Pragmatism, Pluralism, Vigilance and Tools for Reflection: A Reply to Quill Kukla

In ‘Healthism, Elite Capture, and the Pitfalls of an Expansive Concept of Health,’ Quill Kukla (Chap. 21 , this volume) warns for the possible harms caused by a conception of health that is too open-textured and all-encompassing. The take-away message of Kukla’s contribution is that, when we embrace a pragmatist, pluralist approach to the conception of health, we should be extra vigilant for the possible misuses of the term. What I defend here is that we need more than just a pluralistic, pragmatic view on the conception of health in combination with a vigilant attitude. What we need is a pragmatic approach to our (philosophical) analyses of health. While the former approach in the end still focusses on establishing some kind of standards (and/or who is going to set the standards) for deciding on the ‘right’ conception of health (be it monist or pluralist), the latter focuses rather on developing tools for reflection that can help in bringing an ongoing vigilance to life while respecting the actual pluralism and dynamics in our use of the concept.