The Fragility of Philosophy of Medicine Essentialism, Wittgenstein and Family Resemblances / [electronic resource] :
by Lucien Karhausen.
- 1st ed. 2023.
- Cham : Springer International Publishing : Imprint: Springer, 2023.
- XIV, 214 p. 1 illus. online resource.
- Philosophy and Medicine, 147 2215-0080 ; .
Chapter 1. A Certain Philosophical Context -- Chapter 2. Wittgenstein's Toolbox -- Chapter 3. Medicine -- Chapter 4. Diseases, Injuries, and Disabilities -- Chapter 5. Mental Disorders -- Chapter 6. Unexplained Physical Symptoms and Functional Disorders -- Chapter 7. Health -- Chapter 8. Causality -- Chapter 9. Medical Explanation -- Chapter 10. The Origins and Foundation of Medicine -- Chapter 11. Functions, Malfunctions, and Teleology -- Chapter 12. Treatment, Placebos and Nocebos -- Chapter 13. Is Medical Grammar Counterfactual? -- Chapter 14. The Philosophy of Medicine Versus Medicine -- Chapter 15. To Conclude. .
This book about philosophy of medicine bestows a bottom-up and not a top-down approach. It starts from clinical medicine and epidemiology, analyzing their interrelations with philosophical instruments. The book criticizes the constant search for generalities and the essentialism that too often characterizes this discipline, which results in philosophers of medicine dialoguing with each other without direct contact with medical science. In the light of Ludwig Wittgenstein's philosophy, this book proposes an approach to the philosophy of medicine based on the quorum of language, what Wittgenstein calls family resemblances. In this way the author establishes a philosophy of medicine that is closely related to the medical clinic and to public health and as such avoids armchair philosophy. "Don't think, but look", wrote Wittgenstein.