Medicine and philosophy - Classical Homeopathy Online

Introduction 35is disagreement about the authenticity of some of them). Yet any generalaccount of Aristotle’s philosophy is bound to begin with a discussion of theproblems posed by the form and status of his writings. Do they represent the‘lecture notes’ written by Aristotle himself on the basis of which he presentedhis oral teaching? Or are they to be taken as the ‘minutes’ or ‘verbatims’ of hisoral teaching as written down by his pupils? Certainly, some characteristicsof his works may be interpreted as evidence of oral presentation; 44 and withsome (parts) of his works it is not easy to imagine how they might havebeen understood without additional oral elucidation – although this maybe a case of our underestimating the abilities of his then audience and anextrapolation of our own difficulties in understanding his work. However,other parts of his work are certainly far too elaborate to assume such aprocedure. 45 Some works display a careful structure of argumentation whichmay well be understood by reference to an audience which is supposedto go through a learning process; and certainly the ‘dialectical’ passageswhere he deals with the views of his predecessors reflect a very elaboratecomposition. 46 All in all, it is clear that not much is gained by prematuregeneralisations and unreflective categorisations (such as ‘lecture notes’), 47and that we should allow for considerable variation in forms of expressionand degree of linguistic and structural organisation between the variousworks in the Corpus Aristotelicum.A further point that has attracted considerable attention is the relationbetween orality and literacy. Although the details and the precise significanceof the process are disputed, the importance of the transition fromorality to literacy for Greek culture and intellectual life can hardly be overstated.Since the majority of the Hippocratic writings were produced in thelate fifth and early fourth centuries bce, the Corpus testifies in a variety ofways to this transition. Thus it can safely be assumed that several treatises,especially the older gynaecological works On Diseases of Women and Onthe Nature of the Woman, which contain long catalogues of prescriptionsand recipes, preserve traditional knowledge which has been transmittedorally over a number of generations. Moreover, several treatises explicitlyrefer to oral presentations of medical knowledge, such as the author of On44 For examples see Föllinger (1993) and van der Eijk (1994) 97; for direct references to the teachingsituation see Bodéüs (1993) 83–96.45 E.g. Metaphysics 1.1 or Nicomachean Ethics (Eth. Nic.) 4.3; for other examples see Schütrumpf (1989)and Lengen (2002).46 E.g. Generation of Animals 1.17–18.47 On the problems inherent in this notion see Schütrumpf (1989) 178–80 with notes 12, 13, 17, 23 and26.