The Conimbric Treaties: The Transmission of the Psychological Knowledge of the West, in the Land of Santa Cruz

Abstract

The chapter deals with the psychological knowledge that developed within the philosophy practiced by the Jesuits in Coimbra through the analysis of the manuals they produced at the end of the sixteenth century and the beginning of the seventeenth century. Such manuals were also circulated in Brazil and were essential for the formation of the Jesuit missionaries who came to the country. For this reason, they are possibly one of the most important themes for the reconstruction of the history of psychological knowledge in colonial Brazil.

Brazil was initially called Terra de Santa Cruz by the Portuguese discoverers. Since the first decades of the sixteenth century, those who arrived in Brazil by sea route could bring books in their suitcases: in fact, the art of the newly founded press allowed the reproduction of texts, in a less expensive and less voluminous way than by handwritten copies.

A set of books in the luggage of the missionaries of the Society of Jesus, who arrived in Brazil in 1549, consisted of newly printed treaties and nicknamed Conimbricenses. The nickname derived from the fact that they were written in Coimbra, whose ancient Roman name was Conimbrica. The knowledge of the content of these texts will help us to understand the way of thinking of the Jesuit missionaries (their ‘universe of thought’, in the expression of De Certeau) and of those who were trained in the schools they created in Brazilian territory. In this book, we will focus on the way of thinking about psychic phenomena.

The path that will be proposed will require the reader to engage in the language of philosophical psychology of the time, in its specific articulations and terminologies. As will be evident, the effects of the transmission of this conceptual baggage, in the cultural universe of colonial Brazil, were considerable.

2.1 The History of Treaties

The first group of Jesuit missionaries in Brazil were mostly Portuguese who had studied in Salamanca, Alcalá, Lisbon, and at the College of Arts in Coimbra. The College, founded in 1548 and given to the Jesuits in 1555 by King John III, was located in Coimbra, a city already an important center of production and cultural formation inspired by Portuguese humanism. Since 1537, a University had been operating in Coimbra.

In this context, the Colégio das Artes had assumed an important role in the political project of formation of elites and cultural renewal of the Portuguese State. In this sense, the managing entity was highlighted: the Society of Jesus (Carvalho and Camps 2010).

Initially founded in preparation for other colleges, the College of Arts expanded into the Faculty of the same name. There, not only subjects of a literary philosophical nature (Grammar, Rhetoric, and Dialectics) were taught, but also Arithmetic, Astronomy, Music, and Geometry. The cultivation of Greek and Latin Humanities had thus acquired milestones of the Renaissance climate (Carvalho and Camps 2010).

Jerome Nadal SJ, then in the position of Visitor of the Society, ordered that a teaching manual for the course of philosophy, based on the commentary on the works of Aristotle revisited by Thomas Aquinas, be composed as soon as possible. The Jesuit Manoel de Góis (1540–1597), who taught in Coimbra between 1574 and 1582, began the work, taking advantage of the handwritten course in philosophy, read ordinarily by the teachers of the College of Coimbra, but also of Evora, Lisbon, and Braga (Carvalho and Camps 2010). In this way, Góis wrote the treatises quickly and the volumes began to be edited from 1584 onwards.

In all, these are eight volumes of Commentaries from the Conimbricense College of the Society of Jesus. The parts referring to the “scientia de anima”, that is, the philosophical psychology of Aristotelian and Augustinian origin, were printed in Coimbra and Lisbon from 1592 to 1606.¹

The publication of the Conimbricense Course represented an important editorial event in Europe, due to the systematic, interdisciplinary, and comprehensive nature of the work. The organization of the text in questions, solutions and theses, corresponds to the structure of the scholastic method heritage of medieval philosophy. As for its content, the treatises labeled by the authors as commentaries on Aristotelian works are in fact appropriations of texts and themes proposed by Aristotle, but according to clippings, choices and emphasis dictated by the specific circumstances of the space-time context in which they were written.

In the Commentaries, there is a thread that guides the teaching of philosophy in the field of pedagogy directed at schools and that responds to the dictates of the Ratio studiorum: the thought of Thomas Aquinas. Ignatius of Loyola (1491–1556) had attended the University of Paris at the time when the Suma de Aquino was taken as a theological manual. In this way, Loyola appropriated Aquinas’ work in the form of an aristotelianism guided by Christian revelation.

Nevertheless, the Society of Jesus was a newly constituted religious order devoid of its own philosophical and theological tradition. For this reason, Jesuit teachers had the freedom to combine the legacies of tradition in the constitution of new philosophical positions.²

2.2 The Elaboration of the Scientia de Anima

The topics related to psychological study are covered in the following texts of the Conimbricenses treatises: the commentary to De Anima (On the Soul, Góis 1602), the commentary to Parva Naturalia (Small natural things, Góis 1593), the commentary to Ethics of Nicomaco (Góis 1957), the commentary to De Generatione et Corruptione (On generation and corruption, Góis 1607). In the texts, all written in the Latin language, the main concepts concerning psychological knowledge are highlighted.

As already mentioned, the proposition of Aristotelian psychology involves the appropriation of it by the philosopher and theologian Thomas Aquinas in the thirteenth century in the context of the anthropological vision shaped by Christianity; it assumes, therefore, the denomination of Aristotelian-Tomist doctrine. However, the vision of man and the psychism conveyed by the medieval philosophical tradition is interpreted in the light of the cultural changes that marked the humanist and Renaissance period.

Such influences are philosophical,³ but also medical,⁴ or other areas of “natural philosophy ”. The quality and quantity of the cited sources are significant of the position of the Jesuit philosophers who seek to discuss and when possible to reconcile sometimes very different theories among themselves; that is, they are seeking to reconcile ancient and modern doctrines.

The analysis of the commentaries on Aristotelian psychological works allows one to know the broad panorama of the time with regard to anthropological and psychological knowledge. It allows one to understand the problems, the solutions, the themes, and the concepts, the methods of knowledge, which at the time were considered essential components of the domain defined as the study of “anima”.

An important component of this knowledge transformation process is the challenges arising from the need to open up to the “new” worlds outside Europe with which Europeans came into contact in the sixteenth century. This is a real revolution produced in the field of knowledge by the discovery of New Worlds, new men, new peoples, and social forms.

Some fundamental theses referring to the Aristotelian-Tomist definition of the human soul constitute the foundations of the proposed knowledge about the soul phenomena. The soul is defined as the first substantial act of the body, form of the body, and principle of our activity, according to the classical Aristotelian doctrine (Aristotle 2006).

The qualities of the soul are simplicity, spirituality, subsistence, immortality, and be created. Góis states that the theory of the substantiality of the soul is supported by a large group of philosophers (from Plato, of whom Timaeus quotes), but he also discusses the contrary theories widespread in the cultural universe of his time.⁵ The position of Góis is the reaffirmation, against these theories, of the substantial character of the soul.

