Referring to the medical model of frenzy sketched out in the first two chapters, Chapter 3 explores the metaphysical problems which it caused. The model’s insistence on the total dependence of the mind on the brain, it argues, placed pressure on a Christian cosmology in which ‘flesh’ and ‘spirit’ were supposed to be fully separable. Frenzy forced contemporaries to ask how it was possible for the human mind – made in the ‘image of God’ – to be impaired by organic disease. For most early modern Christians, the mind was a part of the soul, and this soul was immaterial, incorruptible, and immortal. Frenzy gave the impression that it invaded every part of the person, but this impression was false. The soul had to be immune to brain disease. This chapter examines the ancient roots of this problem, and examines how early modern England’s preachers, physicians, and philosophers attempted to solve it.

The Conclusion draws together the book’s various thematic strands: the perceived primacy of the ‘reason’, the right of its possessors to rule, the exculpatory effect of a frenzy diagnosis, and the high cost paid by those who received one. It returns to the larger question posed at the outset: whether the organ of the brain and the faculties of the mind were seen as constitutive of ‘personhood’ in pre-1700s England. The responses to frenzy which we have encountered in this book suggests that they were. The operations of the mental faculties known as ‘reason’, ‘will’, and ‘memory’ (or simply the ‘wits’) were located in (and often colloquially identified with) the brain. The functionality and continuity of these faculties was integral to the maintenance of legal, social, and spiritual personhood. Yet what troubled frenzy’s witnesses the most, the Conclusion argues, was the way it disrupted its sufferers’ predictable ways of being in the world – the values they had once held dear, the ways they had once looked and spoken. It was a disease which had the power to change friends, neighbours, and loved ones beyond recognition.

Chapter 2 considers how the diagnosis of frenzy – in its standard definition, an inflammation of the brain or meninges – both shaped and was shaped by anatomical knowledge. Reading the work of the anatomist Thomas Willis (1621–1675) alongside his various sixteenth- and seventeenth-century interlocutors, it situates his anatomical work within a longer tradition of brain–mind cartography. The chapter argues that Willis’s determination to map the functions of the brain onto its structures was driven, in part, by his clinical experiences of frenzy. His explicit hope was that his anatomy would be the foundation stone on which a new, clinically useful ‘Pathologie of the Brain and nervous stock, might be built’. But not all of his hopes for the project were medical in nature, or even this-worldly. Willis also sought to shore up two vital truths, both of which frenzy seemed to undermine: first, that there was a categorical difference between the human soul and that of all other living beings, and second, that the human soul alone would survive the death of the body.

The human body is tied to a distinctive form of natural beauty, for Hegel proposes that there is something about the human body in its given, natural form that makes it uniquely capable of manifesting self-conscious spirit or mind. Since, ontologically speaking, the being of spirit is of a higher order than anything in nonhuman nature, the capacity to give off the distinctive look and sound of a spiritual way of being amounts to the human body’s capacity for a higher, fuller beauty as well. This chapter focuses primarily on the naturally given, predominantly involuntary ways in which the human body allows spirituality to appear. Because Hegel characterizes artworks generally as involving a “spiritualizing” of otherwise natural forms, we are encouraged to think of the human body’s distinctive, spirit-manifesting demeanor as a kind of root aesthetic vocabulary with which all of the more developed “languages” of art are familiar and from which they grow. But it also seems that for Hegel it ultimately takes art, and in particular classical sculpture, to reveal the purportedly natural beauty of the body, and this complicates the sense in which bodily beauty is natural after all.

The Introduction situates the book’s contribution in relation to the historiographies of madness, medicine, emotion, selfhood, and personhood. While mania and melancholy have enjoyed perennial scholarly interest, the same cannot be said of early modern frenzy. The Introduction offers some thoughts as to why frenzy has been neglected, and reflects on some of the conceptual and methodological difficulties which accompany its study. It explains the book’s scope (and limits), and offers short summaries of its six chapters. Sketching out the book’s central claim – that frenzy had devastating effects on personhood, and that these effects drove its early modern observers to unpick the tangle of mind, soul, and brain – it engages with recent claims about the emergence of a distinctively modern ‘cerebral self’. It sets out to test the claim that the possession of certain ‘psychological features, such as memory, consciousness, and self-awareness’ was not constitutive of ‘personhood’ until the end of the seventeenth century.

Chapter 1 tracks frenzy’s trajectory as a medical diagnosis between 1500 and 1700. It offers an introduction to frenzy as it was understood by eight medical practitioners, four of whom came of age in a time of relative stability in English medicine (1560–1640) and four in a time of rapid change (1640–1700). It shows how, from the mid seventeenth century, the old humoral definition of frenzy was altered to fit new medical philosophies – chemical, mechanistic, and corpuscular – and new models of human physiology. Tracing the contours of the disease over two centuries, it highlights points of continuity as well as change. Throughout this period, it argues, theorists from diverse schools explained frenzy’s effects with reference both to the solid structures of the body and the fluids which flowed through them. This chapter argues that it was the devastating effects of brain disease which galvanized medical theorists to seek to explain disorders of the mind as disruptions of material ‘animal spirits’.

