ABSTRACT
In his Tusculanae disputationes (Tusculan Disputations, 45 bce), Cicero associated the notion of philosophy as a therapy of the mind (medicina animi) with the Stoics, “especially Chrysippus.” In doing so, Chrysippus had compared mental health (sanitas animi) – perhaps with too much emphasis (nimium operae), in Cicero’s opinion – to the sound condition of the body (4.23). In his De placitis Hippocratis et Platonis (On the opinions of Hippocrates and Plato), written between 162 and 176, Galen (129–216?), too, attributed the analogy of mental and physical health to Chrysippus (5.22). Francis Bacon (1561–1626), who was well acquainted with these Ciceronian and Galenic loci, reinterpreted the Stoic analogy in such a way that the medical element involved in the original metaphor shifted even more towards the literal referent: rather than being the healing subject, the mind was the object that needed to be healed. The remedy did not therefore lie in the individual exercise of the rational faculties, but in the outside world, the life of the body, a more balanced use of the senses and, finally, in engaging with the challenges of political reality. This meant that, in the Baconian treatment of the mind, Chrysippus gave way to Galen. Significantly, Galen had criticized Chrysippus and his followers because, unlike the physicians, the Stoics had failed to indicate in what ways the knowledge of the soul could find useful applications in the domains of moral and political philosophy (Galen 2012: 94). Here it should be pointed out that Bacon’s redefinition of the Stoic therapy was possible because, starting from the sixteenth century, a parallel movement of Galenic revival had accompanied the recovery of Stoic ideas. Indeed, a valuable source of information about the Stoic treatment of the emotions became available during the Renaissance precisely through the Latin translation of Galen’s De placitis Hippocratis et Platonis. 1
