C. Lefève (dir.), Autour de Canguilhem. Vie, médecine et soin, coll. "Questions de soin", Presses Universitaires de France, 361 p.
Georges Canguilhem is now an indispensable reference in philosophical and ethical debates on health and medicine. One reason for this is the radical gesture he undertook from his thesis on the normal and the pathological: to remind medicine of its often forgotten origins and individual purpose. It arises from the cry for help of a patient, whom medicine must consider in their entirety, uniqueness, and ability to give meaning and value to their life. Céline Lefève's essay captures the unity of his thought, which articulates a philosophy of life described as a normative activity struggling against its limitations; an epistemology of medicine, defined as an art using sciences (without reducing itself to them); and an ethics of the clinic, founded on the physician's attention to the patient (not just their illness alone). At a time when medicine operates at the intersection of scientific and organizational norms geared towards standardization, viewing it primarily as supporting the individual life norms of the patient provides a central critical resource to medical ethics and, beyond that, to a policy of care. Readings of Canguilhem by philosophers and physicians (Lazare Benaroyo, Martin Dumont, Jean-Christophe Mino, Didier Sicard, Charles Wolfe, and Frédéric Worms) subsequently confirm the relevance of his philosophy today.
