Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Notes on contributors
- Note on conventions
- Preface
- Introduction
- 1 Galen's library
- 2 Conventions of prefatory self-presentation in Galen's On the Order of My Own Books
- 3 Demiurge and Emperor in Galen's world of knowledge
- 4 Shock and awe: the performance dimension of Galen's anatomy demonstrations
- 5 Galen's un-Hippocratic case-histories
- 6 Staging the past, staging oneself: Galen on Hellenistic exegetical traditions
- 7 Galen and Hippocratic medicine: language and practice
- 8 Galen's Bios and Methodos: from ways of life to path of knowledge
- 9 Does Galen have a medical programme for intellectuals and the faculties of the intellect?
- 10 Galen on the limitations of knowledge
- 11 Galen and Middle Platonism
- 12 ‘Aristotle! What a thing for you to say!’ Galen's engagement with Aristotle and Aristotelians
- 13 Galen and the Stoics, or: the art of not naming
- Bibliography
- Index
3 - Demiurge and Emperor in Galen's world of knowledge
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 06 August 2010
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Notes on contributors
- Note on conventions
- Preface
- Introduction
- 1 Galen's library
- 2 Conventions of prefatory self-presentation in Galen's On the Order of My Own Books
- 3 Demiurge and Emperor in Galen's world of knowledge
- 4 Shock and awe: the performance dimension of Galen's anatomy demonstrations
- 5 Galen's un-Hippocratic case-histories
- 6 Staging the past, staging oneself: Galen on Hellenistic exegetical traditions
- 7 Galen and Hippocratic medicine: language and practice
- 8 Galen's Bios and Methodos: from ways of life to path of knowledge
- 9 Does Galen have a medical programme for intellectuals and the faculties of the intellect?
- 10 Galen on the limitations of knowledge
- 11 Galen and Middle Platonism
- 12 ‘Aristotle! What a thing for you to say!’ Galen's engagement with Aristotle and Aristotelians
- 13 Galen and the Stoics, or: the art of not naming
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
The Emperor – this world-soul – I saw riding through the city to review his troops. It is indeed a wonderful feeling to see such an individual who, here concentrated into a single point, reaches out over the world and dominates it.
Hegel, 1806The presence of a wise, powerful, skilful and provident creator figure – alternately labelled ‘nature’ (phusis) and ‘demiurge’ (dēmiourgos) – is absolutely key to Galen's thinking, to the medical and philosophical system he constructs and articulates. This figure has, however, not yet been subject to the intensity of scholarly scrutiny that its structural significance demands. This chapter is an attempt to fill in some of these gaps by investigating, in a more focused manner than hitherto, questions about where Galen's notion of nature and the demiurge comes from and about the work it does in his world of knowledge. I examine the intellectual resources that Galen drew on in fashioning his creator, what is traditional and what original in his formulation, and the identity of both its past precedents and the contemporary features it shares, as well as the motivations that he may have had in producing the particular package that he did.
Two specific, and connected, arguments will be put forward, following on from some more general points about Galen's demiurge, his notion of nature, as it appears and functions within his medical system and fits into his wider cultural context.
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- Galen and the World of Knowledge , pp. 59 - 84Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2009
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