ABSTRACT
This chapter explores some of the ways in which people in western history have been persuaded, encouraged or at times even compelled to perceive health. It argues that health appeals to a human desire for a long-lasting state of relative painlessness while at the same time often takes on more socio-cosmological significances. In perceiving health, people have also found themselves perceiving deeper and reassuring truths, which can connect to ideas of goodness, normality and the divine and a particularly desirable relationship with Time. Sources include the writings of Hans-Georg Gadamer, Sebastian Brant, John Locke and Christian writers of different places and periods.
