Intellectual History Review
January 2, 2024
Vojtěch Hladký
Panpsychism, the idea that everything in the world is endowed with a soul, took varied forms even during historical periods when it flourished. The article focuses on Francesco Patrizi, who coined the term panpsychism to mean that everything is ensouled. Patrizi traced panpsychism back to the most ancient thinkers, and his conclusions generally agree with current scholarly assessments of early Greek philosophers. However, a closer comparison reveals significant differences: Patrizi used the concept to state that the world as a whole is ensouled, whereas early Greek philosophers understood it to mean that every thing in the world possesses a particular soul. Modern scholarship assumes a more historical account of ancient thought, characterized by gradual progress from simple, empirically based concepts to more complex metaphysical ones.
Intellectual History Review
December 14, 2023
Sergius Kodera
Kenelm Digby was an early English advocate of Cartesianism, but his approach to the mind-body problem was conciliatory. In his 1644 work Two Treatises, he argued that physical bodies follow corpuscular philosophy, while human intellectual capacities cannot be explained by matter alone. This article examines Digby's little-noticed relationship with Renaissance Neoplatonic doctrines of spirits—entities that are half spirit and half matter, mediating between body and soul. The author suggests that Digby preserved the traditional ideas of a universal spirit and world soul, translating Marsilio Ficino's spiritus doctrines into the language of seventeenth-century corpuscularism rather than overcoming them.
Intellectual History Review
December 11, 2023
Elisabeth Blum, Paul Richard Blum, Tomáš Nejeschleba et al.
No Summary
Intellectual History Review
December 11, 2023
François Quiviger
Bernard Palissy, a 16th-century French potter and natural philosopher, held panpsychic views—the belief that all matter, including minerals and metals, possesses a form of life or soul. This paper examines how those ideas shaped his artistic practice, particularly his ceramic works and garden projects. By connecting his philosophical writings to surviving artifacts, the author argues that Palissy's art was a direct expression of his conviction that nature is animate and that the artist's role is to reveal the life within raw materials.
Intellectual History Review
December 7, 2023
Emmett L. Holman
Panpsychism, the view that consciousness is a fundamental feature of all physical matter, has gained traction among analytic philosophers in recent decades. This paper traces the history of the mind–body problem since the 1960s, explaining how debates between physicalist and dualist theories reached an impasse that has led many philosophers to consider panpsychism as a promising alternative. The author reviews several versions of panpsychism that have emerged, discusses its prospects as a scientific theory, and notes how some scientists view it. While panpsychism is not presented as unproblematic, it is offered as a way to break the deadlock between standard positions.
Intellectual History Review
November 23, 2023
Martin Žemla
Paracelsus's concept of the universal ensoulment of nature underpins his view of the body's self-healing capacity, as detailed in his 1536 work Grosse Wundartzney. Rather than focusing on balancing bodily humours, his medicine aimed to strengthen the inner vital principle—termed the balsam, mummy, or astral spirit—through life-endowed essences of healing substances that act via inner sympathies. This approach links to medical alchemy, which produces subtle medicinal essences, and relies on natural magic and the microcosm-macrocosm analogy. The paper also examines Paracelsus's relationship to predecessors, notably Marsilio Ficino.