The reduction of the Medieval “internal senses” to only one internal sense, usually identified with imagination, was one of the trends which most evidently characterize the early-modern philosophical psychology. But this trend was not universally widespread and met some puzzling inner difficulties. On the first side, one can find some pieces of Medieval accounts on inner senses even in typically modern contexts such as showed by the persistence of the “estimative power” in some of the early-modern doctrines of human passions. On the other side, even full-blooded “reductionists” often were aware of the hard points of their entreprise. In fact, it was not clear how one could engender all the different psychological performances usually attributed to the non-intellectual inner senses starting from a pure passive and physiological faculty as imagination was usually seen. This difficulty is widely discussed by those late-Scholastic commentaries to De Anima which, even following the “reductionist” wave, try to save at the same time the assumptiont hat the "sensitive soul" has a proper kind of knowledge. This paper will discuss some of those commentaries, focusing mainly that composed by Antonio Rubio (1548-1615) in 1611, which expresses analytically both the reasons and difficulties of reductionism.
E’ sufficiente un solo senso interno? La psicologia dell’immaginazione nella prima età moderna e le sue difficoltà
PIRO, Francesco
2012-01-01
Abstract
The reduction of the Medieval “internal senses” to only one internal sense, usually identified with imagination, was one of the trends which most evidently characterize the early-modern philosophical psychology. But this trend was not universally widespread and met some puzzling inner difficulties. On the first side, one can find some pieces of Medieval accounts on inner senses even in typically modern contexts such as showed by the persistence of the “estimative power” in some of the early-modern doctrines of human passions. On the other side, even full-blooded “reductionists” often were aware of the hard points of their entreprise. In fact, it was not clear how one could engender all the different psychological performances usually attributed to the non-intellectual inner senses starting from a pure passive and physiological faculty as imagination was usually seen. This difficulty is widely discussed by those late-Scholastic commentaries to De Anima which, even following the “reductionist” wave, try to save at the same time the assumptiont hat the "sensitive soul" has a proper kind of knowledge. This paper will discuss some of those commentaries, focusing mainly that composed by Antonio Rubio (1548-1615) in 1611, which expresses analytically both the reasons and difficulties of reductionism.I documenti in IRIS sono protetti da copyright e tutti i diritti sono riservati, salvo diversa indicazione.
