The papers published in this volume will be useful to philosophers, classicists, doctors and medical professionals. They examine issues and problems of philosophy and medicine from within the prism of the tradition of ancient Greek philosophy and medicine and from within the contemporary context.
In the Hellenic tradition which lasted for several millennia, these two disciplines, mainly as arts, were considered as the two most important parts of a doctor's and a philosopher's theoretical education and practice. However, in our times given the significance of technological progress and its application in medicine and how this may pose a danger that man, as patient, may be treated as an object and no longer as a person, we can conclude that inquiry into the correlation of medicine and philosophy can only contribute to the betterment of man's state of affairs.
The issues that are examined in the texts which are published in these two volumes not only concentrate on the relation of medicine to philosophy in general, but they also consider a wide range of particular problems of scholarly importance such as the following:
Pre-Socratic philosophers and medicine; Socrates as physician of the soul; Plato, medicine and mental health; Plato's views on disease of the body and the soul in the Symposium, Timaeus, and other dialogues; Plato and psychopathology and particularly Plato and Freud; Hippocratic texts and the importance of Hippocratic medicine for the consideration of moral problems; Aristotle's view of the passions, medicine, ethics, and entelecheia as a paradigm for today's health problems; Stoic views on suicide and assisted death; dreams and therapy; music and therapy; Galen's views on philosophy and medicine and his thoughts on the powers of man; and finally, a theme that was present throughout the conference: what are the criteria for health and can we speak of criteria for physical, political and moral health?
The articles in the present volume should be studied in conjunction with the papers contained in the second volume on the Philosophy and Medicine .