Philip van der Eijk, Alexander von Humboldt Professor of Classics and History of Science at Humboldt University, Berlin, will deliver a talk on, "The place of disease in a teleological world-view: Plato, Aristotle, Stoicism, Galen."
How is the phenomenon of disease accommodated and accounted for in a world-view according to which there is a meaning or a design underlying the natural world and in which everything, or at least most things, happen for a good purpose? Is disease perceived to pose a problem to the belief in a teleological world order? Or is it invested with a meaning or purpose of its own, and regarded as a means towards something good? To what extent is ‘making sense of suffering’ an acceptable option? These are perennial questions that have been discussed in a number of philosophical and religious belief systems across the world, both past and present. This presentation will examine how these questions were dealt with in the Graeco-Roman world.
First, we will consider the relevant views on the physics and metaphysics of disease as expressed in some literary sources and by Greek medical writers of the classical period; then we will concentrate on those Greek thinkers who set out the most comprehensive and systematic teleological accounts of the natural world while at the same time devoting explicit consideration to the nature and origins of disease: the philosophers Plato and Aristotle, who provided theoretical accounts of the occurrence of imperfection in a providentially organized universe; and the Stoics, who developed a range of different answers to the question of how to account for evil and suffering in a world in which divine providence rules universally and in which there is no room for chance or contingency. Finally, we will look at the practising doctor Galen, who was confronted with the occurrence of disease and disability on a daily basis, yet firmly adhered to the Platonic-Aristotelian belief in a divine world order in which nature does nothing in vain.
A pre-circulated paper will be emailed to those who register for the event.