What is health? What is it to be healthy? Our first answer must inevitably be the answer of St. Augustine, when confronted with the theoretical problem of time: “If no one asks me, I know the answer; if I want to explain it to the one who asks me, I do not know it.” In both cases the first sensation of one who aspires to theorizing is that of perplexity. I think, therefore, that this initial perplexity has its source in two principal reasons, capable of reduction to these two assertions: first, the idea of health has a complex structure, and, second, the idea of health has a variable structure. Without a thorough study of this complexity and this variability, the construction of the medical anthropology that our historical level requires would not be possible. We will try to point out the fundamental lines of both.

In Iroquois and Algonquin legend there is the story of a girl who submits in the dark of night to a man she believes to be her brother. Every detail seems to identify him: physical appearance, clothing, a scratched cheek attesting to the heroine's virtue. When formally accused by her, the brother reveals that he has a second self (Sosie) or, more precisely, a double; the bond between them is so strong that everything befalling the one is automatically transmitted to the other : the torn garment, the wounded face. In order to convince his incredulous sister, the young man kills his double before her eyes, but with this single blow he pronounces his own death sentence, since their destinies are one.

How did it become possible to philosophize about history? Man has generally sought to locate himself in natural space rather than in historical time. The various oriental philosophies give no place to history. “Humanistic” Greece herself, in other respects so eager to explore human conduct in all its characteristic dimensions and in all its aspects, prudently recoiled from anything which might give value to time or cause history to appear as the specifically human mode of existence. No other culture, perhaps, carried so far the concern for harmonizing human relationships, and yet the idea of progress was completely lacking in it. The organization of the terrestrial city always remained the central point of the reflection of Greek poets and philosophers, who were almost all teachers and law-givers—but they never thought to situate the true destiny of man in the historical world, much less to grant man a place in the universe which would make him forget the precariousness of his condition and his subordination to that which surpasses him. And, if we listen to Aristotle: “The life of moral virtue,” he says, “is happy only in a secondary degree. For the moral activities are purely human, ανθρωπικαι.” Naturally, “it is true that, being a man and living in the society of others, he chooses to engage in virtuous action, and so will need external goods to carry on his life as a human being, πρos τo ανθρωπɛνɛσθαι.” But we must take care not to assert “that man is superior to the other animals … since there are other things far more divine in their nature than man, for instance, to mention the most visible (ϕανɛρωτατα), the things of which the things of which the celestial system is composed.” Aristotle was referring to the stars—and, indeed, it was in the circular motions of the luminaries, much more than in the human domain, that the classic Greeks saw that which is manifested in being with the greatest splendor. If we limit ourselves to the specifically human—as do those whom Plotinus designates under the frankly disdainful term oι ανθρωπικωτɛρoι—we risk losing contact with the Good that revolves in the cosmos and is our sole guaranty against the senseless non-being which threatens us from every side. Under these conditions the question of knowing whether or not history has meaning, and whether or not it is provided with an appropriate logic which expresses the profound structure of our being, appears meaningless.

A complex of transformations, carried into effect with varying tempos since the beginning of the era of industrial revolutions, has disrupted a certain number of human societies: societies which the ethnologists often call “modern” in opposing them to those labeled “traditional.”

There are certain terms which, for reasons no longer discoverable, have taken on an emotional force which impels people either to admire what they seem to stand for or to dislike it. Among such terms are the temporal and the eternal, the dynamic and the static, the unified and the multiple, the universal and the local. At the present time to say that a work of art, for instance, has been “universally admired” is presumably also to say that it is better than one which is admired only in France or Italy or the United States. To say that courage or truthfulness or charity have always been “highly esteemed” is also to say that they are inherently nobler qualities than, for example, originality or wit, which are highly esteemed only in certain epochs. It is this curious aura of emotivity which Professor A. O. Lovejoy in one of his ingenious terminological inventions once called “metaphysical pathos.” “Metaphysical pathos” is not merely the name for the power which terms have of stimulating pleasant emotions, of making men feel that the things they name are good. It may also be of an unpleasant sort. It may induce dislike as well as admiration. Where one man speaks of the dynamic with something approaching awe, another calls it “aimless striving” or “spiritual restlessness,” forgetting that only a hundred and fifty years ago the German Romantic philosophers could think of no nobler end of man than striving for striving's sake. Hence it is always useful and for the most part necessary to look closely at those abstractions by means of which we justify our programs. It is for this reason that it may be well to examine one of our own sacred words, “tradition,” which seems to have replaced even that perennial favorite of the poets, “nature.”

This note was written in the hope that it would make a small contribution to the revival, not of Hegel, but of a mental faculty which is in danger of being obliterated : the power of negative thinking. As Hegel defines it, “Thinking is, indeed, essentially the negation of that which is immediately before us.” What does he mean by “negation,” the central category of dialectic?

Definitions are often viewed with a skeptical eye. The most diverse definitions are successfully applied to a given subject; their discrepancies are noted, and conclusions are drawn concerning the vanity of quibbling over words. In the best of cases the writer, before beginning his own exposition, proposes the definition which he will follow exclusively, convinced that all terminologies are valid so long as they are explicit and respected.

Every citizen has an equal right to culture. The development of the means of diffusion and of democratic ideas has unquestionably furthered a trend toward the unification of culture, but this process is often hindered and retarded. Profound disparities separate the cultural ideas and practices of society, the ideal or real cultural models of different social classes and categories, those of different groups, and, finally, those of the leaders and of the public. Imbalances result from this, and it is these imbalances that popular culture tends to modify. In order best to meet the continuously new cultural needs of industrial and democratic society, popular culture has adapted to modern life some of the features of traditional culture. It has initiated the masses into the elementary techniques of learning—writing and reading. An increasingly complex and extended primary education has become more widespread. Contemporary society raises problems that evolve so rapidly and are so intricate that popular culture must be continued after school and during a man's entire life. It finds its way into new systems of permanent instruction and training through the agency of large-scale means of diffusion, by means of groups or social relationships.