Abstract
This chapter deals with Thomas Browne’s most famous work, Religio Medici (written between 1635 and 1640 and published in 1642), and especially with his account of Charity. The first paragraph focuses on Browne’s specific account of the relationship between natural and supernatural. This view is inspired by Bacon, Sebunde, and Montaigne, and is crucial to understand the background of Browne’s view about the virtue of Charity. The second paragraph is about Browne’s specific understanding of Charity, which seems to be a middle stage between the traditional, Scholastic doctrine, and the Kantian idea of moral law, independent from the practical law and the desire of the subject. The third paragraph deals with Religio Medici’s reversal of the traditional “order” of Charity, as well as Browne’s accounts of abnegation and friendship as an effective way for a charity to the self which meets many aspects of Foucault’s ἑπιμέλεια έαuτου. The fourth paragraph is about Browne’s analogical understanding of medicine and morality, as well as his use of the meditatio mortis.
If I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, but do not have charity, I have become a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal
(St. Paul, I Cor. 13, 1)
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Bibliography
Aquinas, Thomas. 1888–1906. [ST]. Summa theologiae cum Supplemento et commentariis Caietani. In Sancti Thomae de Aquino Opera Omnia iussu Leonis XIII P. M. Edita, voll. 4–12, Rome.
Aristotle. 2004. Nichomachean ethics. Trans. and ed. R. Crisp. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Bacon, Francis. 1884. The works of Francis Bacon. Vol. 1. New York: Worthington.
Barbour, Red, and Claire Preston. 2008. Sir Thomas Browne: The world proposed. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Browne, Thomas. 1645. Religio Medici. 2nd ed. London: Printed for Andrew Crooke.
———. 1658. Pseudodoxia epidemica or enquiries into very many received tenets and commonly presumed truths. 4th ed. London: Printed for Edward Dod.
Cadman Seelig, Sharon. 2008. ‘Speake that I may see thee’: The styles of Sir Thomas Browne. In Barbour and Preston 2008, 13–35.
Calasso, Roberto. 2008. Fisiognomica di Sir Thomas Browne. In Thomas Browne, Religio Medici, italian translation by Vittorio Sanna, 11–50. Milano: Adelphi.
———. 2018. I geroglifici di Sir Thomas Browne. Milano: Adelphi.
Conti, Brooke. 2008. Religio Medici’s profession of faith. In Barbour and Preston 2008, 149–167.
———. 2014. Confessions of faith in early Modern England. Philadelphia: University of Pensylvania Press.
Dunn, William P. 1950. Thomas Browne. A study in religious philosophy. Minneapolis: The University of Minnesota Press.
Finch, Jeremiah S. (ed.). 1986. A catalogue of the libraries of Sir Thomas Browne and Dr. Edward Browne, His son: A facsimile reproduction (Leiden, 1986).
Foucault, Michel. 1986. The care of the self. Volume 3 of the history of sexuality, trans. R. Hurley. New York: Pantheon Books.
———. 2005. The hermeneutics of the subject. Lectures at the Collège de France, 1981–1982. Trans. G. Burchell. New York: Palgrave McMillan.
———. 2016. About the beginning of the hermeneutics of the self. Lectures at Darmouth College, 1980. Trans. G. Burchell. Chicago/London: The University of Chicago Press.
Grant, Patrick. 1985. Thomas Browne’s Religio Medici: Baconian method and the metaphysical cross. In Id., Literature and the discover of method in English renaissance, 102–123. Houndmills: McMillian.
Hadot, Pierre. 1995. Philosophy as a way of life. Spiritual exercises from Socrates to Foucault, Introduction by A. I. Davidson. Trans. M. Chase. Oxford: Blackwell.
Havenstein, Daniela. 1999. Democratizing Sir Thomas Browne: Religio medici and its imitations. Oxford: Clarendon Press/Oxford University Press.
Kant, Immanuel. 1900a. Grundlegung zur Metaphysik der Sitten [GMS]. In Kants gesammelte Schriften, vol. 4. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter.
———. 1900b. Kritik der Praktischen Vernunft [KPV]. In Kants gesammelte Schriften, vol. 5. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter.
———. 1998. Groundwork of the metaphysics of moral. Trans. and ed. M. Gregor. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
———. 2015. Critique of Practical Reason. Trans and ed. M. Gregor (2nd edition, revised). Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Montaigne, Michel. 1877. Essays. Trans. C. Cotton and ed. W. Carew Hazlitt. London: Reeves and Turner.
Murphy, Kathryn. 2008. ‘A likely story’: Plato’s Timaeus in the garden of Cyrus. In Barbour and Preston 2008, 242–256.
Parry, Graham. 2008. Thomas Browne and the uses of antiquity. In Barbour and Preston 2008, 63–79.
Plato. 1953. Dialogues of Plato. Translated into English, with analyses and introduction by B. Jowett, 5 vols, 4th ed. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
Post, Jonathan, F. S. 1985. Browne’s Revisions of Religio Medici. Studies in English Literature, 1500–1900 25 (1): 145–163.
Preston, Claire. 2008. ‘An incomium of consumptions’: A letter to a friend as medical narrative. In Barbour and Preston 2008, 206–221.
———. 2009. Thomas Browne and the writing of early modern Science. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Sebunde, Raymond. 1434. Liber naturae sive creaturarum, in the 1648 edition Theologia Naturalis sive Liber Creaturarum, apud Petri Compagnon, Lyon.
Seneca, Lucius Annaeus. 2001. Selected letters. Trans. E. Fantham. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Shuger, Debora. 2008. The Laudian idiot, In Barbour and Preston 2008, 36–62.
Silver, Victoria. 2008. Wonders of the invisible world’: The trial of the lowestoft witches, In Barbour and Preston 2008, 118–145.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2021 The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Guidi, S. (2021). From Charity to the Care of the Self: Thomas Browne’s Religio Medici. In: Braga, J., Santiago de Carvalho, M. (eds) Philosophy of Care. Advancing Global Bioethics, vol 16. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-75478-5_16
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-75478-5_16
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-030-71240-2
Online ISBN: 978-3-030-75478-5
eBook Packages: Religion and PhilosophyPhilosophy and Religion (R0)