Humors in Renaissance Philosophy

Abstract

The Renaissance inherited the classical doctrine of the four humours (Greek chymoi), the essential fluids of the human body. The humours were blood, phlegm, yellow bile, and black bile. A healthy body was characterized by the balance between the humours. Illness was perceived as an interruption of that balance. The relative disposition of these four humours was believed to determine the physiological health and temperament of humans and animals. The humours formed part of a wider explanatory model of the natural world. They were connected to the four elements, the four temperaments, the four seasons, and the four ages of man. Each humour was governed by a particular bodily organ (Table 1).

Table 1 Correspondences

Through this series of connections, the humours integrated the human body into a scheme of the wider natural world: in humoural theory, man is intrinsically a part of the natural order, not separate from it. The passions of the mind and aspects of character cannot be meaningfully understood apart from the physical body. Psychological as well as physical conditions are traceable to natural causes. As a materialist approach to diagnosis, humoural theory fits well with the Aristotelian tradition; Platonic interest in the spirit, and astrological and occult explanatory models of physical and emotional states, fall largely outside the theory of humourism (Arikha 2007).