The Being and Value of Health

The principle aim of this thesis is to provide an account of the nature of

health. The starting-point is that health is a normative concept: health

implies a standard or norm in relation to which an organism's state is

evaluated. Many philosophers take this to imply that health must be

defined in subjective terms. They either think health consists in a certain

type of subjective experience (e.g. Canguilhem, Fulford), or that health

is relative to subjective values and goals (e.g. Nietzsche, Korsgaard,

Nordenfelt). I argue that subjective definitions of health fail to capture

the essential properties of health and attempt to show that health is

something normative and yet entirely objective. This would imply that

there are normative facts in the world, and to support this claim I turn

to debates in contemporary meta-ethics. I develop a meta-ethical theory

according to which a subset of non-moral goods is grounded in

objective features of living beings, and argue that this meta-ethical

theory opens the possibility for an objective account of health.

I then proceed to develop a theory of health that aims to capture

what it means for any living to be healthy. I argue that the concept of

health latches onto organisms' capacities (or dispositions): the greater an

organism's range of capacities (or quantity of dispositions), i.e. the more

it is capable of doing, the healthier it is. The norm relative to which an

organism's range of capacities is measured in evaluations of health, I go

on to argue, is the maximum range of capacities possible for the species.

Accordingly, an organism is healthy if it is capable of performing all

species-specific activities. A closer analysis of this claim yields the

formal definition that health consists in a multiplicity of potential

activity vis-?vis factual limitations set by the species. This definition of

health is defended against various objections and potential counter-

examples. In the context of human health, I attempt to show this

definition of health captures both physical and mental dimensions of

health; that it establishes a direct link between health and individual

autonomy; and that it supports a Nietzschean account of 'the great

health'-the idea that being able to give up the concern for one's health

constitutes a superior kind of health. In the conclusions, I reflect on

whether this conception of health could function as an ethical ideal, and

consider the form that a health-based ethics could take.