The soul has peculiar abilities called powers (δυναμις). These are classified in four types: first, the vegetative power with the nutritive and generating functions; second, the sensory power, responsible for the sensitive knowledge that acts through the external senses (sight, hearing, smell, taste, touch) and the elaboration of this knowledge through the internal senses . These are as follows: the common sense whose function is to gather the sensations coming from the five external senses, distinguishing them and comparing them among themselves; the fantasy, which composes and divides the sensations among themselves; the cogitative power, or estimation, and the memory appetitive.

Thirdly, there is the appetitive power, which distinguishes itself in sensitive appetitive power, oriented toward sensitive and singular objects (i.e., passions or affective life itself) and intellectual appetitive power, directed by reason (or will). The intellectual power is composed of intuitive intellectual knowledge (information about a present object) and abstract intellectual knowledge (apprehension of an object that is not present).

According to Góis, the intellectual soul transcends the body. The argument is that the operations of the intellectual soul (intellect and will) transcend the nature and the physical and material condition of the human being. The intellectual soul is a spiritual substance, but not a part of the divine mind. It is of a spiritual nature by overcoming the bodily condition and is able, through the way of the intellect, to grasp and elaborate immaterial realities and, through the way of the will, to overcome the sphere of affections and sensibility (Carvalho and Camps 2010).

The powers of the soul correspond to what modern psychology today defines as psychic functions, notably: sensory functions, motivational and emotional functions, intellectual functions. However, from the perspective of Aristotelian psychology, the powers do not identify themselves tout court with the phenomena, whereas modern psychology recognizes the existence of only the phenomena. This change was the decisive step for the birth of psychological science in the nineteenth century.

Another important differentiation from modern psychology is that the scientia de anima of the Conimbricences conceives the psychic dynamism not as an autonomous sphere, but in its intersections with the other aspects of the person (that is, corporeality and the spirit). Thus, the understanding of psychic phenomena also depends on the knowledge of the functioning of the other spheres of personal life, in the first place the corporeal sphere.

2.3 The Psychic Apparatus in the Body Complex: Humors and Temperaments

In the view of the Jesuit philosophers, there is a deep intersection between the corporeality and the psychism of the person.⁶ The Conimbricenses treatises teach that the functioning of the psychic dynamics is grafted in the dynamism of the “natural complexion” of each person, that is, in the psychophysiological condition of the body, expressed by the concept of temperament. In these treaties, the link between these two levels is considered so important that knowledge of temperament is considered part of the study of the soul.⁷

This view, in turn, fits into the context of a realistic epistemological position that postulates the deep intersection between metaphysics, “physics” (i.e., natural philosophy), mathematics, and theology.⁸

The origins of the concept of temperament date back to Greek medical theory, systematized by Hippocrates (460aC–370aC) and Galen (129–217). The theory considers the constitution of man determined by the presence of four fundamental humors. These correspond to the four basic elements of the composition of the universe. The humors are as follows: black biles (or melancholy), yellow biles, phlegm, and blood. The theory establishes a correspondence between the preponderance in the body of a type of humor and the temperament of the individual. Thus, excess black bile (melanê kolê) corresponds to melancholic temperament; excess yellow bile corresponds to choleric; excess blood, the blood; excess water, the phlegmatic. Temperaments determine the psychosomatic characteristics of the subject: his organic condition as well as his psychic states (Klibansky et al. 1983).

From this theory, an area of knowledge defined as Medicine of the Soul, or Medicine of the Spirit, emerged in the West. In Medieval and Renaissance West, the Medicine of the Soul became “guides of good living”. Knowledge and practices coming from theology, philosophy, spirituality, rhetoric, and medicine integrate this domain: medical theories (such as humoralist theory), advice suggested by the Fathers of the desert, advice derived from the ancient tradition of Christian Patristics, etc.

The Medicine of the Soul is based on an analogy between the soul and the body. It presupposes the existence of “diseases of the soul”. Thus, it admits the specificity of psychological pathology. At the same time, the psychological dimension is taken as an intermediary between the organic and the spiritual.

The illness of the soul can be the object of medical care because it has symptoms that can be physical. At the same time, it is also the object of cure by philosophers. In fact what gets sick is the soul as a whole (not only the sensory and vegetative soul, but also the rational soul).

Such analogy is, in many cases, interpreted in terms of a parallelism , in others, as expressive of the psychosomatic unity that characterizes the human being. The unitary principle of health is balance. Any imbalance, be it in the body or the spirit, is the cause of illness. For example, an imbalance caused by an excess, or defect, in the movements of the sensory appetite (= passion) can cause bodily and psychic illnesses and also cause a fragility of the spirit. In the same way, the diversity in the composition of the body’s humors (complexion) leads to different psychological temperaments. However, an excess, or defect, of one or another mood may degenerate into psychic and physical pathologies.

In the sixteenth century, the Spanish physician Huarte de San Juan, a graduate of the University of Alcalá and author of the Examen de Ingenios para las Sciencias (1574), established a close correspondence between the Medicine of the body, the Medicine of the Animo, and the political and social construction of society. In doing so, he based it on the model of the Platonic Republic (San Juan, 1989). In this way, social practice is based on natural philosophy. The social body is conceived as a structure analogous to the microcosm, which is man himself.

Therefore, the Jesuits continued this tradition and spread it in their areas of missionary presence. In the writings of Ignatius of Loyola, founder of the religious order, there is frequent reference to this knowledge. It was used for a deeper understanding of the human being and his destiny, aiming at the orientation (“direction”) of his spiritual life.⁹ The application of temperament theory is also found in the writings of Cláudio Acquaviva (1543–1615), one of Ignatius’ successors in leading the Society of Jesus (Acquaviva 1660/1893a, b).

The knowledge about the natural complexion of individual bodies can be found in various treatises prepared by the Jesuit masters of Coimbra. Among them, the Commentarii Collegii Conimbricensis Societatis Iesu, in Libro de Generatione et Corruptione stands out. This book discusses the theories of physicians and philosophers about the diversity of temperaments (Góis 1607).¹⁰

The concepts conveyed in the treatise are inspired by Galeno, Averroés, Avicenas. It is postulated the existence of a type of temperament , the uniform, where all four qualities (heat and cold, wet and dry) are present in equal proportion. However, most individuals have disformed temperaments: in these, there is an unbalanced distribution of the four qualities. There are four types of disformed temperaments. The choleric temperament has prevalence of the fire element and for this reason has excess of the yellow biles humor and has the qualities of heat and dryness. The blood temperament has prevalence of blood and therefore has excess of blood and has the qualities of heat and humidity. The phlegmatic temperament has excess of water and therefore of the phlegmatic humor, and therefore, it has the qualities of cold and humid. The melancholic temperament has excess of earth and therefore of the black biles humor and therefore has the qualities of cold and dryness.

Within these types of temperament , there is a great variability, according to the quantitative combination of the four qualities. For example, if in the choleric temperament (where heat is combined with dryness) dryness predominates, it may become choleric-melancholic. If, on the contrary, heat predominates, it can be transformed into choleric-bloody temperament.

The commentary discusses the kind of temperament that would be most conducive to the excellence of inventiveness and to the perspicacity of the mind.

