Medicine and philosophy - Classical Homeopathy Online

Aristotle on melancholy 163melancholics the ability of deliberation and rational thought (see the passagesfrom Nicomachean Ethics and Eudemian Ethics), and that he attributestheir special mental ability (divination in dreams) only to the fact that forsome reason their reasoning faculty is inactive or powerless (On Divinationin Sleep and Eudemian Ethics): as a result they are classified in thesetexts under the group of ‘simple-minded people’, as opposed to the ‘bestand most intelligent’. This seems to be in stark contrast to the thoughtexpressed in Pr. 30.1, namely that the peritton of melancholics is connectedto reason (954 b 1: , for without this connection it wouldin Aristotelian terms have been impossible to apply the peritton in the fieldsof philosophy, politics and poetry, which in Aristotle’s view are unthinkablewithout reason (phronēsis). It is impossible to see how Aristotle’s statementsare supposed to tie in with the existence of a ‘wise melancholic’ (melancholikossophos) as recognised in the chapter from the Problemata (cf. thereferences to Socrates, Plato and Empedocles).However, apart from the exceptional nature of the melancholic perittonand the fact that the euthuoneiria of melancholics is unrelated to this (seenote 78), the text in the Problemata does in fact allow for some positiveremarks on this contradiction. The way in which the relevant passage in thechapter is phrased shows that the author was apparently aware of the factthat the connection between phronēsis and melancholy implies a paradox inan Aristotelian context. To quote the passage: ‘All those, however, in whomthe excessive heat is moderated towards a mean, these people are, to be sure,melancholics, but they are more intelligent, and they are, to be sure, lesseccentric, but different from the others in many aspects, some in culture,others etc.’ ’ 82 The use of (‘to be sure...but’) and the comparativesmay well indicate that the author was aware of the paradoxical natureof his statement: although they are melancholics, yet they are relativelyclose to reason; although they are less abnormal, yet they are outstanding.The comparatives and show that these people arenot rational and normal per se (that would really contradict Aristotle’sstatements), but only in comparison to other melancholics (or to thosemoments when their own balance between hot and cold, which is afterall unstable, is disturbed or absent). They are not really ‘intelligent’, but82 For this reading (instead of the transmitted but incomprehensible see Klibansky et al.(1964) 24 n. 58; Flashar (1962) 720; Müri (1953) 25 n. 5 (against Pigeaud (1988a) 123).