Healthy Embodiment

Philosophical Reflections on the Experience of Health

Bas de Boer (University of Twente, The Netherlands)

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Hardback

Forthcoming
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English

Routledge
21 May 2025

Phenomenology & Existentialism; Ethics & moral philosophy; Sociology; Medical ethics & professional conduct; Medical sociology

Series: Routledge Research in Phenomenology

This book provides a philosophical analysis of the experience of health and investigates how this experience is shaped by recent developments in medicine and public health. It shows how phenomenological and Foucauldian approaches to health can be systematically integrated into a general account of healthy embodiment.

Many medical practitioners argue for a shift from curative to preventative medicine. Technoscientific developments now enable us to track our health and provide more effective ways to live healthily. This book argues that these developments shape how we experience our health of and others, as well as the way in which we distinguish between health and illness. Its starting point is that health is not so much an object with well-defined boundaries that can be scrutinized scientifically but is better understood as an embodied experience. The author uses phenomenology and the work of Foucault to develop a theory of healthy embodiment. He argues that experiencing oneself as a healthy subject requires being made present as a healthy object by someone or something else. He explores how the experience of health results from the interaction between being a subject and being an object and potentially involves challenging medical norms.

Healthy Embodiment will be of interest to researchers and graduate students working in phenomenology, science and technology studies, medical humanities, bioethics and sociology of medicine.

By: Bas de Boer (University of Twente The Netherlands)
Imprint: Routledge
Country of Publication: United Kingdom
Dimensions: Height: 229mm, Width: 152mm,
ISBN: 9781032991146
ISBN 10: 1032991143
Series: Routledge Research in Phenomenology
Pages: 146
Publication Date: 21 May 2025
Audience: College/higher education , Further / Higher Education
Format: Hardback
Publisher's Status: Forthcoming

Bas de Boer is an assistant professor in the philosophy of technology at the University of Twente. He is the author of How Scientific Instruments Speak (2021) and editor of the recent volume Phenomenology and the Philosophy of Technology (2024).

Reviews for Healthy Embodiment: Philosophical Reflections on the Experience of Health

“Healthy Embodiment is rich and timely contribution to the phenomenology of embodiment and the philosophy of health and illness. By focusing specifically on the meaning and experience of health, Bas de Boer offers an astute Foucauldian critique that illuminates the extent to which technologies of biomedicine and public health policies discipline the body and shape our understanding and experience of health. The book will be a valuable resource in the philosophy of medicine and critical health studies for years to come.” Kevin Aho, Florida Gulf Coast University, USA