"Illness can actually invite you to be more reflective." OR "Philosophers try to understand what makes us the way we are; what is essential to our being qua humans; what are accidental or arbitrary features."
Havi Carel is Professor of Philosophy and an expert on experiences of illness. At 35, she was told she had 10 years to live, diagnosed with an incredibly rare respiratory disease. This experience turned philosophy into a discipline of immediate practical concern for her, rather than an abstract theoretical enterprise. She has since worked closely with the NHS to provide a 'philosophical tool-kit for patients'. In Carel's work, philosophy is returned to an essential art of living.
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