Resumen de What Is the Role of Pain in Human Life? A Lesson from Classical Greek Philosophy and Medicine
In this paper, I examine the role of pain in classical Greek medicine and philosophy (ca. 450–300 BCE). I explore how Greek physicians and medical authors, whose texts are preserved in the so-called Corpus Hippocraticum, conceptualized pain. I present the role of pain in their explanations of the functioning of the human body, in diagnosis, and in therapy. Furthermore, I demonstrate that the framework for understanding pain used by these physicians can also be recognized in the philosophical ideas of Plato and Aristotle. Both physicians and philosophers are confronted with the question of how to integrate pain into broader theories of a meaningful world. Although it may initially seem that medicine approaches pain significantly differently from philosophy, I show that the basic schema is the same: pain needs to be understood, integrated, and, if possible, utilized for some beneficial purpose. Given that the nature of human life is such that certain positive aspects are necessarily connected to pain (such as childbirth, menstruation, exercise, education, and corrective punishment), the question arises regarding the role of pain, its causes, significance, and meaning. I demonstrate that while physicians and philosophers differ in their specific answers, they share the questions they ask about pain and the field in which they encounter these questions. Thus, this paper not only sheds light on the specific question concerning the role of pain in ancient medicine and philosophy but also, secondarily, on the relationship between these two domains of human knowledge and practice.
