The Multilingual Challenge for the Construction and Transmission of Scientific Knowledge by Berthoud Anne-Claude;Gajo Laurent; & Laurent Gajo

Author:Berthoud, Anne-Claude;Gajo, Laurent; & Laurent Gajo [Berthoud, Anne-Claude & Gajo, Laurent]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing Company
Published: 2020-10-20T11:05:35+00:00

6.2Variations on the theme of the body and disease (Lazare Benaroyo)

French has only one word (maladie) for disease/illness/sickness, and only one word (corps) for the body it dwells in. English, on the other hand, has three words for maladie: (1) ‘disease’, which defines it in terms of the organic and physiological disruptions it causes, (2) ‘illness’, which defines it in terms of its existential dimension, and (3) ‘sickness’, which defines it in terms of its social and cultural aspects.

In both French and English, these words refer to three representations of the wounded body: ‘disease’ refers to the biological body seen as an object of science, ‘illness’ refers to the lived-body, the locus where it is experienced, and ‘sickness’ refers to the socialized body. In both languages, however, there is only one word for these various realities: corps in French, and ‘body’ in English. In German, on the other hand, ‘body’ can be denominated in two different ways. The word Leib, which means one’s own body, points to the impossibility of dissociating the body from life; it reflects the unity of the singular being-in-itself, which is alienated by disease. This is a very distinct reality from that of the body-as-object: Körper in German.

These various words cover the full semantic “thickness” of the basic French notions of corps and maladie in the three languages. The English language reflects the fact that the wounded body is perceived as the site of (1) a biological dysfunction, (2) an existential crisis and (3) a social distress. It is this wealth of meaning that has to be kept alive, beyond words, in the dialogue between physicians and patients. Various registers of material reality and existence reflect the “shadow” of the French words maladie and corps at the various moments in the care relationship. It is the focus on the full semantic depth of these words that brings to life and highlights the dialogue between the caregiver and the patient in the pursuit of the best care – a patient whose apparent passivity may be interpreted in this setting as patience, to quote Emmanuel Lévinas (1998: 93), that is, as an opening towards the other, “ an original call for aid […] an original opening toward merciful care, the point at which […] the anthropological category of the medical, a category that is primordial, irreducible and, ethical imposes itself”. It is this ethical awakening that strikes physicians when the words corps and maladie are uttered. In connection with this, Guido Ceronetti was to write: “Goethe said that medicine has to embrace the whole of the physician’s being, for its object is the whole of the human organism […]. If the physician’s moral life is not sufficiently diverse and elaborate, he would be unable to truly understand life-health-death-disease, and would never console his patients in an appropriate way” (Ceronetti, 1984: 128 and 163).

Thus, although French has only one word to express disease and only one word to express the diseased body, it can usefully borrow from English and German the

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