Concept of disease as an ontological device to shape human existence

Abstract

Disease and health are conceptual cornerstones of the framework of all medicine. In different times these concepts have had different contents, but in all times their role has also been to express some status of personal human existence and shape its general and particular forms of individual and collective forms through different wanted or avoided scenarios of human behavior. A long term solo of biological reductionism has strengthened the concept of disease as a tool to differentiate normal and abnormal structure and behavior of human beings. Current symbiosis of biological reductionism with the trend of stronger social regulation can rewrite the content of the concept of disease in direction to increase of external determinism of personal human existence. Philosophical analysis of the concept of disease can support coherence in the heterogeneous ideological framework of medicine and help to bind technical side of medicine with appropriate values.