From predicaments to pathophobia: non-ideal approaches in philosophy of illness

Life can be non-ideal in many ways. One of the central ways in which it is non-ideal is in its necessarily embodied, and hence vulnerable, nature. This vulnerability includes our susceptibility to injury and disease, other types of bodily failure, and death. We are further vulnerable to external events and exigencies of life that are also beyond our control (Carel 2021). This vulnerability, on which we say much more below, is a core feature that ought to be considered in discussions of non-ideal moral and political theory. There is, of course, also much joy and pleasure in embodied life, and this, too, relates to non-ideality in a variety of ways. In this Chapter, we interpret the term ‘non-ideal’ broadly, offering some reflections on embodiment and its connection to non-ideal moral theories, and examining the lives and predicaments of ill persons (Valentini 2012).