Can Illness Be Edifying?
Forthcoming in Inquiry.
Havi Carel has recently argued that one can be ill and happy. An ill person can ‘positively respond’ to illness by... more Havi Carel has recently argued that one can be ill and happy. An ill person can ‘positively respond’ to illness by cultivating ‘adaptability’ and ‘creativity’. I propose that Carel’s claim can be augmented by connecting it with virtue ethics. The positive responses which Carel describes are best understood as the cultivation of virtues and this adds a significant moral aspect to coping with illness. I then defend this claim against two sets of objections and conclude that interpreting Carel’s phenomenology of illness within a virtue ethical framework enriches our understanding of how illness can be edifying.
Physical and Virtual Environments: Meaning of Place and Space
by David Seamon
To be published as chapter 18 in Willard & Spackman’s Occupational Therapy, 12th Edition, B. Schell & M. Scaffa, editors. Philadelphia: Wippincott, Williams & Wilkens, 2012 © David Seamon
Since the 1980s, occupational therapists and scientists have given increasing attention to how qualities of physical... more Since the 1980s, occupational therapists and scientists have given increasing attention to how qualities of physical environments and places contribute to human health, well being, and productive occupations (Corcoran & Gitlin, 1997; Dunn et al., 2003; Gitlin, 2009, Kielhofner, 1995, ch. 7; Kiernat, 1987; Rowles, 2003; Stewart et al., 2003; Ulrich et al., 2008). In this overview, I emphasize how human beings experience environments, places, and spaces; therefore, I draw largely on phenomenological research. Most simply, phenomenology is the description and interpretation of human experience (Finlay, 2011; Seamon, 2000; van Manen, 1990). In this chapter, I briefly describe the phenomenological approach and then consider four environmental themes important for occupational therapists and scientists: (1) place; (2) environmental embodiment; (3) home and at-homeness; and (4) digital technology and virtual places.
Serious Illness and Supernatural Agents: Explanatory Models for Diseases which Defy Explanation
by Julia Gamble
Journal of the University of Manitoba Students' Association 29., 2011
Serious illness which threatens mortality, does not respond to treatment, and has no obvious cause, elicits sensations... more Serious illness which threatens mortality, does not respond to treatment, and has no obvious cause, elicits sensations of fear, bafflement, and helplessness in those who are affected. Through ethnographic case studies, it will be shown that these patterns cross cultural boundaries. At the same time, it will be demonstrated that the explanatory models for such illnesses exist within unique cultural settings. An understanding of the effects of such illnesses on human emotion, combined with a clear view of cultural context, is essential for any examination of these explanatory models.
Physical and Virtual Environments: Meaning of Place and Space
by David Seamon
To be published as chapter 18 in Willard & Spackman’s Occupational Therapy, 12th Edition, B. Schell & M. Scaffa, editors. Philadelphia: Wippincott, Williams & Wilkens, 2012 © David Seamon
Since the 1980s, occupational therapists and scientists have given increasing attention to how qualities of physical... more Since the 1980s, occupational therapists and scientists have given increasing attention to how qualities of physical environments and places contribute to human health, well being, and productive occupations (Corcoran & Gitlin, 1997; Dunn et al., 2003; Gitlin, 2009, Kielhofner, 1995, ch. 7; Kiernat, 1987; Rowles, 2003; Stewart et al., 2003; Ulrich et al., 2008). In this overview, I emphasize how human beings experience environments, places, and spaces; therefore, I draw largely on phenomenological research. Most simply, phenomenology is the description and interpretation of human experience (Finlay, 2011; Seamon, 2000; van Manen, 1990). In this chapter, I briefly describe the phenomenological approach and then consider four environmental themes important for occupational therapists and scientists: (1) place; (2) environmental embodiment; (3) home and at-homeness; and (4) digital technology and virtual places.
The experience of the body in chronic illness
This is a draft version of a paper I have given at York University's Graduate Conference in Disability Studies (2011), and at The Making Sense of Health, Illness and Disease conference at Oxford University (2007).
Working from a phenomenological standpoint, as well as my own experience living with cystic fibrosis, I argue that... more Working from a phenomenological standpoint, as well as my own experience living with cystic fibrosis, I argue that chronic illness involves a disruption of the relations between the self and the world that shape my immediate sense of both. Merleau-Ponty argues that the body is typically experienced as an “impersonal power” that facilitates my access to the world. The ill body, however, is experienced as an intruder that shuts off my access to the world. Chronic illness, then, insofar as it involves being permanently alienated from my body, also involves being permanently alienated from the world. I then draw upon Hegel’s arguments about the nature of work to show how the work of caring for a chronically ill body involves deferring myself to the demands of my ill body, thus experiencing my illness as an “agent” that sets the terms of my agency. In living with a chronic illness, I thus discover, within my experience, the ambiguous nature of embodiment: it is as embodied that I am an agent in the world, but this same body places limits on my agency, for it has a life of its own.
Diabetes, Chronic Illness and the Bodily Roots of Ecstatic Temporality
by David Morris
Human Studies: A Journal for Philosophy and the Social Sciences (2008), 31 (4). pp. 399-421.
This article studies the phenomenology of chronic illness in light of phenomenology’s insights into ecstatic... more This article studies the phenomenology of chronic illness in light of phenomenology’s insights into ecstatic temporality and freedom. It shows how a chronic illness can, in lived experience, manifest itself as a disturbance of our usual relation to ecstatic temporality and thence as a disturbance of freedom. This suggests that ecstatic temporality is related to another sort of time—“provisional time”—that is in turn rooted in the body. The article draws on Merleau-Ponty’s Phenomenology of Perception and Heidegger’s Being and Time, shedding light on the latter’s concept of ecstatic temporality. It also discusses implications for self-management of chronic illness, especially in children.


