Synopses & Reviews
The Symptom and the Subject takes an in-depth look at how the physical body first emerged in the West as both an object of knowledge and a mysterious part of the self. Beginning with Homer, moving through classical-era medical treatises, and closing with studies of early ethical philosophy and Euripidean tragedy, this book rewrites the traditional story of the rise of body-soul dualism in ancient Greece. Brooke Holmes demonstrates that as the body (sôma) became a subject of physical inquiry, it decisively changed ancient Greek ideas about the meaning of suffering, the soul, and human nature.
By undertaking a new examination of biological and medical evidence from the sixth through fourth centuries BCE, Holmes argues that it was in large part through changing interpretations of symptoms that people began to perceive the physical body with the senses and the mind. Once attributed primarily to social agents like gods and daemons, symptoms began to be explained by physicians in terms of the physical substances hidden inside the person. Imagining a daemonic space inside the person but largely below the threshold of feeling, these physicians helped to radically transform what it meant for human beings to be vulnerable, and ushered in a new ethics centered on the responsibility of taking care of the self.
The Symptom and the Subject highlights with fresh importance how classical Greek discoveries made possible new and deeply influential ways of thinking about the human subject.
Review
Brilliant and important, this book tackles nothing less than the discovery of the body as a cultural and conceptual category in Greek antiquity. The book ranges over Homer and archaic poetry, the Sophists, philosophy, tragedy, and--most unusually and originally--the medical writings of the Hippocratic corpus, to construct a compelling account of historical developments.
Review
"Brooke Holmes' volume is a wonderful read that would be enjoyed not only by scholars but also by people interested in the history of ideas in the Greek world. I also think that such a work must be a source for any future analysis of the concepts of person, soul, and body in Greek philosophy and literature."--Octavian Gabor, Bryn Mawr Classical Review
Review
"Historians of ancient medicine and scholars of Greek tragedy will find this carefully documented book of great interest."--M. Lynn Rose, American Historical Review
Review
"This is not the type of book one can read in a single sitting; rather, it is a work one will want to study, reread, and revisit over a period of time. It will no doubt become a point of reference for anyone interested in the body in the ancient world."--Laurence Totelin, Isis
Review
This is a splendid book, deeply researched and meticulously executed; it is also compact, complex, and defiant of efforts to summarize. Laurence Totelin - Isis
Review
The book is a remarkable example of scholarship, and ought to be welcomed by ancient philosophers, particularly those who work in moral psychology and embodiment. -- Aaron James Landry, Philosophy in Review
Review
The book is a remarkable example of scholarship, and ought to be welcomed by ancient philosophers, particularly those who work in moral psychology and embodiment. Ann Ellis Hanson - New England Classical Journal
Review
[A]mbitious and compelling. . . . [R]ichly provocative. Aaron James Landry - Philosophy in Review
Review
Holmes has written a wide-ranging and thorough book on the emergence of the concept of the body as a physical object in Ancient Greece. The primary and secondary sources consulted are extensive . . . making this work most useful for a scholar already knowledgeable in the body soul argument. The language used and the concepts raised make for intense reading at times, but this book provides a systematic analysis of the concept of the body, a frequently ignored part of a significant Greek belief: the body-soul dichotomy. Joel Alden Schlosser - Foucault Studies
Review
Brooke Holmes' volume is a wonderful read that would be enjoyed not only by scholars but also by people interested in the history of ideas in the Greek world. I also think that such a work must be a source for any future analysis of the concepts of person, soul, and body in Greek philosophy and literature. Octavian Gabor
Review
Historians of ancient medicine and scholars of Greek tragedy will find this carefully documented book of great interest. Bryn Mawr Classical Review
Review
This is not the type of book one can read in a single sitting; rather, it is a work one will want to study, reread, and revisit over a period of time. It will no doubt become a point of reference for anyone interested in the body in the ancient world. M. Lynn Rose - American Historical Review
Review
This is a splendid book, deeply researched and meticulously executed; it is also compact, complex, and defiant of efforts to summarize. Laurence Totelin - Isis
Review
Holmes provides a timely new avenue for putting ancient medicine centrally on the map of classical Greek thought. . . . Specialists in ancient medicine should be glad to have such an articulate and intelligent advocate trying not only to bridge the gaps among subfields of Hellenic studies but making connections to Foucault and the 'mind-body problem' that we have inherited . . . from Plato and Descartes. Miriam Bissett - Prudentia Offprint
Review
[I]t is a richly argued and instructive work. . . . [I]ts value lies in its synthesis and breadth of the sources. The material Holmes has gathered, not only medical and philosophical, but also literary, backed by solid bibliographical reference throughout and presented through a thorough examination, is impressive, making the volume a stimulating read from a variety of perspectives. Susan H. Prince - Aestimatio
Synopsis
The Symptom and the Subject takes an in-depth look at how the physical body first emerged in the West as both an object of knowledge and a mysterious part of the self. Beginning with Homer, moving through classical-era medical treatises, and closing with studies of early ethical philosophy and Euripidean tragedy, this book rewrites the traditional story of the rise of body-soul dualism in ancient Greece. Brooke Holmes demonstrates that as the body (sôma) became a subject of physical inquiry, it decisively changed ancient Greek ideas about the meaning of suffering, the soul, and human nature.
