Elena, Palamede e l’enigma della colpa: percezione, emozione, volontà

Gorgias’ two speeches Encomium of Helen and Defense of Palamedes face, from different points of view, the problem of free will, deliberation and responsibility. While Palamedes is introduced as hero of the kratos, Helen can be considered as a victim of persuasion and erotic passion. My aim is to analyze Gorgias’ emphasis on sight and hearing as perceptions related to the origin of our actions: powerful perceptions can give rise to violent emotions and force people to change their nature, becoming different from what they previously were. By focusing on the Hippocratic medicine and ancient doctrines about the physiology of perception, we can shed new light on the arguments used by Gorgias in order to defend Helen overwhelmed by the seduction of logos and eros. What the Sophist is mainly interested in is the connection between perception, emotion, and our consequent disposition to act.

Heraclitus and Hippocrates: the Paradigm of the Elements

The article analyses the remaining fragments and testimonies of Heraclitean philosophy and their connection with Hippocratic medicine. It is claimed that both schools belong to the same philosophical-scientific paradigm of the elements. Therefore, theoretical insights of the school of Cos might well serve explaining complicated and often difficult to interpret Heraclitean thoughts. Moreover, it is plausible that parts of Corpus Hippocraticum were written under the influence of the Heraclitean philosophy and therefore its analysis and interpretative application allows us to partially reconstruct the fragmented Heraclitean ideas into the single unified system. The article uses comparative analysis of both thinking traditions in regard to psychological, ethical, physiological, cosmological, and medical ideas. Similarities in explaining human nature are revealed. It is shown that science (medicine) and philosophy in Antiquity use the same paradigmatic utterances to describe reality. Therefore, there are many mutual interconnecting principles between early philosophy and medicine.

No Longer Home: The Smellscape of Mexico City, 1500–1600

During the course of the sixteenth century, the Aztec (or Mexica) city of Tenochtitlan-Tlatelolco (present-day Mexico City) was transformed from a sweet-smelling lacustrine city into a foul one, the direct result of the Spanish invasion (1519–21). This article reconstructs both the sources of odors and culturally situated ideas about smell among the city’s Nahuatl-speaking residents. They are opposed to the ideas about smell held by settler colonists, derived from the framework of Hippocratic medicine. These imported ideas about acceptable smells (like those of urban slaughterhouses) and dangerous smells (swamps) came to have disastrous consequences as they played out in the unique environment of the Basin of Mexico.

Pre-hippocratic medicine

nema

CIENCIA, FILOSOFÍA Y TEKHNE. LA INFLUENCIA PRESOCRÁTICA EN LA FILOSOFÍA BIOLÓGICA DE LOS HIPOCRÁTICOS

Resumen En este artículo queremos estudiar la influencia de la filosofía presocrática en el pensamiento biológico del Corpus Hippocraticum. Comenzamos definiendo lo que entendemos por medicina hipocrática, así como su carácter bifronte (conocimiento y “arte”). A continuación, trazamos una línea de demarcación entre saber científico (o precientífico) y saber filosófico a partir de la Teoría del Cierre Categorial de Gustavo Bueno. A partir de aquí analizamos las diversas escuelas de pensamiento presocráticas y sus influencias en el Corpus. Abstract In this article we want to study the influence of the pre-Socratic philosophy in the biological thinking of the Corpus Hippocraticum. We begin by defining what we understand by Hippocratic medicine, as well as its bifronte character (knowledge and “art”). Next, we draw a line of demarcation between scientific (or pre-scientific) knowledge and philosophical knowledge based on Gustavo Bueno’s Theory of Category Closure. From here we analyze the various presocratic schools of thought and their influences in the Corpus. Palabras claves: Categorial, Elemento, Humor, Medicina Hipocrática, Physis, Presocráticos, Tekhne. Key words: Categorial, Element, Humor, Hypocritical Medicine, Physis, Presocratics, Tekhne.