polylog 42
Mădălina Diaconu: Editorial
winter 2019
Gesundheit und Heilung
Herausgeberinnen des Thementeils: Ursula Baatz & Britta Saal
THEMA
Vitus Angermeier
Krankheitsprävention im Ayurveda
Pragmatisches Recycling und historische Brüche
This article discusses the changes and continuities that characterize the role of disease prevention in Ayurveda from its origins until today. Over the times, Ayurveda repeatedly came under pressure through various external factors. Among these, the impact of western culture and medicine in the wake of colonialism was of utmost significance.
As the present article shows, prevention played a role in Ayurveda from the beginning, however, its importance and the modes of its application changed over the centuries. Therapies like Rasāyana, that have been out of fashion for some time, were revived and adapted to modern needs in the 20th century. In spite of this ability to change and adjust to new circumstances, representatives of modern Ayurveda often prefer to emphasize and even exaggerate the old age and originality of their science.
Mbih Jerome Tosam
Human Nature, Disease Diagnosis and Health in Traditional African Medicine
A fundamental feature of any enduring healing tradition is accurate diagnosis. This is because diagnostic errors along with imprecise and delayed diagnosis all affect health care delivery and quality of care. In this paper, I argue that, in order to understand indigenous African disease aetiology and diagnostic system, it is necessary to have a good knowledge of the traditional African conception of the human body. Without a proper delineation of the boundaries of the body and what this implies for disease and diagnosis, effective healing would be impossible. Specifically, I show that the sub-Saharan African relational model of the body provides a construct of disease, diagnosis and health that differs diametrically from the predominant view in Western scientific medicine. According to the traditional African outlook, the body is not merely a discrete entity made up of measurable and rational parts, as posited by the biomedical model. Rather, it is made up of several interrelated and interdependent parts. The relational model of the body encompasses the whole being, which is to say one’s bodied and disembodied, as well as one’s social and ecological self. Disease arises, therefore, from a breakdown of harmony between these interconnected parts of the body; and for any efficient diagnosis to take place, this unified nature of the body must be taken into consideration. I argue for an intercultural medical dialogue and not one of integration, because integration may result in assimilation and unwarranted appropriation of the healing traditions and medical knowledge of less powerful societies.
Josef Estermann
Philosophische Hintergründe andiner Vorstellungen von Gesundheit, Krankheit und Genesung
In the present contribution, the author gives an insight into the underlying philosophical and cosmo-spiritual logics and rationality of a typical Andean illness called susto (scare). The diagnosis, phenomenology and treatment of this peculiar illness has to do with epistemological, anthropological and cosmological preconceptions present in Andean Philosophy.
The paper tries to establish an intercultural dialogue between Western philosophical thinking and Andean cosmo-spiritual wisdom on health, illness and healing. The procedure called llamar el ajayu is one of the outstanding examples of Andean medical knowledge which can only be fully understood on the base of an alternative anthropology and metaphysics, called runasophy and pachasophy in an Andean context.
Illness in Andean thinking is seen as some kind of cosmic, social and physiological imbalance or disharmony, and health as fully reestablished balance or harmony. Healing is always a ritual and spiritual endeavor including all sort of symbolic representation.
Barbara Schellhammer
Truth and Reconciliation in Kanada
Zur Bedeutung indigener Philosophietraditionen für die Heilung des kulturellen Genozids an Ureinwohnern
The article starts by examining the dreadful consequences of Canada’s aggressive assimilation policies, which culminated in the introduction of Indian Residential Schools whose task it was »to kill the Indian in the child«. The establishment of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission in 2008 sought to initiate a public process with the purpose of acknowledging harms done and healing the relationship between peoples within Canada.
The article explores the indigenous notion of »telling the truth« for the process of »reconciliation«, which leads to healing transgenerational traumas with its symptoms of alcoholism, family violence and suicide. Here, the understanding of procedural and relational truth in Native American Philosophy instead of factual truth will be key. In terms of intercultural philosophy with Western traditions, the article refers to Michel Foucault’s recovery of the ancient practice of parrhesia, which shows several parallels to indigenous truth-speaking. Herein lies the chance to rediscover therapeia for Western healing practices.
