Existential Medicine explores the recent impact that the philosophies of existentialism, phenomenology, and hermeneutics have had on the health care professions. A growing body of scholarship drawing primarily on the work of Martin Heidegger and other influential twentieth-century figures such as Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Jean-Paul Sartre, and Hans-Georg Gadamer has shaped contemporary research in the fields of bioethics, narrative medicine, gerontology, enhancement medicine, psychiatry and psychotherapy, and palliative care, among others. By regarding the human body as a decontextualized object, the prevailing paradigm of medical science often overlooks the body as it is lived. As a result, it fails to critically engage the experience of illness and the core questions of 'what it means' and 'what it feels like' to be ill. With work from emerging and renowned scholars in the field, this collection aims to shed light on these issues and the crucial need for clinicians to situate the experience of illness within the context of a patient's life-world. To this end, Existential Medicine offers a valuable resource for philosophers and medical humanists as well as health care practitioners.

It is a platitude that most people, as they say, 'work to live' rather than 'live to work.' And in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries, work weeks have expanded and the divide between work time and personal time has significantly blurred due to innovations in such things as electronic communications. Concerns over the value of work in our lives, as well as with the balance or use of time between work and leisure, confront most people in contemporary society. Discussions over the values of time, leisure, and work are directly related to the time-honored question of what makes a life good. And this question is of particular interest to philosophers, especially ethicists. In this volume, leading scholars address a range of value considerations related to peoples' thoughts and practices around time utilization, leisure, and work with masterful insight. In addressing various practical issues, these scholars demonstrate the timeless relevance and practical import of Philosophy to human lived experience.

It is a platitude that most people, as they say, 'work to live' rather than 'live to work.' And in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries, work weeks have expanded and the divide between work time and personal time has significantly blurred due to innovations in such things as electronic communications. Concerns over the value of work in our lives, as well as with the balance or use of time between work and leisure, confront most people in contemporary society. Discussions over the values of time, leisure, and work are directly related to the time-honored question of what makes a life good. And this question is of particular interest to philosophers, especially ethicists. In this volume, leading scholars address a range of value considerations related to peoples' thoughts and practices around time utilization, leisure, and work with masterful insight. In addressing various practical issues, these scholars demonstrate the timeless relevance and practical import of Philosophy to human lived experience.

Following the core principle of phenomenology as a return "to the things themselves," Body Matters attends to the phenomena of bodily afflictions and examines them from three different standpoints: from society in general that interprets them as "sicknesses," from the medical professions that interpret them as "diseases," and from the patients themselves who interpret them as "illnesses." By drawing on a crucial distinction in German phenomenology between two senses of the body the quantifiable, material body (Korper) and the lived-body(Leib) the authors explore the ways in which sickness, disease, and illness are socially and historically experienced and constructed. To make their case, they draw on examples from a multiplicity of disciplines and cultures as well as a number of cases from Euro-American history. The intent is to unsettle taken-for-granted assumptions that readers may have about body troubles. These are assumptions widely held as well by medical and allied health professionals, in addition to many sociologists and philosophers of health and illness. To this end, Body Matters does not simply deconstruct prejudices of mainstream biomedicine; it also constructively envisions more humane and artful forms of therapy."

Ecologies of Suffering draws on the methods of Heidegger's existential and hermeneutic phenomenology to critique the objectifying and reductive assumptions of mainstream psychopathology by contextualizing the lived-experience of mental illness and illuminating its existential and qualitative aspects. Focusing primarily on anxiety and depression, the book explores the limitations of the dominant naturalistic-scientific account and examines the disorders from a first-person perspective to show the extent to which they can disrupt and modify the structures of meaning that constitute our sense of self. The book goes on to introduce how a hermeneutic approach to psychopathology can shed light on the ways our historical situation shapes the way we diagnose and classify mental disorders and provides the discursive context through which suffers interpret and make sense of them. To this end, Ecologies of Suffering highlights the crucial need for clinicians to situate mental illness within the context of the sufferer's life-world in order to properly understand the experience. This is a valuable resource for philosophers, medical humanists, biomedical ethicists, and mental health professionals.

