Reading Galen’s De Naturalibus Facultatibus in the Early Modern Period

By investigating the work of several early modern physicians and philosophers (among others, Julius Caesar Scaliger, Jacob Schegk, Andrea Cesalpino, Luis de Lemos and Melchior Sebisch), this chapter examines how various ways of reading Galen’s De naturalibus facultatibus between the sixteenth and the seventeenth centuries had a significant impact on medical and philosophical discussions concerning the relationship between nature, life and selfhood. Galen’s account of the anatomical structures and functions responsible for turning a natural body into a living being (the natural faculties) had a significant impact on the early modern debate on the nature of life, especially on such key concepts as self-preservation, appetite (attraction and repulsion), vegetative reactivity and vital corpuscularianism.