Medicine and philosophy - Classical Homeopathy Online

156 Aristotle and his schoolthe idea that all (pantes) ‘extraordinary’ (perittoi) men are melancholics.The subsequent discussion of the heroes Heracles, Aias and Bellerophontesand the poets and philosophers Empedocles, Socrates and Plato shows thatthe presupposition implied in the question is apparently based on a ratherspecific notion of melancholy. Epilepsy, bouts of ecstasy, prophetic powers,but also depressions, extreme fear of people, and suicidal inclinations areall attributed to the same disease. 61 It is very important here to establishclearly the actual aim of the author. Apparently, this aim lies first of all in theexplanation that this attribution actually has a physiological justification,that is, that the very different, at times even contrasting characteristicsof the melancholic are all based on one coherent physiological condition;secondly, the author intends to explain the in itself paradoxical connectionbetween melancholy as a disease (953 a 13, 15: arrōsthēma; 16: nosos; 18:helkē; 29: nosēmata; 31: pathē) and the extraordinary political, philosophicaland poetic achievements (ta peritta) by means of this physiological basis.This second aim has correctly been understood as readopting the Platonictheory of mania. 62 Yet whereas Plato, in his discussion on the origin ofmania, distinguished between divine enthusiasm and pathological madness(Phaedrus 265 a), the Peripatetic discussion of this topic not only takes amuch larger range of mental and physical afflictions into consideration,but also relates them all to one physical condition, and in the explanationall divine influence is disregarded (even without fierce opposition againstthis, as we find this in the Hippocratic writing On the Sacred Disease andin Aristotle’s On Divination in Sleep 63 ).Answering the opening question of the chapter is in fact only attemptedin the context of the second aim; the largest part of the text is devotedto answering the other question of why the ways in which melancholymanifests itself differ so much. The opening question is referred to onjust two occasions: in 954 a 39–b 4 and, very briefly, in 954 b 27–8. Thisdivision is also followed in the structure of the final summary of the chapter(955 a 29ff.), which first recapitulates the explanation of the instability(anōmalia) and the variety of aspects to the nature of the melancholiccharacter, followed by the summary of the explanation of the relationship61 On a number of occasions, although never in a systematic order, these features are indeed associatedwith melancholic diseases in the Hippocratic writings (see Müri (1953) and the commentary ofFlashar (1962) on the particular occurrences).62 Flashar (1966) 62; Tellenbach (1961) 9; Klibansky et al. (1964) 17.63 See Tellenbach (1961) 10, Pigeaud (1988a) 51. Boyancé (1936, 191) presumes that a certain divineinfluence is implied in the role of the pneuma, yet there is no indication of this in the text of thechapter (on the role of the pneuma see n. 68 below).