Medicine and philosophy - Classical Homeopathy Online

On the Sacred Disease 47as Jeanne Ducatillon has claimed, 8 that the statements of the first chapteractually reveal an authentic religious conviction, we are obliged to defineas accurately as possible how this conviction is related to the concept of thedivine as an immanent natural law and of its workings as natural processes.But we must also consider the possibility (which Ducatillon appears tohave overlooked) that the accusations of the first chapter are no morethan rhetorical or occasional arguments pour besoin de la cause which neednot imply the author’s personal involvement, seeing that many of thesestatements have an obviously hypothetical character. 9 I may, for instance,criticise a person for acting contrarily to his own principles and I may evendefine how he should act according to these principles without endorsingeither his principles or the corresponding behaviour. Yet such a hypotheticalargument does reflect my opinion on the logical connection between thepremise and the conclusion, since it shows what I believe to be a valid or anon-valid conclusion from a given premise (a premise which I need not believeto be true). Thus the argument reflects my sense of ‘logic’ or ‘necessity’and the presuppositions underlying the stringency of my argument.One might object that our apparent problem is not genuine, and thatthere is nothing strange about intellectuals participating in traditional culticactivities such as prayer and sacrifice, while at the same time holding‘advanced’ religious or theological ideas which seem inconsistent with thepresuppositions underlying these cultic practices. 10 However, the problem8 Ducatillon (1977) 180–5.9 Cf. the use of in 1.23 (6.358 L.), of in 1.25 (6.358 L.), of and in 1.31 (6.360L.) as well as the modal imperfects in 1.41 (6.362 L.) and 1.43 (6.362 L.) (and in 2.7, 6.366L.). It is probably this hypothetical character which has led most interpreters to refrain from bringingthese statements to bear on the discussion of the writer’s theological ideas (e.g. Lloyd (1975c) 13 n.19). Nörenberg (1968) 69 also claims that the sections 41–6 are put into the mouth of the magicians,although later on (74–6) he suddenly takes them seriously as reflecting the author’s own opinion.However, his own ‘hypothetical’ remarks there on the ‘moral significance’ of the divine remaininconclusive and partly contradict his earlier views on the divinity of nature. As will become clear inthe course of this chapter, I do not believe that ‘the divine’ (to theion) mentioned in 1.45 is identicalwith ‘the divine’ (sc. ‘character’) of natural laws or that both the ‘moral’ and the ‘naturalistic’ aspectsof the divine are subordinated to a higher concept of divinity; nor do I see any textual grounds fordenying that the author of On the Sacred Disease believes in ‘personal’ or ‘anthropomorphic’ gods(see section 4 below).10 This is apparently the view taken by H. W. Miller (1953) 2 n. 3: ‘This passage [i.e. 1.44–5, PJvdE]as well as the following remarks concerning the true meaning of the use of purifications, suggeststhat the author would not refuse to accept and conform to the rituals of temple and civic religion –as would hardly be expected. His remarks reflect, indeed, a genuine belief in the Divine, but, asperhaps in the case of a Socrates or a Euripides, it is not simply a belief in the gods as traditionallyand popularly conceived.’ This is a complicated and controversial issue, and although I believe thatit does not affect my argument, I am aware that ‘nothing strange about it’ does not do justice tothis discussion. At least three questions are important: (i) To what extent did intellectuals try toharmonise their own theological conceptions with traditional beliefs and, if they did, then for what