Medicine and ideology

Abstract

This paper is an excursion on some of the views that Canguilhem expressed about ideology The paper argues that there are senses in which modern medical rationality is driven by impulses that might - so long as we modify some of our traditional preconceptions about the concept - be described as ideological. Not least of the merits of Canguilhem's thought in this area was that he made the attempt to create an opening for a rethinking of the concept of ideology in the philosophy and epistemology of science which may be useful and challenging at a time when that concept is otherwise rather discredited.