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Gadamer’s approach, however, is not principally tied to the metaphysical biology andcosmology of Greek thought; rather, it thematizes the notion of a self-establishing healthyequilibrium in a phenomenological manner. That is, it seeks to analyze health and sicknessby investigating the experiences of these states in everyday life, and not by invoking biologyor physiology (in either their ancient or their modern form). Thus the analysis of healthis placed on a lifeworld level and takes into account not only the absence of detectablebiological disease, but also the concrete being-in-the-world of the patient, which includesthoughts, feelings and actions. I have carried on with such a phenomenological analysisof health and illness myself, in other works, an analysis contrasting homelike (healthy)and un-homelike (ill) modes of being-in-the-world. 34Health and AuthenticityIn what way does a phenomenological analysis of health bring us closer to phronesis asa key concept for medical ethics? In what way do the two roads travelled by Gadamer inThe Enigma of Health meet? Precisely by defining the goal of clinical practice as somethingdependent on the individual patient. If health is to be understood in terms of beingin-the-world,and not only in terms of biomedical data, then the doctor needs to developan understanding of the patient’s thoughts, feelings and lifeworld predicaments, in orderto carry out his profession. He needs to address the questions around what makes a goodlife and around the meaning of life for this particular person. This is food for thought formedical ethics. The idea that ethical theories could somehow be added as a “non-medical”part to the analysis of the clinical situation is shown to be illusory, when health itself isanalyzed in the same terms as good living.But a healthy life, as the goal of clinical practice, can surely not be the same thing asa good life in itself. There is more to good living than health, and a good life may beattainable even by someone who is not healthy. This assertion holds true even when healthis analyzed as something over and above the mere absence of disease -- that is, when it isanalyzed phenomenologically. Thus the emphasis on phronesis calls for a phenomenologicaldistinction between a healthy life and a good life -- a distinction, which to my mind is notaddressed by Gadamer in any consistent way in The Enigma of Health. Health is an enigmaticthing (die Verborgenheit der Gesundheit), but so, indeed, is good living.Aristotle’s conceptualization of a good life as human flourishing (eudaimonia), in theNicomachean Ethics, is tied up with his analysis of the moral and intellectual virtues. Ifman, who is a social and an intellectual creature, is to be able to flourish, he needs to cultivatethe virtues, which are present in him as potential forms waiting to be developed. Thisanalysis represents an attempt to find objective criteria for good living. Modern philosophicaltheories about a good life (or “happiness,” as it is more often termed) are as a rulefar more individualistic in nature. 35 Utilitarianism, for example, in both its hedonistic andpreference forms, leaves to the individual the question of settling what is pleasurable forhim. As Alasdair MacIntyre has pointed out in his influential study After Virtue, this conceptionof autonomy leads to a peculiar, modern form of relativistic nihilism, which hasits roots not only in Nietzsche, but also in liberalism: I choose what is good for me, andthe only justification for this choice is indeed that it is made by me. Autonomy is in itself34See Fredrik Svenaeus, “Das Unheimliche – Towards a Phenomenology of Illness,” in Medicine,Health Care and Philosophy 3 (2000): 3-16; and “The Body Uncanny – Further Steps Towards aPhenomenology of Illness,” in Medicine, Health Care and Philosophy 3 (2000): 125-137.35For a survey, see Martin Seel, Versuch über die Form des Glücks (Frankfurt a.M.: SuhrkampVerlag, 1995).182