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 nervosus) predisposes men to a sociable life and to the building of a peaceful and civil society.
Brain, Blood, Benevolence: Cumberland’s Anti-Hobbesian Use of Thomas Willis’s Cerebri Anatome (1664)
Raffaella Santi
2021
Abstract
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 nervosus) predisposes men to a sociable life and to the building of a peaceful and civil society.File in questo prodotto:
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