Salvation and Sir Kenelm Digby’s philosophy of the soul
Niall Dilucia
History of European Ideas June 14, 2022 DOI: 10.1080/01916599.2022.2084635 (opens in new tab)
Study at a glance
AI-extracted from the abstract| Characteristics | Theoretical or philosophical paper Peer reviewed |
|---|---|
| Population | The philosophy and writings of Sir Kenelm Digby |
| Key points | Argues that Digby's philosophy of the soul was a meditation on worldly interactions necessary for Catholic salvation, and that viewing him as an advisor on beatitude improves historical understanding. |
Abstract
ABSTRACT The English Catholic philosopher Sir Kenelm Digby (1603–1665) has enjoyed a recent spate of scholarly attention as a prodigious traveller, political figure, and man of diverse intellectual interests. This article contributes to this scholarship by assessing the commentary on salvation at the heart of Digby’s philosophy of the soul and the historical contexts in which it was produced. It argues that Digby’s thinking on the soul was a meditation on the worldly interactions a Catholic must undertake or avoid in order to achieve salvation. As such, our intellectual historical understanding of Digby is much improved when he is viewed as a scholar who constructed an identity as a thinker adept at advising others on the correct path to beatitude. This article also makes the broader argument for salvation as an important conceptual tool for early modern intellectual historians wishing to accurately map the complex relationship between theology, scholarly argument, and scholarly ambition in the seventeenth century.