Editor’s Note
Since the separation between medicine and philosophy traditionally attributed to Hippocrates, the relationship between these disciplines has always been intense and at times conflictual. The fifteen studies brought together in this volume offer a history of these interactions, focusing on key figures or decisive moments: Plato, Aristotle, Galen, the Empirical and Methodic schools, al-Rāzī, Averroes, sixteenth-century Italy, Locke, Kant, Cabanis, the philosopher-physicians of the French Third Republic, Canguilhem, and Jaspers.
While today the main expectation physicians have of philosophy concerns ethics, historically the dialogue between the two disciplines has centered first and foremost on the epistemological status of medicine: Is the best physician necessarily a philosopher? What can philosophy learn from the physician’s method? Is medicine an art of the singular case, a science, or both?
By adopting a long-term perspective, these studies remind us that the current institutionalization of the philosophy of medicine is sometimes accompanied by a forgetting of the historical origins of reflection on medicine. Since contact with medicine also leads philosophy to recall that it defines itself as a way of life, the question that arises is how to improve human well-being and health within an environment constantly reshaped by the introduction of new therapeutic techniques.
Claire Crignon is Associate Professor of Philosophy at Sorbonne University.
David Lefebvre is Professor of Ancient Philosophy at Sorbonne University.