Toward a Critical Phenomenology of Health
T. Welsh
Philosophies August 25, 2026 DOI: 10.3390/philosophies11050150 (opens in new tab)
Study at a glance
AI-extracted from the abstract| Characteristics | Theoretical or philosophical paper Peer reviewed |
|---|---|
| Topics | Philosophy of mind |
| Key points | Argues that health is typically a background feature of experience requiring creative adaptation to life's variations, and proposes a prescriptive critical phenomenology that avoids a reductive medicalized approach by attending to social and political determinants of health and supporting public health against the view that health is solely a personal matter. |
Abstract
Phenomenologies of health remain relatively infrequent compared to phenomenologies of illness. This paper addresses this lack by first summarizing some key elements of phenomenologies of health. First, health typically resides in the background of our experience. Second, health requires a creative, adaptive capacity to life’s variations. The paper then explores prescriptive critical phenomenology of health. It highlights key elements of treatment to produce health that avoid a reductive medicalized approach. The paper examines the social and political determinants of health as key elements of a critical approach to health. Finally, it argues for support of public health as essential to questions of health to counteract the contemporary view of health as solely a personal, rather than contextual, matter.
Comparable studies
Other theoretical and historical papers on philosophy of mind, most cited first.
| Study | Year | Design | Participants |
|---|---|---|---|
| Psychosis as a state of aberrant salience: a framework linking biology, phenomenology, and pharmacology in schizophrenia. | 2003 | Theoretical or philosophical paper | |
| From dopamine to salience to psychosis--linking biology, pharmacology and phenomenology of psychosis. | 2005 | Theoretical or philosophical paper | |
| How do the brain's time and space mediate consciousness and its different dimensions? Temporo-spatial theory of consciousness (TTC). | 2017 | Theoretical or philosophical paper | |
| The phenomenology of deep brain stimulation-induced changes in OCD: an enactive affordance-based model. | 2013 | Theoretical or philosophical paper | |
| Looking for the Self: Phenomenology, Neurophysiology and Philosophical Significance of Drug-induced Ego Dissolution | 2017 | Theoretical or philosophical paper |