In the tradition of the Medicine of the Soul, melancholic humor was considered the most favorable for the development of intellectual activities, starting with Aristotle (Problemata XXX). Góis states, however, that the best temperament is the choleric-melancholic . In fact, the choleric constitution favors commitment and the speed of action and perception. At the same time, the heat of the choleric component moderates the negative effects of the black biles.

Góis warns that the subject may not retain the temperament inherited by his parents throughout his existence, due to changes within the organism itself, or the external environment.

The affirmation of temperament determination, however, is not equivalent to determinism. Góis refuses the theory of the absolute determination of individual differences by humorous factors. In this aspect, it distances itself from the galenical orthodox tradition and highlights the role of the subject’s responsibility in the improvement and correction of his inclinations (Massimi 2000a, b, 2010b).¹¹ The Commentary points out the difference between soul and temperament and defines as wrong some deterministic positions similar to Galen’s position.¹² According to the commentator, the error of this identification has already been pointed out by Thomas Aquinas.¹³ The fundamental difference between soul and temperament is that temperament is an accident (resulting from the combination of the four fundamental elements), and soul is substance. On the contrary, the identification between soul and temperament would imply the negation of the substantiality of the soul. Góis confirms Thomas’ thesis by the evidence that the soul has its own functions that do not derive from temperamento: “ab anima vero actus nutriendi, augendi, loco movendi, sentiendi, intelligendi” (Góis 1607, p. 37). Moreover, the rational soul shows itself capable of controlling the movements linked to temperaments that arise in the sensitive appetite and of moderating passions.

In short, Góis and the Jesuit thinkers in general, while at the same time addressing the intersection between psychism and corporeality, also reiterate the distinction between them. In order to reject the materialistic view of the human being, they also seek to show the determination that the psychism exerts on the body. In fact, in Comentarii Collegii Conimbricensis Societatis Iesu, In Libros Aristotelis qui Parva Naturalia appellantur, (supplements to the book De Anima) published in Lisbon in 1593, questions concerning the influence of psychic phenomena on the condition of the body are addressed.

For example, one of the chapters on the Aristotelian De somno et vigil (q. 13) addresses the phenomenon of sleep associated with sadness. It is known that in depressive conditions, there is a tendency to excessive daytime sleepiness. According to Góis, the cause of this phenomenon would be that sadness mainly affects subjects of melancholic temperament , who are thoughtful and have excessive activity of the imagination. Such activity would disperse steam and consume the body’s unity, causing sleep. Sleep , in turn, seems to relieve sadness, which is an unnatural movement of the body, by bringing body activity back to its natural state, thus containing the effect of melancholic humors.

Góis dedicates an entire chapter of commentary to the theme of sleep and dreams. Dreams are differentiated into two types: natural and psychic. Natural dreams are derived from affections and body movements. Psychic dreams depend on events experienced throughout the day. Natural dreams are shaped by the moods that prevail in individual temperament. Thus, the dreams of the melancholic are sad, funereal, full of darkness, and snowfall. The cholerics have dreams full of fights and enmity. The blood people dream of wounds and burns. The phlegmatic dream of water sports, swimming, rains. Psychic dreams contain as follows: things, people, and intense affections (hate, love, fear, hope, etc.), and gestures proper to the daytime activity of the dreamer. The singers, they sing; the philosophers, they dispute; the avaricious, they accumulate money, etc. In accordance with Aristotle’s Ethics that good men have better dreams, Góis states that dreams also reveal advice for virtuous conduct. The complementarity between physiological, psychological, and ethical dimensions of the human person is a statement that often appears in Conimbricense Commentaries.

Góis also addresses the links between temperament and individual characters. For example, the audacious character is determined by blood complexion. Individuals with this temperament have a great deal of blood and animal spirits and are by nature warm. In this way, they act with strength and endurance in the face of danger and never become pale and trembling. The commentator also wonders why the too daring seem at first to be daring in the face of danger and then become shy. He answers that this fact depends on them not being able to evaluate the entity of the danger by excessive self-confidence. Therefore, true fortitude implies the activity of judgment, that is, the ability to assess the situation rationally.

Some habits influence the phenomena linked to temperament: in this way, sadness and pain are relieved by contemplation and sleep, because both induce in the human being a pleasurable state which is the opposite of sadness, and at the same time, reflection evokes the consideration of aspects which overcome the motives of sadness.

Finally, in the commentary In Librum de Longitudine et Brevitate Vitae, Góis asks which of the four temperaments is most suitable for a long life. And he answers that it is blood complexion, a balanced mixture of heat and humidity. They are less durable: the choleric complexion, characterized by heat and dryness; the phlegmatic complexion, characterized by humidity and cold; and the melancholic, characterized by cold and dryness.

2.4 The Sensitive Life and Its Dimensions

The interface between body and soul is constituted by the sensitive life, considered by the Conimbricense philosophers as an essential element of the psychic dynamism, above all by its function in the process of knowledge, whose basis is sensitive.¹⁴

Góis restates Aristotle’s position that the sensitive perception consists of being moved and being affected (Aristóteles 2006). In the sensory dimension, there is a material modification (which occurs through contact with an external object) and a spiritual modification. This occurs at the level of the species, or intentio, that is, through the psychic representation of this object, which maintains similarity with it.¹⁵

Góis reiterates Thomas Aquinas’ view that the senses are primarily passive faculties naturally susceptible to being modified, or altered, by an external sensitive object.¹⁶ The priority of the senses in the cognitive process is affirmed by Góis. In accordance with Thomas, he rejects the theories of innate representations previously planted in the mind by some superior entity without the need to go through the senses. On the contrary, Góis follows what Aristotle and Thomas taught that the intellect in power is like a tablet on which nothing is currently written (Aristóteles 2006, III 4429^b31).

In De Anima’s Commentaries, Góis carries out a detailed study of the five external senses , especially vision. The treatise develops a kind of “ocular physiology, which deals not only with what is seen and how it is seen, but also discusses the noethical dimension, that is, the apprehension of the meaning of what is seen” (Carvalho and Camps 2010).

The attention to the senses is deeply inserted in Ignatian anthropology. The Commentary offers the readers the knowledge of the theoretical foundation that inspires the meditative and imaginative practice of place composition, a crucial aspect in the Spiritual Exercises of Loyola.

The description of the inner senses and the questions about their number and location is proposed at the beginning of the commentary to the third book of De anima by Aristotle. Significant space is dedicated to it because it was a very important discussion at the time.¹⁷

Starting from the Aristotelian-Tomist foundations, Góis began with a discussion of the position of the physician Galen on this matter. According to Galen, the exact number of internal senses can be evidenced by the different effects of lesions practiced in the anterior, median, and posterior parts of the brain. A lesion in the anterior part causes a delirium that makes the person imagine things that do not exist. A lesion in the middle part causes a delirium that leads the person to make mistaken judgments. A lesion in the posterior causes a delirium that makes the person remember facts that never occurred. The internal senses would therefore be three: imagination, reason, and memory.

