Rhetoric and scepticism: Thomas Browne’s Amphibium mind in Religio Medici

Abstract

ABSTRACT This article explores Thomas Browne’s figuration of the Amphibium mind in Religio Medici as the hallmark of the seventeenth-century literary mind, oriented toward intellectual flexibility, generosity, and harmony. The article argues that such a mind is the specific product of Browne’s double engagement with rhetoric and scepticism, whose innate kinship has not received much critical attention. Religio Medici includes multiple locations, in which Browne’s diversity-seeking, conciliatory rhetoric is aligned with his sceptical acuity. The rhetoric and scepticism share dissatisfaction with any dogmatic centralisation of ideas and sensitivity to the ambiguity of truth. Their affiliation is often expressed in this book as a dynamic presentation of conflicting perspectives, ideas, and values, subject to a careful deliberation that demands the suspension of judgment and the open-minded acceptance of different opinions. Investigating this rhetoric-scepticism coupling illuminates the process of how his distinctively magnanimous mind germinated and developed into his literary profile.