Medicine and philosophy - Classical Homeopathy Online

Diocles of Carystus on the method of dietetics 95Connections of Diocles’ views with Aristotle’s have, of course, beenmade by earlier scholars, especially by Werner Jaeger, in whose pictureof Diocles as a pupil of Aristotle fragment 176 played a central part. Heargued that the fragment could not have been written without the influenceof the great Stagirite on the Carystian physician, and from this and otherconsiderations drew far-reaching conclusions concerning Diocles’ date. 44Jaeger’s views have met with much criticism and opposition from variousscholars, not just because of the authoritative way in which he presentedthem or because of the claim of inevitability he held with regard to theconclusions he drew from his observations. 45 Most of these criticisms appearcompletely justified to me, and I have little to add to them. Yet thisshould not make us a priori hostile to any attempt to associate Diocleswith the Lyceum. The resemblance is not so much between Diocles’ argumentthat knowledge of the cause is often not necessary for practicalpurposes and similar statements found in Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics(which Jaeger emphasised) – it has been shown that what is at issue inthose passages is rather different from what Diocles is concerned with. 46More important in this respect is the point which Diocles makes in section8 – and which is repeated in section 10 – that many things or states ofaffairs do not admit of a causal explanation. While, to my knowledge, noparallels of this idea can be found in the Hippocratic Corpus, it clearly resemblesstatements in Aristotle and Theophrastus (see note 41) to the effectthat the search for causes should stop somewhere and that further analysiseven ‘destroys’ our understanding. It will probably remain a matter ofdispute whether this resemblance is actually to be interpreted as evidenceof intellectual exchange between Diocles, Aristotle and Theophrastus. 47Moreover, if the interpretation of section 8 given above is correct, Diocles’reason for saying that many things cannot be causally explained is slightly44 See n. 8 above; for earlier associations of Diocles with the Peripatos see von Staden (1992) 229 n. 11,12 and 15. For a more recent attempt see Longrigg (1993) 161–75 and (1995).45 The most comprehensive and convincing refutation of Jaeger’s arguments has been given by vonStaden (1992). It should be noted, however, that Jaeger’s views have been setting the agenda forDioclean studies for quite a long time and are sometimes still determining the kind of questionsasked by scholars who are at the same time in doubt concerning the validity of his conclusions (see,e.g., the article by Longrigg quoted in the previous note). For a plea for a study of Diocles in hisown right (with the question of his date and his being ‘influenced’ by this or that particular ‘school’being kept away from the study of the individual fragments as long as possible) see van der Eijk(1993b) and (2001a) xxi–xxxviii.46 See Kullmann (1974) 350ff.; von Staden (1992) 238.47 H. Gottschalk (private correspondence) points out to me that the doctrine of the limits of causalexplanation, which is a very sophisticated piece of philosophy, is presented by Aristotle as hisinvention, whereas Diocles alludes to it very briefly: ‘his sentence presupposes a knowledge ofAristotle or something very like it’.