Political metaphors are not merely rhetorical devices but cognitive instruments that shape perception, structure judgment, and guide collective action. Among them, medical–political metaphors are particularly influential, as they draw on culturally authoritative notions of health, disease, diagnosis, and treatment to interpret political realities. This article offers a philosophical analysis of the epistemic, ethical, and socio-political implications of such metaphors. Drawing on Conceptual Metaphor Theory, Critical Discourse Analysis, discourse ethics, and theories of epistemic injustice, it argues that medicalized political language functions not only descriptively but also as a mechanism that reorganizes political understanding through biologically grounded schemas.



The analysis proceeds in three stages. First, it reconstructs the conceptual structure of five recurrent medical–political metaphors, showing how political actors, institutions, and conflicts are mapped onto medical categories such as pathology, infection, surgery, and cancer. Second, it examines their epistemic consequences, arguing that these metaphors simplify political phenomena, produce category mistakes, obscure agency and structural causality, narrow interpretive possibilities, encourage affective shortcuts in reasoning, and improperly transfer the authority of scientific discourse into domains of normative and political contestation. Third, it explores their ethical and political consequences, showing how they may contribute to dehumanization, weaken mutual recognition, enable epistemic injustice, legitimize exclusionary practices, and reshape political culture by normalizing antagonistic identities and exceptional forms of governance.



The article concludes that medical–political metaphors are not neutral tools of political communication. By framing political disagreement as pathology, they reshape the epistemic and moral conditions under which democratic judgment, public deliberation, and political pluralism operate. Their significance lies not only in the meanings they convey but also in the forms of political reality they render intelligible and governable. A critical examination of these metaphors is therefore essential for understanding the relationship between language, power, and democratic life.