Abstract
The paradigm of production, which grasps things as products, has supported the ancient Greek as well as the contemporary vision of man that constitutes the foundation of therapeutic practice. Thus, the theme of healing is understood in the light of the paradigm of production and hence of a way of accessing the motility of life according to a detached mode of grasping and discovering the world and the self, theorein, capable of ensuring a stable and enduring form of knowledge. Can the therapeutic care be regulated according to forms of knowledge other than the theoretical one?
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Notes
- 1.
In his commentary on this passage, Reale (2004) aptly quotes the Scholastic formula Nihil potest recipi, nisi praeexistat in patiente ordinatio ad finem, et ideo recipitur actio agentis ad modum recipientis (“Nothing may be received, unless a disposition toward an end is already present in the patient, and therefore the agent’s action is received in the patient’s own manner”).
- 2.
This testimony was first quoted by Diogenes Laertius (Lives of Eminent Philosophers, 1.12); it was then recorded by Cicero in Tusculan Disputations 5.8-9 (45 BC); finally, it came to be included in Iamblichus’ Life of Pythagoras 12.58-59 (early fourth cent. AD).
- 3.
The word sophia originally referred to craftsmanship and to an artisan’s know-how but also to the sphere of musical proficiency. Hesiod instead also uses it to describe sailing expertise. The field of use of the term was later widened to include poetry and, more generally, anything that may be learned and put into practice (see Heidegger, GA 27 1996; Hadot 1995).
- 4.
Pythagoras here may have been referring to the Panhellenic Games which, from 776 BC onward, were held in Olympia every 4 years and which drew vast crowds from every corner of the Greek world. Moreover, many Olympic champions hailed from Croton, the principle headquarters of the Pythagorean school (Riedweg 2005).
- 5.
Reflecting on the beginning of philosophy, Heidegger wrote: “Philosophie nennt nicht das, was da behandelt, erkannt werden solle, sondern das Wie, die Grundart des Verhaltens. Daher sagen wir: Philosophie ist Philosophieren” (p. 25 GA 27 1996: “Philosophy does not name what must be recognized and treated through it, but rather the ‘how’, the fundamental mode of operating. We therefore affirm: philosophy is philosophizing.”).
- 6.
These words may be seen to foreshadow the Stoic maxim “Of things, some are in our power, and others are not” (Epictetus, A Manual for Living 1.1).
- 7.
“If we know this, we can also know how to take care of ourselves” (129 a).
- 8.
These words seem to echo the anxiety of these ancient (palaioi) men who, according to the Cratylus, “always get dizzy as they turn round and round in their search for the nature of things, and then the things seem to them to turn round and round and be in motion” (411b-c).
- 9.
The fickleness of fortune and happiness, like the instability of destiny, made its appearance as a theme in Ionic lyric poetry very early on.
- 10.
A few centuries later—as Hadot notes—while conceiving wisdom in different terms, Hellenistic schools all share the (ancient) view of philosophy as the pursuit of perfect tranquility. Hence, philosophy is envisaged as a “remedy for human worries, anguish, and misery brought about for the Cynics, by social constraints and conventions; for the Epicureans, by the quest for false pleasures; for the Stoics, by the pursuit of pleasure and egoistic self-interest; and for the skeptics, by false opinions” (p. 100, 1995–1998).
- 11.
Besides, even though theorein is conceived as a religious and political practice—i.e., as a mandate issued to some citizens to represent their city at Panhellenic festivals (Wilson Nightingale 2004)—it implies one’s participation as a witness in a series of events that take shape within a “space” which transcends political differences and which therefore entails a kind of suspension of one’s belonging to an individual polis. Wilson Nightingale sums it up as follows: “the defining feature of theoria in its traditional forms is a journey to a region outside the boundaries of one’s own city for the purpose of witnessing some sort of spectacle or learning about the world” (p. 68).
- 12.
The distinction between judgment, desire, and action runs throughout the Classical and Hellenistic world and into the Christian era.
- 13.
As Düring notes, Aristotle’s method of inquiry consists in approaching the same problem from different angles. The formula he uses is “Adopting a different starting point now…” (p. 247).
- 14.
This fragility of human action, which was considered the cause of the weakness of the city state (polis), leads Plato to observe that: “Human things are not worthy of great preoccupation, and to have to take an interest in them, is an unfortunate thing” (Laws 803 b).
- 15.
It is evident, therefore, that any kind of action may be seen to reflect either one of these two modes depending on the context and aim pursued. One example would be competing in a race for the sheer pleasure of doing so and competing in the pursuit of glory and success, as Iamblichus suggests (…).
- 16.
Gadamer translates this as Vernünftigkeit.
- 17.
These sentences still echo the religious thought of the archaic age, which envisaged the struggle between blind passion and discrimination for control over the human heart as the key problem in the education of youth (Jaeger 1944).
- 18.
The issue of the relation between this possibility of envisaging the future and the capacity for discursive reasoning (logos) is a puzzle which arguably has only been solved by Ricoeur’s work.
- 19.
That this was indeed the case would appear to be confirmed by the reception of Aristotle in the fourth and third century BC. The central role assigned to activity, understood as political rather than theoretical activity, was one of the reasons why the Epicureans—and probably Hellenistic schools in general—were so critical of the philosopher. One highly interesting testimony is provided by Philodemus’ anti-Aristotelian polemic (see Berti 2009).
- 20.
Energeia here describes a being that is not yet perfect or complete but is about to become so.
- 21.
Movement, which in this perspective refers to an entity moved by a mover, extends all the way down to that entity which is pure act, sheer actuality devoid of any potentiality and lying beyond any possible change: the unmoved prime mover. The eternity of movement is demonstrated by Aristotle starting from the idea of motion and the phenomenon of time (Phys., IV 219 b 1–7, b 23–25). Complementing this determination of the essence of movement, as a counterpart to the power to act, is the lack of power, steresis. With reference to the power of generation, for example, Aristotle states: “For we cannot claim that the boy, the man and the eunuch are powerless to procreate in the same sense.”
- 22.
The concepts of matter and material are rooted in an understanding of the soul oriented toward production. For otherwise the idea of a material as that starting from which something is produced would remain concealed. The concepts of matter and material—the concept of hyle, which has the notion of morphe, or imprint, as its counterpart—therefore acquire a crucial role in ancient philosophy, not because the Greeks were materialists, but because that of matter is a fundamental ontological notion which necessarily emerges when an entity, be it a product or something which must not be produced, is interpreted within the horizon of the understanding of being inherent to the productive attitude as such (see GA 24 1975 pag 164).
- 23.
The same view has also shaped the perception of man’s being according to those categories which enable us to grasp the meaning of objects, of things that are present and within our reach.
- 24.
Another essential difference concerns generation, since human beings beget human beings but tables do not beget other tables (see Arist. Phys. B1 193 b 8–9).
- 25.
The argument that acts are antecedent to possibilities rests on a supreme entity, the unmoved mover, whose essence is the act of moving. This entity moves things just as desire for the loved one moves the lover.
- 26.
In the Greek world, the term ousia is used to describe both an entity and its being. The ontological perspective, whereby the being of an entity is grasped as the being available of any entity in general, coexists with the common sense (ontic) perspective, whereby ousia is used to describe a specific available entity—in Homer, fishing nets, for instance (see Marx 1961).
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Arciero, G., Bondolfi, G., Mazzola, V. (2018). On the Care Path. In: The Foundations of Phenomenological Psychotherapy. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-78087-0_1
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