Body and Soul in Ancient Philosophy

422
Christopher Gill
tional command, presented in Galen’s commentary on the Timaeus as
sent from the brain via the nerves. 48 In envisaging this kind of internal
communication, Galen is, of course, following Plato’s lead in both the
Republic and Timaeus, but in a way that is more compatible with his anatomical
investigations than some other Platonically inspired features of
his theory. 49
If we take together the various features of Galen’s thinking just
mentioned, we can see that Galen has the materials for a picture of embodied
psychology that is substantially different from the dominant (Platonising)
picture offered in PHP. In place of the focus on the operation
of three distinct centres or sources, we can see signs of a more unified
psychological and physiological structure. In this more unified view,
motivation radiates through the nervous system from the brain and activates
the body as an interconnected whole. In the case of anger, the
heart provides the reactive component (boiling of the blood), in response
to the messages sent from the brain through the nerves. The
liver (or liver-based system) operates in a more independent way, but
also at a more basic (plant-like) level, carrying forward low-level processes
of nutrition. The functions of the liver, and also the purely automatic
functions of the heart, can be assigned to “nature”, by contrast
with the cognitive work of the control-centre, which can be assigned
to the ‘psychic’ functions. 50 The picture just outlined is emphasised in
the comment cited earlier from the late work, On His Own Opinions,
which does not mention the alleged psychological role of the heart
48 This kind of division of roles could have been characterised in terms of the contrast
between psychic and natural functions, though that distinction is not used
here.
49 See Pl. R. 440b-d (esp. “boils” and “is angry”, c7 –8), and Ti. 70a-b (esp. “the
force of spirit boils when reason announces [some injustice]”, b2 – 3). Ti. 70a-b,
and more generally 69 – 72, present a combination of internal (psychological)
communication and physiological reactions that prefigures the Stoic picture,
as suggested in Gill 2006, 300 –302; it also prefigures the Stoic-Galenic synthesis
that I am envisaging here. Here and elsewhere, Galen also alludes to Aristotle’s
two-fold analysis of anger as (physiologically) the boiling of blood around
the heart, and (dialectically) a craving for revenge: Arist. de An.1, 403a29-b2;
see e.g. Gal. On the Preservation of Health (San. Tu.) VI.138, 2.9.5 – 6 (cf. Tieleman
2003, 156–157).
50 For these aspects of Galen’s thinking, see text to nn. 41 – 49 above.