Overview
- Contains a whole new chapter on medical hermeneutics and clinical ethics
- Deals with medical hermeneutics and the phenomenology of health
- Offers a comprehensive argument why good medical practice cannot be curtailed to scientific investigations
Part of the book series: The International Library of Bioethics (ILB, volume 97)
Access this book
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Other ways to access
About this book
This is the first monograph to deal with medicine as a form of hermeneutics, now in a thoroughly revised and updated edition, including a whole new chapter on medical ethics. The book offers a comprehensive philosophical argument why good medical practice cannot be curtailed to scientific investigations of the body but is a form of clinical hermeneutics performed by health-care professionals in dialogue with their patients. Medical hermeneutics is rooted in a phenomenology of illness which acknowledges and proceeds from the ill party’s bodily feelings, everyday life-world circumstances and self-understanding in aiming to restore health.
The author shows how the works of classical phenomenologists and hermeneuticians – Martin Heidegger, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Hans-Georg Gadamer and Paul Ricoeur – may be employed to understand how medical diagnosis is enveloped by professional empathy and clinical judgement and developed by scientific investigations of the patient’s bodily condition. Health and illness are ultimately considered to be ways of feeling at home or not at home in the world, and such experiences are the starting point of medical hermeneutics when aiming to make best use of scientific knowledge.
The book is aimed at researchers and teachers in philosophy of medicine and medical ethics, and at physicians, nurses and other health-care professionals meeting with patients in ethically complex and challenging situations. Phenomenology and hermeneutics, most often considered as methods belonging to the humanities, are shown to be of vital importance for the understanding of medical practice and ethical dilemmas of health care.
Similar content being viewed by others
Keywords
Table of contents (5 chapters)
Authors and Affiliations
About the author
Fredrik Svenaeus is Professor of Philosophy at the Centre for Studies in Practical Knowledge, Södertörn University, Sweden. His main research areas are philosophy of medicine, bioethics, medical humanities and philosophical anthropology.
Bibliographic Information
Book Title: The Hermeneutics of Medicine and the Phenomenology of Health
Book Subtitle: Steps Towards a Philosophy of Medical Practice
Authors: Fredrik Svenaeus
Series Title: The International Library of Bioethics
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-07281-9
Publisher: Springer Cham
eBook Packages: Religion and Philosophy, Philosophy and Religion (R0)
Copyright Information: The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022
Hardcover ISBN: 978-3-031-07280-2Published: 16 July 2022
Softcover ISBN: 978-3-031-07283-3Published: 17 July 2023
eBook ISBN: 978-3-031-07281-9Published: 15 July 2022
Series ISSN: 2662-9186
Series E-ISSN: 2662-9194
Edition Number: 2
Number of Pages: XIII, 171
Number of Illustrations: 1 b/w illustrations
Topics: Philosophy of Medicine, Phenomenology, Bioethics, Public Health