Heidegger, Medicine and Scientific Method : The Unheeded Message of the Zollikon Seminars

The aim of Heidegger, Medicine and 'Scientific Method' is to ensure that the profound implications of the Zollikon Seminars Heidegger held for doctors and psychiatrists do not remain unheeded. In one short volume Peter Wilberg concisely summarises Heidegger's fundamental critique of 'scientific method', redefines the basic principles of the 'phenomenological method' and lays out the foundations of a new 'phenomenological' approach to medicine - one which understands that illnesses have meanings not 'causes'. Grounded in Heidegger's fundamental distinction between the physical body (Körper) and the 'lived' or 'felt' body (Leib), phenomenological medicine offers a highly practical and therapeutic understanding of the relation between a patient's clinical disease 'pathology' and the felt 'dis-ease' or pathos that it embodies.

Preface

This book draws on Heidegger s reflections on science as method to introduce a new phenomenological concept of scientific method . Phenomenology is not presented simply as an alternative method of qualitative scientific research of particular or exclusive relevance to the human sciences, but as the basis of any truly fundamental science and of a fundamentally new understanding of medicine in particular. The book is in five parts:

Part 1 deals with the underlying aims and assumptions of the modern scientific method , with particular emphasis on their application in modern medicine. Its primary sources are the central issues raised by Heidegger with physicians and psychiatrists in the course of the Zollikon Seminars.

Part 2 addresses the fundamental nature of modern science as a sense-making or semiotic activity, one that seeks ordered patterns of significance in phenomena. The semiotics of modern science is contrasted with an authentic phenomenological semiotics one that does not reduce the meaning of phenomena to their place within already established patterns of significance.

Part 3 outlines in a new way the basic principles of the phenomenological method, doing so in a manner that highlights its relevance for both the human and natural sciences. It is the author s belief that phenomenological method, understood as the essence of scientific method per se, fulfils not only the original scientific project of Husserlian phenomenology but also Marx s humanistic vision of a unified or "integral" science - one that is both a "natural science of man" and a "human science of nature".

Part 4 seeks to show how a field-dynamic concept of phenomenology can lay the foundations of a new field-phenomenological medicine - one that transcends the metaphysical and methodological assumption of current medical science and practice. It begins with a summary of the basic principles of field-phenomenological science and goes on to explore different phenomenological, ontological, relational and cultural dimensions of medical theory and practice.

Part 5 explores the ethical-historical dimensions of biological and genetic medicine, in particular the links between eugenics and human genomics and the key role played by German physicians and psychiatrists in providing a medical-model justification for the Final Solution . In doing so it acknowledges Heidegger s role in challenging the foundations of both Nazi biologism and biological and genetic medicine in general.

As a postscript I set out briefly the practical essence of field-phenomenological medicine as meta-medicine or medicine beyond medicine a new post-Holocaust approach to health and healing grounded in three fundamental ontological distinctions: between the human body and the human being, between the physical body (Körper) and the felt or lived body (Leib), and between the clinical manifestations of disease pathology on the one hand and, on the other hand, the felt dis-ease or pathos which it embodies.