ABSTRACT
This chapter develops an innovative conceptualisation of the substance of black bile, as it developed in Galenic-Hippocratic humoural theory and served as the basis for the subsequent tradition. It works out an understanding of black bile as an imaginary reference point carrying the content of experiences of finitude. Drawing on ancient Greek medical and philosophical texts, and building on an extensive analysis of the role of black bile in humoural theory, it argues that the success of humoural theory, black bile, and melancholy, as well as melancholy’s persistent connection to philosophy, should be understood in light of the analogical role that black bile plays as the expression of the experience of finitude, in a tradition focused on becoming like god. This chapter also constructs an outline of melancholy experience based on its analysis of the black bile, and serves to introduce the language of melancholy, which will be used as an essential hermeneutical tool to approach the tradition on melancholy throughout the rest of the book.
