Introduction

Author(s):  
Brittany Pladek

This introduction gives an overview of recent scholarship in Romanticism and the medical humanities. It argues that medical humanists are indebted to a Romantic belief that literature cures by making people whole again—what this book calls therapeutic holism. After critiquing therapeutic holism for its limiting assumptions about selfhood and literature’s powers, the introduction offers an alternative in palliative poetics, a model for literary therapy grounded in Romantic writers’ affinity to Georgian medical ethics. It shows how this focus on ethics reorients Romantic scholarship on literature and medicine, which has mostly restricted its definition of medicine to medical science. Finally, this introduction outlines the book’s six chapters: two introductory chapters on the intellectual history of therapeutic holism and four single-author illustrations of palliative poetics.

2009 ◽  
pp. 223-257
Author(s):  
Adele E. Clarke ◽  
Janet K. Shim

- In this article, we review the history of medicalization theory and then offer a historicized definition of biomedicalization. We consider the relationships between biomedicalization and other contemporary theorizing, seeking in particular to situate the concept explicitly in relation to recent scholarship on the politics of life itself. We discuss how biomedicalization processes dovetail with such politics of life as they are engaged individually, collectively, and at the level of population, including issues of bioeconomy, biocapital, citizenship and enhancement. We then address and respond to several critiques of biomedicalization theory, that question its newness, omnipresence, and determinism. In conclusion, we discuss the relations among medicalization, biomedicalization and medical sociology and offer directions for future research.Keywords: biomedicalization, medicalization, technoscience, health, politics of life, optimization.Parole chiave: biomedicalizzazione, medicalizzazione, tecnoscienza, salute, politica della vita, ottimizzazione.


Author(s):  
P. Ravi Shankar

Medical Humanities (MH) provide a contrasting perspective of the arts to the ‘science’ of medicine. A definition of MH agreed upon by all workers is lacking. There are a number of advantages of teaching MH to medical students. MH programs are common in medical schools in developed nations. In developing nations these are not common and in the chapter the author describes programs in Brazil, Turkey, Argentina and Nepal. The relationship between medical ethics and MH is the subject of debate. Medical ethics teaching appears to be commoner compared to MH in medical schools. MH programs are not common in Asia and there are many challenges to MH teaching. Patient and illness narratives are become commoner in medical education. The author has conducted MH programs in two Nepalese medical schools and shares his experiences.


Author(s):  
Jonathan Herring

This chapter explores the nature of ethics of care, which has become a highly influential approach to ethical questions. It summarizes its intellectual history and provides a definition of the concept of care. It then sets out the main themes of the approach and considers some of the objections that have been raised to it. The chapter provides some examples of ways in which ethics of care could be used to resolve difficult issues that arise in medical law and ethics. It also explores other feminist approaches to bioethical issues and the significance of ethics of care for medical law.


2019 ◽  
Vol 2 (2) ◽  
pp. 182-200
Author(s):  
Guogang Wang

Purpose Marx’s monetary theory is an important part of Marxist economics and an irreplaceable milestone in the intellectual history of the monetary theory. The purpose of this paper is to summarize the main content of Marx’s monetary theory from three aspects: the source and nature of money, the function of money and the historical significance of money. Design/methodology/approach Moreover, this paper also gives an extended understanding of Marx’s monetary theory from four perspectives: the endogenous credit mechanism of money, the functions of money and demands for money, the financial function of money and the economic and social functions of money. Findings Lastly, the present paper discusses the practical significance of Marx’s monetary theory from three perspectives, namely, the inspection of “Bitcoin” from the nature and function of money, the definition of demands and the division of supplies at the monetary level, and the prevention of systemic financial risks and the focus of financial supervision. Originality/value Marx’s monetary theory is an important part of Marxist economics and an irreplaceable milestone in the intellectual history of the monetary theory. However, for a long time, the contribution of Marx has rarely been mentioned in the intellectual history of monetary theory. Even the book, Political Economy (On Capitalism), has been only summarily concerned with the source and function of money in Marx’s monetary theory, rather than revealing Marx’s outstanding contribution in the monetary theory and the financial connotation of Marx’s monetary theory, and expounding its practical significance.


2019 ◽  
Vol 17 (4) ◽  
pp. 1133-1161
Author(s):  
STUART MIDDLETON

This article traces a history of the literary critic and theorist Raymond Williams’s idea of the “structure of feeling”, the formation of which is situated within debates about the place of artistic and moral values in democratic politics during the 1940s and 1950s. It demonstrates that the “structure of feeling” was intended to circumvent an equation of collective normative legislation with totalitarianism in the early cultural Cold War, by conceiving the definition of values as a process upon which all individuals in a society were always, necessarily, engaged. In articulating this quasi-democratic account of the production of artistic and moral standards, Williams also sought to escape the various theories of “minority culture” that dominated literary and cultural criticism in mid-century Britain. However, his concept of the “structure of feeling” required him to maintain a privileged role for artistic and intellectual arbiters, which constrained his vision of a properly democratic culture. In conclusion, the article argues that the problem of “democratic values” that Williams addressed in his work of the 1950s was a major factor in the marginalization or exclusion of moral criticism from political argument in Britain after 1945, and suggests that this passage of intellectual history may therefore be of considerable importance to contemporary debates about the lineages and reform of, in a broad sense, neoliberal political economy.


