Observing the InvisibleRegimenI on Elemental Powers and Higher Order Dispositions
Tiberiu Popa · British Journal for the History of Philosophy · 2014
This study aims to clarify the role played by higher order dispositions in the context of the explanatory method in Regimen I and of the approach to dietetics in Regimen as a whole. My main claim is that there are two concomitant directions involved in the inquiry carried out in Chaps 25–36 of Regimen I: there is an inferential and revelatory move from premises about complex dispositions (robustness, bravery, intelligence) to the ‘invisible’, that is, to the particular composition of one's body (a mixture of a certain form of fire and a certain form of water, in which water or fire prevails to this or that degree); and there is a causal-explanatory move, based on such inferences, from the powers of elemental varieties and of their combinations to the resulting higher level dispositions.