Articoli / 1 / Cecilia Muratori /
While a fascination with the mechanics of the body is evident in many Renaissance authors, the question about the extent of the animals’ rationality also gained currency. I aim to show that already before Descartes these two opposing conceptions of the nature of animals – considered as machines, or as intelligent beings partaking in rationality – intertwined, manifesting a surprising common origin. Drawing especially on the works of Pereira and Tommaso Campanella, I argue that both hypotheses derive from a difficulty in dealing with the view of nature as a continuum, alongside the crisis of the Aristotelian structure of the soul. If no clear line can be drawn to separate sensation and rationality, aren’t we forced to conclude that animals must either be rational or lack sensation altogether? While Pereira proposes to follow this second path, Campanella warns that the proper goal is to avoid both these extremes. But the success of Descartes’ theory ultimately obfuscated the fact that the distance between animal automatism and animal rationality was shorter than it might seem: they could indeed be viewed as two possible ways to solve (or rather to escape) the problem of dealing with the continuity between man and animal.
