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The Health and Perfection of Man

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 July 2024

Pedro Lain Entralgo
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What is health? What is it to be healthy? Our first answer must inevitably be the answer of St. Augustine, when confronted with the theoretical problem of time: “If no one asks me, I know the answer; if I want to explain it to the one who asks me, I do not know it.” In both cases the first sensation of one who aspires to theorizing is that of perplexity. I think, therefore, that this initial perplexity has its source in two principal reasons, capable of reduction to these two assertions: first, the idea of health has a complex structure, and, second, the idea of health has a variable structure. Without a thorough study of this complexity and this variability, the construction of the medical anthropology that our historical level requires would not be possible. We will try to point out the fundamental lines of both.

Type
Research Article
Information
Diogenes , Volume 8 , Issue 31 , September 1960 , pp. 1 - 18
Copyright
Copyright © 1960 Fédération Internationale des Sociétés de Philosophie / International Federation of Philosophical Societies (FISP)

References

1. "Von der Macht des Gemüts durch den blossen Vorsatz seinen krankhaften Gefühle Meister zu sein," in Der Streit der Fakultaten, Book III, Part I.

2. Passages similar to these or complementary in their meaning are found in Gorgias 526 d, Phaedo 89d, Republic iii. 408e, Laws xii. 960d, and Epistle x. 358c. I have studied in some detail the Platonic attitude in confrontation with the problem of the relations be tween sophrosyne and health in "Die Platonische Rationalisierung der Besprechung und die Erfindung der Psychotherapie durch das Wort," Hermes, LXXXVI (1958), 298-323.

3. Galen Quod animi mores corporis temperamenta sequantur c. 11. Similar passages may be seen in the writings De propriorum animi cuiusdam affectum dignotione et curetione and De de cuiuslibet animi peccatorum dignotione et medela. For Galen the "sins" (hamartemata) would be disorders of human nature and therefore incumbent on the doctor.

4. I will be satisfied to copy some lines from the biologist Jean Rostand: "Prolongation of existence, choice of the sex of children, posthumous fertilization, generation without the male parent, transformation of sex, pregnancy in a retort, modification of the organic characters before or after birth, chemical regulation of the temperament and character, genius or virtue on request …, all this appears at present as a proper or possible achieve ment of the science of tomorrow" ("Inquietudes d'un biologiste," in Les Nouvelles lit teraires, XI [1958], 20).

5. Der Aufbau des Organismus (Hagg, 1934), p. 314. Consequently, for Goldstein-as for Lubarsch, Schilling, Aschoff, Grote, and others—health is security and equilibrium, and sickness is disequilibrium and threat (ibid., pp. 266-72).

6. Concerning the function of melancholy in Aristotelian anthropology and in the ulterior vicissitudes of the psychological problem of the genius, see J. Croissant, Aristote et les mystères (Liége and Paris, 1932); H. Flashar, "Die medizinischen Grundlagen der Lehre von der Wirkung der Dichtung in der griechischen Poetik," Hermes, LXXXIV (1956), 12-48; and E. Zilsel, Die Enstehung des Geniebegriffs (Tübingen, 1926).

7. Permit me to use these three words without having historically and systematically studied the meaning of each one. I limit myself to indicating that with the word "spirit" I am referring to the "personal spirit" of each human individual and not to the Geist of the idealist philosophy.

8. Therefore, "doing it." Man "is" personally, in the strict sense of the term, that what of himself he "does" freely. Up to what point can man "make" his own nature? For the time being, making it his own, accepting it. Personally, "I am thin" in the propor tion in which I make "mine"—I accept—my own thinness.

On the notion of "persona" in present-day philosophy see the Ethics of Scheler and the work of X. Zubiri, "The Problem of Man," Index, XII (1958), 3.

9. Fray Luis de Leon was classic and serene in his poetry (and, at that, not always, as Damas Alonso has so ably demonstrated); but at the same time he was melancholic and bilious in his life.

10. "Stücke einer medizinischen Anthropologie," in Arzt und Kranker (Stuttgart, 1949), p. 147; "Nasci hic in corpore mortali, incipere aegrotare est," wrote St. Augustine (En. in Psalmos cii. 6).

11. Medizin in Bewegung (Stuttgart, 1949), p. 486.

12. It is a question, as I say, of a hyperbolic expression and not of a formal thesis. In other parts of his work Ortega qualifies this statement.

13. Concerning the relation between the activity of the doctor and seduction, see J. Rof Carballo, "El Problema del seductor in Kierkegaard, Proust, and Rilke," Cuadernos hispanoamericanos, Nos. 102, 103, 1958.