Article Review: Knowledge of Life

Megan Stanfield

Article Review: Knowledge of Life

“A man does not live only like a tree or a rabbit,” states George Canguilhem in an article released by Fordham University Press in 2008 (122). Canguilhem, an accredited French philosopher and physician, analyzes the way in which health and disease were defined in the early 19th-century, highlighting that the emerging criteria for “normal” and “pathological” are far from objective scientific concepts. Canguilhem, who specialized in epistemology and the philosophy of science, demonstrates how the epistemological foundations of modern biology and medicine were intertwined with political, economic, and technological imperatives when he states that “human life can have a biological, social, and an existential meaning” (120). Canguilhem’s agenda poses the problem of how new domains of knowledge come to the surface and this new knowledge is a part of a discontinuous history of human thought. Ambiguity, while it may be a simple word to say, according to Canguilhem, ambiguity can be thought of as the problem child of medicine. To better understand the ways in which pathology and normal relate, Canguilhem argues that we as humans need to identify “ the causes of ambiguity,” as well as “learn lessons from the ambiguity found opposed to taking advice from it” (122). “A man does not live only like a tree or a rabbit.” After reading the article, the audience can understand that this quote is stated to emphasize the idea that life is not black and white, especially in the infinite realm of medicine. Canguilhem’s thoughts help the reader to understand that while there maybe advanced medicine today, the world is not finite, new things are being discovered everyday, and we as a population must learn to adapt and be willing to open ourselves up to new lessons. In conclusion, Canguilhem supports his prior argument by defining “normal” as a “term having no properly absolute or essential meaning” (127).

Canguilhem, Georges. “The Normal and the Pathological” Knowledge of Life. Trans. Stefanos Geroulanos and Daniela Ginsburg. New York: Fordham UP, 2008. 121-133.