Góis then discusses the theory that the number of internal senses should be determined by the different functions to be performed. From this perspective, he presents the contributions of various thinkers. Among them, he proposes the distinction introduced by the Arab philosopher Avicenna among five internal senses: common sense, imagination, estimation, cogitative, and memory.

Finally, in the conclusive solutions presented to this question, Góis follows the opinion of the Jesuit philosopher, Pedro da Fonseca, without, however, explicitly mentioning him. Fonseca returns to the Aristotelian position and groups the internal senses in two, that is, common sense and fantasy. The latter is a complex dynamism composed of imagination, cogitative/estimative, and memory. Common sense differentiates between the perception of objects of different senses and to identify the very act of perceiving. The imagination serves as a deposit of things perceived, which can be accessed even when the objects that produced them are no longer present. The estimation (so called in irrational animals) or cogitative (proper to human beings) has the function of perceiving information (intentiones) that are not directly accessible to the external senses (for example, the information of danger, or the convenience of something) and form the instinctive judgment of fleeing from what is harmful, or approaching what is convenient. Memory stores what it receives (especially images and concepts) and brings it before the understanding every time this is necessary. In memory, Góis distinguishes two natures and modes of operation: the sensitive and the intellective.¹⁸

Góis’ long exposition about the definition of the number of internal senses reveals the attempt to reconcile different methods and approaches to the conceptualization of psychic phenomena: the empirical methods (based on observation and experimentation) and the speculative methods of philosophy, the positions of Aristotle and his interpreters, among them Thomas Aquinas, and those of Augustine and the neoplatonists.

As for the dynamism of the internal senses , Góis describes it as follows: the sensitive data obtained by the external senses are processed by the internal senses, and the result is called the ‘phantom’. The cogitative power is called ratio particularis, because it manifests, in specific features of individual phenomena of the sensitive world, some elements that refer to the essence (universal). The act of thinking requires the presence of images deposited in the memory, ready to be made available again in the face of the request of imagination. In the interpretation of the Aristotelian-Tomist theory carried out by the Conimbric philosophers, thinking is the act of an incarnate being, of a corporal being. For this reason, it always needs to return to the support of the sensitive world for knowledge to occur. The act of thinking requires the presence of fantastic images and simulations deposited in the memory. It depends, therefore, on the action of the internal senses.

2.5 The Appetites

The psychic dynamic that gives rise to human actions is the result of the intersection and interaction between will, cognition (or intellect), and appetites.¹⁹

In the wake of the tradition of Aristotelianism, Góis declares that the engine of psychic dynamism consists of the appetite, that is, the inclination of all things for good. Morality and human action depend on the positioning of appetite. Thus, the good functioning of appetites is a condition for the exercise of virtues. Such functioning depends on the previous sensory knowledge of objects.

In the First Ethical Dispute (Góis 1593/1957), it is stated that the act of appetite evidences the inclination of all things for the good, according to the tomist conception.²⁰ Góis distinguishes between innate appetite and appetite learned (elicit), following the emphasis on learning and transformation of the person by education proper of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. Innate appetite is distinguished into natural sensitive (also called lust) and natural intellectual (or will). The inclinations of sensitive appetite are also called passions. Such movements, arising from the apprehension of good or evil, produce some unnatural mutation of the body.

2.5.1 Sensitive Appetites

The study of these psychic phenomena and their interfaces with the body is deepened in detail by Góis, in various comments on Aristotelian works. The conceptualization of these appetites is found in the Disputes about Aristotle’s Ethics.

The sensitive appetite is proper to animals and men and is distinguished as concupiscible and irascible. By the concupiscible appetite , the animated being inclines to those things that prove convenient and avoids the harmful ones, according to the information given by the senses. By the irascible appetite , the animate being repels the impediments and obstacles to what is good, useful, and healthy. The concupiscible appetite is considered more “noble” than the irascible, because it is directed directly and immediately to the good, concerning the conservation of life. The irascible appetite seeks to remove the impediments. This is equivalent to saying that the power that is ordered to the end is more “noble” than the power that takes care of the means.

Therefore, there are two different kinds of passions, or affections: the passions of concupiscible appetite and those of irascible appetite. In some cases, these passions are conflicting, but they can also act in a complementary way. See the case of anger and lust: “The passions of irascible appetite sometimes seem to repel the movements of concupiscible appetite with intestinal and domestic struggle. In fact, in many cases, the inflamed concupiscent appetite attenuates anger and anger diminishes concupiscence” (Góis 1957, p. 181). It can happen that a passion attributed to a concupiscible appetite becomes a passion of irascible appetite and vice versa. For example, hatred (concupiscible appetite) can lead to anger (irascible appetite), and anger can lead to sadness (concupiscible appetite).

Góis discusses various classifications of passions, proposed by philosophers, and positions himself in favor of the traditional Aristotelian classification. Referring to the intensity of affections, the author draws a comparison between the passions and the four winds: “as the winds disturb the sea with storms, so the passions disturb the spirit with turbulent movements” (Góis 1957, p. 203).

The proposed classification includes 11 passions, divided into two groups. The first is composed of the six passions of the concupiscible appetite which concern the good object and the harmful object. The passions of the concupiscible appetite which concern good are love (which acts when the good object is present), desire (which acts when the good object is absent), delight, or pleasure (which acts when the good object is present). Love, in turn, can be differentiated into friendship (love for someone to whom we desire good) and love of concupiscence (love for one’s own good). The passions of concupiscent appetite which concern evil are hatred (when a harmful object is present), flight (when this object, still absent, could approach), sadness, and pain (when the harmful object is present). The second group of passions are the five that belong to the irascible appetite and concern hard good and hard evil. The passions that aim to achieve a hard good are hope (when we imagine being able to achieve good) and despair (when we imagine being unable to achieve good). The passions that aim to avoid hard evil are fear, audacity (when a harmful object is absent), and anger (when a harmful object is present).

Both sensitive appetites are located in the body. Góis presents several positions on the subject: the platonic, the aristotelian, the galenic. Although they all agree on the location of passions in different parts of the body, there are, however, differences as to the specific organs involved in each emotion. According to Góis, all authors establish a relationship between the organic location of passions and humoralist theory: “These authors think that the affection of wrath is placed in bile, the affection of fear in the heart, the affection of joy in the spleen. This distribution is justified by the fact that the bile (among the three excremental moods that separate from the kilo) is found in the gall bladder. It is said that bile is a stimulus of cholera. That is also why bile is usually choleric. And so it is true that anger resides in the gall’s receptacle. It can be proved that fear is thirsty in the heart, because in those who fear, blood and heat are immediately collected in the entrails, where the disturbance preferably occurs (…). Finally, it can serve as an argument to the fact that joy is located in the spleen the fact that those who suffer from diseases of the spleen, rarely and hardly laugh, being the laughter companion of joy and hilarity, as the doctors attest” (Góis 1957, pp. 188–189). Finally, Góis cites Galeno’s opinion that the concupiscible appetite lies in the liver, from the observation that individuals of blood temperament by nature are more prone to lust. In turn, the irascible appetite would be located in the heart.²¹