Chapter 7 ANTI-INTELLECTUALISM ABOUT SKILLED ACTION AND ITS DISCONTENT raises two problems for anti-intellectualism about skilled action—the problem of creditability and the problem of innovation—and it defends intellectualism from some outstanding objections.

Characters curse storms, power blackouts and climate change sceptics in twenty-first century drama as the destructive force of climate change is theatrically represented across comic farce, realist tragedy and dystopian horror. While these theatrical forms differ in their affective and emotional impact, they commonly predict ecological disaster in the future. Disaster is broadly understood as the combination of historical and social determinants interacting with natural hazards and forces over time. Climate change disaster is framed in scenarios that range from humorous to terrifying and with a growing dramatic genre of futuristic climate fiction (cli-fi) about ecological collapse and political dystopia. Twenty-first century dramatisation presents both the absurdity of humanity’s inability to reduce carbon emissions and global warming and the tragedy of predicted disaster on a geological scale in the Anthropocene. At the same time, contemporary performance illuminates turning points in time turning points in time including a different outcome within the present including within the present.

This chapter introduces the reader to the understanding of the human person articulated by Gregory Palamas (1296–1357) during the late Byzantine Hesychast controversy. The notion of the self elaborated and defended by Palamas is notable for its stress not only on the practice of inner prayer and stillness (“hesychia”) as crucial for the true cultivation of the self, but likewise for its robust defence of the embodiment of the self. Before discussing Palamas’ approach in detail, some background on the question of the relationship of body and soul in Greek patristic thought is offered, with special reference to Maximus the Confessor. This sets the scene for Palamas’ argumentation regarding the body as constitutive of the self together with the soul. Several ways in which Palamas both adopts and challenges classical views of the human self are presented. For instance, while the human soul might be detachable from the body, the human self, or person, is not. In some sense, moreover, every activity of the human self can be understood as a “common activity” of soul and body. The interweaving of body and soul in Palamas’ thought ultimately challenges a straightforward hylomorphic conception of the human being, notwithstanding certain commonalities.

In Sources of the Self, Taylor suggests that the ancient Greeks, despite possessing various linguistic devices for reflexive self-reference, did not have a way of making “self” into a noun. This nominalization of the self is, in his view, characteristic of the modern sense of selfhood. In fact, Aristotle does nominalize autos, the intensifier that functions in Greek much as “self” does in English, in three passages in Nichomachean Ethics IX where he describes a friend as another self. Taylor cites one of these passages in a footnote, commenting that “this doesn’t have quite the same force as our present description of human agents as ‘selves’”, but does not elaborate. This chapter considers what force it does have, exploring three senses of self in Aristotle. Two of them are familiar – the social self expounded in the first nine books of the Nicomachean Ethics and the more contemplative self emerging predominantly in EN X and in De Anima III. Much less familiar is the bodily self that can be discerned at various points in the De Anima and Metaphysics, and that is rather prominent in the Generation of Animals. This conception of the self has its source in the intimate connection between a psuchê and the particular body of which it is the form.

At first glance, Thomism and feminism seem like unlikely bedfellows. In spite of the apparent incongruity, I argue that a fruitful dialogue can exist between Aquinas and feminism, particularly regarding the relationship between the body and reason. To this end, I make three points. First, I argue that Aquinas’s anthropology provides a fertile ground for a discussion of women’s nature and flourishing. Second, I argue that there is surprising degree of similarity between the attitude of Thomas toward the female body and the attitude of certain contemporary feminists, such as Simone de Beauvoir and Shulamith Firestone. All three of these authors recognized that women are more affected by their bodies than men are, and all three saw this as a source of inequality between men and women. Third, I argue that, while Aquinas is wrong to conclude that women are less rational than men, it may nonetheless be true that women experience more frequent interruptions to their ability to exercise fully their highest powers because they experience more pain and fatigue related to their biology. Finally, I consider how the nature of the female body may dispose women to exercising their reason slightly differently than men do.

Parts of Animals (PA) I.5 sends a strong message that the parts of the animal body are to be studied for the sake of the substance, the whole animal. If, as Aristotle suggests, it is the lowest or ‘indivisible’ species which are the substances, then we should study the parts of animals at this level. Yet many of the parts of animals are common to several species, so explaining them for each species would be repetitive and tiresome. We find thus in the PA two opposed explanatory tendencies: one ‘upwards’ toward the more common and greater simplicity and another ‘downwards’ toward the ultimate species and greater complexity. Aristotle’s proposed solution is to account for the various bodily parts at a general level and to descend to the species only when the parts differ significantly. In this chapter I discuss some difficulties for Aristotle’s solution.

