Health as an analogical concept

Area of Science:

• Philosophy of Medicine
• Phenomenology
• Hermeneutics

Background:

• The concept of health is often defined by its relation to illness.
• Existing definitions of health, both bio-statistical and normative, have limitations.
• The literature highlights the 'norm' as a key feature in defining health.

Purpose of the Study:

• To examine the normative structure of the concept of health.
• To propose a phenomenological-hermeneutic framework for understanding health.
• To analyze the logical and experiential priority of health over illness.

Main Methods:

• Analysis of existing literature on the concept of health and illness.
• Application of a phenomenological-hermeneutic approach.
• Examination of the analogical structure of language and etymologies related to health.

Main Results:

• Health has logical priority over illness, while illness has experiential priority.
• Critique of bio-statistical and value-relative normative definitions of health.
• Health is characterized as an analogy of 'plenitude'.

Conclusions:

• The analogical structure of language reveals multiple levels of normativeness (biological, mental, social, moral).
• A new framework for understanding health based on 'plenitude' and linguistic analogy is proposed.
• This framework offers insights for a broader theory of health.