Medicine and philosophy - Classical Homeopathy Online

172 Aristotle and his schoolalso in philosophers like Democritus and, perhaps, Heraclitus, in whichsleep was viewed positively as a state in which humans, or at least some ofus, are capable of modes of cognition not open to us in the waking stateand in which we enjoy a special receptivity to experiences, impulses or, asAristotle would put it, ‘movements’ (kinēseis) that we do not receive, or atleast are not aware of, during the waking state; and there are elements of thisin Aristotle’s theory too. These experiences and impulses can be subdividedinto stimuli that have their origin within the dreamer and those that comefrom outside. 9 The internal stimuli are the ones arising from the dreamer’sbody, or from his/her internal experiences, memories, thoughts, imaginationsor emotions; and these are the stimuli that were of particular interestto medical writers, such as the author of the Hippocratic work On Regimenjust mentioned, and to philosophers (like Aristotle) interested in the relationbetween the psychological and the physiological aspects of sleep. Theexternal stimuli can in their turn be subdivided into two categories: thosethat have their origin in the natural world, and those that come from thesupernatural (gods, demons, etc.); 10 and this group of external stimuli wasof particular interest to thinkers such as Democritus (and, again, Aristotle)trying to find an explanation for the phenomenon of prophecy in sleepconcerning events that lie beyond the dreamer’s direct experience.A similar, related ambivalence surrounded the question whether thesleeping life of an individual presents a complete negation of the characterand personality of his/her waking life, or whether there is some connectionor continuity between the two states. It would seem that if one definessleep negatively (as Aristotle does) as an incapacitation of our powers ofconsciousness, the consequence would be that in the sleeping state thecharacteristics of our individual personalities are somehow inactivated: itwould be as if, in sleep, we lose our identity and temporarily become like aplant. Yet, paradoxically, this negative view also allowed a positive valuationof the state of sleep. For it can be argued that in sleep our souls or mindsare released from our bodies (and from experiences associated with thebody, such as perception and emotion) and acquire a temporary state ofdetachedness and purity, thus anticipating the state of the immortal soulafter its definitive detachment from the body after death. This latter view –that in sleep the soul is set free from the body and regains its ‘propernature’ (idia phusis) – was especially found in Orphic and Pythagoreanthought, with its negative view of the body and its dualistic concept ofthe relation between soul and body, and found its expression in stories9 See Aristotle, Insomn. 460 b 29–30; Div. somn. 463 a 3–30; 463 b 1–2; 463 b 22–3; 464 a 15–16.10 See On Regimen 4.87 (6.640–2 L.); cf. Arist., Somn. vig. 453 b 22–4 (but on the interpretation of theterm daimonios there see below, pp. 187, 191, and 246–7 with n. 30).