With its rise in popularity, work in the phenomenology of medicine has also attracted its fair share of criticism. One such criticism maintains that, since the phenomenology of medicine does nothing but describe the experience of illness, it offers nothing one cannot obtain more easily by deploying simpler qualitative research methods. Fredrik Svenaeus has pushed back against this charge, insisting that the phenomenology of medicine not only describes but also defines illness. Although I agree with Svenaeus’s claim that the phenomenology of medicine does more than merely describe what it is like to be ill, once one acknowledges its more far-reaching theoretical aspirations, one sees that it faces an even more difficult set of objections. Taking a cue from recent work by Rebecca Kukla, Russell Powell, and Eric Scarffe, I argue that the phenomenology of medicine could answer these objections by developing an institutional definition of illness. This not only allows the phenomenology of medicine to answer its critics, but it does so in a way that preserves its major achievements and extends its reach within the philosophy of medicine.

随着其受欢迎程度的上升，医学现象学方面的工作也引起了相当多的批评。一种这样的批评认为，由于医学现象学只描述疾病的体验，因此它提供的任何东西都是通过采用更简单的定性研究方法更容易获得的。Fredrik Svenaeus 反驳了这一指控，坚持认为医学现象学不仅描述而且定义疾病。尽管我同意 Svenaeus 的说法，即医学现象学不仅仅是描述生病的感觉，但一旦人们承认其更深远的理论抱负，就会发现它面临着一系列更困难的反对意见。从 Rebecca Kukla、Russell Powell 和 Eric Sc​​arffe 最近的工作中得到启发，我认为医学现象学可以通过制定疾病的制度定义来回答这些反对意见。这不仅让医学现象学能够回答它的批评者，而且它这样做的方式保留了它的主要成就，并在医学哲学中扩展了它的影响力。