DOKTORI DISSZERTÁCIÓ THE METAMORPHOSIS OF “PASSION” IN THE CULTURE OF THE MIND: EARLY MODERN CONFIGURATIONS SOÓS GÁBOR 2009. Eötvös Loránd Tudományegyetem Bölcsészettudományi Kar DOKTORI DISSZERTÁCIÓ SOÓS GÁBOR THE METAMORPHOSIS OF “PASSION” IN THE CULTURE OF THE MIND: EARLY MODERN CONFIGURATIONS Irodalomtudományi Doktori Iskola, Dr. Kulcsár-Szabó Ernő (doktori iskola vezetője) „Reneszánsz és angol barokk irodalom” doktori program, Dr. Géher István (program vezetője) A bizottság tagjai: A bizottság elnöke: Dr. Péter Ágnes CSc., egyetemi tanár Hivatalosan felkért bírálók: Dr. Fabiny Tibor PhD., egyetemi tanár Dr. Boros Gábor DSc., egyetemi tanár A bizottság titkára: Dr. Tóta Péter Benedek PhD., egyetemi docens A bizottság további tagjai: Dr. Kállay Géza PhD., habil. Docens Dr. Almási Zsolt, Dr. Dávidházi Péter (póttagok) Témavezető: Dr. Géher István PhD., egyetemi tanár Budapest, 2009. 2 TABLE OF CONTENT page I. GENERAL INTRODUCTION 4 I. 1. Passions and Their Relevance in the Early Modern Context 5 I. 2. “Passion”: The Story of the Oxford English Dictionary 12 I. 3. In Search of a Vantage Point: Foucault on the ‘care for the self’ 27 I. 4. The Broader Historical Argument 38 II. THE CLASSICAL HERITAGE OF ‘PASSION’ 58 II. 1. 1. Platonic containments 62 II. 1. 2. Aristotelian adjustments 69 II. 1. 3. The Stoic program of extirpation 74 II. 2. Medieval Christian Accommodations 85 II. 2. 1. St. Augustine 89 II. 2. 2. St. Thomas Aquinas 99 II. 2. 3. Conclusion: Localism/Globalism 100 III. ‘PASSIONS’ IN THE EARLY MODERN CONTEXT 104 III. 1. The ‘Passions’ in the Humanist Agenda 107 III. 2. The Role of the Stoic - Christian Humanist Encounter in the Semantic Shift of ‘Passion’ 128 III. 3. Vernacular Innovations: the Significance of Montaigne, Les Essais in John Florio’s 1603 Translation (The Essayes) 144 III. 4. Bacon’s Strategy of the ‘Regiment of the Mind’ 177 IV. CONCLUSION 204 V. APPENDICES 211 1. The Oxford English Dictionary entry of ‘passion’ and ‘emotion’ 211 2. A Non-Exhaustive List of Treatises on the Passions or Closely Related to the Issue Published in English in the Early Modern Period (second half of the 16th century – beginning of 17th c.) 218 3. The entry ‘émotion’ in Le Robert dictionnaire 220 VI. BIBLIOGRAPHY 224 3 I. GENERAL INTRODUCTION 4 I. 1. Passions and Their Relevance in the Early Modern Context A woman’s face with Nature’s own hand painted Hast thou, the master-mistress of my passion; (Shakespeare, “Sonnet XX”) Come, go with me. I will go seek the King. This is the very ecstasy of love, Whose violent property fordoes itself And leads the will to desperate undertakings As oft as any passion under heaven That does afflict our natures. (Hamlet, II. 1. 105-109) Give me that man That is not passion’s slave, and I will wear him In my heart’s core, ay, in my heart of heart, As I do thee. (Hamlet, III. 2. 74-77) Nay truly learned men have learnedly thought, that where once reason hath so much over-mastered passion, as that the minde hath a free desire to doo well, the inward light each minde hath in it selfe, is as good as a Philosophers booke, since in Nature we know it is well, to doo well, and what is well, and what is evill, although not in the wordes of Art which Philosophers bestow uppon us: for out of naturall conceit the Philosophers drew it; but to be moved to doo that which wee know, or to be mooved with desire to know. Hoc opus, hic labor est. (Sir Philip Sidney, A Defence of Poesie) Then it is thus: the passions of the mind, That have their first conception by misdread, Have after-nourishment and life by care, And what was first but fear what might be done Grows elder now, and cares it be not done. (Shakespeare, Pericles, I. 2. 11-15) Desire, though thou my old companion art And oft so clings to my pure love, that I One from the other scarcely can descry, While each doth blow the fire of my heart, Now from thy fellowship I needs must par. Venus is taught with Dian’s wings to fly; I must no more in thy sweet passions lie; (Sir Philip Sidney, Astrophil and Stella, “Sonnet 72”, ll 1-7) In this great passion of unwonted lust, Or wonted feare of doing ought amis, He started up, as seeming to mistrust, Some secret ill, or hidden foe of his: (Edmund Spencer, The Faerie Queen, Book 1. Canto 1. 49.) 5 The noble hart, that harbours vertuous thought, And is with child of glorious great intent, Can neuer rest, untill it forth have brought Th'eternall brood of glorie excellent: Such restlesse passion did all night torment The flaming corage of that Faery knight, Devizing, how that doughtie turnament With greatest honour he atchieven might; Still did he wake, and still did watch for dawning light. (Edmund Spencer, The Faerie Queen, Book 1. Canto 5. 