Galen and the Arabic Reception of Plato's Timaeus


Book Description

Examines how Galen and his medieval Arabic successors invoke Plato's Timaeus to reimagine medicine and philosophy.




Galen and the Arabic Reception of Plato's Timaeus


Book Description

This first full-length study of the Arabic reception of Plato's Timaeus considers the role of Galen of Pergamum (129–c. 216 CE) in shaping medieval perceptions of the text as transgressing disciplinary norms. It argues that Galen appealed to the entangled cosmological scheme of the dialogue, where different relations connect the body, soul, and cosmos, to expand the boundaries of medicine in his pursuit for epistemic authority – the right to define and explain natural reality. Aileen Das situates Galen's work on disciplinary boundaries in the context of medicine's ancient rivalry with philosophy, whose professionals were long seen as superior knowers of the cosmos vis-à-vis doctors. Her case studies show how Galen and four of the most important Christian, Muslim, and Jewish thinkers in the Arabic Middle Ages creatively interpreted key doctrines from the Timaeus to reimagine medicine and philosophy as well as their own intellectual identities.




Galen and the World of Knowledge


Book Description

This study places Galen more firmly in the intellectual life of his period of the second century AD.




Calcidius on Plato's Timaeus


Book Description

This is the first study to assess in its entirety the fourth-century Latin commentary on Plato's Timaeus by the otherwise unknown Calcidius, also addressing features of his Latin translation. The first part examines the authorial voice of the commentator and the overall purpose of the work; the second part provides an overview of the key themes; and the third part reassesses the commentary's relation to Stoicism, Aristotle, potential sources, and the Christian tradition. This commentary was one of the main channels through which the legacy of Plato and Greek philosophy was passed on to the Christian Latin West. The text, which also establishes a connection between Plato's cosmology and Genesis, thus represents a distinctive cultural encounter between the Greek and the Roman philosophical traditions, and between non-Christian and Christian currents of thought.




From Stoicism to Platonism


Book Description

This book explores the process during 100 BCE-100 CE by which dualistic Platonism became the reigning school in philosophy.




Galen: On Diseases and Symptoms


Book Description

Galen's treatises on the classification and causation of diseases and symptoms are an important component of his prodigious oeuvre, forming a bridge between his theoretical works and his practical, clinical writings. As such, they remained an integral component of the medical teaching curriculum well into the second millennium. This edition was originally published in 2006. In these four treatises (only one of which had been previously translated into English), Galen not only provides a framework for the exhaustive classification of diseases and their symptoms as a prelude to his analysis of their causation, but he also attempts to establish precise definitions of all the key terms involved. Unlike other of his works, these treatises are notably moderate in tone, taking into account different views on structure and causation in a relatively even-handed way. Nonetheless, they are a clear statement of the Dogmatic position on the theoretical foundations of medicine in his time.




Brill's Companion to the Reception of Galen


Book Description

Brill’s Companion to the Reception of Galen presents a comprehensive account of the afterlife of the corpus of the second-century AD Greek physician Galen of Pergamum. In 31 chapters, written by a range of experts in the field, it shows how Galen was adopted, adapted, admired, contested, and criticised across diverse intellectual environments and geographical regions, from Late Antiquity to the present day, and from Europe to North Africa, the Middle and the Far East. The volume offers both introductory material and new analysis on the transmission and dissemination of Galen’s works and ideas through translations into Latin, Syriac, Arabic, Hebrew and other languages, the impact of Galenic thought on medical practice, as well as his influence in non-medical contexts, including philosophy and alchemy.




Plato's Academy


Book Description

A comprehensive, interdisciplinary history of Plato's Academy, the most prominent philosophical school in antiquity, which lasted for about 300 years. Also includes the first complete annotated translation in English of Philodemus' History of the Academy, preserved on a papyrus from Herculaneum.




Body and Soul in Hellenistic Philosophy


Book Description

Philosophers and doctors from the period immediately after Aristotle down to the second century CE were particularly focussed on the close relationships of soul and body; such relationships are particularly intimate when the soul is understood to be a material entity, as it was by Epicureans and Stoics; but even Aristotelians and Platonists shared the conviction that body and soul interact in ways that affect the well-being of the living human being. These philosophers were interested in the nature of the soul, its structure, and its powers. They were also interested in the place of the soul within a general account of the world. This leads to important questions about the proper methods by which we should investigate the nature of the soul and the appropriate relationships among natural philosophy, medicine, and psychology. This volume, part of the Symposium Hellenisticum series, features ten scholars addressing different aspects of this topic.




Plato and the Divided Self


Book Description

Investigates Plato's account of the tripartite soul, looking at how the theory evolved over the Republic, Phaedrus and Timaeus.