Existential Medicine explores the recent impact that the philosophies of existentialism, phenomenology, and hermeneutics have had on the health care professions. A growing body of scholarship drawing primarily on the work of Martin Heidegger and other influential twentieth-century figures such as Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Jean-Paul Sartre, and Hans-Georg Gadamer has shaped contemporary research in the fields of bioethics, narrative medicine, gerontology, enhancement medicine, psychiatry and psychotherapy, and palliative care, among others. By regarding the human body as a decontextualized object, the prevailing paradigm of medical science often overlooks the body as it is lived. As a result, it fails to critically engage the experience of illness and the core questions of 'what it means' and 'what it feels like' to be ill. With work from emerging and renowned scholars in the field, this collection aims to shed light on these issues and the crucial need for clinicians to situate the experience of illness within the context of a patient's life-world. To this end, Existential Medicine offers a valuable resource for philosophers and medical humanists, as well as health care practitioners.

Following the core principle of phenomenology as a return 'to the things themselves, ' Body Matters attends to the phenomena of bodily afflictions and examines them from three different standpoints: from society in general that interprets them as 'sicknesses, ' from the medical professions that interpret them as 'diseases, ' and from the patients themselves who interpret them as 'illnesses.' By drawing on a crucial distinction in German phenomenology between two senses of the body_the quantifiable, material body (Ksrper) and the lived-body(Leib)_the authors explore the ways in which sickness, disease, and illness are socially and historically experienced and constructed. To make their case, they draw on examples from a multiplicity of disciplines and cultures as well as a number of cases from Euro-American history. The intent is to unsettle taken-for-granted assumptions that readers may have about body troubles. These are assumptions widely held as well by medical and allied health professionals, in addition to many sociologists and philosophers of health and illness. To this end, Body Matters does not simply deconstruct prejudices of mainstream biomedicine; it also constructively envisions more humane and artful forms of therapy

Notes from Underground is one of the most profound and most unsettling works of modern literature, prefiguring Dostoevskys later masterpieces such as Crime and Punishment, The Idiot, and The Brothers Karamazov. The underground man has become one of the fixtures of the contemporary worldview. No discussion of the predicament of modern man would be complete without some allusion to this archetypal figure both prophetic and loathsome that towers over modern culture. / The Notes from Underground are, as translator Boris Jakim says, A foul passageway leading into the profoundest secrets of the human heart, an abyss where the most loathsome thoughts are revealed. The Notes are a limbo without hope even of hell, a Book of Job without a happy ending, a waiting for nothing and no one (not even Godot). Nonetheless, entering into this underground that Dostoesky claims is in us all is necessary in order to understand not only this lowest of lows, but also the heights that lift man out of the depths into sanctity and exaltation. It is largely due to this masterful contrast that Notes from Underground is considered by many critics to be not only a pinnacle of existentialist literature, but also one of the greatest works of modern literature altogether.

Ecologies of Suffering draws on the methods of Heidegger's existential and hermeneutic phenomenology to critique the objectifying and reductive assumptions of mainstream psychopathology by contextualizing the lived-experience of mental illness and illuminating its existential and qualitative aspects. Focusing primarily on anxiety and depression, the book explores the limitations of the dominant naturalistic-scientific account and examines the disorders from a first-person perspective to show the extent to which they can disrupt and modify the structures of meaning that constitute our sense of self. The book goes on to introduce how a hermeneutic approach to psychopathology can shed light on the ways our historical situation shapes the way we diagnose and classify mental disorders and provides the discursive context through which suffers interpret and make sense of them. To this end, Ecologies of Suffering highlights the crucial need for clinicians to situate mental illness within the context of the sufferer's life-world in order to properly understand the experience. This is a valuable resource for philosophers, medical humanists, biomedical ethicists, and mental health professionals.

Notes from Underground is one of the most profound and most unsettling works of modern literature, prefiguring Dostoevskys later masterpieces such as Crime and Punishment, The Idiot, and The Brothers Karamazov. The underground man has become one of the fixtures of the contemporary worldview. No discussion of the predicament of modern man would be complete without some allusion to this archetypal figure both prophetic and loathsome that towers over modern culture. / The Notes from Underground are, as translator Boris Jakim says, A foul passageway leading into the profoundest secrets of the human heart, an abyss where the most loathsome thoughts are revealed. The Notes are a limbo without hope even of hell, a Book of Job without a happy ending, a waiting for nothing and no one (not even Godot). Nonetheless, entering into this underground that Dostoesky claims is in us all is necessary in order to understand not only this lowest of lows, but also the heights that lift man out of the depths into sanctity and exaltation. It is largely due to this masterful contrast that Notes from Underground is considered by many critics to be not only a pinnacle of existentialist literature, but also one of the greatest works of modern literature altogether.