The sickness philosophers are healing are human problems - problems common to all mankind

In a certain sense the philosopher is a healer.

Many philosophers make as a doctor a diagnosis and suggest a treatment. So did Buddha, and so did Kierkegaard.

But what they were treating were the human problems, therefore problems common to all mankind.

The sickness unto death, which for instance Kierkegaard´s script The Sickness Unto Death has as subject, is the despair.

The despair is here presented as a sickness in the self, and the condition for healing is to become yourself.

In the same way in Buddhist philosophy, where the sickness is the suffering common to all mankind, and the treatment is meditation, and the recovery is enlightenment.