Abstract
Taking as our starting point Plato'smetaphor of the doctor as philosopher we reflect on some aspects of the epistemological status of medicine. The framework to this paper is the hermeneutics of Hans-Georg Gadamer which shows the paradoxical nature of Western medicine in choosing the body-object as its investigative starting point, while in actual fact dealing with subjects. Gadamer proposes a model of medicine as the art of understanding and dialogue, which is capable of bringing together its various constituent parts, i.e. knowledge, knowing how to do and knowing how to be, in medical practice and in the physician'straining. The paper concludes with a brief discussion of the dyadic figure of the physician as Platonic “master of the living totality” and wounded healer, capable of activating the patient'sself-healing capacity.
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REFERENCES
Plato. Laws. IV, 720 d-e. Translated by Jowett B., Encyclopedia Britannica, Oxford University Press, 1952: 685.
Gadamer stresses that the German word ‘Behandlung’ (care) contains the root ‘Hand’ hand.
The comparison of medicine to philosophy is to be found, with various shades of meaning, in many Greek philosophical texts. Cf. Wehrli F. Der Arztvergleich bei Platon. In Theoria und Humanitas, Gesammelte Schriften. München-Zürich: Artemis Verlag, 1972: 207–215.
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“Medicine is, then, all three – science, art, and virtue synergistically and integrally united in the clinician's daily activities. Hence the description of medicine as a mixed tekné must do until new categories of disciplines are formed. To disarticulate one member of this triad from the others is to dismember medicine – the essential feature of which is the special relationship each holds to the other. When this happens, one becomes a scientist, an artist, or a practitioner, but not a physician. Clearly, any unitarian formalization of the clinician's activity is bound to be misleading and defines part of what constitutes medicine but not the whole of it”. Pellegrino ED., Thomasma DC. A Philosophical Basis of Medical Practice. New York, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1981: 149.
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In Ñber die Verborgenheit der Gesundheit [On the Concealment of Health] Gadamer dedicates a chapter to the physician and philosopher Viktor von Weizsäcker (1886–1957), the most important figure in Germany of natural and psychosomatic medicine. von Weizsäcker, who was a disciple of the physiopathologist Ludolf Krehl, taught in various German universities and worked with Sigmund Freud, Lou Salomè, Max Scheler e Martin Buber. With Buber he founded the journal Die Kreatur. In contrast with scientific reductionism, von Weizsäcker insisted on the uniqueness of the balance between body and environment. He supported his theoretical approach through experiments on human perception both in healthy and sick individuals. His main work, Der Gestaltkreis. Theorie der Einheit von Wahrnehmen und Bewegen, was published in Leipzig in 1940 and was translated by Michel Foucault in 1958.
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We have borrowed this image from Jungian psychology: Sedgwick D. The Wounded Healer. London: Routledge, 1994. See also Guggenbühl-Craig A. Power in the Helping Professions. Dallas: Spring Publications, 1971, 91: “The mythological image of the wounded healer is very widespread. Psychologically this means not only that the patient has a physician within himself and also that there is a patient in the doctor...In Babylon there was a dog-goddess with two names: as Gula she was death and Labartu, healing. In India, Kali is the goddess of the pox and at the same time its curer”.
Gadamer HG. Ñber die Verborgenheit der Gesundheit. Frankfurt: Suhrkamp Verlag, 1993: 96.
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Lingiardi, V., Grieco, A. Hermeneutics and the Philosophy of Medicine: Hans-Georg Gadamer'sPlatonic Metaphor. Theor Med Bioeth 20, 413–422 (1999). https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1009929001467
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1009929001467