Feijoo, medicine, and skepticism

Feijoo: medicina y escepticismo

Abstract

Benito Feijoo (1676-1764) was one of the most important mediators to the public of the latest scientific and philosophical ideas in Spain in the eighteenth century. A self-conscious critic of all sorts of ideas and a member of the republic of letters, he also called himself a skeptic. At first, that meant allying himself with physician Martín Martínez, a famous critic of Aristotelianism in medicine who also called himself a skeptic. After supporting Martínez’s view of skepticism in medicine against his critics, Feijoo seems to have abandoned the term, perhaps because he learned more about what the term could mean and realized it could be understood in some quarters to undermine the Catholic church and support atheistic materialism. He explored what skepticism could mean in medicine in some detail, but avoided using it in philosophical and theological matters.