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A draft of my essay review of Havi Carel's book, 'Phenomenology of Illness' (OUP 2016)
Journal of Applied Philosophy, 2018
Phenomenological Reviews
Journal of Evaluation in Clinical Practice, 2020
Journal of Medicine and Philosophy, 2019
A large slice of contemporary phenomenology of medicine has been devoted to developing an account of health and illness that pro- ceeds from the first-person perspective when attempting to under- stand the ill person in contrast and connection to the third-person perspective on his/her diseased body. A proof that this phenom- enological account of health and illness, represented by philo- sophers, such as Drew Leder, Kay Toombs, Havi Carel, Hans-Georg Gadamer, Kevin Aho, and Fredrik Svenaeus, is becoming increas- ingly influential in philosophy of medicine and medical ethics is the criticism of it that has been voiced in some recent studies. In this article, two such critical contributions, proceeding from radic- ally different premises and backgrounds, are discussed: Jonathan Sholl’s naturalistic critique and Talia Welsh’s Nietzschean critique. The aim is to defend the phenomenological account and clear up misunderstandings about what it amounts to and what we should be able to expect from it.
Published in Handbook of Phenomenology and Medicine, ed. Kay Toombs, Dordrecht: Kluwer, 87-108, 2001.
Hypatia Reviews Online
Medical Humanities, 2018
Plato’s Charmides, I argue, is a remarkably productive text for confronting and questioning some common presuppositions about the body and illness, particularly when we take seriously Socrates’ claim that healing Charmides’ headaches requires first examining—and perhaps healing—his soul. I begin by turning to the work of the psychiatrist and medical anthropologist Arthur Kleinman to argue that even if the pain Charmides experiences is more ‘physical’than ‘mental’, a physical exam and physical intervention alone will not necessarily be effective in treating his headaches. Next, I turn to the work of the phenomenologist Maurice Merleau-Ponty and his discussion of the phenomenon of the ‘phantom limb’ to argue that the body, rather than simply being a physical object is, instead, primarily an experiencing subject; the body is fundamentally our way of having a world. Furthermore, illness, rather than being conceived of as either a physical or mental disorder, should instead be understood in terms of a person’s being-in-the-world with others. Finally, I return to Plato’s Charmides and argue that, just as the phantom limb reflects the destruction of a specific way of being-in-the-world with others, Charmides’ headaches reflect the construction of a specific way of being-in-the-world with others. This article has been accepted for publication in Medical Humanities, 2018 following peer review, and the Version of Record can be accessed online at http://dx.doi.org/10.1136/medhum-2018-011572 © Susan Bredlau
Metaphilosophy 45(1): 20-40, 2014
This article examines the philosophical role of illness. It briefly surveys the philosophical role accorded to illness in the history of philosophy and explains why illness merits such a role. It suggests that illness modifies, and thus sheds light on, normal experience, revealing its ordinary and therefore overlooked structure. Illness also provides an opportunity for reflection by performing a kind of suspension (epoché) of previously held beliefs, including tacit beliefs. The article argues that these characteristics warrant a philosophical role for illness. While the performance of most philosophical procedures is volitional and theoretical, however, illness is uninvited and threatening, throwing the ill person into anxiety and uncertainty. As such it can be viewed as a radical philosophical motivation that can profoundly alter our outlook. The article suggests that illness can change the ways in which we philosophise: it may shape philosophical methods and concerns and change one’s sense of salience and conception of philosophy. Keywords: phenomenology, illness, philosophical method, Merleau-Ponty, epoché, Husserl.
Anatomy Journal of Africa
Carlton Brown, 2023
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Krisnawati Pata' & Roslin Toding, 2024
Church History, 2013
GÊNERO E REGULAÇÕES DO SEXO ENTRE ANTIGOS E MODERNOS , 2024
Lecture Notes of the Institute for Computer Sciences, Social Informatics and Telecommunications Engineering, 2010
Primary Health Care Research & Development, 2012
Analytica Chimica Acta, 2016
2011 18th Working Conference on Reverse Engineering, 2011
2020 25th International Conference on Pattern Recognition (ICPR), 2021
International conference KNOWLEDGE-BASED ORGANIZATION, 2018
International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, 2020