PEDRO HENRIQUE ZAFANI COUTO

The Anatomy of Melancholy (1621) is a medico-philosophical treatise written by Robert Burton (1577-1640) renowned for its length and style, but whose content and ideas remain little explored in Brazil. Our research objective is to understand from what premises the philosopher departs to justify, in his preface, Democritus Jr. to the Reader, the writing and publication of the Anatomy of Melancholy, that is, to understand what objective the author had in writing the treatise and to evaluate the hypothesis that Burton attempts to construct, through the study of mental affections, an anthropology in the philosophical sense of the term, that is, that he seeks to determine, through anatomical analogy, certain ethical-moral characteristics that would be the foundation of what we call "man". With this we will demonstrate that what sustains the need for an anatomy of melancholy originates from a generalized vision of the human condition.