英文摘要 |
This paper begins with an examination of a genealogy of philosophical reflections on health and illness from Friedrich Nietzsche to Georges Canguilhem and Gilles Deleuze. While Nietzsche’s inspiration to Deleuze has been widely acknowledged, lit-tle attention has been paid to how Canguilhem’s philosophy of the life sciences fol-lows Nietzsche and later affects Deleuze. Canguilhem claims that health is one’s feel-ing of confidence in life; health is when a living being feels it creates values and estab-lishes its own vital norms. The notion of individuality plays a significant role in Canguilhem’s philosophy of the life sciences. Individuality is not only constituted by a living being who determines how to react; for Canguilhem, individuality refers to a living being as well as its relation to the milieu. An individual is not pre-given; instead, in selecting and responding to its milieu, it is individuated. Understood in a biological sense, the individual, when creating a norm, makes a judgment based on feeling. While a norm is created, the assessment is where values are posited. For Canguilhem, to live is to evaluate, to seek the sense of the organism’s choice. Hence the notion of individ-uality is considered as an axiological rather than an ontological one. This paper is composed of three parts: the living and its milieu, individuality and valuation, and Canguilhem and contemporary medical issues. I intend to examine why and how Canguilhem’s notion of individuality is tied to value judgements, what influence Nietzsche has on Canguilhem, and how Canguilhem’s thoughtful ideas of individ-uality can help us critically reflect on contemporary debates about personalized medicine. |