Medicine and Practical Ethics in Galen

Galen was notable in the ancient world for his creative intermingling of medicine and practical ethics. This book is the first authoritative analysis of Galen’s psychological and ethical works alongside a large number of his technical tracts, both medical and philosophical, and offers a robust framework through which we can comprehend his role as a practical ethicist – an aspect of his intellectual profile that has been little understood until now. Sophia Xenophontos explores a wide range of literature on moralia in the Roman Imperial period, as well as topics including the pathology of emotions, the social role of medicine, and character formation and social ethics, to show the sophisticated and complex ways in which moral themes and controversies from antiquity were adapted and reinvigorated by Galen. This title is also available as open access on Cambridge Core.

Sophia Xenophontos is Associate Professor of Ancient Greek Literature at the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki. She is the author of Ethical Education in Plutarch: Moralising Agents and Contexts (2016) and Georgios Pachymeres’ Commentary on Aristotle’s ‘Nicomachean Ethics’: Critical Edition with Introduction and Translation (2022).