“La mirada filosófica como mirada médica”

We share the conviction that philosophy is fundamentally an orientation of life, that is to say, what the ancients called “care of the soul” or “care of self”. A conviction that, contemporaneously, has been expressed by authors so different as Ludwig Wittgenstein, Jan Patočka, Michel Foucault or Pierre Hadot. Now, if this is true, it is, therefore, necessary to explore how philosophy can significantly contribute to that what in today’s society is called “mental health” (with problems such as those related to the imminent depression pandemic). This research project modestly takes on this challenge. It will attempt to articulate an understanding of the human condition (which we call the “philosophy of proximity”) based on the concepts of outdoors, affectability, shelter and resistance, with the intention that this theoretical proposal may interest and be useful for professionals who provide assistance in mental health (psychiatrists, psychologists and social workers). The project, despite being philosophical, is close to the tradition of phenomenological psychiatry that – in a broad sense – goes from Jaspers to Blankenburg, and is fortunate to have been conceived already in interdisciplinary work between philosophers and psychiatrists. It will be argued that the true medical view, given that it does not operate with the idea of plenitude or perfection, does not multiply labels unnecessarily (by understanding that a certain lack is constitutive and that there is pathos without illness), while there is however a pathologizing gaze that falls into this drift and only understands suffering from its ascription to the morbid, which ends up being everything if the norm is perfection. Understanding that the difficulty of existence is not a disease and that human life is essentially being affected can facilitate the development of a language and a narrative capable of eventually becoming a help for people’s lives and for certain reinforcement strategies and of resistance in the face of difficulties, disintegrating processes and abysses of the meaningless.

Keywords: philosophical view, medical view, psychiatry, health, proximity, resistance, depression, life, affectability