Jean Fernel
Hiro
HIRAI
Alter Galenus:
Jean Fernel et son interprétation platonico-chrétienne de Galien
Early Science and Medicine,
10 (2005), pp. 1-35.
Inspired by Christian Platonism as developed in the late fifteenth-century Florentine milieu, the French physician Jean Fernel proposed a particular interpretation of Galen in a medico-philosophical work entitled On the Hidden Causes (Paris, 1548). With this interpretation, he responded to the serious and urgent need for a reconciliation of the newly reconstituted Galen of Renaissance humanism with Christian faith. The present study examines Fernel’s strategy and method in constructing this singular Galenic body of doctrine, special attention being given to the roles attributed to the Creator, the formative force, and the soul. Subsequently, an analysis of the notion of spirit and of its innate heat as indispensable instruments of Fernel’s physiology will uncover the very target of his criticism of materialism.
1.
Introduction
2. Les
forces divines de la forme
3. Dieu le
Créateur et la formation du corps humain
4. La
nature divine et céleste de l’âme
5. La notion de la “faculté”
6. La force formative et le divin artisan dans le sperme
7. Le spiritus
et sa chaleur innée
8. Les fonctions physiologiques et les causes occultes
9. La source de Fernel
Conclusions