Experience ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
Color Complex ◽  
Long Time ◽  
History Of ◽  
To Come ◽  
The Mind

This article is an attempt to present (and thereby to come to terms with) an important aspect of the meaning of race as it relates to the experience of black people, especially in America. It commences with Edward W. Blyden because his ‘color complex’ is of a kind that brings us back, not without much embarrassment, to the realisation that while colour may be a state of the mind, it is also and even primarily a matter of the body. Blyden is particularly appropriate as a starting point, for he is an epitome, in many ways, of the African experience in the later nineteenth century, linking (as he does) the multiple experiences of the Caribbean, the United States, and mainland Africa. He wrote at a time when the intellectual and other currents in ‘Negro’ America flowed easily to the new centres of influence in Liberia and colonial West Africa. He was thus the product of the history of Africanity in his period, and for a long time after.

An Inquiry into Thomas Jefferson's Ideas of Beauty

2000 ◽  
Vol 59 (2) ◽  
pp. 216-231 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kenneth Hafertepe
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Classical Tradition ◽  
Human Mind ◽  
Aesthetic Theory ◽  
Ancient Rome ◽  
The Enlightenment ◽  
Standard Of Taste ◽  
The Mind ◽  
Art And Architecture ◽  
Good Proportion

A careful reading of eighteenth-century aesthetics provides a view of Thomas Jefferson's thinking about art and architecture quite different from the existing scholarly paradigm. Jefferson owned, read, and quoted Enlightenment philosophy and criticism, most notably that of Henry Home, known as Lord Kames. Far from privileging reason over emotion, these philosophers held that all people are created with innate senses of beauty and morality, as well as a rational faculty. Because of the sense of beauty, certain qualities in objects can inspire the idea of beauty in the mind; other ideas of beauty are comparative, requiring use of the rational faculty. Jefferson's aesthetic theory was informed by his understanding of the human mind, which led to an architecture rooted in good proportion and to didactic paintings rooted in history ancient and modern. As with other Enlightenment thinkers, Jefferson endorsed the entire classical tradition, admiring not only the architecture of ancient Rome and modern Paris but also of Palladio and the French Baroque. Similarly, he admired the work of minor Baroque painters as well as the neoclassicism of Jacques-Louis David. Nor was Jeffersonian classicism nationalistic; rather, he endorsed the Enlightenment concept of a universal and uniform standard of taste.

Descartes' thesis about the separation of mind and body is usually quite severely criticized in the modern cognitive science in general and philosophy of mind in particular. This thesis serves as an important starting point for the development of the conception of embodied and enacted cognition, which has gained extraordinary popularity to date. This article substantiates that the solution to the mind - body problem proposed by Descartes is not at all so unequivocal and categorical, his position is much more subtle and sophisticated than it often seems to us. The article discusses the Descartes’ arguments both in favor of the «great separation between mind and body», and against it. It is shown that Descartes’ thoughts about the mutual influence of the states of the body and phenomena of mind, about the close coupling of mind and body and their unity, about the connection of mind with bodily action are in line with the modern conception of embodied and enactive cognition and may well be considered as a forerunner for its development. Descartes' deep analytical mind, which allowed him to create a method and which gave scientists an attitude to doubt everything in search of scientific truths, allowed him to carefully evaluate his own theses, carrying out various, including opposing, argumentative lines of thought. The understanding the real contribution of Descartes is essential for the further development of the conception of embodied and enactive cognition, which has considerable methodological strength in various fields of social and humanitarian research.

METOD ◽  
2020 ◽  
pp. 179-195
Author(s):  
Elena Knyazeva
Keyword(s):  
Philosophy Of Mind ◽  
Mutual Influence ◽  
The Body ◽  
Close Coupling ◽  
Enactive Cognition ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
Mind And Body ◽  
The Mind ◽  
Further Development ◽  
Methodological Strength

Descartes' thesis about the separation of mind and body is usually quite severely criticized in the modern cognitive science in general and philosophy of mind in particular. This thesis serves as an important starting point for the development of the conception of embodied and enacted cognition, which has gained extraordinary popularity to date. This article substantiates that the solution to the mind - body problem proposed by Descartes is not at all so unequivocal and categorical, his position is much more subtle and sophisticated than it often seems to us. The article discusses the Descartes’ arguments both in favor of the «great separation between mind and body», and against it. It is shown that Descartes’ thoughts about the mutual influence of the states of the body and phenomena of mind, about the close coupling of mind and body and their unity, about the connection of mind with bodily action are in line with the modern conception of embodied and enactive cognition and may well be considered as a forerunner for its development. Descartes' deep analytical mind, which allowed him to create a method and which gave scientists an attitude to doubt everything in search of scientific truths, allowed him to carefully evaluate his own theses, carrying out various, including opposing, argumentative lines of thought. The understanding the real contribution of Descartes is essential for the further development of the conception of embodied and enactive cognition, which has considerable methodological strength in various fields of social and humanitarian research.

