Galen of Pergamum (129-c. 219) was one of the most important figures of his times for science, medicine and critical thinking.
Although normally placed in the area of ancient medicine, Galen may serve as a striking example of a philosopher-physician, a role which he avidly took on in light of an ideal articulated in one of Aristotle’s minor works.
What has emerged in the booming research into ancient medicine of the last three decades has transformed our understanding of this medical genius and his tactics of self-presentation.
“We may know him as the personal physician to emperor Marcus Aurelius, but my talk will highlight a few other interesting aspects of his life, which reveal how much he was also a competent philosopher and shrewd spin doctor,” Professor Han Baltussen, the lecturer explains.
Han baltussen is the Hughes Professor of Classics at the University of Adelaide and a Fellow of the Australian Academy of the Humanities.
He has published on a wide range of topics in intellectual history and is the author of Theophrastus On Theories of Perception (2000), Philosophy and Exegesis in Simplicius (2008) and has also edited several collections of essays, one on ancient philosophical commentaries, another on ancient consolations.
He is currently finalising an edited volume entitled The Art of Veiled Speech. Self-censorship from Aristophanes to Hobbes (with PJ Davis, expected June 2015), and preparing a monograph on grief and consolation in antiquity. His latest project involves a collaborative study of Stoic influences on the political thinking in the Enlightenment.
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