The Enigma of Health: Hans-Georg Gadamer at 100 Fred Dallmayr As Gadamer, the “dean” of European philosophy, turns 100 this year, it behooves philosophers and reflective people in general to ponder the relation between philosophy and “good life,” and more broadly between philosophy and natural health. As it happens, Gadamer himself has extensively reflected on this issue, especially in a book titled The Enigma of Health. The essay first recapitulates some of the main arguments of Gadamer’s text, focusing on the difference between the growing scientific arsenal of medical intervention (combatting illness) and the unforced and un-constructed maintenance of human health through attentiveness to “nature's way.” The middle section inserts the text into the context of Gadamer’s larger opus, exploring particularly the connection between health and such key Gadamerian concerns as “appropriateness,” “natural rightness,” and “mimesis.” The conclusion traces affinities between Gadamer and the teachings of Heidegger and Adorno, while also probing the political implications of his text for the maintenance of human freedom in the face of expertocracy and the reduction of politics to ideological blueprints. In many ways, modernity in the West constitutes a conspiracy against nature in favor of artifact or deliberate construction. In virtually all domains of human endeavor—from philosophy and science to industry and forms of modern art—we find a celebration of construction or production coupled with a near-contempt for “nature’s ways.” Even intellectual tendencies critical of aspects of Western modernity readily pay homage to the modern ethos by employing self-chosen labels like “constructivism,” “reconstruction,” and “deconstruction.” No doubt, this modern ethos also carries ennobling features: ultimately, the zeal for construction testifies to human creativity and inventiveness, to the strong Promethean streak operative in humankind. Yet, relentlessly pursued, Prometheanism carries a heavy price: that of potential self-destruction. Although deliberately seeking to expand the range of human possibilities (perhaps infinitely), construction runs headlong into the vortex of finitude, thus endangering the very source of possibilities (or its own “condition of possibility”). In large measure, this danger has to do with modernity’s liaison with mastery and forceful, even violent intervention: virtually all forms of modern construction forcefully Copyright © 2000. All rights reserved.328 THE REVIEW OF POLITICS disrupt or redirect natural processes whose regenerative powers are hardly unlimited. The destructive potential of construction is vividly evident in the arsenal of nuclear weapons threatening global survival; it is also manifest in the steadily intensifying ecological crisis which erodes the moorings of human habitation (oikos) on earth. The dilemmas of construction are also reflected in the field of human illness and health, that is, in the domain of medical treatment and its limits. Here again, Prometheanism has yielded impressive triumphs. Undeniably, the advances of medical science have been able to combat and even eradicate major illnesses which had plagued humankind in the past; yet, its competence in attacking illness does not equally extend to fostering and sustaining human health and natural well-being. Although remarkably efficient in artificially prolonging the duration of life, medicine is not similarly able to produce natural longevity and with it the benefit of seasoning accruing to a richly textured old age. Among contemporary philosophers, no one has reflected more intensively on questions of illness and health than Hans- Georg Gadamer, the “dean” of Continental philosophy whose entire life’s work steers a subtle course between hermeneutical questioning and listening, between artful construction and “letting-be” (or between nature and art). Gadamer’s reflections are all the more significant as his own life exemplifies concretely the point of his theoretical teaching. Born in 1900 Gadamer has been a witness of the turbulent course of an entire century—all the while maintaining a steady path throughout these turbulent events. At century’s end, surely much can be learned from his example about steadiness and about aging as a mode of continued seasoning. Gadamer’s reflections on these topics are contained mainly in a book first published in German in 1993 and subsequently translated into English under the title The Enigma of Heaith (in 1996). in the following I shall first of all review the main arguments regarding illness and health presented by Gadamer in that book. Next, I shall correlate and compare these arguments with prominent themes found in some of his other writings. By way of conclusion, I shall broaden the focus by inserting Gadamer’s insights into the larger context of contemporary philosophical discussions and global political experiences. Copyright © 2000. All rights reserved.THE ENIGMA OF HEALTH 329 Gadamer’s The Enigma of Health carries the subtitle The Art of Healing in a Scientific Age. The subtitle is revealing as it points to one of the book’s main concerns: the tension and even conflict between modern science, including medical science, and the practice of healing seen as the restoration and maintenance of health, From Gadamer’s perspective—which he shares with such different thinkers as Heidegger and Habermas—modern science involves basically a process of distantiation from and objectification of the world geared toward the goal of human mastery or contro! over nature. As he writes, modern science denotes no longer “the totality of the knowledge of the world” which Greek philosophy had elaborated; rather, based ona unitary methodology as formulated by Descartes, modern science functions as a “tribunal of verification” before which nature’s laws can be confirmed or refuted. Predicated on this methodology, modern science no longer blends with nature, but rather makes possible a “knowledge directed to the power of making, a knowing mastery of nature”—which is the essence of technology. As contrasted with the natural philosophy of antiquity, modern science in Gadamer’s view is no longer concerned with nature seen as “a self-maintaining and self-restoring totality.” Rather, wedded to strategic intervention and the Kantian motto of “forcing nature to yield its secrets,” science bears the earmarks of “making and producing,” and especially those of “projective construction.” Modern science, we read, understands itself precisely as a kind of knowledge that is guided by the idea of transforming nature into a human world, indeed almost of eliminating the natural dimension by means of rationally controlled projective “construction.” As science this knowledge allows us to calculate and to control natural processes to such an extent that it finally becomes capable of replacing the natural by the artificial? 1. Hans-Georg Gadamer, The Enigma of Health: The Art of Heating in a Scientyfic Age, trans. Jason Gaiger and Nicholas Walker (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1996), pp. 5-6, 38-39. Compare also the comment (p. 105): “Through modern science and its experimental methods we compel nature to offer up answers. But in doing so we inflict a form of torture on it.” Copyright © 2000. All rights reserved.