Oliva Sabuco de Nantes and her Nueva Filosofia: a new philosophy of human nature and the interaction between mind and body

The main objective of the New Philosophy was to ‘improve the lives of people and nations in part by improving medical practice’. To this end, Oliva Sabuco sought to improve humankind’s knowledge of the philosophical underpinnings of medicine while taking experiential practices into account. She suggested that a variety of procedures (pharmaceutical, emotional and therapeutic) should be adopted to maintain and restore harmony between the mind and body. Oliva Sabuco sought to promote health and prevent disease by expanding our knowledge of the interrelationship between mind and body; the ultimate goal was to understand the body’s function and form in order to promote inner harmony and thus health. The influence of classical traditions in moral and natural philosophy, medicine, and cosmography is unmistakable in Oliva Sabuco’s text, yet she synthesized these traditions, disagreed with fundamental aspects of them, and transformed them in a holistic philosophy of human nature that is part of a larger view of the cosmos and mankind’s place in it.