After articulating these traditional theories, Góis accepts the opinions of Hippocrates, Zenão, Posidônio, Crisipo, Aristotle, Theophrastus, and Vesalio. In accordance with these, he declares that appetites are thirsty in the heart. The reasons are two. Whether the affection of anger or greed, they cause perturbation in the heart. Moreover, the heart is the origin and source of all vital operations and therefore also of appetites, given by nature to conserve life and ward off dangers. However, irascible and concupiscent appetites reside in two distinct places in the heart due to the diverse composition of qualities that anger and concupiscence demand. Anger demands abundance of heat and dryness; concupiscence demands abundance of moisture and heat. In this view, there is a very strict relationship between the theory of passions and humoralist theory. Although the passions are defined as psychic phenomena, the hypothesis of their organic location establishes a humoral and, therefore, physical determination in the genesis of passions.²²

Another aspect addressed in detail in the Conimbricenses treaties refers to the somatic changes caused by passions. In Tomist theory, these would be organic effects caused by the concentration, or dispersion, of vital spirits in the heart. These, by heat, are directed to the outside of the body or, by cold, are concentrated in the entrails. Thus, such alterations would be determined by the modification of the primary qualities of the elements (heat and cold). This modification would be caused by the sensitive soul as form of the body.²³

Based on the position of Tomás, Manuel de Góis states that such changes are peculiar to the kind of passion experienced. In the case of anger and love, for example, although both induce body heat, they are different types of heat: “The fervour that follows heat belongs to love and anger for different reasons. In fact, the fervor of love is given with a certain sweetness and gentleness: it exists for the beloved and resembles the warmth of air and blood. That is why blood is prone to love, and it is said that the liver in which the blood is generated incites to love. The fervor of anger, on the other hand, is bitter and is turned to consume, because it tends to the punishment of the opposite and for this reason it resembles the heat of fire” (Góis 1957, p. 185).

To experience a passion is to be taken from a body disposition according to nature to a disposition that is not according to nature. In fact, we have seen that, by definition, all acts that belong to the sensitive appetite occur with some modification of the body that takes the animal away from its natural disposition. On these acts depends the acceleration or delay of the movement with which it dilates or contracts the heart. Thus, if the acts of the sensitive appetite concern escape and hesitation (for example, fear and sadness), they delay the movement of dilation of the heart, causing greater contraction of the organ. If, however, these acts are aimed at reaching the desired object and delighting in it, they cause dilation of the heart. Some passions produce a movement less alien to nature (joy and delight), others a movement more alien to nature (pain and sorrow), because it is more in accordance with the nature of the heart the operation of dilation, rather than contracting.

The somatic effects of fear are a topic widely addressed by Conimbricense Commentaries, among them the Commentary on Parva Naturalia, which was printed in Lisbon in 1593, and is considered a supplement to De Anima. The author warns about the force of such effects, such as that in some cases, fear can induce death. According to Góis, there are two types of causes, the formal cause (the sensitive appetite itself) and the material cause. This is a particularly intense emotion, which produces an organic alteration of vital spirits, an alteration which correlates with the operation of the sensory appetite. Such an alteration brings about an excessive contraction or an excessive expansion of the movement of the same spirits. Thus, in the movement of escape in the face of an imminent evil aroused by fear, the spirits and the blood condense in the heart, causing death by extinction of the innate heat of the body (Góis 1593). The possible serious somatic effects of fear depend on the fact that this passion intensely alters the natural movements of the heart. This also explains why fearful people pale and tremble; the phenomenon derives from the concentration of blood and animal spirits inside the body and the tremor of the limbs is due to the fact that heat is concentrated in the lower parts of the body.²⁴

In the comment In Librum De Vita et Morte, Góis asks again about the cause of which intense disorders of the animus —especially anger, fear, strong joy—affect the heart and can lead to death. In the first place, two causes of this phenomenon are established as follows: formal (for example, in the case of anger, the appetite for vengeance) and material (an intense commotion, or organic alteration of vital spirits, correlated to the operation of the appetite, leads the individual to have a red face because of the irritation of the blood). Thus, if the affection of the animus (formal cause) is very intense, it may cause death due to the unnatural movement of vital spirits. The author begins to analyze the effects of each passion: anger stimulates intense heat and a release of moods of cholera (yellow bile) that reach the brain and deprive the anger of the use of reason and sometimes lead to death. In fear , analogous to escape behavior to avoid evil, vital spirits, and blood also “flee” toward the interior of the body, and this sudden movement can cause the extinction of natural heat and sudden death. The same goes for intense shame.²⁵ Góis makes an example of the somatic effects of sadness, which is originally a sickening soul. It induces a change in the body; it makes the heat collect inside it, thus making the limbs flaccid and soft. In this way, it weakens the body and its operations. However, because it is a slow movement, sadness does not lead directly to death. But this can occur over time, by the effects of this weakening of the body.²⁶ Joy, if moderate, favors the healthy movement of vital spirits. If it is excessive, it produces disorders which may even cause sudden death.²⁷ An intense affection of the soul can affect the frequency of wrist movements, notes Góis, in the comment In Librum de respiratione.

The commentator also answers several specific questions regarding the somatic manifestations of emotional phenomena. Such questions have already been addressed in Aristotelian Problems.

One of them concerns the fact that heat, produced in different quantities depending on different passions experienced, concentrates in specific parts of the body. In the case of sadness, it thickens in the heart; in the case of shame and joy, in the face. What would be the efficient cause of this phenomenon? The answer given by Góis is that the vital spirits and the blood that produces the heat move on the impulse of the soul.

Another question refers to the fact that the faces of the frightened ones turn pale. The answer attributes the phenomenon to the retraction of blood and vital spirits within the body, a retraction resulting from the movement of the soul.

The question about the cause of the fearful hair leads to attribute this effect to the sensation of cold experienced; this sensitive appetite leads the natural heat of the body to retract itself inside. An analogous movement of retraction explains the phenomenon that the frightened ones are thirsty. In fact, the natural heat when it withdraws inside the body warms the viscera absorbing its humidity and inducing the need to drink water to restore balance.

Different dynamics are found in the case of the blushing of the face caused by the affection of shame (defined as the fear of just reprehension). In this case, the contraction of the blood and consequent pallor of the face does not occur, as would be expected. According to Góis, the reason for this difference would be the fact that an object arouses shame concerning the phenomena of the soul and not the body. To support this statement, the commentator quotes the book by the Italian doctor Girolamo Fracastoro (1476–1553), De Symphatia et Antiphatia Rerum. Fracastoro states that shame is an affection aroused by the perception of a self defect evident in the eyes of other people present. Affection stimulates the movement of blood, which flows into the parts of the body involved in the perception of oneself and the presence of others, that is, the face.²⁸

The cause of the pain and that great joy both cause tears is that these affections bring about changes in the amount of heat in the body. The pain removes the heat inside the body, and this action causes the mood to come out through the eyes. Joy expands the warmth to the outside of the body, so that the humor comes out through the eyes. In the case of pain, the tears are warm. In the case of joy, the tears are cold. The affection of joy provokes the redness of the skin because the soul, approaching the object of joy, makes the blood and the spirits reflect to the face.

