‘Our Common Breath: “Conspiration” from the Stoics to the Christian Church Fathers’

Horky, Phillip Sidney

Abstract

This essay tracks a brief history of the concept of ‘co-breathing’ or ‘conspiration’ (συμπνοία), from its initial conception in Stoic cosmology in the third century BCE to its appropriation in Christian thought at the end of the second century CE. This study focuses on two related strands: first, how the term gets associated anachronistically with two paradigmatic philosopher-physicians, Hippocrates and Pythagoras, by intellectuals in the Early Roman Empire; and second, how the same term provides the early Church Fathers with a means to synthesize and explain discrete notions of ‘breath’ (πνεῦμα) through a repurposing of the pagan concept. Sources discussed include figures associated with Stoic, Pythagorean, and early Christian cosmologies.

Citation

Horky, P. S. (2021). ‘Our Common Breath: “Conspiration” from the Stoics to the Christian Church Fathers’. In C. Saunders, J. MacNaughton, & D. Fuller (Eds.), The Life of Breath in Literature, Culture and Medicine Classical to Contemporary (55-68). Palgrave Macmillan. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-74443-4_3

• Online Publication Date: Oct 5, 2021
• Publication Date: Oct 2, 2021
• Deposit Date: May 19, 2020
• Publicly Available Date: Oct 5, 2021
• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Pages: 55-68
• Series Title: Palgrave Studies in Literature, Science and Medicine
• Edition: 1st ed.
• Book Title: The Life of Breath in Literature, Culture and Medicine Classical to Contemporary
• ISBN: 9783030744427
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-74443-4_3
• Public URL: https://durham-repository.worktribe.com/output/1628514
• Contract Date: May 5, 2020