Prolegomena to a philosophy of illness

Abstract

The aim of this paper is to settle the basis to interpretate illness in a philosophical way. This work defends that every illnes, under socio-cultural conventions and apart from clinical profiles, shares the same ontological structure susceptible to be described in formal terms. In order to prove it, a conceptual framework is elaborate it based on the figure of José de Letamendi, who is considered the forefather of the philosophy of illness, and in philosophers from the hispanic tradition like José Ortega y Gasset, who provides us with a hermeneutic horizon to develope conveniently the objective of this paper.