Ragnar van Es

Ragnar van Es studied at Delft University of Technology and received his M.A. in Liberal Arts and Sciences from Utrecht University. After health problems had forced him to give up his profession, he returned to Utrecht University to study Philosophy. He is currently writing a B.A.-thesis on philosophical anthropology, biology and methodical culturalism.

Psychiatry is both an art and a science. In recent years the scientific aspects have become increasingly important for psychiatric research and practice, limiting the role of expert judgement. The dominant biomedical platform has realigned the pathological (psychiatry) and the normal (biology) in that its knowledge base is now statistical and drawn from populations rather than from individual patients. Today many critics hold that mainstream (i.e. biological) psychiatry has become “unmenschlich”, no longer doing justice to the whole patient and her suffering. Psychiatry thus seems to be in need of some serious philosophical reflection on its status, goals, methods and concepts. My Ph.D. project will do just that. Through an analysis of mainstream psychiatry and recent attempts to protect human dignity by focussing on synthesis, agency and holism, I hope to show that differences in psychiatric approach correspond to differences in the image of human nature. Unfortunately, those who are looking for integrating models often neglect existing holistic (medical) theories. By investigating some highly original but nearly forgotten thinkers of Weimar Germany, I intend to fill this gap.