Ethique et histoire des sciences chez Georges Canguilhem

“Ethics and History of Science in Georges Canguilhem : Psychology, Milieu, Medicine.”

Dr. Jean Francois Braunstein
Professor l’Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne

WEDNESDAY September 17, 2014 - 4:30 p.m.

The Department of Social Studies of Medicine
3647 Peel Street
Don Bates Seminar Room 101

Georges Canguilhem is not primarily an epistemologist or an historian of science, unlike what is commonly thought. He began his work long before his classical 1943 Essay concerning some problems related to the normal and the pathological with less well known publications, focusing on ethics and politics, criticizing two main themes, that of psychology as a school of subjection and the « deterministic » and racist view of milieu. But Canguillhem will return to these issues later in his works in the history of science and provide scientific arguments in support of his earlier criticisms. His interest in medicine also does not come primarily from an epistemological point of view : it follows from his reflection on « technique » and «concrete human problems ». And medicine remains, for Canguilhem, throughout his work, an example of ethics according to his taste, which incidentally happens to be the exact opposite of bioethics. 

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