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The Ontopoietic Design of Life and Medicine’s Search for the Norm

An Alliance between Phenomenology/Philosophy of Life and Medicine

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Life the Human Being between Life and Death

Part of the book series: Analecta Husserliana ((ANHU,volume 64))

Abstract

The Romantic philosopher Schelling, who showed profound interest in medicine and whose philosophy attracted considerable interest in the medical profession of Germany in his day, pointed out that medicine is the “royal road” of philosophy. This insight has come to full fruition in the contemporary phenomenology/philosophy of life.1

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Notes

  1. Anna-Teresa Tymieniecka, Logos and Life, Book 1: Creative Experience and the Critique of Reason, Analecta Husserliana, XXIV. Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1988.

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  2. See Henk A. M. J. Ten Have, The Growth of Medical Knowledge,Philosophy and Medicine 36. Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1990.

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  3. Anna-Teresa Tymieniecka, “Nature-Life and Culture in the Unity-of-Everything-There-IsAlive,” in Marcelo Sanchez Sorondo and Dario Antiseri (eds.), Phvsica, cosmologia, natur-philosophie: nuovi approcci,Collana Dialogo di Filosofia 10. Rome: Herder, Università Lateranense, 1993, pp. 292-298.

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  4. For the moral disarray, see Anna-Teresa Tymieniecka, “The Golden Measure,” in Anna- Teresa Tymieniecka (ed.), Life: The Ideal of Human Kind,Analecta Husserliana XLIX. Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1996, pp. 3-25; see also Tristram Engelhardt, “From Abortion to Euthanasia: Rethinking the Value of Life at the End of the Christian Age,” in the present volume.

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  5. For a brief history of medicine, see Guenter B. Risse, “History of Western Medicine from Hippocrates to Germ Theory,” in Henry Ernest Sigerist, On The History of Medicine,New York, N.Y.: M.D. Publications, 1960.

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  6. Rudolf Virchow, “One Hundred Years of General Pathology,” in his Disease, Life and Man,trans. Lelland J. Rather. Palo Alto: Stanford University Press, 1958, pp. 170-215.

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  7. Rudolf Virchow, “Cellular Pathology,” in ibid,p. 85.

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  8. Rudolf Virchow, “Atoms and Individuals,” in ibid,p. 133.

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  9. Anna-Teresa Tymieniecka. “The Great Plan of Life,” in Anna-Teresa Tymieniecka (ed.), Phenomenology of Life and the Human Creative Condition,Book 1: Laying Down the Cornerstones of the Field,Analecta Husserliana LII. Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1998, pp. 3-29.

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  10. See Arthur L. Caplan, “The Concepts of Health, Illness and Disease,” in his Concepts of Health and Disease, Reading, Mass.: Addison-Wesley, 1981, pp. 234 - 247.

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  11. Christopher Boorse, “Health as a Theoretical Concept,” Philosophy of Science (1977) 44: 4 511 - 573.

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  12. See Zbigniew Szawarski, “Two Models of Medical Knowledge,” in the present volume.

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  13. See Anna-Teresa Tymieniecka, “Ontopoiesis of Life as the New Universal Paradigm; An Alliance between Phenomenology/Philosophy of Life and the Sciences of Life,” “Theme” in Anna-Teresa Tymieniecka (ed.), Life-Scientific Philosophy: Phenomenology of Life and the Sciences of Life,Analecta Husserliana LIX and LX. Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1998, 1999.

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  14. See Boorse, op. cit

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  15. See Lennart Nordenfelt, On the Nature of Health, an Action-Theoretic Approach. Dordrecht: D. Reidel (Kluwer ), 1987.

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  16. Boorse, op. cit,p. 554.

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  17. O. Temkin, “Health and Disease,” in Dictionary of the History of Ideas,Vol. 2, New York: Scribners 1973, pp. 395-407; quoted in Boorse, op. cit

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  18. Boorse, op. cit,p. 494.

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  19. It appears that there is a universal consensus on the usefulness of statistics in medical diagnosis. Normality is understood then in terms of statistical normality and variation. However, Boorse (op. cit,pp. 546-47) and Edmond A. Murphy, while recognizing the indispensability of statistics. are troubled by the vagueness of statistical normality, for which Murphy blames “epistemic, ontological and under-conceptualization difficulties” (in his The Logic of Medicine,2nd ed. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1997, p. 155).

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  20. Boorse, op. cit,pp. 556-558.

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  21. Ibid,p. 556.

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  22. Ibid,p. 555.

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  23. Ibid,pp. 555-558.

