The Matter of Character: The Case of Pre-modern Physiognomy

From the end of the 13th century a powerfully material approach to explaining human behavior and personality was available to medieval thinkers. At its heart was intense awareness of the power of material nature over all aspects of human existence. One of the loci where this tradition openly flourished was learned physiognomy which provided a concentrated dose of somatic explanations for every behavioral pattern. Based on readings from two influential physiognomic manuals, this chapter shows that late-medieval physiognomic thinking assigned nature a dominant role in determining human behavior in its widest scope (covering the moral, cognitive, intellectual, religious, emotional, political, social, and sexual aspects of life). The increasingly systematized principles of physiognomy, occasionally relied on the practice of scientific observation. Pre-modern physiognomy allowed for a stark materialistic understanding of moral psychology, and its discourse was not censured by religious authority.