Causality, Agency, and the Limits of Medicine

Bibliographic Data

ID23213118
AuthorsBrooke Holmes (0000-0001-9984-1632, 1Princeton University – Classics 141 East Pyne, Princeton, New Jersey 08544 United States, corresponding author)
Year2013
Volume46
Issue3
Pages302-326
Publication date2013-07-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueApeiron (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0003-6390 • E-ISSN: 2156-7093
PublisherWalter de Gruyter GmbH (PUBLISHER • DE)
DOI10.1515/apeiron-2012-0016
OpenAlexW2028566522
LanguageEN
Citations received2
References cited12

The difference between ancient Greek medicine and ancient Greek philosophy has often been seen by scholars in terms of two targets of expertise: the body and the soul. In this paper, I argue that we can better understand the boundaries between medicine and philosophy in antiquity by focusing instead on the difference between causes and motivations (or causes and desires). The reason is this. It is not the case that the writers of the Hippocratic Corpus are uninterested in the soul (psychē). They are, however, reluctant to address their therapies to expressions of the patient’s own agency, despite tacitly acknowledging such agency as a causal force that cannot be reduced to the automatic behavior of the body. I go on to show how thinkers like Plato and Democritus zero in on the problem of perverted desires as part of a strategy of establishing a new domain of therapy, a domain that comes to be classified as the therapy of the soul.

Agency (philosophy) · Ancient Greece · Ancient Greek · Ancient philosophy · Causality (physics) · Domain (mathematical analysis) · Epistemology · Hippocratic Oath · Linguistics · Moral agency · Soul · Teleology · Classical Antiquity Studies · Classical Philosophy and Thought · Classics · Historical, Religious, and Philosophical Studies · History · Mathematics · Philosophy · Psychology

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