Overview

After its unparalleled rise and expansion over the past century, medicine is increasingly criticized both as a science and clinical practice for lacking scientific rigor, for contributing to overmedicalization, and for failing to offer patient-centered care. This criticism highlights serious challenges which indicate that the scope and societal role of medicine are likely to be altered in the 21st century. Somogy Varga's ground-breaking book offers a new perspective on the challenges, showing that they converge on fundamental philosophical questions about the nature and aim of medicine. Addressing these questions, Varga presents a philosophical examination of the norms and values constitutive of medicine and offers new perspectives on how to address the challenges that the criticism raises. His book will offer valuable input for rethinking the agenda of medical research, health care delivery, and the education of health care personnel.

Full Product Details

9781009450010

Table of Contents

Reviews

'This book offers a novel view of the nature and aims of medicine, which is deployed to defend medicine from excessive scepticism while respecting and developing the challenges that medicine faces today. It is an important contribution to the philosophy of medicine.' Jacob Stegenga, Professor of History and Philosophy of Science, University of Cambridge 'This excellent book offers a careful and insightful analysis of the nature and aims of medicine. It is unique in positioning medicine in relation both to science and to ethics, and it systematically dismantles extreme stances on medicine while offering stances that are simultaneously moderate and novel.' Alex Broadbent, Durham University

Author Information

Somogy Varga is Professor of Philosophy at Aarhus University, Director of the Center for Philosophy and the Health Sciences, and Visiting Research Professor at Ruhr University Bochum. He is the author of Scaffolded Minds (2019), Naturalism, Interpretation and Mental Disorder (2015), and Authenticity as an Ethical Ideal (2011).

Tab Content 6

Customer Reviews

Recent Reviews

Countries Available