Personality and Class
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2020-08-10T15:16:59+00:00
What makes us who we are? Just as today we might turn to personality tests and horoscopes to explain our dispositions and destinies, our early modern counterparts looked to the four temperaments. Decided by the configuration of planets at birth, an excess of a bodily humor could account for one's disposition and life trajectory. One's disposition also experienced day-to-day fluctuations, influenced by the movement of the planets and changes in environment or diet. These dispositions or temperaments, in turn, could be used as explanations for a rigidly hierarchical society. Artists could attribute the hardship of beggars and peasants to their phlegmatic, and therefore idle, or choleric, and therefore dangerous, qualities. A privileged soldier's choleric violence, in contrast, could be celebrated as the strong will of Napoleon—or does the phlegmatic gesture of his idle hand undermine this reading?
