Sir Anthony Kenny was not a big-name figure. A wonderful scholar, he wrote an honest and moving account of his journey into and out of the priesthood – A Path from Rome.
Amongst his many distinctions, it was Kenny who conferred the Oxford doctorate on the young Fr Anthony Fisher OP. Kenny died last month, though his interest in life’s biggest questions will make for years of good reading.
In 1969 Kenny gave a famous lecture, arguing that the philosopher Plato had invented the concept of mental health. Plato would have known a rich body of medical theory and practice in ancient Athens.
Just as we talk of bodily illness, Plato pondered whether we could describe problems of the soul or mind as mental illness. This was the first time anyone had seriously thought about “mental health”: inner balance or harmony of soul.
Plato thought of good mental balance as, surprisingly, “justice”. As medicine makes our bodies well, justice or harmony between emotions, passions and reason makes our souls well.
This sounds funny to us. Justice is surely about the parts of the state working together for social harmony. But Plato is saying this is also a good way of looking at ourselves: all parts of our mind working together for mental harmony.
We understand mental health as “psychological” today. But “psyche” is simply the Greek word for the soul – good mental health requires soul-care, not just medical care.
Full mental health involves moral and spiritual concepts, not just medical concepts. We sometimes think that all illness – bodily and mental – is out of our hands, an unfortunate condition I suffer from. Yes, and no.
Some conditions we do just suffer, others we may contribute to by our choices. Nobody thinks mental illness is my own fault. But perhaps Plato was right that a well-balanced soul requires not just medical cure but moral care.
We certainly know much more today about the role spiritual and ethical thought plays in human balance and flourishing.
If we over-medicalise human experience and behaviour, we may shrink the space for virtue and self-knowledge. Medicine has huge benefits for human happiness, virtue even more.
And Plato was the first to look at how these two might work together in a good human life.
