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Historical Reconstruction of the Debate on the Value-Ladenness of Disease: Changes in Context, Themes, and Format, 1970–2000

  • Journal of Humanities, Seoul National University
  • 2023, 80(3), pp.97-135
  • DOI : 10.17326/jhsnu.80.3.202308.97
  • Publisher : Institute of Humanities, Seoul National University
  • Research Area : Humanities > Other Humanities
  • Received : July 11, 2023
  • Accepted : August 8, 2023
  • Published : August 31, 2023

Park Seungmann 1

1가톨릭대학교

Accredited

ABSTRACT

This article presents a historical analysis of the debate on the value-ladenness of disease in the contemporary Anglo-American philosophy of medicine, spanning the period from the 1970s to the 2000s. Numerous arguments have emerged concerning whether disease and health are value-laden (normative) or value-neutral (naturalistic) concepts. However, both the primary sources contributing to these debates and the secondary accounts summarizing them have been afflicted by a shared constraint: an absence of historical contextualization. Put differently, extant studies suffer from both external ahistoricity, wherein they fail to reveal the social backdrop influencing the debates, and internal ahistoricity, as they neglect to account for the transformations occurring within the debates themselves. By addressing these concerns, the primary objective of this article is twofold: firstly, to elucidate the social milieu in which the value-ladenness debate unfolded and to capture the evolving philosophical landscape and the changing themes and methodologies underpinning the arguments; secondly, to uncover the ahistorical nature of the existing debate as an outcome of these historical developments.

Citation status

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