Questions and problems connected to pain will be explored in the following manner. In preparation for every session, students will read a short primary and/or secondary text connected to the actual topic. Once a semester, every student will have to prepare a short summary of one text and present it in the session. For the final evaluation, students will write a short essay connected to a topic discussed during the semester.

The sessions throughout the semester will be divided into five groups: 1) The problem of pain in antiquity – introduction (two sessions), 2) Hippocrates on pain (three sessions), 3) Plato on pain (two sessions), 4) Aristotle on pain (three sessions), 5) Pain between philosophy and medicine (two sessions).

1. Session: Seminar introduction, a general discussion about pain

Reference text: Definition of pain (International Association for the study of pain, https://www.iasp-pain.org/PublicationsNews/NewsDetail.aspx?ItemNumber=10475).

2. Session: Pain in antiquity

Reference texts: Rey (1995), The history of pain (pp. 10-23); Harris (2018), Pain and Medicine in the Classical World (pp. 55-66), Sophocles, Philoctetes (parts)

3. Session: Hippocrates on Pain I: theoretical writings

Reference texts: Hippocrates, The Nature of men (parts), Ancient medicine (parts), On Regimen (parts)

4. Session: Hippocrates on Pain II: practical writings

Reference texts: Hippocrates, Places in man 42, On fractures (parts), Epidemics (parts), Coan praenotions (1-100, 150-200, Loeb pp. 109-127 139-151), Nature of women (1-7, Loeb pp. 193-207)

5. Session: Hippocrates on Pain III: Contemporary discussion

Reference texts: Horden (1999), Pain in Hippocratic Medicine; King (1999), Chronic Pain and the Creation of Narrative; King (2001), What does medicine mean? The pain of being human

6. Session: Plato on Pain I. The birth of the ethical problem of pain

Reference texts: Plato, Gorgias 491e-499e; Philebus 31a-33c, 44a-45e, 51a-53c, 60a-e

7. Session: Plato on Pain II. Place of pain in Plato’s ethical theory

Reference text: Republic 583b-584d; Phaedo 65a-c, 68e–69e, 83c-84b

8. Session: Aristotle on Pain I. Aristotle’s ethics and pain

Reference texts: Nicomachean ethics I. Politics I.1-2, 1253a7-18; Cheng (2018), Aristotle’s vocabulary of pain

9. Session: Aristotle on Pain II. Place of pain in Aristotle’s ethical theory: pain and pleasure

Reference texts: Nicomachean ethics VII. 11-14; Taylor (2008), Pleasure: Aristotle’s Response to Plato.

10. Session: Aristotle on Pain III. Pain, activity, and Eudaimonia

Reference text: Nicomachean ethics X. 1-5. Frede (2016), Pleasure and Pain in Aristotle’s Ethics.

11. Session: Ethical and/versus physiological approach to pain. Formulating the philosophical and medical positions of the discussed texts. Critical evaluation of these positions. Discussion.

12. Session: Broader context of pain in antiquity.

Reference texts: The history of pain (pp. 24-43), Harris (2018), Pain and Medicine in the Classical World (pp. 66-82)

Bibliography

Primary:

Plato, Complete Works. John M. Cooper, D. S. Hutchinson (eds.), 1997.

Barnes, J., The Complete Works of Aristotle: The revised Oxford translation. Princeton, 1984

Jones, W.H.S., Potter, P., and Smith, W. Hippocrates. Loeb edition, 10 vols. Cambridge:

Harvard University Press, 1923-2012.

Secondary:

Aydede M. Pain. 2005. The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Spring 2013 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), URL = .

Budelmann F. “The Reception of Sophocles’ Representation of Physical Pain”, AJPh 128, 2007, 443–467.

Craik, The ‘Hippocratic’ corpus. Content and Context. Routledge 2015

Cheng, W., “Aristotle’s vocabulary of pain”. Philologus. 2018. https://doi.org/10.1515/phil-2018-0008

Frede D., Pleasure and Pain in Aristotle’s Ethics, in R. Kraut (ed.), The Blackwell Guide to Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics. Blackwell Publishing, 2016.

Harris W., Pain and Medicine in the Classical World. In W. Harris, (ed.) Pleasure and Pain in Classical times, 2018.

Konstan (2018), On grief and pain.

Harris (2018), Pain and Medicine in the Classical World.

Millot (2018), Must We Suffer in Order to Stay Healthy Pleasure and Pain in Ancient Medical Literature.

Mann (2018), Pleasure, Pain, and the Unity of the Soul in Plato’s Protagoras.

Horden, P. “Pain in Hippocratic Medicine”, in J. R. Hinnells/R. Porter (eds.), Religion, Health and

Suffering, London 1999, 295–315.

King, D., Experiencing Pain in Imperial Greek Culture. Oxford University Press, 2018.

King, H., “Chronic Pain and the Creation of Narrative,” in Porter, J., ed., Constructions of the Classical Body. Ann Arbor, 1999, 269-286.

Rey, R., The History of Pain. Harvard University Press, 1995.

Scullin, Sarah E., Hippocratic Pain. Publicly Accessible Penn Dissertations. 2012.

Taylor C.C.W., Pleasure: Aristotle’s Response to Plato, in Taylor, C.C.W., Pleasure, Mind, and Soul. Selected Papers in Ancient Philosophy, 2008.

Wilson, N. “The Semantics of Pain in Greco-Roman Antiquity”, in Journal of the History of the Neurosciences, 2013.