Patrizi, panpsychism, and the Presocratics

Datos Bibliográficos

ID12903014
AutoresVojtěch Hladký (0000-0002-1024-8988, Charles University, autor de correspondencia)
Año2024
Volumen34
Número1
Páginas5-32
Fecha de publicación2024-01-02
Peer ReviewedSí
Open AccessNo
TipoARTICLE
RevistaIntellectual History Review (JOURNAL)
Identificadores de la revistaISSN: 1749-6977 • E-ISSN: 1749-6985
EditorialRoutledge (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1080/17496977.2023.2283921
OpenAlexW4390587540
IdiomaEN
Citas recibidas1
Referencias citadas55

The main aim of the article is to show how panpsychism, that is, the idea the everything in the world is endowed with a soul, was varied even during the periods in the history of philosophy when it flourished. In the Renaissance, I focus on Francesco Patrizi: he coined the term, which originally meant that everything is ensouled. The article starts by an investigation of Patrizi's attempt to trace panpsychism back to the most ancient thinkers. His conclusions are, in general, in agreement with current scholarly assessment of early Greek philosophers, whose views I attempt to reconstruct in a kind of survey. A closer comparison, however, shows significant differences between Patrizi's and today's account of the most ancient conception of panpsychism. While Patrizi uses the concept to state that the world as a whole is ensouled, early Greek philosophers understood it to mean that every thing in the world possesses a particular soul. From a broader perspective, it is clear that, while Patrizi builds on the notion of all-embracing ancient philosophy, modern scholarship assumes a more historical account of ancient thought characterised by a gradual progress from simple, more empirically based concepts, to more complex and metaphysical ones

Ancient Greek · Ancient philosophy · Art · Epistemology · Focus (optics · Literature · Metaphysics · Scholarship · Scholasticism · Soul · Classical Antiquity Studies · Classical Philosophy and Thought · Historical, Religious, and Philosophical Studies · Law · Philosophy