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Brain, Blood, Benevolence: Cumberland’s Anti-Hobbesian Use of Thomas Willis’s Cerebri Anatome (1664)
Raffaella Santi
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DOI:10.17265/2159-5313/2021.12.003
University of Urbino Carlo Bo, Urbino, Italy
In his book of 1672, De Legibus Naturae, Richard Cumberland tries to refute Hobbes’s theory of human nature, demonstrating that man is not a homo insociabilis but a homo benevolens. Using Thomas Willis’s Cerebri Anatome. Cui Accessit Nervorum Descriptio et Usus (1665) as well as the works of other physicians and anatomists, Cumberland tries to show that human body (especially thanks to its peculiar brain, blood, and plexus nervous) predisposes men to a sociable life and to the building of a peaceful and civil society.
Cumberland, Hobbes, Willis, natural law, morality, human body, brain, blood, nervous system
Raffaella Santi. (2021). Brain, Blood, Benevolence: Cumberland’s Anti-Hobbesian Use of Thomas Willis’s Cerebri Anatome (1664). Philosophy Study, December 2021, Vol. 11, No. 12, 923-927.
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