The Hermeneutics of Medicine and the Phenomenology of Health

Download or read book The Hermeneutics of Medicine and the Phenomenology of Health written by F. Svenaeus and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2001-04-30 with total page 222 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Fredrik Svenaeus' book is a delight to read. Not only does he exhibit keen understanding of a wide range of topics and figures in both medicine and philosophy, but he manages to bring them together in an innovative manner that convincingly demonstrates how deeply these two significant fields can be and, in the end, must be mutually enlightening. Medicine, Svenaeus suggests, reveals deep but rarely explicit themes whose proper comprehension invites a careful phenomenological and hermeneutical explication. Certain philosophical approaches, on the other hand - specifically, Heidegger's phenomenology and Gadamer's hermeneutics - are shown to have a hitherto unrealized potential for making sense of those themes long buried within Western medicine. Richard M. Zaner, Ann Geddes Stahlman Professor of Medical Ethics, Vanderbilt University