Another topic approached by the commentary spells out the relationship between the affection of anger and mental life. The commentator takes up the position of some ancient philosophers who associate the affection of wrath with the good functioning of mental dynamism. He clarifies that there are two kinds of anger: the one associated with hatred and violence that seeks to fight back for aggression and the other, which is called strength, positive and necessary for the mind.

One issue discusses the cause of the eyes turning red when the subject is struck by a vehement anger. The answer is that in the experience of anger , the blood, excited by the fervor of the heart, concentrates on the head and eyes, and therefore, blood vapors easily appear. Still on anger, one investigates the reason for other affections (such as sadness, pain, and pleasure) to manifest themselves in a complementary way to it. The explanation given is that anger is associated with pain and sadness when it refers to insult, which is the cause of pain. Anger is associated with pleasure when it is connected with vengeance.²⁹

The commentator asks about loving affection. If likeness is a cause of love , why are there often fights between fellow men?³⁰ He responds that this happens because of the possibility that love becomes its opposite, hate. Still on love, Góis investigates the frequent association between love and madness, the reasons for which can be varied. In the first place, the intense and constant thought of the beloved object arouses the animal spirits in the brain and they provoke heat in the brain stimulating the functioning of the internal senses beyond the norm. Thus, they provoke an imbalance, so that the psychic powers can no longer perform their function in an orderly manner.

In Commentary on Aristotelian Ethics, one of the points discussed by Góis is whether the passions are also proper to the spirit of the wise, that is, of one who is fully dedicated to the cultivation of the rational soul. The discussion is justified by the dialogue that Conimbric philosophers have with ancient stoicism and with contemporary neo-stoicism. Góis states that the stoic philosophers deny that passions live with wisdom.³¹ And he explains that they “were brought to this sentence because they thought it unworthy of the wise man to agitate with disturbances, since these were proper to sick spirits” (Góis 1957, p. 197). The starting point of the stoic position is the doctrine that passions would be diseases of the soul. This vision is opposed to the Aristotelian-Tomist and Augustinian theory according to which man, though wise, cannot entirely free himself from passions.³² Góis tries to resolve this opposition by proposing the hypothesis that between the two positions there would be only a semantic divergence, and not one of content. The Stoics would attribute a more restricted meaning to the word passion, defining it not in terms of any movement of appetite, but only of the turbulent ones, which go beyond the limits of reason and divert the spirit toward vices. On the contrary, the philosophers of Aristotelian and scholastic tradition would define passions as any movement of the sensitive appetite. Góis reaffirms his adherence to this latter tradition and conceives of passions as natural phenomena of human dynamism. Góis states that the passions, if ordered by reason, are not diseases of the spirit and vices, but possible conditions for virtue: “[the passions], if we put reason before them as mistress (and submit to it with civil obedience), can be used for moderation and balance and can be called to the obligations of virtues, deserving praise and reward”.³³ In fact, “if passions are considered in themselves, that is to say while they are a certain movement of irrational appetite, neither evil nor moral good belongs to them, which depends on reason” (Góis 1957, p. 199). Moreover, if the sentence of the Stoics were to be understood as a statement that the whole movement of appetite is vicious and alien to virtue, it would be contrary to the view of Christian Jewish theology on man. If he is a being created in the image and likeness of God, all his vital expressions have positive value, including passions.

In short, passions become diseases, or disorders of the animus, to the extent that their dynamics depart from the rule and rational moderation. Despite this, Góis admits that in some cases, we cannot dominate passions for reason, and therefore, they are not subject to moral control. This would be the passions that induce deep transmutations in the body (such as the commotion of laughter, or crying, etc.). In this aspect, the author seems to affirm a certain degree of determination of corporeality in psychic life.

Besides the somatic determination, Góis postulates the existence of another cause that would make the passions pathological, the action of the internal senses. It may happen that “the [sensitive] appetite moves the will through the news of the inner sense which itself follows, while the ghosts of the senses determine the intellect for the contemplation of this, or that thing” (Góis 1957, p. 159). In this case, it is possible that the act of the inner sense moves the sensitive appetite toward some object and that this intense movement reaches the will, so that it “is dragged by the appetite,” and “has no power to resist it”. This occurs when the sensitive appetite “is so vehement that it absolutely absorbs the use of reason,” thus moving the will according to a necessary and deterministic causality. This intense and disordered inclination of appetite “disturbs (…) and absorbs the judgment (…) which takes away his faculty to deliberate” (Góis 1957, p. 161). Once again, the decisive function of sensibility in psychic life as a whole is evident.

An important consequence of affirming the psychosomatic nature of passions is that they do not exactly belong to the rational appetite . Therefore, affections such as love, joy, and delight, which involve the action of cognition and will, cannot properly be called passions, but phenomena of intellectual appetite.³⁴

2.5.2 Intellectual Appetites

In Commentary on Ethics, Góis addresses the links between the lower and upper parts of psychic dynamism and the ordering role played by will, or intellectual appetites. The first question it discusses is whether all human acts are products of free will. If we consider human acts as to how they operate, then all human action is free. In fact, “man’s proper mode of operation, as distinct from animals, is to act in such a way as to generate the dominion and freedom of his actions. Thus only those human actions are called those which man performs in his free power” (Góis 1957, p. 139). The will is free not because it deliberates for itself, “but because it follows the previous deliberation of the intellect”.

In the vision of Góis and the Jesuit philosophers, will occupies a central position in psychic dynamism. Góis uses “own experience” to attest to the evidence that the will actively moves the other powers of the soul to exercise their acts. In fact, all soul powers are by nature subject to the will: “This truth is proven in two ways. Firstly, by our own experience, since we contemplate, read, move from one place and do other obligations of this kind whenever we want. Secondly, by reason: it is from finality that the beginning of the movement of any active power starts (since every agent operates because of the end), and finality is the object of the will. From this it follows that the will to exercise one’s acts moves all the other powers” (Góis 1957, p. 147).

The author describes the dynamism of this “submission”. The will is a kind of vital force that permeates all psychic dynamism: “The will moves the other powers by connecting with them as the most universal cause. In this way, the power with which it competes and the will itself form a unique cause from which action springs. (…) The action with which the will formally moves the other powers is transitory, since it does not remain in the will itself. In fact, it is not really distinguished from the action of the other powers. Moreover, this intervention of the will is sometimes something spiritual, since the will can connect with an immaterial power (for example, the intellect); at other times, it is something material (for example, when it connects with a sensory power, inherent to the bodily organ, such as the imagination)” (Góis 1957, p. 149).

Góis goes deeper into an issue with special attention, the way in which intellectual appetites (or will) move the internal senses . He proposes two modalities, either according to a “despotic power” or according to a “political power”. In the first case, the internal senses would act as slaves who obey without resistance. In the second case, the internal senses would be free to follow, or resist, the movement of the will.³⁵ Góis states “that there is no internal sense that always obeys the will. Indeed, the internal senses “sometimes grasp the object so tenaciously that the will in no way, or hardly, dominates their movement, as daily experience teaches (Góis 1957, p. 151).

