Medicina y política en Francesco Patrizi: el cuerpo de &lt;em&gt;La Ciudad Feliz&lt;/em&gt;

Susana Gómez López

doi:10.3989/asclepio.2015.15

Abstract

Besides some disagreements, La citta felice of Francesco Patrizi has usually been considered both as a work belonging to the utopian genre of sixteenth century or as a philosophical portrait of the real Venice. In this essay, I maintain, instead, that La citta felice was born in Patrizi’s mind from his attempt to support the Aristotelian political, aristocratic, order and to justify it according to the principles of the philosophical and Platonic medicine of Marsilio Ficino. Such an attempt led him to describe the polis as a human body, applying the Hippocratic-Galenic system to explain its internal functions and considering that the political order of the city arises from the civic body’s needs for maintaining the quantity and quality of natural, vital and animal spiritus.

Highlights

Besides some disagreements, La città felice of Francesco Patrizi has usually been considered both as a work belonging to the utopian genre of sixteenth century or as a philosophical portrait of the real Venice
I maintain, instead, that La città felice was born in Patrizi’s mind from his attempt to support the Aristotelian political, aristocratic, order and to justify it according to the principles of the philosophical and Platonic medicine of Marsilio Ficino
Such an attempt led him to describe the polis as a human body, applying the Hippocratic-Galenic system to explain its internal functions and considering that the political order of the city arises from the civic body’s needs for maintaining the quantity and quality of natural, vital and animal spiritus

Summary

Susana Gómez López

Cómo citar este artículo/Citation: Gómez López, Susana (2015), “Medicina y política en Francesco Patrizi: El cuerpo de La Ciudad Feliz”, Asclepio 67 (1): p089. En cambio, que Patrizi ideó su Ciudad feliz para defender el modelo político aristocrático expuesto por Aristóteles en su Política y justificarlo con los principios de la medicina platónica que Marsilio Ficino había elaborado en su De vita. Tal intento llevó a Patrizi a describir la ciudad como un cuerpo humano, recurriendo a los principios de la medicina hipocrático-galénica para explicar su funcionamiento y llegando a mantener que el orden de la ciudad es el resultado de la necesidad que tiene el cuerpo cívico de conserva la cantidad y calidad de sus espíritus naturales, vitales y animales. PALABRAS CLAVE: Patrizi; Política; Medicina; Renacimiento; Filosofía; Aristóteles; Platonismo; Spiritus; Ficino

SUSANA GÓMEZ LÓPEZ

UNA MEDICINA PLATÓNICA PARA UNA POLÍTICA ARISTOTÉLICA