Presbyterians and science in the north of Ireland before 1874

2008 ◽  
Vol 41 (4) ◽  
pp. 541-565 ◽  
Author(s):  
ANDREW R. HOLMES
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Presidential Address ◽  
Darwinian Evolution ◽  
Educational Facilities ◽  
The North ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
The Times ◽  
John Tyndall ◽  
The Mind ◽  
The Relationship

AbstractIn his presidential address to the Belfast meeting of the British Association for the Advancement of Science in 1874, John Tyndall launched what David Livingstone has called a ‘frontal assault on teleology and Christian theism’. Using Tyndall's intervention as a starting point, this paper seeks to understand the attitudes of Presbyterians in the north of Ireland to science in the first three-quarters of the nineteenth century. The first section outlines some background, including the attitude of Presbyterians to science in the eighteenth century, the development of educational facilities in Ireland for the training of Presbyterian ministers, and the specific cultural and political circumstances in Ireland that influenced Presbyterian responses to science more generally. The next two sections examine two specific applications by Irish Presbyterians of the term ‘science’: first, the emergence of a distinctive Presbyterian theology of nature and the application of inductive scientific methodology to the study of theology, and second, the Presbyterian conviction that mind had ascendancy over matter which underpinned their commitment to the development of a science of the mind. The final two sections examine, in turn, the relationship between science and an eschatological reading of the signs of the times, and attitudes to Darwinian evolution in the fifteen years between the publication ofThe Origin of Speciesin 1859 and Tyndall's speech in 1874.

Eternal Life and the Body According to Spinoza

2020 ◽  
pp. 68-80
Author(s):  
Alexandre Matheron
Keyword(s):  
The Body ◽  
Eternal Life ◽  
The Third ◽  
Adequate Knowledge ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
Adequate Idea ◽  
The One ◽  
The Mind ◽  
Initial Starting

In this chapter, Matheron presents some brief thoughts on Proposition 39 of Part V of the Ethics, which states that a body capable of many things has a mind whose greater part is eternal. The key to unlocking this seemingly unusual claim is to understand what happens in the body when the mind understands. This leads Matheron to reconstruct the demonstrations that accompany the preceding propositions in Part V as well as to a discussion of adequate and inadequate ideas in Spinoza. Though we might not be immediately aware of it, to have an adequate idea of something external us is to have the adequate idea of a certain order that is established between affections in our body whose structure matches the one that inheres in the thing in question. This leads Matheron to a discussion of the ‘third kind of knowledge’ and its relation to the Spinozist concept of eternity, all of which clarify the initial starting point: the acquisition of new and more adequate knowledge always entails a clearer understanding of our body’s capacities that are already included in the eternal idea that we are.

Genius under Observation

2014 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ann Jefferson
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Medical Science ◽  
The Body ◽  
Mental Functioning ◽  
The Arts ◽  
The Mind ◽  
Broad Consensus

This chapter details the emergence of a new medicine of the mind in France. The philosophical component of the new medicine was based in large part on the principles of eighteenth-century sensualist philosophy. This tradition held out to the practitioners of mental medicine the presumption of a connection between the body and the mind, which had particular importance for their growing interest in genius. The broad consensus that had existed in the eighteenth century between aesthetics and a philosophy of the mind is mostly lost in the nineteenth century as two opposing models of mental functioning emerge. The powers of observation widely attributed to genius in the eighteenth century were now claimed as the prerogative of (medical) science, and contrasted with imagination, which was predominantly associated with genius and the arts.

Introduction

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Chantal Jaquet
Keyword(s):  
Reference Point ◽  
The Body ◽  
Historical Sources ◽  
Philosophical Basis ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
The Subject ◽  
The Mind ◽  
Current Popularity

The observation that the Spinozan model of the union of the body and mind serves as a reference point and a model in contemporary neurobiology, particularly in the works of Damasio, Changeux, and Atlan, is a starting point for a reflection on Spinoza's current popularity. The author highlights the need to go back to historical sources and re-examine the mind-body relationship on a philosophical basis, founded on an analysis of Spinoza's thought on the subject, and how it evolved over the entire corpus.

Dark Night of the Early Modern Soul

2019 ◽  
Vol 45 (1) ◽  
pp. 4-27
Author(s):  
Jeffrey D. Burson
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Biological Science ◽  
The Body ◽  
Human Organism ◽  
Dark Night ◽  
The Mind ◽  
Discursive Field ◽  
Important Shift

During the sixteenth century, Jesuit renovations of medieval Aristotelian conceptions of the soul afforded an important discursive field for René Descartes to craft a notion of the soul as a substance distinct from the body and defined by thought. Cartesianism, however, augmented rather than diminished the skeptical crisis over the soul and the mind–body union. This article explores the work of a Jesuit intellectual, René-Joseph Tournemine, whose attempt to navigate between Malebranche’s Cartesianism and the metaphysics of Leibniz proved influential during the eighteenth century in ways that intersect with the development of Enlightenment biological science. Tournemine’s theologically motivated conjectures about the nature of the mind–body union reinforced an important shift away from considering the soul as a metaphysical substance in favor of seeing it as a pervasive motive force or vital principle animating the human organism.

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