Education and the Cultivation of the Early Modern Self: Cultura Animi as Self-Care in Juan Luis Vives (2023)
Vermeir, Koen (Author)
Early Science and Medicine: A Journal for the Study of Science, Technology and Medicine in the Pre-modern Period
Volume: 28
Issue: 1
Pages: 63-94
Does the modern self still need self-care? Pierre Hadot, Michel Foucault and others suggested that self-care mostly disappeared with the advent of modernity. How this happened, or whether self-care instead took on new forms, is still not well understood. This article examines the Renaissance appropriation of the concept of a “culture of the soul” (cultura animi) as a marker for how self-care was adapted to modernity. After detailing how Cicero used cultura animi as a metaphor for self-care, I study the appropriation of this concept by the humanist Juan Luis Vives (1493–1540), who made it into a central notion for his educational reform. I argue that, for Vives, self-care does not consist in the following of rules, precepts or “technologies of the self”; it is not a philosophical “art of living”. Instead, “culture” stands for an organic way of learning, a practice of absorbing multifarious experience, especially though the study of historical literature. Accordingly, the “self” to be cultivated is not one’s individual ego or transcendent soul, but one’s practical judgment. Education, centered on the cultivation of practical wisdom, is essential for self-care and for the flourishing of community.
...MoreArticle Steven Vanden Broecke; Jonathan Regier (2023) Special Issue Introduction: Individuality, Self-Care, and Self-Preservation in Late Medieval and Early Modern Science. Early Science and Medicine: A Journal for the Study of Science, Technology and Medicine in the Pre-modern Period (pp. 1-7).
Similar Citations
Article
Silvia Manzo;
(2023)
Francis Bacon on Self-Care, Divination, and the Nature–Fortune Distinction
(/isis/citation/CBB467830858/)
Book
Adam Phillips;
(2022)
On Getting Better
(/isis/citation/CBB133892262/)
Book
Adam Phillips;
(2022)
On Wanting to Change
(/isis/citation/CBB116010876/)
Article
Steven Vanden Broecke;
Jonathan Regier;
(2023)
Special Issue Introduction: Individuality, Self-Care, and Self-Preservation in Late Medieval and Early Modern Science
(/isis/citation/CBB810324847/)
Article
Fenneke Sysling;
(2020)
Measurement, self-tracking and the history of science: An introduction
(/isis/citation/CBB055576627/)
Article
Steven Vanden Broecke;
(2023)
Astrological Self-Government at the Fifteenth-Century Court of Bourbon
(/isis/citation/CBB202486418/)
Book
Lina Bolzoni;
(2023)
A Marvelous Solitude: The Art of Reading in Early Modern Europe
(/isis/citation/CBB685562354/)
Book
Jessica L. Wright;
(2022)
The Care of the Brain in Early Christianity
(/isis/citation/CBB642375976/)
Article
Michel Pretalli;
(2019)
Hannibal versus Phormio: Theory and Practice in Italian Military Literature at the End of the Renaissance
(/isis/citation/CBB555691679/)
Article
Magdalena Kersting;
Jesper Haglund;
Rolf Steier;
(2021)
A Growing Body of Knowledge
(/isis/citation/CBB252580833/)
Book
Cassandra Gorman;
(2021)
The Atom in Seventeenth-Century Poetry
(/isis/citation/CBB486681154/)
Book
Peter M. Jones;
(2016)
Agricultural Enlightenment: Knowledge, Technology, and Nature, 1750-1840
(/isis/citation/CBB219747830/)
Article
Dixon, Joy;
(2013)
“Dark Ecstasies”: Sex, Mysticism and Psychology in Early Twentieth-Century England
(/isis/citation/CBB001201191/)
Chapter
Cassini, Lorenzo;
(2012)
Juan Luis Vives and Early Modern Psychology: A Critical Reappraisal
(/isis/citation/CBB001214003/)
Book
Cosimo Monteleone;
Kim Williams;
(2023)
Daniele Barbaro and the University of Padova: Architecture, Art and Science on the Occasion of the 450th Anniversary of His Death
(/isis/citation/CBB942234104/)
Article
Shreeharsh Kelkar;
(2022)
Between AI and Learning Science: The Evolution and Commercialization of Intelligent Tutoring Systems
(/isis/citation/CBB706254591/)
Article
Ann Marie Ryan;
(2019)
Catholic Minds/Bodies–Souls: Catholic Schools and Eugenic Inspired Educational Reforms in the United States, 1915–1952
(/isis/citation/CBB756510954/)
Article
Peter Achterberg;
Willem de Koster;
Jeroen van der Waal;
(2015)
A Science Confidence Gap: Education, Trust in Scientific Methods, and Trust in Scientific Institutions in the United States, 2014
(/isis/citation/CBB337703195/)
Article
Els Stronks;
(2019)
Curiosity, Youth, and Knowledge in the Visual and Textual Culture of the Dutch Republic
(/isis/citation/CBB089009139/)
Article
Sandrine Parageau;
(2021)
« Colomb ignorant trouva le nouveau monde » : ignorance, découverte fortuite et expérimentation à la première modernité
(/isis/citation/CBB363347228/)
Be the first to comment!