Mental Disorders in Ancient Philosophy by Marke Ahonen (review)

Abstract

Reviewed by: Mental Disorders in Ancient Philosophy by Marke Ahonen Chiara Thumiger Marke Ahonen. Mental Disorders in Ancient Philosophy. Studies in the History of Philosophy of Mind, 13. Heidelberg: Springer, 2014. Pp. xi, 265. $129.00. ISBN 978–3–319–03430–0. This book tackles the topic of mental disorder and its representations, a fundamental one in cultural studies, by clearly delimiting its territory to a more technical, and so far a less explored, area: how ancient philosophers identified and interpreted mental disorder, its causes, cures, and status in human moral and spiritual life. Ahonen’s material ranges from Plato to the late antique, and follows a chronological order. Ahonen’s dedicated focus on philosophy is indeed missing from scholarship on mental pathology in the ancient world, at least in monographic form, with Jackie Pigeaud’s important La maladie de l’âme. Étude sur la relation de l’âme et du corps dans la tradition médico-philosophique antique (Paris 1981) being the nearest predecessor to the present work. This book therefore falls in an area in which comprehensive discussions are much needed. Ahonen’s program is both more systematic and inclusive and less deep than Pigeaud’s, which explains also her lack of engagement (at first sight surprising) with this important book. While Pigeaud explored in depth the relationship between medicine and philosophy, in her survey Ahonen focuses on philosophical sources somehow traditionally defined. She includes two chapters (neatly confined to Hippocratic texts and Galen) and an appendix discussing medical texts; she is not, however, so interested in interrogating the exchanges or areas of contact between medicine and philosophy (a topic that has attracted much scholarly attention lately). The simplifications I have just underlined, however, are in my view imposed by what is the real strength of the book, its completeness in reviewing the relevant philosophical figures and texts. If we judge it on this criterion, this book is indeed a precious instrument for scholars in the history of philosophy and the history of medicine, but also an instructive survey for cultural historians dealing with the ancient world, cataloguing for the first time with such a degree of thoroughness the key philosophical developments on the topic. The intended audience is in fact not necessarily philosophical: helpful introductions and summaries are offered, and Greek words are transliterated, making this material accessible outside the narrower world of classicists and ancient historians. In terms of content, the book is divided into six main chapters discussing the topic of mental disorder in various philosophical figures (and, partly, in the medical tradition), and is complemented by two appendices. The introduction widely surveys the previous scholarly literature, without engaging deeply with its theoretical and methodological positions but succeeding in offering a clear bibliographical status quaestionis. The second chapter explores the “medical background,” Hippocratic and nontechnical ideas on mental disorder: this section [End Page 436] was not entirely justified by the concept of the monograph, given its distinction between “philosophy” and “medicine,” and so it remains somewhat unintegrated within the rest of the discussion. It offers useful information, however: readers from exclusively philosophical backgrounds will find here a valuable contextualization. Chapter 3 discusses key Platonic texts on our topic (Phaedrus, Timaeus, Republic, and Laws). Chapter 4 moves on to Aristotle, surveying his categories of melancholikoi and manikoi, his discussion of akrasia in EN 7, and Probl. 31.1 on melancholia. Chapter 5 is devoted to the Stoics, and the idea of a “madness of all mankind” which is more metaphorical and less directly medical than that of the thinkers surveyed thus far. The following chapter returns to a fully medical perspective, discussing Galen and his ideas on mental disturbances and their physiology (as well as philosophical therapies of the flaws of the soul). Chapter 7 focuses on discussions of “other philosophical traditions”: Skeptic, Epicurean, Middle- and Neo-platonic authors, and commentators on Aristotle. This is rather succinct and useful especially as a stocktaking of key references. The book ends with two appendices, one on homosexuality in Aristotle and Caelius Aurelianus, and one on the topos of madness in the tradition of biographies of philosophers. The first is informative on a very rich cultural document; it would...