The Phenomenology of Pain - Saulius Geniusas Series in Continental Thought

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the contrary notwithstanding, cannot escape the charge of solipsism? To clarify the meaning of this accusation, let us open a brief dialogue between the phenomenology of pain and the phenomenology of medicine by turning to Tania Gergel’s recent critique of the phenomenological method. With reference to the phenomenology of illness, Gergel contends that one of its fundamental goals is “to give an account and help us understand illness as it is experienced by the ill individuals themselves” (2012, 1104). However, as Gergel sees it, phenomenological sensitivity to the experiential dimensions of illness does not facilitate, but rather impedes the capacity to understand and relate to ill individuals. “Far from enabling empathy and understanding, if the true conception of illness resides in the ill individual’s personal experience of the phenomena, we might well ask how it can ever be truly communicated and understood by another” (Gergel 2012, 1104). As Gergel sees it, this is not only a methodological difficulty that afflicts phenomenological studies of illness, but a problem that also impedes phenomenology’s ambition to facilitate a dialogue between patients and health-care practitioners. If illness is confined within the boundaries of experience, then we inevitably come to confront the challenge of solipsism: the experience of illness seems to be inaccessible to anyone except the individual subject of that experience.

      Let us extend this critique from the phenomenology of illness to the phenomenology of pain and let us ask: Does phenomenology truly maintain that the concepts of illness and pain reside in the ill individual’s personal experience in a way that those concepts would elude interpersonal understanding? In light of the foregoing account of the phenomenological method, we can see that we face here a misleading characterization of the phenomenological standpoint. The suggestion that the concepts in question reside in the experience of the patient is a clear instance of psychologism. Phenomenology aims to ground the concepts of illness and pain in experience, yet not to bound them within personal experience. Illness and pain are not confined within, but rooted in, experience.

      Gergel’s characterization of the phenomenology of illness represents the widespread tendency in the philosophy of illness to misidentify phenomenological analyses as types of empirical description of factual experiences pain patients live through. We need to reassert the fundamental methodological commitments that underlie phenomenologically oriented studies. In light of these commitments, the task of the phenomenology of pain is to provide insight into what is essential about pain experience. A study can be qualified as phenomenological, in the Husserlian sense of the term, insofar as it subscribes to the methods of the epoché, the reduction, and eidetic variation. Much confusion would be avoided if not only the critics of phenomenology, but also those who take themselves to be practicing phenomenology, recognized the indispensable role that these methods must play in phenomenologically oriented research.

      My defense of the method of eidetic variation does not entail that I take this method to be free of difficulties. So far I have left the most severe limitation out of consideration. All too often, this method is understood as an excuse to practice phenomenology in isolation from other intellectual debates and controversies. One thinks that this method proscribes the possibility of any kind of dialogue between phenomenology and other sciences, be they human, social, or natural. Presumably, insofar as these sciences do not rely on the methods of the epoché and the reduction, phenomenologists do not have the right to accept their results in their own research. It appears that phenomenologists are destined to carry out their research not only in methodological loneliness, but also in thematic seclusion. Needless to say, all of this carries regrettable consequences for phenomenological research. When viewed from the perspective of other sciences, phenomenological findings all too often appear extraneous and dispensable. We thus need to ask: Does the phenomenological method place a requirement on the phenomenologists to practice phenomenology in such an insular way?

      If it is indeed true that the method of eidetic variation places such a requirement on the part of the researcher, then I would contend that this method cannot achieve its fundamental objective, namely, it cannot generate insights into the essences of the phenomena. When interpreted in the above-mentioned way, this method becomes entirely dependent upon the phenomenologist’s factual cognitive abilities, which limit the range of possible variation. Even worse: when interpreted in such an insular way, the method of eidetic variation places the investigator back in the arms of psychologism. These remarks call for some further elucidation.

      Husserl claims that at a certain point in the process of eidetic variation, the researcher comes to see the essence of the phenomenon, and, when this happens, no further variation is needed. Yet how can one ever be assured that the process of imaginative variation is no longer necessary and that one has, presumably, attained insight into the essence of the phenomenon? In this regard, the distinction Husserl draws between open and motivated possibility is highly helpful.15 No matter how carefully one might follow the eidetic method, there always seems to be an open possibility that one might be misidentifying the presumably essential characteristics of the phenomenon. It seems that the method of eidetic variation, especially when practiced in the insular way as described above, is just not capable of closing off such an open possibility and thereby reassuring us that we are avoiding possible pitfalls. What is more, when this method is practiced in private seclusion, the general insights attained come into conflict with the results achieved in scientific research. With regard to Husserl’s (1977, 75) eidetic claim that colors and sounds cannot change into each other, Shaun Gallagher writes:

      Simply because he cannot imagine this possibility, however, doesn’t mean that it is actually impossible. Here we can see the importance of intersubjective verification, since in fact, one can find people who experience synaesthesia, and for whom colors and sounds do change into each other. Empirical research on synesthesia [sic] can also indicate the range of possibilities and can demonstrate that the regional (ontological) boundary between colors and sounds can be more malleable than might be ordinarily expected. (2012, 51)

      Do conflicts of this kind between phenomenological claims and the results of empirical research compel us to abandon eidetic variation as an unreliable method that cannot secure the reliability of its own pronouncements? Such a conclusion would be detrimental for phenomenology, for, as I have argued earlier, if phenomenology relies only on the methods of the epoché and the reduction, then it is not in the position to make any reliable claims that could obtain intersubjective verification. Yet such a conclusion would be both hasty and illegitimate. Conflicts that emerge between phenomenologically oriented claims and the results achieved in other sciences compel us to abandon a certain interpretation of eidetic variation, namely, the interpretation that presumes this method places a demand on the researcher to engage in phenomenological reflections while taking safe distance from all other intellectual discussions. The recognition that the method of eidetic variation does not warrant the reliability of phenomenological insights into the essence of the phenomena requires that we find a way to open a dialogue between phenomenology and other sciences. Methodologically, we can achieve this goal by showing that there is a fully legitimate way in which imaginative variations could be supplemented with factual variations, namely, those variations that draw on the accomplishments in other fields of research. Such factual variations can derive from highly diverse sources, such as the natural, social, and human sciences, literature and poetry, fine arts and cinema, or even (auto) biographies. Insofar as phenomenology is open to such supplementation, one has all the reasons needed to call it dialogical phenomenology.

      We are in need of such a phenomenological approach that would stay faithful to the fundamental methodological principles (the epoché, the reduction, and eidetic variation) while at the same time being open to the developments in other fields. What I identify here as dialogical phenomenology is a philosophical approach that meets both conditions. Yet how feasible is such an approach? How can phenomenology accept the results from other disciplines? Would this not require one to give up one’s commitment to the methods of the epoché and the reduction? It might seem that dialogical phenomenology is a contradictio in adjecto. It appears to compromise phenomenology’s purity, since it forces one to accept the results from other fields that were obtained on the grounds of the natural attitude. Since the phenomenological method requires one to put in brackets the natural attitude, including the presuppositions

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