Knowledge of life summary

Knowledge of Life

In the “Knowledge of Life” by Georges Canguilhem the uncertainty of the term “normal” is discussed with great variety because it always seems to be uncertain. One perspective explains that the deviation or singular form from the rest appears to be the difference making it irregular. Claude Bernard states “the truth is in the type, reality is always outside this type and constantly differs from it”. If there were to be a specific type then everyone would be the same and individuality would not exist. Therefore anomalies are not necessarily defects but rather necessities of its individual existence and success of life. There must be leniency within species of what is “normal” because there are always different genotypes and values in diverse circumstances.

There are so many possible forms of life that there is no difference between a successful form and a failed form. There are no successes that de-value other forms making them failures. “Successes are delayed failures” because everything eventually dies and “failures are aborted successes” (126) because what was once successful is now abandoned. The actual value of a specific form is what develops of it.

Everything has anomalies and diverges from the “defined type” making it an exception. But if everything is the exception than the “exception becomes the rule” (127). Some authors think that the divergences from the original, is the domestication of the species giving it the opportunity to succeed. So un-normal in essence is a positive.

Disease is described as the point where the being’s specific standard with regards to the environment becomes inadequate. Disease isn’t the loss of norms but life synchronized by inferior norms. Being able to adapt to the environment is a premise of “health”. The boundaries between the pathological and normal seem to be blurry. The normal state coincides with the pathological state and fluctuates only with the quantity of variation. “The pathological state is not the absence of norms but the presence of other norms” (131). Pathological is the essential opposite of “healthy” but doesn’t contradict “normal”.

To live is “to confront risks and to triumph over them” and health is a latitude (132). Health in man is the aptitude to bear variations of several norms, when he exceeds normal. It is to trounce organic disaster and find a way to recover. So disease is “a reduction of the power to overcome others” (132).

“Works Cited”

Canguilhem, Georges. “The Normal and the Pathological.” Knowledge of Life. Trans.

Stefanos Geroulanos and Daniela Ginsburg. New York: Fordham UP, 2008. 121-

133.