The Concept of Pneuma after Aristotle

Description

This volume explores the versatility of the concept of pneuma in philosophical and medical theories in the wake of Aristotle’s physics. It offers fourteen separate studies of how the concept of pneuma was used in a range of physical, physiological, psychological, cosmological and ethical inquiries. The focus is on individual thinkers or traditions and the specific questions they sought to address, including early Peripatetic sources, the Stoics, the major Hellenistic medical traditions, Galen, as well as Proclus in Late Antiquity and John Zacharias Aktouarios in the early 14th century. Building on new scholarly approaches and on recent advancements in our understanding of Graeco-Roman philosophy and medicine, the volume prompts a profound re-evaluation of this fluid and adaptable, but crucially important, substance, in antiquity and beyond. Introduction Soul and Pneuma in De spiritu Strato of Lampsacus on Pneuma Aristotle's Second Breath: Pneumatic Processes in the Natural Problems (On Sexual Intercourse) Ideas of Pneuma in Early Hellenistic Medical Writers The Pneumatic Theories of Erasistratus and Asclepiades Cleanthes’ Pneumatology. Two Testimonies from Tertullian The Physics of Pneuma in Early Stoicism Pneuma and the Pneumatist School of Medicine Galen on Pneuma: Between Metaphysical Speculation and Anatomical Theory One Part of a Teleological Whole: Galen's Account of the Lung as an Instrument of Pneumatic Elaboration How the Soul Affects the Body: Pneumatic Tension, Psychic Tension and Megalopsychia in Galen Proclus on the Pneumatic Ochema Theories on Pneuma in the Work of the Late Byzantine Physician John Zacharias Aktouarios Index of Ancient Sources Index of Names General Index