ABSTRACT
The phrase "the metaphysics of health care" is not a familiar one, even among devotees of either discipline. We use it to refer to inquiry into the character of concepts that are basic to medicine, nursing, and other health disciplines. Some such concepts are more or less the "property" of the discipline, but others are part of the culture's common semantic currency-think of death, for example, or personhood. What we mean by inquiring into the fundamental character of such concepts is best illustrated by the essays in this section, but generally speaking, we have in mind such debates as those concerning in what sense such concepts denote things that are "real" or "constructed."