By undertaking a new examination of biological and medical evidence from the sixth through fourth centuries BCE, Holmes argues that it was in large part through changing interpretations of symptoms that people began to perceive the physical body with the senses and the mind. Once attributed primarily to social agents like gods and daemons, symptoms began to be explained by physicians in terms of the physical substances hidden inside the person. Imagining a daemonic space inside the person but largely below the threshold of feeling, these physicians helped to radically transform what it meant for human beings to be vulnerable, and ushered in a new ethics centered on the responsibility of taking care of the self.
The Symptom and the Subject highlights with fresh importance how classical Greek discoveries made possible new and deeply influential ways of thinking about the human subject.
Synopsis
"
The Symptom and the Subject is intellectually challenging, beautifully written, deeply thought out, and closely researched in primary and secondary materials. I found myself utterly engrossed by its arguments."
--James I. Porter, University of California, Irvine"Brilliant and important, this book tackles nothing less than the discovery of the body as a cultural and conceptual category in Greek antiquity. The book ranges over Homer and archaic poetry, the Sophists, philosophy, tragedy, and--most unusually and originally--the medical writings of the Hippocratic corpus, to construct a compelling account of historical developments."--Leslie Kurke, University of California, Berkeley
Synopsis
"The Symptom and the Subject is intellectually challenging, beautifully written, deeply thought out, and closely researched in primary and secondary materials. I found myself utterly engrossed by its arguments."--James I. Porter, University of California, Irvine
"Brilliant and important, this book tackles nothing less than the discovery of the body as a cultural and conceptual category in Greek antiquity. The book ranges over Homer and archaic poetry, the Sophists, philosophy, tragedy, and--most unusually and originally--the medical writings of the Hippocratic corpus, to construct a compelling account of historical developments."--Leslie Kurke, University of California, Berkeley
Synopsis
The Symptom and the Subject takes an in-depth look at how the physical body first emerged in the West as both an object of knowledge and a mysterious part of the self. Beginning with Homer, moving through classical-era medical treatises, and closing with studies of early ethical philosophy and Euripidean tragedy, this book rewrites the traditional story of the rise of body-soul dualism in ancient Greece. Brooke Holmes demonstrates that as the body (sôma) became a subject of physical inquiry, it decisively changed ancient Greek ideas about the meaning of suffering, the soul, and human nature.
By undertaking a new examination of biological and medical evidence from the sixth through fourth centuries BCE, Holmes argues that it was in large part through changing interpretations of symptoms that people began to perceive the physical body with the senses and the mind. Once attributed primarily to social agents like gods and daemons, symptoms began to be explained by physicians in terms of the physical substances hidden inside the person. Imagining a daemonic space inside the person but largely below the threshold of feeling, these physicians helped to radically transform what it meant for human beings to be vulnerable, and ushered in a new ethics centered on the responsibility of taking care of the self.
The Symptom and the Subject highlights with fresh importance how classical Greek discoveries made possible new and deeply influential ways of thinking about the human subject.
Synopsis
"
The Symptom and the Subject is intellectually challenging, beautifully written, deeply thought out, and closely researched in primary and secondary materials. I found myself utterly engrossed by its arguments."--James I. Porter, University of California, Irvine
"Brilliant and important, this book tackles nothing less than the discovery of the body as a cultural and conceptual category in Greek antiquity. The book ranges over Homer and archaic poetry, the Sophists, philosophy, tragedy, and--most unusually and originally--the medical writings of the Hippocratic corpus, to construct a compelling account of historical developments."--Leslie Kurke, University of California, Berkeley
About the Author
Brooke Holmes is assistant professor of classics at Princeton University.
Table of Contents
Preface and Acknowledgments ix
Abbreviations xiii
Note on Transliterations and Translations xxiii
INTRODUCTION 1
Symptoms and Subjects 1
Seeing through Symptoms 9
The Physical Imagination 19
Rethinking S?ma and Psukh? 29
Telling Stories 37
CHAPTER ONE: Before the Physical Body 41
Daemonic Violence 48
The Seen and the Felt 58
The Boundaries of the Felt 64
Fear and the Visual Field of the Self 69
How Gods Act 73
The Seen Body and Social Agency 76
Interpreting Disease and Practices of Healing 79
CHAPTER TWO: The Inquiry into Nature and the Physical Imagination 84
Depersonalizing Causes 90
Natural Justice 95
Melissus and the Denial of Body 101
A Community of Objects 108
Bodies, Persons, Knowledge 116
CHAPTER THREE: Incorporating the Daemonic 121
Symptoms at the Th reshold of Seen and Unseen 126
The Interval 130
Explaining Disease 133
The Dynamics of the Cavity 138
The Automatic Body 142
CHAPTER FOUR: Signs of Life and Techniques of Taking Care 148
The Prognostic Symptom: Forces of Life and Death 150
Fragile Life 156
On Ancient Medicine and the Discovery of Human Nature 162
Embodiment, Knowledge, and Technical Agency 171
Taking Care 177
Shoring Up the Self 182
CHAPTER FIVE: Beyond the S?ma: Therapies of the Psukh? 192
Bodily Needs 196
Psychic Desires 202
Gorgias's Encomium to Helen and Human Diseases 211
Psychic Disorder in Democritus 216
CHAPTER SIX: Forces of Nature, Acts of Gods: Euripides' Symptoms 228
The Polysemy of the Symptom 233
Tragedy and the Interval 239
Euripides' Causes: Th e Madness of Heracles 242
Euripides' Causes: Th e Madness of Orestes 246
Realizing Disease in the Hippolytus 252
Daemonic Phusis 260
The Semantics of Suff ering 265
Conclusion 275
Bibliography 281
Index Locorum 325
General Index 349