Góis asks about the causes that lead the inner senses to turn to an object without the consent of the will. There would be four causes: “the real presence of the object which is introduced through the external senses;” “the internal instigation of demons which, by stirring up animal spirits, transfer from one side to another, the images stored within and sharpen them, and accommodate them to the apprehension of the things represented in them;” “the disposition of the organ;” and the somatic constitution.³⁶ For example, “melancholics, who have a dry and cold temperament, persist longer in apprehending the same thing” (Góis 1957, p. 151).

Normally, however, the sensitive appetite is driven by the will with “political power”. The demonstration of this is derived from experience “that the appetite is moved by the will demonstrates it by experience, since we often provoke or repress its movements, according to our will”. The relationship between the sensitive appetite and the intellectual appetite is “a non despotic subjection” because “at each step the sensitive appetite can be taken to the sensitive good against the judgment of reason and the affection of the will”. The will moves the external members of the body with “servile power,” “as proven by experience,” unless they are hindered by some illness” (Góis 1957, p. 155). However, there are some “sudden movements that sometimes move the members”, which “do not always come from the will (…) but sometimes only from appetite. For example, an individual with a choleric temperament moves his hand, by sudden appetite for revenge, to practice an insult” (Góis 1957, p. 157).

According to Góis, the confirmation that on several occasions the will (intellectual appetite) can be moved by the sensitive appetite is found in Sacred Scripture, but also in “experience”: “no one exists who does not experience the movement of an appetite (or anger, or pain, or joy) to incline the will towards himself” (Góis 1957, p. 159).

However, “the (sensitive) appetite does not move the will, because it is an inferior psychic power, connected to the organ of the body. As such, it has no control over the superior and immaterial power (according to the Aristotelian De Anima). The sensitive appetite moves the will “for the object, that is, through the intellectual noticia which proposes that the object should be accepted, or rejected” (Góis 1957, p. 159). This happens in two ways: in the first place, “the passion of appetite has an interest in the intellect, in this or that way, judging about the thing, sometimes in one way, sometimes in another“. And this makes “the will, following the decision of the intellect, want or repudiate the same thing as the appetite. In the second place, “appetite moves the will by means of the news given by the internal sense that it itself follows, since the representations of the object elaborated by that sense determine the intellect for the contemplation of this or that thing” (Góis 1957, p. 159). Again, the possibility is approached that the will be dragged along by appetite, in such a way that it has no power to resist it. Góis states that this happens under specific circumstances: “A very intense movement of appetite which entirely inhibits the use of reason necessarily moves the will; otherwise it does not. In fact, the movement of the will is free to the extent that the judgment remains whole and free. However, the inclination of appetite disturbs and absorbs judgment. In fact, the movement of this sensitive appetite when it is penetrating and disturbing moves the intellect vehemently to think about the object of passion (for example, about the thing which causes pain or pleasure) in such a way as to take away its faculty of deliberation” (Góis 1957, p. 161).

Finally, in the view of Góis and the philosophers of Coimbra, appetites, sensitivity, and intellect (will) are central aspects of a person’s psychic dynamism. They articulate themselves with sensitivity, in various ways.

2.6 The Cognitive Powers

The discussion about cognitive potentials is conducted by Góis within the framework of knowledge theory. The human person is a somato-psychic-spiritual being. Therefore, the elaboration of the sensitive data (which, as we have seen, constitute the basis of knowledge) begins with the psychic processes connected to the body (sensitivity). Later, it is performed by other powers, among which cognition, or intellect (which performs the act of intellection). Thus, one passes from the sensitive knowledge to the intellective knowledge . Following Thomas Aquinas, Góis distinguishes two functions of the intellect: the agent intellect and the possible intellect. The agent intellect acts in the first phase of the intellective knowledge: it extracts how much of the universal is potentially found in the representations made by the internal senses (the intelligible species). Once the intelligible species of material conditions have been abstracted, it prints them on the possible or passive intellect. Therefore, the agent intellect has the active role of extracting the essence (quidity) from the particular representations coming from the sensitive knowledge (which by themselves are only potentially intelligible) and transforming them into universal (or intelligible in act). The possible intellect corresponds to the last phase of intellectual knowledge: it receives the information in the form of intelligible in act and constitutes the knowledge itself, that is, the apprehension of the universal.

In the last part of his commentary on De Anima, dedicated to the motor faculty, Góis affirms the superiority of the intellect over the will. He also affirms the distinction between will (whose object is good) and intellect (whose object is truth) and the fact that there are several modes of interrelationship (Carvalho and Camps 2010).

A special highlight is given to a specific component of cognitive powers: inventiveness. The importance of the inventiveness within the Company is highlighted in the Constitutions: in describing the rules for the General Admission Examination, it is stated that a defect in the quality of the ingenuity constitutes grounds for refusing admission to the Order: “ingenii defectus est impedimentum secundarium ad Societatem” (Examen c.5, n.3, II, 17).

Several Jesuit authors discuss the theme of inventiveness. Among them, Antonio Possevino SI, in the First Book Cultura Ingeniorum of the treatise Bibliotecha Selecta, discusses the conception of the Spanish doctor Huarte de San Juan and considers inventiveness as a gift from God, common to all men (Possevino 1990). However, it can be damaged in its use by causes arising from sin. In Chapter Eleven (Ingenia quot duplicia, ex Aristoteles), Possevino proposes a classification of individual devices, which can be distinguished in “magna, item parva, mediocria, felicia, infelicia, apta, inepta, velocia, tarda, acuta, obtusa” (Possevino 1593, p. 8). Possevino dedicates several chapters of his work to refute Huarte’s position according to which the diversity of the devices would be innate. The knowledge of the mills appears to the author important for the orientation of young people toward studies. He recommends that this knowledge be practiced in the educational institutions of the Church. In fact, to possess a good inventiveness is necessary for the action of a Jesuit since to this characteristic are associated functions such as government, oratory, study, and teaching.

Battistini (2000) states that in Modern Age culture, the term inventiveness denotes a specific mode of thought. “In a reality as unstable as that of the seventeenth century, man already aware of his modernity is required to perform a creative task that is not satisfied only by the variations in relationships that are already consolidated and evident, but that also creates other relationships for nothing obvious, less evident and even mysterious, through a continuous solicitation of the intellect and imagination. This explains the baroque centrality of the theme of inventiveness, a gift that consists in bringing things closer together, with a kind of circle that provokes an increase in knowledge and the delight derived from surprise. In fact, the inventiveness is a category already used by Aristotle. However, most authors of the seventeenth century who deal with this category, leave aside all the care of the Greek philosopher in avoiding too distant approaches to concept. In other words, the matrix of Baroque poetics is still Aristotelian, but its rules are modified, eliminating the mesoteric component, i.e. the measurement and temperance. In the game of reception, the audacity of the poet’s inventiveness which, in creating metaphors, identifies a concept with another that immediately seemed irreconcilable, unleashes a double process of watching and unveiling that forces the recipient to participate in the same inventive happiness of the issuer, experiencing the pleasure of deciphering by his own inventiveness what had been created by the inventiveness of another” (Battistini 2000, pp. 131–132, our translation).

