THE PHENOMENON OF HEALTH FROM THE POSITION OF ENACTIVISM: EXISTENTIAL AND PHENOMENOLOGICAL ASPECTS

Health is not merely the absence of disease but a state of active involvement in the world, according to an enactivist and phenomenological perspective. The biomedical model is insufficient, and holistic or biopsychosocial approaches still fail to integrate biology, psychology, and culture. Drawing on Gadamer, Heidegger, Merleau-Ponty, and Ratcliffe, the author argues that health reveals itself as a condition enabling immersion in a shared world, not as a specific introspective feeling. Health is the potential for world discovery embedded in existential feelings, which arise through the living body and shape what matters to us.

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Abstract

The article considers existential and phenomenological aspects of the phenomenon of health from the standpoint of enactivism, which is understood as a body-oriented phenomenology. Enactivism was developed because the biomedical understanding of health (as the absence of disease), which dominates medical practice, is insufficient.A certain approximation to the enactivist approach is the holistic concept of health (L. Nordenfelt), in which the experience of suffering or well-being experienced during illness plays a role, as well as the biopsychosocial model of health by G.Engel. In the latter, it remains unclear how different levels of biology, psychology and socio-cultural context interact with each other. The author emphasises the peculiarity of phenomenological concepts of health. The phenomenologist starts from the perspective of the ‘first’ person when it comes to analyzing health and illness and tries to explain the relationship between the levels of biology, psychology and socio-cultural context as belonging to the same life world. The author of the article considers the approach of G.Gadamer, according to whom health is not a state that a person introspectively feels in himself, but rather a state of involvement, being-in-the-world, being with other people, active and useful participation in the performance of his daily tasks.Health reveals itself to us not as a specific feeling, but as a condition that allows us to immerse ourselves in a world shared with others. Gadamer’s approach to understanding health is consonant with enactivism, which has deep phenomenological roots, in particular in the philosophy of M.Heidegger and M.Merleau-Ponty.The author of the article clarifies the concept of ‘existential feelings’ (M.Ratcliffe), which arise and are felt through the living body and provide templates for understanding things that matter to us in the world. Health is not one such specific feeling, but rather the potential for world discovery that is contained in all existential feelings.