The experience of illness is a universal and substantial part of human existence. Like death, illness raises important philosophical issues. But unlike death, illness, and in particular the experience of being ill, has received little philosophical attention. This may be because illness is often understood as a physiological process that falls within the domain of medical science, and is thus outside the purview of philosophy. In Phenomenology of Illness Havi Carel argues that the experience of illness has been wrongly neglected by philosophers and proposes to fill the lacuna. Phenomenology of Illness provides a distinctively philosophical account of illness. Using phenomenology, the philosophical method for first-person investigation, Carel explores how illness modifies the ill person's body, values, and world. The aim of Phenomenology of Illness is twofold: to contribute to the understanding of illness through the use of philosophy and to demonstrate the importance of illness for philosophy. Contra the philosophical tendency to resist thinking about illness, Carel proposes that illness is a philosophical tool. Through its pathologising effect, illness distances the ill person from taken for granted routines and habits and reveals aspects of human existence that normally go unnoticed. Phenomenology of Illness develops a phenomenological framework for illness and a systematic understanding of illness as a philosophical tool.

What is illness? Is it a physiological dysfunction, a social label, or a way of experiencing the world? How do the physical, social and emotional worlds of a person change when they become ill? And can there be well-being within illness? In this remarkable and thought-provoking book, Havi Carel explores these questions by weaving together the personal story of her own serious illness with insights and reflections drawn from her work as a philosopher. Carel's fresh approach to illness raises some uncomfortable questions about how we all - whether healthcare professionals or not - view the ill and challenges us to become more thoughtful. 'Illness' unravels the tension between the universality of illness and its intensely private, often lonely, nature. It offers a new way of looking at a matter that affects every one of us.

Following the core principle of phenomenology as a return 'to the things themselves,' Body Matters attends to the phenomena of bodily afflictions and examines them from three different standpoints: from society in general that interprets them as 'sicknesses,' from the medical professions that interpret them as 'diseases,' and from the patients themselves who interpret them as 'illnesses.' By drawing on a crucial distinction in German phenomenology between two senses of the body_the quantifiable, material body (Ksrper) and the lived-body(Leib)_the authors explore the ways in which sickness, disease, and illness are socially and historically experienced and constructed. To make their case, they draw on examples from a multiplicity of disciplines and cultures as well as a number of cases from Euro-American history. The intent is to unsettle taken-for-granted assumptions that readers may have about body troubles. These are assumptions widely held as well by medical and allied health professionals, in addition to many sociologists and philosophers of health and illness. To this end, Body Matters does not simply deconstruct prejudices of mainstream biomedicine; it also constructively envisions more humane and artful forms of therapy.

This work provides a phenomenological account of the experience of illness and the manner in which meaning is constituted by the patient and the physician. The author provides a detailed account of the way in which illness and body are apprehended differently by doctor and patient. This title has been awarded the first Edwin Goodwin Ballard Prize in Phenomenology.

Theoretical foundation for nursing as a science/ Ragnar Fjelland and Eva Gjengedal -- Is a science of caring possible?/Margaret J. Dunlop -- A Heideggerian phenomenological perspective on the concept of person/ Victoria W. Leonard -- Hermeneutic phenomenology:a methodology for family health and health promotion study in nursing/ Karen A. Plager -- Toward a new medical ethics: implications for ethics in nursing/ David C. Thomasma -- The tradition and skill of interpretive phenomenology in studying health, illness and caring practices/ Patricia Benner -- MARTIN, a computer software program: on listening to what the text says/ Nancy L. Diekelmann, Robert Schuster,and Sui-Lun Lam -- Beyond normalizing: the role of narrative in understanding teenage mothers' transition to mothering/ Lee Smithbattle -- Patients' caring practices with schizophrenic offspring/ Catherine A. Chesla -- Parenting in public: parental participation and involvement in the care of their hospitalized child/ Philip Darbyshire -- A clinical ethnography of stroke recovery/ Nancy D. Doolittle -- Moral dimensions of living with a chronic illness: autonomy, responsibility, and limits of control/ Patricia Benner, Susan Janson-Bjerklie, Sandra Ferketich and Gay Becker -- The ethical context of nursing care of dying patients in critical care/ Peggy L. Wros -- The ethics of ambiguity and concealment around cancer: interpretations through a local Italian world/ Deborah R. Gordon -- Narrative methodology in disaster studies: rescuers of Cyprus/ Cynthia M. Stuhlmiller.

What counts as health or ill health? How do we deal with the fallibility of our own bodies? Should illness and disease be considered simply in biological terms, or should considerations of its emotional impact dictate our treatment of it? Our understanding of health and illness had become increasingly more complex in the modern world, as we are able to use medicine not only to fight disease but to control other aspects of our bodies, whether mood, blood pressure, or cholesterol. This collection of essays foregrounds the concepts of health and illness and patient experience within the philosophy of medicine, reflecting on the relationship between the ill person and society. Mental illness is considered alongside physical disease, and the important ramifications of society's differentiation between the two are brought to light. Health, Illness and Disease is a significant contribution to shaping the parameters of the evolving field of philosophy of medicine and will be of interest to medical practitioners and policy-makers as well as philosophers of science and ethicists.

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

Existential Medicine explores the recent impact that the philosophies of existentialism, phenomenology, and hermeneutics have had on the health care professions. A growing body of scholarship drawing primarily on the work of Martin Heidegger and other influential twentieth-century figures such as Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Jean-Paul Sartre, and Hans-Georg Gadamer has shaped contemporary research in the fields of bioethics, narrative medicine, gerontology, enhancement medicine, psychiatry and psychotherapy, and palliative care, among others. By regarding the human body as a decontextualized object, the prevailing paradigm of medical science often overlooks the body as it is lived. As a result, it fails to critically engage the experience of illness and the core questions of ‘what it means’ and ‘what it feels like’ to be ill. With work from emerging and renowned scholars in the field, this collection aims to shed light on these issues and the crucial need for clinicians to situate the experience of illness within the context of a patient’s life-world. To this end, Existential Medicine offers a valuable resource for philosophers and medical humanists as well as health care practitioners.

Some of the authors who have contributed to this volume are philosophers, some are engaged in other academic disciplines, and several are practicing healthcare professionals. Their essays demonstrate that because phenomenology provides extraordinary insights into many of the issues that are directly addressed within the world of medicine it can be an invaluable practical tool, not only for those who are interested in the philosophy of medicine, but for all healthcare professionals who are actively engaged in the care of the sick.

In medicine the understanding and interpretation of the complex reality of illness currently refers either to an organismic approach that focuses on the physical or to a 'holistic' approach that takes into account the patient's human sociocultural involvement. Yet as the papers of this collection show, the suffering human person refers ultimately to his/her existential sphere. Hence, praxis is supplemented by still other perspectives for valuation and interpretation: ethical, spiritual, and religious. Can medicine ignore these considerations or push them to the side as being subjective and arbitrary? Phenomenology/philosophy-of-life recognizes all of the above approaches to be essential facets of the Human Condition (Tymieniecka). This approach holds that all the facets of the Human Condition have equal objectivity and legitimacy. It completes the accepted medical outlook and points the way toward a new `medical humanism'.