Aristotle in the Medical Works of Arnau de Vilanova (c. 1240–1311) (original) (raw)
Related papers
Aristotle's Exhortation to Medicine in the Parva naturalia (DRAFT)
in P. Destrée, M.R. Johnson (eds), Aristotle on Philosophical Exhortation, Peeters, Louvain-la-Neuve (forthcoming)
Twice in the Parva naturalia (PN), Aristotle exhorts the students of nature to deal with medical questions: the most distinguished students of nature, Aristotle says, “end with the principles of medicine”. In this article, it is argued that the two disciplines can be complementary, with respect to certain specific objects, without being in a relationship of epistemological subordination in the most demanding sense of the term. To understand this, it is necessary to pay more attention to the context of the PN.
Competing Arts: Medicine and Philosophy in Aristotle's Protrepticus (Hermeneia, 17 / 2016)
Aristotle's Protrepticus shows traces of a long-standing dispute concerning the hierarchy of different technai. In this paper I argue that the Protrepticus stages an agon between philosophy and medicine, both of which strove for the status of a techne of cognitive and intellectual authority. By making reference to several medical methods and concepts, Aristotle tried to reveal the preeminence of philosophy in the knowledge of human nature and, thereby, debunked the claims of medicine for a rightful and unerring arbiter of the best way of life. Through my analysis I try to illustrate that a large part of Aristotle's polemic with medicine was directed against several statements made in Hippocratic literature. Finally, I suggest that in his polemic against medicine Aristotle envisaged a particular type of opponent which is to be identified with the rigoristic medical practitioners and writers whose methods of inquiry and viewpoints were exposed by the Hippocratic author of Ancient Medicine.
Early Science and Medicine, 2014
Early-modern Jesuit universities did not offer studies in medicine, and from 1586 onwards, the Jesuit Ratio studiorum prohibited digressions on medical topics in the Aristotelian curriculum. However, some sixteenth-century Jesuit text books used in philosophy classes provided detailed accounts on physiological issues such as sense perception and its organic location as discussed in Aristotle's De anima II, 7–11. This seeming contradiction needs to be explained. In this paper, I focus on the interst in medical topics manifested in a commentary by the Jesuits of Coimbra. Admittedly, the Coimbra commentary constituted an exception, as the Jesuit college that produced it was integrated in a royal university which had a strong interest in educating physicians. It will be claimed that the exclusion of medicine at Jesuit universities and colleges had its origin in rather incidental events in the course of the foundation of the first Jesuit university in Sicily. There, the lay professors of law and medicine intended to avoid subordination to the Jesuits and thereby provoked a conflict which finally led the Jesuit administration to refrain from including faculties of medicine and law in Jesuit universities. Towards the end of the sixteenth century, a veritable Jesuit animosity towards medicine emerged for philosophical and pedagogical reasons. This development reflects educational concerns within the Society as well as the role of commentaries on Aristotle for early-modern learning.
The aim of this chapter is to examine one of the central explanatory-or rather antiexplanatory-concepts Ps.-Alexander of Aphrodisias expounds in the preface to the first book of his Medical Puzzles and Natural Problems and which he sporadically uses in addressing specific medical-naturalist problems collected in it-that is the concept of "unsayable properties" (ἰδιότητες ἄρρητοι). This concept relies on the author's conviction that for certain natural/medical phenomena the human intellect fails to provide a proper explanation due to the particular nature of the phenomenon at hand. He ascribes this failure to a lack of descriptive resources on the side of the researcher, which is symptomatic of the weakness of human intelligence and discourse more generally. Ps.-Alexander incorporates the concept in a specifically aetiological context, where it ties in closely with more metaphysical preconceptions about the world, seen as a divinely organised cosmos. By analysing and contextualising Ps.-Alexander's concept and use of ἰδιότητες ἄρρητοι, this study aims to shed a light on the ancient debate about what medical physicians were expected to know and what was knowable to them. This question is important, as it reflects on the epistemic limits of ancient medical-naturalist research as conceived by its own practitioners, thus giving a concrete idea of what kind of questions were better left unresolved.
Medicin and Philosophy in Direct Dialectic Relation During the Classical and Late Antiquity
Medicine and Philosophy, in classical antiquity mainly, coexisted and joined hands as activities of the human intellect, with one exerting fruitful influence on the other in the course of time. The influence of philosophy on ancient medicine is generally accepted, as the theories of pre-Socratic philosophers from the 6th century BC for the interpretation of the world and human nature were the main inspiration for the formulation of the first medical texts. Natural philosophers from Ionia, such as Thales of Miletus, Anaximander, Anaximenes and Heraclitus, through their theories, laid the foundations towards future medical advances. Hippocrates of Kos, with his medical treatises in " Corpus Hippocraticum " was greatly influenced by the philosophical thought. Hippocrates is considered the " father of medicine " because he broadened the medical knowledge of his time and laid the foundations of medicine as science, releasing it from magic and superstitions. Plato and Aristotle refer to Hippocrates in their works and speak with respect about him acknowledging his enormous contribution to the healing of serious diseases. In the ancient world, Asclepius, who was considered a great healer of many serious diseases, was worshiped as the patron god of medicine. In his honor temples were erected and next to them great therapeutic centers, the well known " Asclepieia " , scattered in many cities of Ancient Greece and Asia Minor. In the 5th, 4th and 3rd century BC there are great medical schools that operate, founded by famous medico-philosophers of the time, such as the
2014
Galen’s treatises, regarded as a fundamental part of medical education, had already been translated into Latin, commented and included in the university curricula of the Middle Ages. Yet there was a new interest in these works developed by Renaissance humanists, who knew Greek and were able to read Galen “in the original”. In order to facilitate the study of these treatises by students whose knowledge of Greek remained inadequate, there were many Latin translations and commentaries of Galen’s works by Renaissance humanists. We will focus on two commented editions of Galen’s De morborum differentiis/causis, De symptomatum differentiis/causis. The fist one (Lyon, 1540) contains the Latin translation of Guillaume Cop and the commentary by Francois Valleriole, a French physician of Arles. The second one (Paris, 1550) contains the Latin translation and commentary by the German humanist Leonhart Fuchs. Our first purpose is to study the relationship of each translator with the Greek langua...