아비첸나의 의학적 원인론

Abstract

Etiology is an important subject both in philosophy and medicine, and it had been actively discussed in the both fields from antiquity. In ancient Greece, Aristotle and the Stoics had developed philosophical etiology which made a great contribution to establish medical etiology. Galen developed a more systematic medical etiology based on these philosophical etiology. Although he accepted both Aristotelian and Stoic etiology, he applied each of them to different fields of medicine. Underlining final cause among four causes of Aristotle, he applied it to physiology which aims at explaining various bodily functions. On the other hand, he applied the Stoic etiology, which focuses on explaining sequential causality among phenomena, to pathology. Despite his great respect for Aristotle and Galen, Avicenna valued neither Aristotelian etiology nor Stoic etiology. What he most highly valued in his medical etiology was what he called an essential cause. Although Aristotelian and Stoic etiology is philosophical one, it is noteworthy in terms of medical etiology as they served as a theoretical tool for approaching medical cause in a systematic way. However, they are not satisfactory for dealing with medical issues for initially they were not made for medical problems, but for philosophical problems. As a result, it was required that an medical etiology should be made which can meet the internal requirements of medicine. An essential cause of Avicenna is the concept which was designed to satisfy these requirements.