Kevin Aho – Existential Medicine: Essays on Health and Illness

In contemporary debates in philosophy of medicine medical humanities are gaining ground in a discipline that was for many years dominated by bioethics. Phenomenology, with its focus on human experience, and a long history of interest in illness as boundary cases of human existence, turns up as a tradition with a lot to offer in this context. In their introduction to the Edinburgh Companion in Critical Medical Humanities Whitehead & Woods thus mention phenomenology as one of two key traditions within what can be called second wave medical humanities (Whitehead & Woods 2016, 11). In this spirit, the collection of essays in Kevin Aho’s inspiring publication is an invitation to join the exploration of phenomenology and existential medicine and find new potentials for philosophy of medicine within these traditions.