The project contributes to the philosophical research on the concepts of health and disease systematically as well as historically. The application of the narratological concept of peripety to the interpretation of ‘disease’ aims at extending and clarifying the complex medico-philosophical debate. Viewing definitions of disease as instances of peripeties enables me to craft a heuristic that is adequate to analyse these definitions with regard to their underlying narrativity. That way recently developed narratological approaches that are gaining popularity within the field of medical humanities are put in relation with the broader philosophical debate.
The theoretical research will be accompanied by the historical survey, which will be used as a means of proof for the appropriateness of my heuristic based on peripety. It examines definitions of disease in philosophy of medicine in Germany before, during and after the German reunification. The strong ideological and political narratives in the former GDR and their vanishing during the reunification process provide an interesting case of a grand sociopolitical peripety influencing other areas of human conduct – such as the understanding of what a disease is.
Publications from this project
- “Glossary: Peripety,” in Baltic Peripeties – The Power of Narration and the Making of Regions, ed. Eckhard Schumacher and Cordelia Heß. Göttingen: V&R unipress, 2025, 305-307, https://doi.org/10.14220/9783737017008.299
- “Peripetie: Ein Schlüssel zu den Narrativen philosophischer Krankheitsdefinitionen,” in: Diskurse über Krankheit. Zum Krankheitsbegriff in Philosophie, Medizin und Psychologie (= Gesundheit, Kommunikation und Gesellschaft 7), ed. Annette Sell. Bielefeld: Transcript Verlag, 2024, 133-150, https://www.transcript-verlag.de/978-3-8376-7229-9/diskurse-ueber-krankheit/.