Kenelm Digby was among the first authors in England to embrace Cartesianism. Yet Digby’s approach to the mind–body problem was irenic: in his massive Two treatises (Paris, 1644), the author advocates a corpuscular philosophy that is applied to physical bodies, whereas the intellectual capacities of human beings remain inexplicable through the powers of matter. The aim of the present article is to highlight the (rather reticent) relationship of Digby’s corpuscularism with doctrines of spirits in connection with the Renaissance Neoplatonic tradition. (...) Not uncommon in seventeenth-century natural philosophies, such “spirits” are notoriously evasive entities: half spirit, half matter acting as mediators between the realms of bodies and souls. This article suggests that Digby sought to preserve the inveterate ideas of a universal spiritus and a world soul and, in particular, that Kenelm Digby translated (rather than “overcame”) Marsilio Ficino’s (1433–1499) spiritus doctrines into the language of seventeenth-century corpuscularism. (shrink)

In the history of seventeenth-century philosophy, the distinction between material and immaterial extension is closely associated with the Cambridge Platonist Henry More (1614–1687). The aspect of More’s conception of immaterial extension that proved most influential is his theory of absolute divine space. Very plausibly, the Newtonian conception of space owes a great deal to More’s views on space. More’s views on space in turn were closely linked to his views on the nature of individual spirits—the souls of brutes and humans, (...) as well as the intelligences of the angels. It has been acknowledged that More’s theory of absolute space was not without precedents. Most importantly, Francesco Patrizi da Cherso (1529– .. (shrink)