Philosophical Fight Log: Day 13-A Sound Mind in a Sound Body
“The gym is medicine…Training is medicine.” -Tyson Fury[1]
If one studies the history of the classical world, particularly the history of classical education, one will fast encounter the notion of ‘mens sana in corpore sano,’ Latin for ‘a sound mind in a sound body.’ For classical Romans and Greeks alike, this concept, of an inextricable metaphysical union between mind and body, was regarded as both supremely self-evident and good commonsense. Health, for classical Greeks and Romans was therefore predicated upon this hylomorphic conception of the human person as mind and body, therefore making exercise, nutrition, sport, and attendance to the physical body a necessary and essential requirement of one’s overall mental and psychological flourishing and well-being. Accordingly, education of both the Greek and Roman citizen was properly understood as education of the whole person, body, mind, and soul, and not just the training of the mind exclusively for accumulation of rote book knowledge or for the ability to manage symbols and abstractions in the head.
Socrates, for instance, in addition to being a philosopher, was also known for being a wrestler in his youth as well as for being a valiant and courageous warrior who fought barefoot in the snow. Aristotle, in addition to teaching logic and philosophy at the Lyceum, famously made his students train with Olympic wrestlers in order that they may cultivate not just flourishing intellects but flourishing bodies as well. And the Stoics of course (Epictetus, Seneca, Marcus Aurelius) likewise emphasized the importance of training the body as well as the mind as a means of cultivating inner character, so as long as such cultivation was done with the proper balance. To quote Musonius Rufus,
Since a human being happens to be neither soul alone nor body alone, but a composite of these two things, someone in training must pay attention to both. He should, rightly pay more attention to the better part, namely the soul, but he should also take care of the other parts, or part of him will become defective. The philosopher’s body also must be well prepared for work because often virtues use it as a necessary tool for the activities of life.[2]
This ethic of ‘a sound mind in a sound body,’ is all but wholly absent in our present-day Western paradigm of what constitutes both health and education. Living in the wake of the errors of Descartes, who conceived of the totality of the human person as little more than a disembodied intellect, as well as the accumulated errors of modernism more generally, which largely conceived of man as little more than deterministic mechanism, Western man’s conception of both human education and human health have been plagued, for several centuries now, with a kind metaphysical lopsidedness tending disproportionately towards the head and to the radical neglect of attendance to the health, flourishing, and metaphysical primacy of the body.
One of the ill consequences of this modernist/Cartesian paradigm within our institutions of both health and education has been the default tendency for so-called ‘experts’ to see and treat the human person as a kind of disembodied, mechanical brain, dragging the body behind it as some sort of vestigial organ and complete afterthought. The 21st century, gig-economy, with its increasing tendency towards urbanism, commuting, sedentariness, artificial lighting, artificial environments, screens, and ‘knowledge work’ has likewise exacerbated and further reinforced this conception of the one-dimensional, disembodied human person. Accordingly, if this is our conception of the human person, of human nature, and of human flourishing, then our understanding of what constitutes illness and disease as well as proper sources and symptoms of illness or wellness will necessarily follow suit.
Enter Big Pharma, Big Psychiatry, Big Psychology, Big Medicine, and Big Education to now come up with a million and one contrived, erroneous, and self-perpetuating theories, ideas, and quack treatments as to why modern-day man is increasingly fat, sad, lonely, depressed, anxious, suicidal, restless, listless, and lacking any semblance of meaning in his life.
‘Maybe it’s a serotonin imbalance and you just need these prescription pills.’
‘Maybe you’re sad and depressed because you are eating too much red meat and eggs and aren’t getting enough processed grains and synthetic vegan meals.’[3]
‘Maybe obesity, biology, and ‘health’ are all social constructs anyhow and you can just decide that you are fit and healthy if you simply choose so.’
And so on…
Or, maybe the human body and the human person have a nature; one that was meant to move, to labor, to eat real food, to be outdoors, in actual sunlight, in fresh air, with other people, exerting immediate physical agency in one’s immediate physical world, and to not simply exist as a disembodied head in some soulless, antiseptic cubicle-farm so that the faceless shareholders of the faceless corporation can just get richer. Maybe the human body and the human form was built for something greater, nobler, and more dignified. And maybe that inner knowledge, deep in our bones, of the denial, suppression, and atrophying of those latent physical capacities and potentials within each of us, pushing ceaselessly on the back of our hearts, reminding us that we can be more, that we are more; maybe that is the source of the bulk of modern man’s physical as well as psychological ailments. Maybe then, we all need to radically re-inhabit our bodies.
And maybe what most of us need, are less meds… and more scars.
[2] https://modernstoicism.com/show-me-your-shoulders-the-stoic-workout/
Musonius Rufus: Lectures and Sayings, trans. Cynthia King (CreateSpace.com, 2011), 63, Lecture 6.