What is illness? Is it a physiological malfunction or a social label? Is illness simply the absence of health? How do the physical, social and emotional worlds of a person change when they become ill? Can there be wellbeing within illness? Havi Carel addresses these questions by weaving together two perspectives on illness: her personal account of her own illness, and the abstract, philosophical account. Carel shows how we can view illness not simply as a localised biological dysfunction, but as a transformation of one's body, one's social, psychological and physical worlds, and one's temporal existence. By focusing on the experience of illness as lived from within illness is reformulated as a life-changing event rather than a limited physiological problem. The body is no longer a lifeless container for the self, but the core of human subjectivity and embodied existence.
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Editorial Reviews
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"If this is what academic self-help can do, long may there be more books like it." Times Higher Education
"The challenge for those who champion philosophy's usefullness is to show how it can fit with the rest of life, not stand as master over it. The Art of Living Series rises to this challenge ... ." The Guardian
"As a philosopher, Havi Carel spends her days grappling with questions of mortality. But her theoretical notions on the meaning of life and death were turned upside down when she was diagnosed with a terminal illness - and told she had just 10 years to live." The Independent
About the Author
Havi Carel is Senior Lecturer in Philosophy at the University of the West of England, Bristol.
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5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A fantastic achievement,
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This review is from: Illness: The Cry of the Flesh (The Art of Living Series) (Art of Living (McGill-Queen)) (Paperback)
This book is a tremendous achievement, as well as being a very moving personal document. It is a philosophical meditation on the nature of and social meaning illness, disease and death. It discusses philosophical and psychological literature, Epicurus, Heidegger and Merleau-Ponty. But it is also a personal memoir, it is about Carel's experience of being diagnosed with a life-threatening illness, about what that meant for her presence in the world, about how she appeared in the eyes of others, and how she felt she appeared. It is about the encounter with medical professionals and their detached and external perspective on another's catastrophe; it is about the varied reactions of friends, some of whom couldn't maintain friendship. It is about how to confront the fact that all your assumptions about how your life is going to go: career, relationships, family, old age, can just be taken away. Carel was diagnosed with lymphangioleiomyomatosis (LAM), a rare disease that affects young women, and for which the progosis is about 10 years from the onset of symptoms. The sufferer experiences a progressive decline in lung-function over that time. Life may be extended by a heart-lung transplant, but that's, obviously, a difficult business.
I'm not much of a fan of "contintental" philosophy, because I've often found it obscure to obscurantist. Carel, however, is trained in that tradition and is really good at overcoming the resistance of sceptics like me. She uses Merleau-Ponty's ideas about embodied subjectivity throughout the book to explore what illness is like for the sick person and how powers and abilities that are invisible to and taken for granted by the well person become all too manifest to the sick (or disabled or ageing) person. All the time, she is constantly moving backwards and forwards between this theoretical discussion and the fact of her own experience: the first onset of symptoms, "denial", diagnosis, treatment, the foreclosure of plans, projects, possibilities. The phenomenology of social situations gets explored too: how people react, their sensitivities and insensitivities, callous reactions, stupid injunctions from ignorant people to try faddish diets of exercise routines. The discussions of Heidegger and Epicurus I found a little hard going at times. Havi does a brilliant job, I think, of making Heidegger clear. But in doing so she brings to the surface, of my mind at least, the suspicion that, far from being a radical philosopher, he was often turning into universal truths the parochial facts of European bourgeois life: not everyone has a career, nor sees their life as a structured series of projects. But then I'm not a Heidegger scholar, and perhaps I'm being unfair to him. In a sense, issues of Heidegger interpretation don't matter, because Carel is just using the philosophical traditions most available to her to reflect on the social and personal meaning of the imminence of death.
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A Razor's Edge,
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This review is from: Illness: The Cry of the Flesh (The Art of Living Series) (Art of Living (McGill-Queen)) (Paperback)
I am not in any regard a professional philosopher, though I became aware of this book by reading the journal, Philosophy in Review. But I am into my seventies now, and this book really speaks to me. The book illuminates illness from a personal perspective; gives me new understanding through its exploration of the thinking of Epicurus and Heidegger in connection with illness; and so illuminates and extends my thinking about illness, medicine and phenomenology from a personal and societal perspective. Havi Carel says, "The point of the dialogue is to show how an existential problem, like illness, can be resolved, or at least addressed, by philosophy." For me her book does this splendidly and personally and accessibly, through anecdote, memoir and addressing philosophical texts. Her personal ongoing experience with a mortal disease gives the book a vividness and edge one does not expect from a book on philosophy.
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Compassionate intellect,
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This review is from: Illness: The Cry of the Flesh (The Art of Living Series) (Art of Living (McGill-Queen)) (Paperback)
Excellent book which explores through the intellect as well as the practical emotional basis for dealing with illness as a integral part of life within a philosophical context. Anyone dealing with illness, physical or emotional, should read this work which has its academic basis as well as an experiental framework due to the author's insights and personal experience.
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