Phren

Phren (Ancient Greek: φρήν, romanized: phrēn, lit. 'mind'; plural phrenes, φρένες) is an Ancient Greek word for the location of thought or contemplation.[1] Phren is used, for example, to describe where Achilles considered his sadness about losing Briseis and his duty to join the Greeks against Troy.[2] According to Pythagoras it is one of the intellectual capacities that constitute the soul, along with nous (spirit or mind) and thymos (passion).[3] The term is also used to refer to a general psychological agent to which moral blame and praise can be extended.[4]

Phren, however, is not exclusively applied to humans. Some thinkers maintained that it darts through the universe as effluences, in a manner similar to the mechanism of perception introduced by Theophrastus.[5] It then steers and controls the cosmos in the process and is the measure of what is harmonious and what is fit to exist.[5] It is said that it is strongest at the region found beyond the universe where strife reigns and is demonstrated by the status of aether in the Empedocles' system.[5]

The kind of mental activity conducted in the Phren involves what 20th and 21 Century Western thinkers consider both feeling and thinking; scholars have remarked that Ancient Greeks located this activity in the torso as opposed to the head. [2] [6]

Its Latinized form is "fren" and is found in English language words such as schizophrenia, phrenitis, phrenic nerve, phrenology, frenzy, frenetic.[6]

References
  1. Sullivan, Shirley D. (1999). Sophocles, Use of Psychological Terminology: Old and New. Carleton University Press (in 2018 called McGill-Queen's University Press). ISBN 0-88629-343-X.
  2. Scott, Sarah. "Core Vocab: phrēn, phrenes". Kosmos Society: An Online Community for Classical Studies. Harvard University Center for Hellenic Studies. Retrieved 29 April 2018.
  3. Blavatsky, H. P. (2007-08-11). The Key to Theosophy by H.P. Blavatsky. Theosophy Trust Books. ISBN 9780979320576.
  4. Petrovic, Andrej; Petrovic, Ivana (2016). Inner Purity and Pollution in Greek Religion: Volume I: Early Greek Religion. Oxford: Oxford University Press. p. 186. ISBN 9780198768043.
  5. Drozdek, Adam (2016). Greek Philosophers as Theologians: The Divine Arche. Oxon: Routledge. pp. 78–79. ISBN 9780754661894.
  6. Catlin, Brian; John, Lyons. "Etymology of Thoracic Terms". Dartmouth Medical School. Archived from the original on 20 March 2018. Retrieved 20 March 2018. Phrenic – The stem of this word, phren, had two separate meanings in ancient Greece. One was the heart or, perhaps, because it was so close by, the thoracic diaphragm. Our modern adjective phrenic referring to the diaphragm, as in phrenic nerve, comes from that meaning. The other meaning of phren was the brain or mind. From this second meaning we get such words as phrenology and schizophrenic. Frenzy, at one time spelled phrenzy, also comes from this meaning.
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