Medicine and philosophy - Classical Homeopathy Online

128 Hippocratic Corpus and Diocles of Carystusalso referred to as dianoia) as a distinct entity, separate from the body (sōma).This distinction manifests itself in particular during sleep (4.86–7). However,this does not imply that the soul is immaterial. The soul consists of waterand fire (the elements which, according to this author, have the greatestinfluence on the constitution of the human body), which stand in a certainproportion to each other. Fluctuations in this proportion result in differencesbetween individual people’s cognitive skills, such as acuteness, a goodmemory, precision of the senses and proneness to certain emotions (1.35).When the balance between these two elements is seriously disturbed, it willgive rise to psychological disorders, but these can be cured by changing eatingand drinking habits and adopting a certain lifestyle (1.36). According tothis author, the soul is therefore a material entity, yet it does not have a fixedlocation: it moves through the body via ‘passages’ (poroi ). The condition ofthese passages (for instance their width or narrowness) is a further influentialfactor in someone’s mental functioning. In the state of wakefulness, the souldistributes itself over the entire body and carries out certain tasks ‘for thebenefit of the body’, including hearing, seeing, touching and movement.During sleep, or rather ‘when the body is asleep’, the soul remains awakeand withdraws in its own ‘home’ (oikos), where it carries out the activities ofthe body independently. These include seeing, hearing, walking, touching,grieving, thinking: they are called enhupnia or ‘dreams’. Yet the author doesnot venture an opinion on the location of the soul and its ‘home’.A presentation like this shows how inadequate terms like ‘materialism’and ‘dualism’ are to describe ancient theories on body and mind. The authorof On Regimen may be called a materialist to the extent that he holds anentirely material view on the soul; yet at the same time he assumes twoseparate entities which may normally co-operate and mutually influenceeach other, yet one of them (the ‘soul’) can also function independently, as,for instance, in sleep. 19The greatest refinement in the definition of the status of mental phenomenacan be found in Aristotle, although his comments on the topic,too, show a certain amount of fluctuation. He expresses the view that the‘soul’ is not a separate entity, which might exist independently of the body:‘soul’ to Aristotle is ‘the form of the body’, that which causes a body to live,which gives it structure and enables it to exercise its faculties. 20 Yet this19 For the psychology of On Regimen see Palm (1933) 44–7; Joly and Byl (1984) 296–7; Hankinson(1991b) 200–6; Jouanna (1966) xv–xviii; Cambiano (1980) 87–96; Van Lieshout (1980) 100–3.20 For this interpretation of Aristotle’s understanding of the soul see Sorabji (1974) 63–89 and Kahn(1966) 43–81, both reprinted in Barnes, Schofield and Sorabji (1979) 42–64 and 1–31; van der Eijk(2000b). For other attempts to reformulate Aristotle’s view on the mind–body debate in modernterms see the volume by Nussbaum and Rorty (1992), with comprehensive bibliography.