Robert Burton, perfect happiness and the visio dei

• Published in: The Renaissance of emotion p. 86
• Main Author: Lund, Mary Ann
• Format: Book Chapter
• Language: English
• Published: Manchester University Press 01.07.2015
• Subjects: Aesthetic judgment; Aesthetics; Afterlife; Applied philosophy; Axiology; Beauty; Behavioral sciences; Bible; Charity; Cognitive psychology; Divine attributes; Divinity; Doctrinal theology; Emotion; Emotional states; Eschatology; Ethics; Happiness; Heaven; Literary Theory and Cultural Studies; Love; Morality; neo-Platonism; Normative ethics; Old Testament; Philosophy; Philosophy of religion; Practical theology; Psalms; Psychology; Religion; Robert Burton; Sacred texts; Sadness; Spiritual love; Systematic theology; The Anatomy of Melancholy; Theology; Virtue; visio dei
• ISBN: 9780719090783; 0719090784
• DOI: 10.7228/manchester/9780719090783.003.0005

Happiness is in short supply inThe Anatomy of Melancholy. At the beginning of the main body of his book, Robert Burton (1577–1640) reminds us that, before the Fall, humankind was ‘pure, divine, perfect, happy’ (vol. 1, p. 121). All this was lost with the advent of sin. A state of permanent discontent took its place, which, in the broadest sense of the word, is what constitutes melancholy: from these Melancholy Dispositions, no man living is free, noStoicke, none so wise, none so happy, none so generous, so godly, so divine, that can vindicate himselfe, so well composed,