qui - maria vita romeo

74 Alessandro Chiessi
cepted because it conflicts with the representation that mankind wants to
give of itself. To claim that mankind is part of the nature, that it is matter,
that it finds in mechanism a descriptive paradigm, means to put it on the
same level of beasts—of brutes—means to show its vanity, means to unmask
its “pride,” means to hurt its “self-love.” So physiological naturalism
collides against human passions, because “pride” and “self-love,” for Mandeville,
are human passions and as such they are fundamental elements of
human nature.
Since all human activities are related to the mechanical movements of
the “animal spirits,” the same thing can be said about passions. 72 Not only
do thought and rationality come from a corpuscular—and thus material—
mechanism, but also those abstract—not rational—elements that, at last,
become the cause of human actions through their capability in creating
needs and wishes. 73 rough a posteriori analysis again, Mandeville, after
having displayed in the Treatise a physiological and so natural foundation
for passions, in e Fable of the Bees, tries to discover what passions lead
human actions. e object of research now is not the single man, but
72 Talking about “animal spirits” Philopirio states: “You shall call this a Supposition, if you
please; but I have laid no manner of Stress upon, either the Difference of the Elasticity or various
Contexture of their Parts, which yet that there must be will be evident, when we come to consider,
that not only the Difference there is often in Constitutions and bodily Strength; but likewise good
and ill Tempers, Passions of the Mind, Courage and the Want of it, Wit and Foolishness, and many
other things not to be discover’d but from the Effects they have upon the Actions of Men, can be
owing to, and depend upon nothing else, than the Difference in the Texture of Parts, Tone, Elasticity,
or some other Quality of that wonderful Fluid, which we call the animal Spirits.” Treatise 1730,
pp. 207-208. Cf Treatise 1711, pp. 141-142; where, more or less, there is the same passage. I underline
that Philopirio refers to “Passions of Mind” and not to “Passions of Soul,” as Descartes did. Although
in seventeenth and eighteenth century ‘soul’ and ‘mind’ often were synonymously used, from
my point of view, here there is another proof of the distance between Descartes and Mandeville.
73 I conventionally give a priority to needs in respect to wishes. I think that needs are referred
to feelings, for this reason someone feels something: hunger, thirst, sexual instincts, together the
other ‘cultural’ needs, such as clothes of a particular shape, cars, etc. While wishes, from my point
of view, rise from these feelings around one or more needs and become, in their abstract and imaginative
dimensions, the cause of actions (through will? Why not, in particular if we refer to Hobbes’
definition in the Leviathan: “the last appetite in deliberating”). e process, however, can be reversed
and an imagined wish can create a sensible need. In other words I consider needs as part of
the feelings’ area and wishes as part of the abstract thinking area. is appendix, which is a conventional
generalization and therefore limited and partial, is aimed to clarify the role of passions in
senses and mind.