In the Conimbricense Commentary to Aristotle’s treatise De anima (1602), Góis uses the term ingenium when, in addressing some aspects inherent to the psychosomatic unity that constitutes the human being, he discusses the question whether the tenderness of the body’s flesh can be considered an indication of good inventiveness (Góis 1602, pp. 71–72). He thus takes up what Aristotle stated in De Anima when he spoke about the sense of touch and its importance in the process of knowledge. According to the Greek philosopher, the tenderness of the flesh predisposes to a greater tactile sensibility and therefore to have a good inventiveness. The subjects who have hard flesh would also be rude as to intelligence. Góis, however, rejects the Aristotelian thesis associating the sense of touch to the cognitive power of inventiveness, using arguments that relate the latter to temperament theory, just as Aristotle had already done, some of them even taken from other texts of the Estagirita: the Problems. In contesting De Anima’s position, Góis proposes contrary evidence. For example, the phlegmatic temperaments endowed with soft meats are less intelligent than the choleric ones. And the melancholics, whose meats are harder due to their somatic composition, have greater intellectual acuity.

In this context, Góis provides a definition of ingenium as the ease and readiness of understanding: “a phantasia, mentis in intelligendo facilitas, et promptitudo, in qua vis ingenii consistit” (Góis 1602, p. 216). In Conimbricense philosophy, therefore, there seems to be the possibility of delineating a certain connection between inventiveness and temperaments characterized by the prevalence of the igneous element.

2.7 Conclusion

In short, from the perspective of Coimbra’s philosophers, a complex interweaving between body and soul characterizes the personal being. In this way, health results from balance and care in both its dimensions. It is not a question of neutralizing or disregarding the action of psychic powers. They are constitutive elements of human experience. However, it is necessary to learn how to deal with these phenomena in order to make them constructive factors of one’s development. In fact, according to the Conimbricenses, “the passions, if we put reason before them as mistress (to which they submit themselves with civil obedience), can be used for moderation and balance and can call for the obligations of the virtues” (Góis 1957, p. 199).

It is due to the influence of the Renaissance culture that, in Góis’ comments, the theses and questions concerning the dynamics of psychological powers are oriented to the plane of human behavior, leading to the intersection between the domains of Psychology and Ethics. In fact, as already mentioned, Humanism and, above all, the Renaissance have revisited Aristotle’s ethical thinking. Ethics to Nicome (Aristóteles 1996) was one of the books most read and interpreted by the thinkers of that period, including those of the Society of Jesus.

The importance given to the will is due to the resumption of Augustine’s philosophy in the sixteenth century, including from the perspective of the theology of the Protestant Reformation. The psychic dynamic that gives rise to human actions is the result of the intersection and interaction between the intellectual appetites (will), the intellect and the sensitive appetites. However, following the thinking of the time, Góis assumes the existence of a relationship of dependence between the other powers of the soul and the will. For this reason, he dwells on the analysis of the dynamics by which the will moves the other powers and deepens the notion of appetite. This term is proper to the tradition of Aristotelianism and in our current language corresponds to the notion of desire. Góis thus reaffirms the classical doctrine of the inclination of all things to good.

We have seen that Góis’ comments attach great importance to states of the soul defined as passions, which in the language of modern psychology correspond to emotions, or feelings. They discuss these phenomena in the light of philosophical knowledge, but also of medical knowledge. They attach great importance to questions about the physiological and biological correlates of the dynamics of passions. The questions are as follows: the relationships between sadness, sleep, and dreams; the relationships between dreams and passions; the relationships between passions, the cardiovascular system, and breathing; the relationships between passions and the psychosomatic constitution of individuals (temperament); the relationships between passions and the various ages of life. In this way, the conception of the functioning of psychic dynamism is the foundation of a unitary anthropology of Greek and medieval matrix. In this conception of man, there is no solution of continuity between bodily and psychic phenomena and the knowledge of philosophers and theologians and the knowledge of doctors complement each other, because they are expressions of a universe of unitary meaning.

However, the theory of Coimbra’s philosophers must be placed on the cultural horizon of Modernity, where the constitution of a new philosophical anthropology is outlined. In this, “soul and body are about to be radically separated”. And the various areas of knowledge claim their autonomy in terms of methods and objects. On this horizon, the theory of passions plays a central role, as will occur in Descartes’ treatise. After Descartes, the attempt by Jesuit philosophers to build a theological-moral theory for the revaluation of passions, based on the physical treatment of these passions, would no longer be an acceptable proposal in the cultural universe of the 17th and 18th centuries.³⁷ In this historical moment, in fact, “the shock between two paradigms” will be structured: one that will consider the passions of the soul as simple effects of the body’s dynamism and the other that will take the passions as essentially psychic phenomena.

In general, therefore, the science of the soul proposed by the Jesuits and the foundation of self-knowledge implied in it is tied to a broader vision of the world that they make themselves proposers and that is based on some fundamental pillars: The position of the Jesuit philosophers of Coimbra, despite appearing in tune with the vision of the nascent modernity, nevertheless claimed its insertion in the millenary tradition of “know yourself”. And this anthropology of radical self-knowledge, in turn, was founded on a cosmology marked by the creationist design; in an ethic directed towards the realisation of a happy life; in a theology which places man in relation to God taken as the Truth.³⁸

On the other hand, it is evident that the psychological knowledge conveyed and elaborated by the Conimbricenses place themselves within the framework of the nascent Modernity. In fact, they discuss issues of contemporary interest, even if they seek to reaffirm aspects of the traditional world view. One example is the great space dedicated in De Anima’s Commentary to the question of individual and racial differences and the human soul. This theme has already been approached by Thomas Aquinas in the Suma Teológica in a somewhat dubious way and interpreted by peripatetic philosophers in different ways. It is treated with great emphasis by Manuel de Góis in the chapter on the qualities of the soul. In this, it is firmly stated that, as far as the soul and its powers are concerned, men of all races and of all times are equal. Thus, the deficiency, or perfection as to the operations of a psychic power, should not be attributed to the lesser or greater perfection of the power, but to the defect, or perfection of the organ of the body involved. Every intellectual inequality which exists from individual to individual comes only from the unequal constitution of individual bodies. The importance of the discussion becomes clear as we recall the debate held by contemporary Catholic theologians and philosophers, especially in the Iberian area, about the humanity of the Amerindian peoples (Hanke 1985). The transmission of this discussion in the Jesuit cultural production in colonial Brazil can be found in the Diálogo sobre a conversão do gentio (Dialogue on the conversion of the Gentile), written by Manoel da Nóbrega (1989) in the middle of the sixteenth century, dedicated to the theme of evangelization of the Brazilian Indian.

In any case, the psychological knowledge elaborated and transmitted by the Conimbricenses treatises informed the view about themselves and about the other, of the Jesuit missionaries recently arrived in Brazil.