Abstract

DE CARVALHO MESQUITA AYRES, José Ricardo. Understanding the practical sense of health actions: contributions of Philosophical Hermeneutics. Salud colectiva [online]. 2008, vol.4, n.2, pp.159-172. ISSN 1669-2381.

Health actions have a powerful techno-scientific armory invested in their instrumental success. Conversely, they have a fragile conceptual basis for the understanding and transformation of the practical sense of health-disease-care processes that especifically take place nowadays. This essay intends to identify the potential contributions of philosophical hermeneutics to overcome such fragility. With this purpose and through contemporary hermeneutics, the recovery of the aristotelian distinction between theory, technique and praxis and its repercussions is discussed, for a systematic treatment of the practical reason of health actions. Against this backdrop, the following stands out: the dialogic essence of understanding-interpreting human acts; the fusion of horizons as the movement of realization of those processes of understanding; and happiness projects, existential guide to everyday life, as the impulse and the possibility of openness of the reason to the practical sense of health actions.

Keywords : Epistemology; Philosophy; Knowledge; Health Care (public health); Health-Disease Process.

        · abstract in Spanish     · text in Spanish     · Spanish ( pdf )