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Med Humanities 2000;26:61-62 doi:10.1136/mh.26.1.61-a
  • Book review

The Hermeneutics of Medicine and the Phenomenology of Health – Steps towards a Philosophy of Medical Practice

Fredrik Svenaeus, Linköping, Linköping University Press, 1999, 314 pages, 250 SEK/£20.

  1. Søren Holm
  1. Reader in Bioethics, University of Manchester

      Martin Heidegger is known as a notoriously difficult philosopher to understand and explicate, and it seems almost foolhardy to try to use Heidegger's philosophy as the foundation for a philosophy of medicine, but that is the task the Swedish Philosopher Fredrik Svenaeus sets himself in this very interesting book.

      The author first argues that medicine should not primarily be conceived as an assembly of scientific theories and technologies applied in the clinical situation. Medicine should instead be conceived as a practice of healing, with a central structure which is the meeting between two persons, the doctor and the patient. This line of argument is obviously not …

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