The Spanish philosopher Benito Jerónimo Feijoo (1676-1764) wrote in 1736 the essay Causes of love , where he tried to explain why people imagine different things despite being of the same nature. Why does one person love one thing and another the opposite? Why are some people passionate and yet others remain enthusiastic? Why do we hate today what we loved yesterday? Feijoo reflected in his studies on whether it is possible to love the inside of another person at first sight, why lovers start just by thinking about the other person or why it is so difficult to leave behind a disappointment in love.
Unlike other authors of the time, Feijoo was concerned with the love bond itself: how it happens, what changes inside one person because of the other, and what must be done to maintain or extinguish the flame. In the words of the monk himself: “but for what belongs to physics, or natural philosophy, it can be ensured that matter is still almost intact”. Since “there is so much written about love”, we could say from our 21st century perspective that it is almost a “scientific” approach to love relationships. With regard to “moral philosophy, there is quite a lot written, […] more so as regards physics, or natural philosophy, it can be ensured that the matter is still almost intact”.
“From what causes is love born or hangs? Feijoo wonders. This author maintained that the passions were the product of a contingent relationship between the soul, the flesh and the external world. His physiological model completely excluded the possibility of knowing whether two people would fit in with each other until the precise moment of their physical encounter.
“My interest in exploring the ideas of Feijoo is twofold,” says Elena Serrano, author of the study. On the one hand “he was arguably the most influential thinker of the 18th century in the Hispanic world” and, on the other, “his physiological model considered men and women as equal intellectuals, with important consequences for his views on mating” . Feijoo began publishing his writings at the age of 50 to combat “erroneous philosophical views.” He had a great ability to present “difficult questions in simple language”, with which he “encouraged the laity to think”. The second aspect pointed out by Serrano is that he defended what “we could call a feminist physiology […] in which female bodies are not seen as inferior or imperfect copies of male ones.” Actually there are three issues of a truly raging topicality: skepticism, popularization and feminism.
Feijoo defended something that is not in doubt today, except in some cultures or countries: “the only way to achieve lasting marriages was to first recognize that there were no differences in the functioning of the bodies of men and women.”
At the beginning of his essay Teatro cívico universal (1726) Feijoo launches his “Defense of women”, in which he defends the intellectual equality of the sexes. His arguments had already been used in the 17th century by 17th century writers, such as Marie de Gournay, Lucrezia Marinella and María de Zayas and, in general, by followers of Cartesian ideas who defended the independence of the mind from its bodily substratum. Serrano points out that “Feijoo not only made fun of the Huarte system, but also that of Nicolás Malebranche.” Juan Huarte de San Juan (1529-1588) was a highly reputed Spanish doctor, reprinted in 1702, who defended intellectual differences by sex, just like the Parisian philosopher Nicolás Malebranche (1638-1715). In this defense, Feijoo emphasizes that a simple argument with words does not prove anything: “But what I feel is that with these philosophical discourses everything can be proven, and nothing is proven. Each one philosophizes in his own way.
“As a counterargument to these male philosophers, Feijoo turned to Oliva de Sabuco, author of the New Philosophy of the Nature of Man (1587), which had been recently reissued,” Serrano comments in the article. Oliva de Sabuco (1562-1646) was a Spanish philosopher who defended an approach opposed to the Galenic medicine of the four humours. Feijoo’s “recognition of Sabuco had patriotic connotations,” but more importantly, he argued that alternative medical ideas could be defended without implying opposition to Catholic dogma. “For Feijoo, defending equality of the sexes was not just a matter of fairness: it ensured social harmony consistent with Catholicism.”
Therefore, the idea supported by the Spanish monk is that love can arise with equal force in the male and female body or, as Serrano says, “the intensity of loving feelings was not a sign of femininity.” Often, Feijoo notes, men are seen to be “sweet, benign, kind, helpful, humane, open-minded, deferential, and caring.”
Feijoo distinguished three kinds of love. The first was “pure appetite”, similar to that felt when smelling a delicious fruit; the second an “intellectual love” that was only excited by the rational soul and, the third, the “pathetic love” or the “passion of love”, in which he was really interested. He had to enter the mind/soul-body debate, that is, how the material is capable of producing sensations, thoughts and feelings. Let us remember that we are in the eighteenth century, so the debate in this regard was open. Thomas Willis (1621-1675), for example, described nerves as hollow tubes through which animal spirits traveled rapidly. But for Feijoo nerves were solid, like the strings of musical instruments, exerting their influence through vibrations. Despite this, he maintained the viscera as the place of feelings, affirming that the organ that feels love was the heart. However, he surprises us with the following words: “And where is the origin of all these sensations? Undoubtedly in the brain. And it is that, “in the brain is the origin of all the nerves” , he adds.
Smells, sounds, etc. Sensations that are undoubtedly fundamental in falling in love. “The impression that objects make on the organs of all the senses spreads through the nerves to the brain, where the common sensorium is,” he said in his Causas del amor . However, once again honoring his time and ecclesial condition, he ends by affirming “that the eye does not see, but the soul”. We can forgive him for this madness from a historical perspective, especially if we take into account that “he also speculated on the influence of chemical products”, as Serrano correctly indicates. Although a bit speculative, yes: “If the boy had eaten or drunk recently, the dissolved salts in his blood would affect his heart through “hidden pores”, predisposing him to lascivious attraction”. Also applicable to girls, as Feijoo himself defended.
He went a step further by stating that there could be different temperaments based on “nervous dispositions”. Given this set of variables, it would be incredibly difficult to know whether two people would match before an actual physical encounter . He had problems with the Inquisition when he defended this thesis in his piece Importance of physical science for morality (1739).
Elena Serrano is a postdoctoral researcher in the European project ERC Cirgen: Circulating gender in the global Enlightenment: Ideas, Networks, Agencies, at the University of Valencia. Her article A Feminist Physiology: BJ Feijoo (1676–1764) and His Advice for Those in Love is freely available on the Isis page and was published in December 2021.
