Article Title
Abstract
University of Pennsylvania Libraries, Lawrence J. Schoenberg Collection, MS LJS 429, is a small booklet containing materials of natural philosophy, chiefly related to the effects of cosmic forces on human biology. Two of its diagrams illustrate the mentalizing process of the Aristotelian-Thomist psychology anima sensitiva, or the process through which sensory experience is formed as a mental perception. This essay points out the ways in which these diagrams differ from a standard (Thomist) medieval model of Mind. During the very late Middle Ages, the analysis of Mind as anima sensitiva and mens appears to shift from being action-based (analysed in terms of abilities and powers) to being substantive-based (analysed in terms of substantial agents using material tools). I will suggest that these two diagrams unusually model “faculty psychology” in a way that seems to foreshadow one we associate more with the time of Descartes, and even of Locke and Hume.
Recommended Citation
Carruthers, Mary J.
(2019)
"Two Unusual Mind Diagrams in a Late Fifteenth-Century Manuscript (UPenn Schoenberg Collection, LJS 429),"
Manuscript Studies: Vol. 4:
Iss.
2, Article 6.
Available at:
https://repository.upenn.edu/mss_sims/vol4/iss2/6
Included in
History of Science, Technology, and Medicine Commons, Medieval Studies Commons, Philosophy of Mind Commons
