学としての健康科学

Abstract

The possibility and the problems of health-science as an independent science are argued fundamentally epistemologically and philosophically. Health seems to be dealt by medicine. However in fact health and healing have been rather neglected in the process of development of modern biological medicine. Health itself by nature can not become an object of medicine as natural science because of its mechanistic view of nature and reductionistic method. This is the essential reason why health-science as a new science has been required. Thinking fundamentally, health can not become object of medicine, nor of human sciences such as psychology, sociology, anthropology. But this restrictive characteristic of health has positive moment in itself. The transcendent and immanent being of health which acts through human body integrating its physical, mental and social moments is nothing but the principle of health-science. The central field of this is health-anthropology. Life and its health is of holistic character. The world of life consists of many things which relate to and depend on others. But the ground of interdependent relation of things can not be found inside things. Health as the unifying force through the body comes to existence only in relation to transcendence at the bottom of all living things. And so the problem of relation between medicine and religion is very important. The "care" which characterizes the essential way of our relation to health or healing is based on interrelative and interdependent relation of things in the world of life. Such philosophies of life as philosophy of Kitaro Nishida in Japan, the health-wisdom like the health-concept expressed in the WHO-charter, and today's idea of WHO, "Health for all", seem to offer us keys to develop our health-science.