The Enigma of Health and Ill-Health : An Investigation to the Hermeneutic Phenomenological Theory of Homelikeness

Abstract: The aim of this project is to introduce and criticize the phenomenological theories of health and ill-health as they are described in Fredrik Svenaeus´PhD thesis The hermeneutics of medicine and the phenomenology of health: steps towards a philosophy of medical practices. Svenaeus was born in 1966 and is an associate professor in the Department for health and society at Linköping University. This criticism is twofold:Firstly Svenaeus tries to give a detailed phenomenological description of what it is like to suffer from illness. I will attempt to argue that the actual relationship between the patient and the world is also crucial in a phenomenological description of illness. Secondly I will attempt to criticize Svenaeus´generalization that illness can only be seen as an obstruction, not for the viewpoint that health is imperceptible and illness is perceptible. I will try to argue that illness is a way of life, a way which reveals to us that we are living towards death.