ABSTRACT
The nursing theory literature and the literature of philosophy and medicine contain many discussions of what health is and how it should be theorized. The conative kind of functioning of subjectivity is difficult to describe because it is largely absent from peoples' self-awareness. One of the legacies of Descartes is that we are apt to think of all human functioning that is not physical as being mental. To be unmindful of the needs of health will be one of the ways that agents can be seen to be irrational within the pragmatic mode of subjectivity. Useful things belong to the pragmatic mode of peoples' subjectivity. The contents of the conative mode of their being 'are always in a certain measure – and even the hammers, needles and machines are – objects of enjoyment, presenting themselves to "taste", already adorned, embellished'.
