Medicalization as Technology Based on the Heidegger, Borgmann and Feenberg Ideas on the Philosophy of Technology

Medicalization is a term for the process by which medical definitions and practices are applied to behaviors, psychological phenomena, and somatic experiences which previously were not within the conceptual or therapeutic scope of medicine. There have been two distinct main approaches to medicalization. The first was a Marxist critique of medicine as authoritarian and imperialistic, while the second was a critique of the expanding role of medicine in the social control of deviant behavior. This article contends that none of these approached could explain medicalization comprehensively. The main thesis of this paper is that medicalization as a technology could be an alternative. In this paper, this thesis will be examined in the light of Heidegger’s, Bergmann’s and Feinberg’s philosophy of technology.