Galen's Anatomy of the Soul

This paper presents the first half of a two-part investigation into the nature and coherence of Galen's philosophical psychology. In it, I shall consider Galen's account of the structure of the soul, his vigorous defence of a Platonic tripartitional psychology in contrast to the unifying account of the Stoics, paying particular attention to his attempted demonstrations of the distinctness and various locations of the soul's parts, and to the epistemological and methodological principles he brings to bear in this effort. Part of the purpose of this will be to demonstrate in some detail how Galen's twin professions of philosopher and physiologist combine to inform his particular treatment of these issues. In the second part,' I shall turn to the moral aspects of Galen's philosophical psychology, and in particular to his account of the passions, and the question of whether they can be tamed, or whether rather they require root-and-branch eradication; and I shall attempt to show how Galen's physicalism is to be made compatible with his belief that, at least in their general condition, our passions, and the extent to which we are the slaves of them, are up to us. From all of this, I hope, there will emerge a picture of Galen engaged in what Fodor has called 'speculative psychology',2 that is the attempt to steer a middle course between a purely empirical and hence potentially impoverished approach to the science of psychology on the one hand, and an overly aprioristic and rationalistic psychology of the mind carried through with no regard for empirical adequacy on the other. And, I hold, Galen engaged in it in a sophisticated manner for, properly carried out, such a project need be neither bad science nor inadequate philosophy, but indeed the only fruitful and intelligent way of going about either.3