Disease: An Ethical Hermeneutic Approach

This study examines the interpretation of disease as a manifestation of a deep, internal ethical life present in the body to expose the life that hides, grows, and camouflages itself to escape from treatments. In the study, Amara calls for a renewed understanding of the biological behavior of disease via a hermeneutic that listens to the voice of the disease in its ontological elucidation, or its description as an expression of self-existence outside the limits of human biology. From the very beginning, this study places the concept of disease against the concept of evil because disease, something more powerful than life itself, is a medical construction of evil in the body revealed by medicinal side effects, the development of the “viciousness” of viruses, and the “brutality” of microbes. The world is witnessing a great paradox, notes the author, when diseases have evolved and grown more deadly with the development of medicine and the improvement of its therapeutic techniques and mechanisms. This means that disease, from the ethics side, “avenges” itself and “takes revenge” against medicine, developing its methods for camouflage, deception, and diversion, changing its physical symptoms as a reaction to the “misunderstanding” of the ethical life discourse of disease. Amara addresses ontological questions, such as “do we get sick or does illness befall us?,” and explores the relationship between the doctor and patient, as well as the concept of a patient’s ethical “will”.

Download Article Download Issue Subscribe for a year

Abstract

Zoom

This study examines the interpretation of disease as a manifestation of a deep, internal ethical life present in the body to expose the life that hides, grows, and camouflages itself to escape from treatments. In the study, Amara calls for a renewed understanding of the biological behavior of disease via a hermeneutic that listens to the voice of the disease in its ontological elucidation, or its description as an expression of self-existence outside the limits of human biology. From the very beginning, this study places the concept of disease against the concept of evil because disease, something more powerful than life itself, is a medical construction of evil in the body revealed by medicinal side effects, the development of the “viciousness” of viruses, and the “brutality” of microbes. The world is witnessing a great paradox, notes the author, when diseases have evolved and grown more deadly with the development of medicine and the improvement of its therapeutic techniques and mechanisms. This means that disease, from the ethics side, “avenges” itself and “takes revenge” against medicine, developing its methods for camouflage, deception, and diversion, changing its physical symptoms as a reaction to the “misunderstanding” of the ethical life discourse of disease. Amara addresses ontological questions, such as “do we get sick or does illness befall us?,” and explores the relationship between the doctor and patient, as well as the concept of a patient’s ethical “will”.

References