1.) As the quotations above show, “passion” is far from being a univocal term in Early Modern English literature. The present study wishes to examine how “passion” was understood in the period, what were the implications of the term with relation to ethical behaviour and right action, and how did its sense evolve? Thus it is a kind of a background study in the history of ideas, in the study of words and concepts, using different branches of philosophical inquiry in order (it is hoped) to enhance the understanding and appreciation of the literary works of the period under consideration. The study seeks to explore the ethical, theological and anthropological concerns “passion” (as a word and as a concept) mobilized, the challenges did it raised and the implicit or explicit ethical stakes and preoccupations involved in the change of the meaning of the word ‘passion’ in the late 16th century? What were the theological and ethical accommodations and transformations that this change entailed in the historical context of Early Modern Humanism1? This historical context is characterised by the resuscitation of certain elements of Classical humanism, most prominently the doctrines of Hellenistic and Roman Stoicism in what is usually termed as the neo-Stoic trend of the second half of the 16th century. Of course, Renaissance humanism helped to revitalise the legacy of other Hellenistic philosophical schools as well, such as Epicureanism, Scepticism but for the evolution of the word and concept of ‘passion’, the Stoic 1 For ease of reference, I shall refer to Early Modern Humanism bearing in mind that 1) as is well- known, this humanism developed a bit later North of the Alps and more specifically in England (second half of 16th century) cf. Warren Boutcher, “Vernacular Humanism in the sixteenth century” in The Cambridge Companion to Renaissance Humanism edited by Jill Kraye, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996, pp. 189-203; and 2) most of the authors I shall be discussing in this study belong already to a second generation of humanists. 6 impact was the most important. This is because the passions were of particular concern to the Stoics and with their revival, this issue and the problems associated with it were transposed and accommodated into an Early Modern Christian context. Part of the attraction for the Stoic authors and their Early Modern interpreters was due to the appeal that the Stoic precepts of rational, emotion-free response to external events had for the European public as the ideal solution for the political and religious turbulences of late 16th and 17th century.2 The topic did have its place in Medieval treatises but it gained even more pertinence and acuity with the Renaissance Humanist movement due to the possibilities it opened for the human being on two, corresponding and interdependent levels: the indeterminacy and malleability of human nature and the ensuing practical questions of how to face the adversities of life and how to behave. Both of these issues can be seen as belonging to the cluster of ideas that constituted the Renaissance conception of the dignity of man. Early Modern Humanism, just as Classical humanism, was dependent on a number of philosophical, theological assumptions that determined its view of what it is to be human and the place of man in the universe. The differences in these assumptions are necessarily reflected in the understanding and treatment of the passions. Thus the aim of this study is to consider how the ensuing interaction between the two humanisms (Classical and Early Modern) surface in the perception of the passions. The perspective in which the present study wishes to tell this story can be characterised as intercultural inasmuch as the peculiarity of Renaissance Humanism lies in the encounter of Europe with what it claims to be its own past and this past is, in the case of Europe, a cultural other. This is because the constitutive element of Early Modern Humanism, the return to the works of the Greco-Latin Classical authors, was confronting European culture with what was outside it. The contemporary French cultural historian and philosopher, Rémi Brague, describes European culture and civilisation as having this capacity (in contrast with Islam for example) to have a re-naissance (or indeed, to be in continual renaissances), to interrogate its own past in order to formulate from it an ideal of culture toward which it measures itself in an attitude of willed cultural secondariness. This is what Brague calls “attitude romaine” characterised by an “identité excentrique” in the sense of establishing its 2 Cf. Jill Kraye, “Philologists and philosophers” in The Cambridge Companion to Renaissance Humanism, p. 152. 7 point of normative reference outside itself.3 He contrasts religious revival movements, which aim to return to the source of the religion within the same tradition, with the concept of re- naissance proper.