Cornelis Bontekoe e la cura delle passioni

Cornelis Bontekoe, a Cartesian physician of European fame and short life, is not a prominent figure. A follower in philosophy of Geulincx, whose Ethica he publishes, a follower of Craanen in medicine and physiology, he advocates a heterodox medical Cartesianism with theoretical writings of a very polemical style and fairly successful. He has oscillating (and outré) positions on the relationship of mind and body: he goes so far as to deny the multiplicity of thoughts and the autonomous activity of the mind, in an extreme occasionalism involving even the will; nevertheless, his last work, which appeared posthumously, is an ‘Ethical-Physical Treatise on the Passions of Mind and Body, and the Safest Remedies for Them’, in which he proposes a cure or therapy of the passions in general and of philautia in particular.