Despite recent efforts, little research has been done concerning the issue of medical ethics in Georges Canguilhem’s work. This is mainly due to the critical position the author takes regarding the humanistic medicine practices that began to proliferate after World War II. However, we hold that the medical philosopher´s insights do contribute to the field of medical ethics, since they rescue the patients’ individuality, which is highly valued in today´s person centered medicine: over the “objectifying” rationality of modern medicine. We (...) also propose that Canguilhem poses an “interactive” understanding of human life that goes beyond a reductionistic vision of life and which allows the development of an ethical subject capable of producing new norms. (shrink)

Este artículo pretende resaltar la lectura que Michel Foucault realiza de lamedicina grecolatina en el mundo antiguo. Más que caracterizarse por susrasgos terapéuticos, tal discurso médico buscaba la producción de una éticade la existencia. A partir de diferentes textos prescriptivos desarrolladospor filósofos, moralistas y médicos, se muestra la importancia que losantiguos otorgaban a la salud como elemento esencial dentro del ejerciciode la libertad. El uso general del cuerpo, involucrando la alimentación,así como la práctica de los placeres sexuales, se convertía en (...) un objetode inquietud permanente para quien deseara “estilizar su ser”. Destacarestas características de la medicina antigua occidental permite delinearuna genealogía de los valores morales actuales vinculados al autocuidado,práctica importante para los dispositivos de seguridad de las racionalidadespolíticas contemporáneas. (shrink)

The issue of medicine in some of Michel Foucault’s works provides an opportunity to understand the problem of modern subjectivity. The research undertaken by Foucault on the birth of the clinic and the issue of medicalization is one of the few examples in which a particular knowledge produces ways of existing. As is shown in the paper, medical knowledge allowed the construction of an idea of human beings based on an organicist conception. In addition, medicalization and the spread of Biopolitics (...) since the 18th century until our days fostered the realization of such a project. In conclusion, such a research is useful because it makes possible to trace a genealogy of the way in which human beings understand their own existence. (shrink)