TITLE: The healthiness of the human being and of society in the

medical texts

KEYWORDS: Hippocrates, Presocratic philosophy, medicine, politics

ABSTRACT:
After Alcmeon of Crotone and its definition of health as isonomia ton
dynameon, the ideas of health and illness appear in some treatises of
the Corpus Hippoccraticum connected to a political idea or
definition, maybe in a metaphorical way or by claims of an analogon.
Terms such as isonomia, eukrasia, epikrateia, metrios, eumetria,
monarchia, akarthatos, katharsis, —and also dikaios or dike to define
the healthy status of a particular human being—, reflect questions
and natural processes which the archaic and classical philosophers
passionately discussed, and most of them are grounded in different
presocratic considerations of the physis. For example, the concept of
violence (bie, to biaion), the avoidance of radical change (metabole)
recommended to the physician or the problems caused by complete
displacement of a humour (metastasis-epikrateia) play a major role in
medical texts in the diagnosis of a disease, an also in its cure, as we
can read in Peri diates oxeon, Aphorismoi or Peri physios anthropou,
one of the works of the Corpus more linked with Alcmeon,
Empedocles and the Sicilian school; but this very physical processes,
which develop a concrete and specific malady in an individual body,
are parallel to those very ones that affect the everyday life of the
common body of the polis (epibole and stasis), as we can see in Plato
´s and Aristotle´s political thought. What we would like to discuss
here is how the presocratic philosophers, the authors of the Corpus
hippocraticum and classical political thinkers wove together a
complex and intrincate net in which the opposition macrocosmos-
microcosmos (understood as the opposition physis-anthropos) and
the opposition polis-anthropos were involved in a continuous
dialogue and redefinition of their conceptual and practical limits.

Jorge Cano Cuenca

Research Fellow at Universidad Carlos III. Madrid.

RÉSUMÉ:
MA in Classical Philology (Universidad Complutense, Madrid).
Member of Institute of Classical Studies on Society and Politics
“Lucio Anneo Seneca” (Universidad Carlos III) and secretary of Res
Publica Litterarum, web review of the Seneca Institute and the
international research group Nomos (Universidad Carlos III.
Madrid.).
He has published several works about Greek philosophy, ancient
medicine and society. Among his editions and translations of Greek
literature, with introduction and notes: Tratados hipocráticos: Sobre
la naturaleza del hombre-Peri physios anthropou (Madrid, Gredos
2003), Plutarco, Vidas Paralelas (Lisandro-Sila) Vol. V (Madrid,
Gredos 2007), Marco Aurelio, A sí mismo (Madrid, Edaf 2008),
Epicuro, Carta a Meneceo (Madrid, Sietenanos, 2007).
He is now working on his PhD in Classical Philology under the
direction of Prof. Francisco Lisi (Universidad Carlos III de Madrid)
about the relationship between philosophy and medicine in
presocratic thought and in Plato. Also he works in a project, with
funding from Madrid Government, of edition, translation and
commentary of Plato’s Laws.

CONTACT ADDRESS:
Universidad Carlos III de Madrid
Edificio 17, "Ortega y Gasset". 17.2.43 
Calle Madrid 133, 28903 Getafe (Madrid) Spain
jccuenca@hum.uc3m.es