Folk dance remains a diffuse and contested concept and yet its performances and meanings retain contemporary saliency to many people across the world. This chapter reflects on definitional issues, the relationship of folk dance to ritual and folk dance’s embodied ideology in Europe and beyond. Given that nineteenth-century thinking haunts the later literature and manifestations of folk dance, I re-visit Felix Hoerburger’s concepts of ‘first existence’ and ‘second existence’ folk dance, together with their critique and key modifications by Andriy Nahachewsky and Anthony Shay. I consider contemporary ritual folk dancing that draws upon evolutionist theory for inspiration and discuss examples of folk dance as cultural heritage that bear performative testimony to perceived unbroken connections between land, people, gender, race and nation. I conclude by urging both persistent critical interrogation of folk dance as ideology in a global frame and further investigation of the choreographic and artistic relevance of folk dance to its widespread practitioners and audiences.

Porphyry and Iamblichus added further levels of virtue to Plotinus’ scale of virtues. In Chapter 8 I discuss Iamblichus’ On the Pythagorean Life, which presents Pythagoras as a model of the political virtues. I show how, on this level, Iamblichus takes over Epicurean ideas about serenity, freedom from disturbance, a balanced control of desires and bodily needs and how, more generally, the Epicurean biographical practice of praising philosophical heroes as models to be imitated anticipates Iamblichus’ presentation of the figure of Pythagoras. I note also a wider use of Epicurean ethical ideas in Late Antique Platonism, in particular on the level of political virtues, the virtues of the discipline of bodily desires.

Chapter 6 gives a survey of ethical themes in Plotinus. It begins with happiness (eudaimonia) as life at its highest degree, the life of intellect of which human soul is capable. The affairs of bodily existence have no part in this life of intellect, which is a perfect, joyful, peaceful state. To reach this state, virtue is required. Two sorts of virtue are distinguished: the ‘political’ virtues and the ‘higher’ (or ‘greater’) virtues, as stages in assimilation to the divine life of transcendent Intellect. The affairs of our bodily life concern us as souls which have a need, a natural ‘appropriation’, to take care of bodily lives, ours and that of others. Action in this bodily existence should be guided by practical wisdom, a wisdom guided by ‘premises’, i.e., norms derived from theoretical wisdom. Finally, I indicate the variety of texts composed by Plotinus’ Platonist successors where ethical themes may be found.

This chapter illustrates how Greek and Arabic sources influenced the thinking of early scholastic theologians working on the topic of human nature in four main areas. These are debates about the powers of the soul, the composition of the soul, the relationship between the body and the soul, and the theory of knowledge.

The chapter focuses on the experiences and representations of the shipboard community in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, to explore the changes in the imagining of ‘people’ and questions of individual and collective identity. By closely reading the novels by Joseph Conrad, James Hanley, and B. Traven, alongside the theoretical works of Sigmund Freud, Gustave Le Bon, and Hannah Arendt, it argues how fictional form diagnoses and dramatises with singular power the gradual move from Victorian ideas of the ‘crowd’ to an interwar imagining of peoples’ history and the language of rights. In the process, the chapter addresses a range of issues, from questions of race, class, and the body to the condition of statelessness and the growth of proletarian consciousness, which push the maritime novel in new directions.

Hippocratic doctors discussed two forms of total loss of consciousness. The most common one, where they equated fainting with a separation of the soul, and another form - independent from the psuchê - where they saw the concurrence of numerous independent bodily symptoms that ended up in a swoon. The momentary disruption of cognitive functions that occurred during fainting, and their definite cessation with death made them conceive the soul as both a broad notion that subsumed numerous mental capacities (which transiently separated from the body during swoons) and as a life force that abandoned the body for good with death.

The analysis of total loss of consciousness illustrates the varied ways in which the different authors resolved - in their corresponding periods and contexts - the tension between body and soul. Despite their diverse approaches, all the medical writers under scrutiny took for granted the existence of a soul, its intervention in this kind of conditions, and its bonds to the body as determiner of the clinical presentation. Particularly, they grappled to organise the mental capacities and explain how they were affected in the different forms of impaired consciousness.

Total loss of consciousness is nowadays mostly framed as a global alteration of brain activity. In antiquity, doctors often alluded to this symptom with compound terms of psuchê or anima, and they understood the body and the soul to be involved - to different extents - in the phenomenon. Consequently, by exploring how they conceived this condition, it is possible not only to better understand their idea of consciousness, but also to get a hint of how the envisaged the relation between body and soul.