Author(s):  
Ahmad S. Dallal

Replete with a cast of giants in Islamic thought and philosophy, Ahmad S. Dallal’s pathbreaking intellectual history of the eighteenth-century Muslim world challenges stale views of this period as one of decline, stagnation, and the engendering of a widespread fundamentalism. Far from being moribund, Dallal argues, the eighteenth century--prior to systematic European encounters--was one of the most fertile eras in Islamic thought. Across vast Islamic territories, Dallal charts in rich detail not only how intellectuals rethought and reorganized religious knowledge but also the reception and impact of their ideas. From the banks of the Ganges to the shores of the Atlantic, commoners and elites alike embraced the appeals of Muslim thinkers who, while preserving classical styles of learning, advocated for general participation by Muslims in the definition of Islam. Dallal also uncovers the regional origins of most reform projects, showing how ideologies were forged in particular sociopolitical contexts. Reformists’ ventures were in large part successful--up until the beginnings of European colonization of the Muslim world. By the nineteenth century, the encounter with Europe changed Islamic discursive culture in significant ways into one that was largely articulated in reaction to the radical challenges of colonialism.


Author(s):  
Tiago Santos Almeida

Historicity is a key epistemological component of the definition of “science” proposed by authors such as Gaston Bachelard, Georges Canguilhem and Michel Foucault, and partially accepted by the Brazilian Collective Health builders. What we call the “historicity awareness” of Collective Health is the field’s recognition that there is no knowledge of health without history and that its history interferes with its results, with the conceptualization of its objects, its cognitive and technological practices, and the feasibility of its promises of enhancing the quality of life towards an equal society. This helps explain why Humanities in general and History, in particular, are ubiquitous to Health Education, where they are known as Health and Medical Humanities or, as is more usual in Brazil, Human and Social Sciences in Health. They helped to imagine an equitable health care system of which the concrete manifestation, however imperfect, is the Brazilian Unified National Health System, the SUS. Health Humanities, Medical Humanities, and History of Science and Technology are all interdisciplinary fields that challenge historiography and theory of history to look beyond the borders of our normative understanding of the historian’s professional identity – which legitimacy is achieved through specific academic training – to properly evaluate the multiple expressions of society’s relationships and engagements with history and time.


2018 ◽  
Vol 62 (3) ◽  
pp. 833-852
Author(s):  
HANNAH MALONE

AbstractThis essay presents a critical overview of recent literature in English on the modern cultural history of death. In order to locate new developments, it charts the evolution of the field from the 1970s until today and distinguishes between French and Anglophone strands in the historiography. A selection of studies published between 2005 and 2015 exemplifies a revival in recent scholarship that hangs on four main innovations: the abandonment of grand narratives of modernization and secularization; an interdisciplinary integration of political, cultural, and intellectual history; greater attention to the individual; and the expansion of the field beyond Europe and North America. Thus, today, the history of death is both local and global, public and private, personal and universal.


2009 ◽  
pp. 209-241
Author(s):  
Adele E. Clarke ◽  
Janet K. Shim

- In this article, we review the history of medicalization theory and then offer a historicized definition of biomedicalization. We consider the relationships between biomedicalization and other contemporary theorizing, seeking in particular to situate the concept explicitly in relation to recent scholarship on the politics of life itself. We discuss how biomedicalization processes dovetail with such politics of life as they are engaged individually, collectively, and at the level of population, including issues of bioeconomy, biocapital, citizenship and enhancement. We then address and respond to several critiques of biomedicalization theory, that question its "newness", omnipresence, and determinism. In conclusion, we discuss the relations among medicalization, biomedicalization and medical sociology and offer directions for future research.Keywords: biomedicalization, medicalization, technoscience, health, politics of life, optimization.Parole chiave: biomedicalizzazione, medicalizzazione, tecnoscienza, salute, politica della vita, ottimizzazione.


Conatus ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 63
Author(s):  
Athanasios Rinotas

Albertus Magnus’ alchemy is a subject that has attracted the attention of the scholars since the early decades of the 20th century. Yet, the research that has been conducted this far is characterised by its non philosophical character. As a matter of fact, the previous studies approached Albertus’ alchemy either in terms of history of science or of intellectual history. In this paper, I focus on Albertus’ definition of alchemical transmutation that is found in his De mineralibus and I analyze it in terms of his theory of creation and of his theory of matter. Therefore, I show whether a re-creation of a metal is in accordance with Albertus’ philosophy and congruently I bring forth the Aristotle Graecus and the Aristotle Latinus that are found as background in his alchemical theory of transmutation. Ultimately this paper aims to show that the aforementioned theory is not an arbitrary statement from Albertus’ part, but the result of a serious philosophical endeavour


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