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  24. Ibid,p. 555.

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  25. Ibid,p. 558.

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  26. Ibid,p. 560.

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  27. Ibid,p. 557.

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  28. Ibid,

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  29. Ibid

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  30. Ibid pp. 561-62.

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  31. See Tymieniecka, “Ontopoiesischrww(133),” op. cit

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  32. Tymieniecka, “Nature-Lifechrww(133),” op. cit,pp. 292-299.

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  33. Boorse, op. cit,p. 563.

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  34. See Anna-Teresa Tymieniecka, “The First Principles of the Phenomenology of Life: Charting the Human Condition,” in Anna-Teresa Tymieniecka (ed.), Phenomenology and Philosophy of Life (The Spanish Perspective),Analecta Husserliana XXIX. Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1986; and Tymieniecka, Logos and Life,Book 1, op. cit

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  35. At the very outset of our presentation and interpretation of the contrast between these theories, it must be noted that at the bottom of it is a distinction made by both of these authors, albeit in a different fashion, between the concepts of “disease” and “illness.” The ways in which they emphasize one or the other are essential to their theories. We cannot here enter into a discussion of these concepts in depth and at length. Let us assume that, in general, by “disease” is to be understood a defective condition within the organism and by “illness” the manifestations of that defectiveness in the malfunctioning of the organism. This distinction is viewed differently in the theories of Boorse and Nordenfelt. We cannot enter here into the intricacies of a distinction to which Boorse has devoted a special study, “On the Distinction between Disease and Illness,” Philosophy and Public Affairs,Vol. 5, I, 1975, pp. 48-68. In general, for Boorse disease is a basic defect in the organism that might or might not manifest itself directly as disfunction in the organism (“On the Distinctionchrww(133),” pp. 50-56). Since he emphasizes that the criterion for health is the functioning of the organism and its parts in accordance with species design, it is disease — whether manifest or not — that is his focus. It is likewise in functional terms that he addresses abnormal mental conditions, integrating them into his theory by positing “natural mental functions” and holding that “recognized types of psychopathology are unnatural interferences with these functions” (“On the Distinctionchrww(133),” pp. 56-60). (This stands in contrast to the opinions of psychiatrists such as Thomas Szasz who see no criteria by which mental conditions popularly considered pathological can be considered “mental diseases.”) And while Boorse focuses on “disease,” Nordenfelt, who stresses primarily the capacity of the human being for action, favors the concept of “illness” when speaking of disfunctions.

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  36. Nordenfelt, On the Nature of Health, an Action-Theoretic Approach, op. cit,p. xiii.

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  37. Ibid

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  38. Ibid,p. xv.

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  39. Ibid

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  40. Ibid

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  41. Ibid

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  42. Ibid,pp. 77-81.

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  43. Ibid,p. 35.

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  44. Ibid,p. 97.

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  45. Ibid,p. 36.

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  46. Ibid,p. 37.

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  47. Ibid

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  48. Ibid,p. 49.

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  49. Ibid,pp. 79.

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  50. Ibid,p. 81-82.

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  51. Ibid,p. 91.

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  52. For my conception of human self-interpretation-in-existence, see my Logos and Life Book 1: Creative Experience and the Critique of Reason, Analecta Husserliana, XXIV. Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1988; and Book 3: The Passions of the Soul and the Elements in the Ontopoiesis of Culture. The Life Significance of Literature Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1990; but specifically my shorter study, “Life’s Primogenital Timing,” in Anna-Teresa Tymieniecka (ed.) Life: Phenomenology of Life as the Starting Point of Philosophy Analecta Husserliana L. Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1997, pp. 3-22.

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  53. For thoughts on accomplishment through self-interpretation-in-existence. see the same works as in the previous note and my studies throughout the Analecta Husserliana series, beginning with my study in Anna-Teresa Tymieniecka (ed.), The Self and the Other. The Irreducible Element in Man,Analecta Husserliana VI. Dordrecht: D. Reidel, 1978.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. The World Phenomenology Institute, USA

    Anna-Teresa Tymieniecka

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. The World Phenomenology Institute, USA

    Anna-Teresa Tymieniecka

  2. The Jagiellonian University, Kraków, Poland

    Zbigniew Zalewski

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Tymieniecka, AT. (2000). The Ontopoietic Design of Life and Medicine’s Search for the Norm. In: Tymieniecka, AT., Zalewski, Z. (eds) Life the Human Being between Life and Death. Analecta Husserliana, vol 64. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-017-2081-6_2

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-017-2081-6_2

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