Is health merely the absence of illness? Can healthiness be defined as an experience in and of it itself, or must we call no man healthy till he is dead?

Notions of health and illness are extremely delicate to discuss due to ideological weight they carry, not to mention their inexactitude, which no doubt cannot be simplified. Nevertheless, they are central to our experience and to today's political issues. Combining medicine, biology, and the human sciences, this study compares the approaches of thinkers such as Canguilhem, Boorse, Engelhardt, and Nordenfelt.