https://doi.org/10.4081/mem.2025.1640
The notion of habitability in palliative care. A phenomenological investigation basing on the reflection of Jean Ladrière
All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.
Authors
This paper aims to be a phenomenological reflection on how the end-of-life period is experienced by subjects included in palliative care pathways. The discussion moves from the meaning and the centrality of the request to be able to live the last period of one’s existence in a context perceived as welcoming and familiar. The goals of the paper are essentially two. Firstly, the intention is to underline the ability of the phenomenological approach to intercept the concrete needs that emerge from the context of palliative care, inserting them in a theoretical-hermeneutical framework. Phenomenology, with its attention to the lifeworld and its factuality, seems able to accept the request for an evaluation of the concrete and lived experience of each patient. Against this background, the intent is to retrace Jean Ladrière’s reflection on the conditions that make an environment habitable for human being. The second goal consists in the proposal to apply the concept of habitability of Ladrière to the context of palliative care. This aims to demonstrate how this phenomenological reflection can elucidate and deepen the main ethical-practical issues related to the theme of living one’s space at the end of life. To this end, it is important to present the three intertwined essential conditions – embodiment, coexistence, lived temporality – on which the concept of habitability of Ladrière is based. More specifically, the goal is to evaluate the validity and the practical utility of their adoption in palliative care.
How to Cite
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.
PAGEPress has chosen to apply the Creative Commons Attribution NonCommercial 4.0 International License (CC BY-NC 4.0) to all manuscripts to be published.
An Open Access Publication is one that meets the following two conditions:
- the author(s) and copyright holder(s) grant(s) to all users a free, irrevocable, worldwide, perpetual right of access to, and a license to copy, use, distribute, transmit and display the work publicly and to make and distribute derivative works, in any digital medium for any responsible purpose, subject to proper attribution of authorship, as well as the right to make small numbers of printed copies for their personal use.
- a complete version of the work and all supplemental materials, including a copy of the permission as stated above, in a suitable standard electronic format is deposited immediately upon initial publication in at least one online repository that is supported by an academic institution, scholarly society, government agency, or other well-established organization that seeks to enable open access, unrestricted distribution, interoperability, and long-term archiving.
Authors who publish with this journal agree to the following terms:
- Authors retain copyright and grant the journal right of first publication with the work simultaneously licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution License that allows others to share the work with an acknowledgement of the work's authorship and initial publication in this journal.
- Authors are able to enter into separate, additional contractual arrangements for the non-exclusive distribution of the journal's published version of the work (e.g., post it to an institutional repository or publish it in a book), with an acknowledgement of its initial publication in this journal.
- Authors are permitted and encouraged to post their work online (e.g., in institutional repositories or on their website) prior to and during the submission process, as it can lead to productive exchanges, as well as earlier and greater citation of published work.