Tobias Schlosser
Das Verständnis von physischer und psychischer Gesundheit bei indigenen Völkern Nordamerikas
Since the early stages of European colonisation, the indigenous peoples of the Americas have been stigmatized as consumers of human flesh. Both settler-invader cultures and academic research have been fascinated by a giant cannibal called Wetiko, originating in the Cree culture of the First Nations. This essay explores the »western« interpretation of cannibalism as a culturally bound psychosis, and consequently examines the responses of Native scholars who, on the one hand, stress that the stories of the cannibal monster contain underlying legal principles that form part of their laws and customs, and on the other, use the concept of the Wetiko to criticize »western« imperialism, seeing cannibalism as a form of greed in a pathological way. Finally, the paper discusses how healthy and unhealthy states of mind are connected to a specific indigenous worldview and its system of values.
Damian Peikert
Die Praxis des Philosophen ist konkrete Medizin
Klinische Philosophie und das heilsame Gespräch
»Clinical Philosophy« 臨床哲学, which means a philosophy on the spot of suffering. Within his theory of aida and inspired by the insights of Viktor von Weizsäcker and Nishida Kitarō, Kimura assumes an inseparability of philosophy and psychiatry which leads to a philosophy of life. This approach can be defined as both philosophy of psychiatry and medical anthropology. Washida is seeking for the potential of »philosophical thinking situated in our actual life«. Even now, physicians, philosophers, and educators are applying this concept in their (therapeutic) practice. So, what is Clinical Philosophy? How can we grasp a philosophical concept raised from two methodological contexts? This paper approaches a fundamental conceptual clarification of Clinical Philosophy by highlighting its primordial critique and the therapeutic role of dialogue.
FORUM
Stephan Popp
Muhammad Iqbal – Mit Nietzsche für den Islam
The philosopher and poet Muhammad Iqbal is officially seen as the inventor of the idea of Pakistan and is considered to be the national poet of the country. Indeed, he is one of the most important Islamic modernists, a source of inspiration for enlightened Islam today, and one of the great philosophers of life in the first half of the 20th century. This article explains the main concepts of his philosophy: »self«, »love«, »intuition«, his philosophy of time, his concept of Islam, and his critique of the West. It then traces the influences of Islamic thinkers, of the western philosophers Fichte, Kant, Nietzsche, and Bergson, and the influence of the Indian society he was living in, on his thought. Iqbal claimed that all his ideas derived from his thorough reading of the Quran. However, the questions that shaped his answers were very much in the form of the then contemporary European philosophy, plus the discourses of his society.
REZENSIONEN & TIPPS
Lilian Kroth
Reales Außen? Konfrontationen zwischen French Theory und postkolonialer Kritik
Zu: Michaela Ott: Welches Außen des Denkens? Französische Theorie in (post)kolonialer Kritik. Nr. 42 S. 125-28.
Franz Gmainer-Pranzl
Die »Geburt des Logos aus dem Pathos«.
Zu: Bernhard Waldenfels: Platon. Zwischen Logos und Pathos. Nr. 42 S. 128-30.
Daniel Bella
Geteiltes Nachdenken über Gemeinschaften.
Zu: Giovanni Tidona: Gemeinschaften. Figuren der Lebensteiligkeit. Nr. 42 S. 130-32.
Louise Müller
Negotiating Theories of Nature for a More Complete Environmental Philosophy.
Zu: Angela Roothaan: Indigenous, Modern and Postcolonial Relations to Nature: Negotiating the Environment. Nr. 42 S. 133-36.
Mohamed Turki
Moderne Denker des Nahen und Mittleren Ostens sowie Nordafrikas.
Zu: Anke von Kügelgen (Hg.): Wissenschaft, Philosophie und Religion, Religionskritische Positionen um 1900 und zu: Kata Moser: Akademische Philosophie in der arabischen Welt: Inhalte – Institutionen – Periodika. Nr. 42 S. 136-41.
Mădălina Diaconu
Beiträge aus Ostasien zu einer globalen Ästhetik.
Zu: Aesthetic Consciousness in East Asia. Contemporary Aesthetics, 6. Nr. 42 S. 141-46.
Alexander Höllwerth
Ein dynamisches und lebendiges Bild der polnischen Philosophie der Gegenwart.
Zu: CONCORDIA. Gegenwartsphilosophie aus Polen. Nr. 42 S. 146-50.
Mădălina Diaconu
»Aus Vielfalt Lebendigkeit gewinnen« – Festschrift für Franz Martin Wimmer.
Zu: Franz Gmainer-Pranzl und Britta Saal (Hg.): Polylog denken. Überlegungen zu einer interkulturell-philosophischen Minimalregel. Nr. 42 S. 150-55.
Cristina Chitu
Arne Klawitter