Teodorski, Marko. 2019. "Melancholy and Oppression: Aristotle, Pseudo-Hippocrates and Lars von Trier". In PATHE: The Language and Philosophy of Emotions, edited by Ljiljana Radenović,,Dragana Dimitrijević and Il Akkad. Belgrade: University Library. (original) (raw)
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Melancholy and its sisters: transformations of a concept from Homer to Lars von Trier
History of European Ideas, 2021
This introduction argues for competing diachronic and synchronic accounts of melancholy in European and American culture. Taking the pioneering and yet belated work Saturn and Melancholy (1964) of Erwin Panofsky, Fritz Saxl, and Raymond Klibansky as its starting point, this article situates melancholy as at once its own, often local and non-specialist discourse as well as a conceptual web binding together medical, artistic, and social innovations, competitions, and turmoil. As a subject, melancholy demands interdisciplinary study, as Dürer's print Melencolia I continues to prove. As a locus of methodological innovation, melancholy in the wake of Panofsky, Saxl, and Klibansky continues to yield the alternative genealogies, conceptual histories, and formal artistic vocabularies of this volume's contributions whether moving backwards from Dürer to Homer or forward to the present day with Lars von Trier and major European novelists. Since antiquity, few concepts in western discourse have anchored and embodied other ideas so much as melancholy has. Melancholy characterized a host of physical and intellectual phenomena drawn together into a singular identity, with these new characteristics then radiating outwards into medicine , theology, and politics. And vice-versa: melancholy mediated social experiences just as its symptoms and representations simultaneously consolidated them. Writing in 'Trauer und Melancholie' ('Mourning and Melancholy', 1916), Sigmund Freud grasped the central problem of this strangely impressionable quality of melancholy: 'Melancholy, whose definition is volatile even in descriptive psychiatry, occurs in various clinical forms, the combination of which does not appear to be certain, some of which suggest somatic rather than psychogenic affections.' 1 Combinations and constellations hence characterize melancholy just as much as contexts and receptions do. As the contributions to this volume collectively argue, a stable and cumulative iconographic and visual history of melancholy developed across time and space in tandem with divergent literary and medical heritages. 2
It is Christmas 2006, Time Magazine proclaims me person of the year. I look at the cover and raise my eyebrows. What? Me? 'Yes, you. You control the Information Age. Welcome to your world.' My world. From this Time-issue I may conclude that this is the earthly heaven of the sovereign individual in an intimate embrace with information communication technology. The fruit of this love affair, according to Time, is a world-wide 'social experiment' of energetic, productive, innovative, creative, in short of free spirits. At long last: we are free, we are equals and we are interactive. Adhortations such as those in the Christmas issue of Time, are frequently let loose upon us these days. They are characteristic of a time in which drive and entrepreneurial spirit are considered to be among the highest values. It seems a paradox that encouragement appears to be all the more necessary in this Realm of Freedom. As a consequence this incitement turns into something obsessive, it becomes a somewhat frenetic summons. What is being pursued here and what is it that is being avoided? I hope to address these questions in the following article by allotting a central place to an experience which, in the course of European history, has been understood in various ways and, therefore, has been undergone in various ways, namely: melancholy. A glance at the vicissitudes of this experience may afford a view of the (changing) condition of our culture.
The focus or underlying emphasis of this paper is to delve into the formative and initial understanding of melancholy as a phenomenon vis-à-vis philosophical speculations and analytical debates around this terminology, in the medieval period to 18th century. Melancholy as a phenomenon has long been analysed and researched upon to be categorically understood and defined. With advancement in medical sciences, this field further opened up a plethora of case studies, debates and discussions by psychiatrists and medical experts to comprehend it thoroughly. When psychology evolved as an empirical discipline it became distinctly diversified from philosophy over the centuries. Their approach and methodology towards understanding this phenomenon differs a lot and has also altered rapidly and consequently. This paper focuses on philosophical understanding of melancholy during medieval period. While defining aesthetics of sublime Kant also discusses about melancholy. This paper seeks to discuss speculative and initial understanding around melancholy, and also posits it as a distinct aesthetic category. Keywords –Etymological Origin, Ancient& Medieval Understanding, Kant
Brain Research Bulletin, 2011
The relationship between the "passions" (emotions or feelings) and psychopathology has been a constant throughout the history of medicine. In this context, melancholy was considered a perversion of the soul (corruption of the passions). One of the most influential authors on this subject was René Descartes, who discussed it in his work The Treatise on the Passions of the Soul (1649). Descartes believed that "passions" were sensitive movements that the soul experienced due to its union with the body (res extensa). According to this theory, the soul was located in the pineal gland, where it was actively involved in overseeing the functions of the "human machine" and kept its dysfunctions under control, by circulating animal spirits. Descartes described sadness as one of "the six primitive passions of the soul", which leads to melancholy if not remedied. Cartesian theories had a great deal of influence on the way that mental pathologies were considered throughout the entire 17th century (Spinoza, Willis, Pitcairn) and during much of the 18th century (Le Cat, Tissot). From the 19th century onwards, emotional symptomatology finally began to be used in diagnostic criteria for mood disorders.
NICOMACHEAN ETHICS: ARISTOTLE’S TREATMENT OF THE MELANCHOLIC
Although the concept of melancholy is insignificant in modern-day medicine and psychology, it is important that its occurrences in Nicomachean Ethics (N.E.) are not overlooked. Book seven of N.E., Continence and Incontinence: Pleasure, is directly tied with Aristotle’s inquiry of practical reasoning, self-control, and attaining eudemonia. In stating that, I argue that Aristotle’s treatment of the melancholic allows us to identify melancholy from other forms of mental illness, specifically as a unique case of depression and how it is characterized in many ways. In this paper I will explain the context in which melancholics are discussed by analysing the three occasions in which they are mentioned within N.E.; each is followed by an analysis of how its reference is relative to our present-day understanding of depression. I will conclude by explaining how Aristotle’s model renders that melancholy should be a distinguished as a mental illness in its own right, and lastly, explaining his therapeutic analysis on how it can be treated. Seeing as depression is an increasingly common experience, the goal of this paper is to help raise awareness of the stigma towards mental health and the harmful affects it has on its sufferers.
Melancholy and the Somatic Subject of Stress Management
This article explores the curious relation between the Aristotelian concept of melancholy and the contemporary concept of stress and stress management in organizations. Through a symptomatological reading of the most important Aristotelian text on melancholy, Problems XXX, I, it identifies the mélaina cholé – the black bile – as the somatic subject of a higher order of self-management among extraordinary individuals and discusses how the conceptualization of this somatic subject has been popularized in the contemporary presentation of stress and stress management in popular literature. It discusses this popularization and its effects on three levels: the individual, the organizational and the managerial, suggesting that the properties, which used to be reserved for the extraordinary in character among politicians, poets, philosophers and artists has been popularized under the assumption of an anthropology, which subsumes the great, culturally constructive achievements under a general idea of Arbeitskraft, of labour power.