Medicine and philosophy - Classical Homeopathy Online

164 Aristotle and his schoolonly closer to reason than other melancholics; they remain ‘eccentric’ (formelancholics are fundamentally abnormal), but to a lesser degree than othermelancholics; yet rather than implying that they are similar to ordinarypeople, it means that they distinguish themselves from other people, butthis time in a positive rather than a negative sense. The sentence is construedin such a way that each clause, so to speak, corrects a possible implication ofthe previous one, and this construal may well be interpreted as an explicitacknowledgement of Aristotle’s concept of melancholy.As to the question about where to place the melancholic peritton inAristotle’s theory of virtue, little can be said with any certainty, due to alack of explicit statements on the subject. However, a good starting-pointfor the debate would be the principle on which the discussion in the chapterof the Problemata is built, namely that of the ēthopoion of the phusis, theinfluence which the human phusis (in the sense of a ‘natural predisposition’and a ‘physiological constitution’) exerts on the formation of the humancharacter. It is a fact that the role of nature as a condition or prerequisitefor man’s moral and cognitive behaviour in Aristotle’s ethics and psychologyis limited. 83 On the other hand, Aristotle repeatedly recognises andrefers to the importance of a physiological balance (an eukrasia betweenheat and cold in the body) for the proper functioning of sensory perception,practical deliberation and intellectual thought; the typical notion ofmesotēs (which is derived from physiology) plays an important part here. 84The effect of physical conditions on the psychological and moral state isusually only mentioned in a negative context, namely that of disordersresulting from a lack of physiological balance: the fact that melancholicsare repeatedly mentioned in the Ethics and the Parva naturalia can be explainedby the fact that they are particularly suitable for illustrating thesenegative effects of the physiological constitution, as they lack this balanceby nature (see Tracy (1969) 226–7, 256). However, this example impliesthat what disturbs melancholics on a permanent basis can occur to everyperson occasionally and periodically (hence the analogy with wine anddrunkenness).Yet the effect of nature in these areas can also manifest itself in a positiveway, in outstanding expressions of a special predisposition, which cannotbe achieved in what Aristotle considers the usual way, namely by force ofhabit (ethismos or askēsis) and teaching (didachē or mathēsis). To describe thisspecial predisposition and its expression in ‘particularly mental shrewdness’,83 See the general statements on this theme in Eth. Nic. 10.9, Eth. Nic. 2.1 and Eud. Eth. 1.1, as well asGigon (1971) 100ff.; Gigon (1985) 135–8; Verbeke (1985) 247–58.84 Of fundamental importance on this theme is the work by Tracy (1969) in particular 197–282.