Health as an analogical concept

This article examines the normative structure of the concept of health and tries to suggest an account of it in a phenomenological-hermeneutic framework. It is argued that the concept of health has a logical priority to illness, though the latter has an experiential priority. The fundamental feature of the concept of health as discussed in the literature is initially recognized in the notion of 'norm', in both the bio-statistical and normative-ideal sense. An analysis of this body of literature reveals some weaknesses in bio-statistical definitions of health as well as in those normative ones which endorse a value-relativity thesis. An approach based on the analogical structure of language is then advanced. In this framework, the notion of biological normativeness proposed by G. Canguilhem is connected with an analysis of the language of health through etymologies. It is argued that health can be characterized as an analogy of 'plenitude', which is the common ideal reference of the various health-concepts. The analogical structuring of language allows the recognition of different levels of meaning, and therefore of different kinds of normativeness (biological, mental, social, moral). Some hints of a theory of health deriving from this framework are then given.