The Phenomenology of Pain. Saulius Geniusas

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СКАЧАТЬ is the significance of the phenomenological reduction for such a field of research as the philosophy of pain? While through the method of the epoché one loses pain as a natural phenomenon, through the method of the phenomenological reduction one regains it as a pure experience. The fundamental goal of the phenomenology of pain is thereby delineated: its fundamental ambition is to give an account of pain as a pure experience, that is, as an experience purified of all naturalistic apprehensions. The goal is to consistently disconnect all the natural apperceptions, which codetermine our common understanding of pain, conceived of as a natural phenomenon.

      Here we stumble across new difficulties. Should one not liken the field of pure experience to a ceaseless Heracleitean flux, to an incomprehensibly streaming life, in which being-thus indefinitely replaces being-so? If pure consciousness indeed is such a stream of experience, then how can one possibly obtain any knowledge of this field? The phenomenologically reduced field of experience appears to be inaccessible to intersubjectively verifiable knowledge. It thereby becomes clear that the possibility of phenomenology is not yet secured by means of the epoché and the reduction. The third methodological procedure, namely, the method of eidetic variation, is designed to provide a solution to this dilemma. Phenomenology does not strive to be a factual science of conscious experiences. Rather, it is meant to be an exploration of the essences of conscious life—a descriptive eidetics of reduced consciousness. Insofar as phenomenology is an eidetics of experience, the phenomenology of pain must be an eidetics of pain experience. It does not just strive to give an account of pain, conceived of as pure experience; its fundamental goal is to clarify the essence of such experience.

      Still, before turning to eidetic variation, we are in need of a further clarification. Although so far, we have spoken of the reduction in a rather unqualified way, there are good reasons to distinguish between different kinds of reduction, and especially between phenomenological and transcendental reductions. From the time he discovered the reduction in 1905 until around 1916, Husserl himself did not discriminate between these forms of the reduction. Subsequently, it became clear that insofar as one speaks of the reduction in an unqualified way, it remains an ambiguous concept in that it is associated with two significantly different functions. First, it is associated with the method of bracketing the natural world and of transitioning from a naive naturalistic ontology, which is straightforwardly absorbed in beings, to the analysis of meanings. Second, it is also associated with the further transition from the field of meanings to the ultimate source of all meaning, which Husserl identified with transcendental (inter)subjectivity. From around 1916 onward, Husserl started distinguishing between these two functions of the reduction. The first function was identified as the phenomenological reduction, while the second one was identified as the transcendental reduction. The phenomenological reduction is the method that enables the phenomenologist to transition from the natural world, conceived of as the universe of real things as given in the natural attitude, to the world of pure phenomena. Yet a phenomenologist need not stop with this methodological procedure. One can further supplement the phenomenological reduction with the transcendental reduction by initiating a further transition from the field of phenomena to their ultimate condition, or presupposition, which Husserl associates with transcendental (inter)subjectivity (see Kockelmans 1994, 16–17).

      As far as the phenomenology of pain is concerned, it is the phenomenological reduction, and not the transcendental reduction, that is indispensable. The three methods that are here identified as fundamental are those of the epoché, the phenomenological reduction, and eidetic variation. This does not mean that the method of the transcendental reduction is not important in phenomenology; it does mean, however, that one can carry out a phenomenologically oriented study without employing the transcendental reduction. The analysis undertaken in this study will primarily, although not exclusively, rely on the phenomenological reduction.⁵

      Let us turn to the third phenomenological method, namely, that of eidetic variation. This method is designed to clarify how one is supposed to move from reflecting on individual instances to grasping essences. According to this method, the kind of example one begins with is irrelevant, just as it is irrelevant if the example derives from actual perception, memory, or phantasy. It is crucial, however, to consider the example as free from all naturalistic explanations: the method of eidetic variation rests on the shoulders of the epoché. Starting with an arbitrary example, one must vary the phenomenon “with a completely free optionalness” (Husserl 1960, 70), while simultaneously retaining the sense of its identity, no matter what kind of phenomenon it might be. This means that one must abstain from the acceptance of the phenomenon’s being and change the object into a pure possibility—one possibility among other possibilities. That is, one must vary different aspects of the phenomenon until one reaches the invariant—conceived of as a determination, or a set of determinations, in the absence of which the phenomenon would no longer be the kind of phenomenon it is. Following such a method, one comes to the realization that, for instance, extension is an invariant feature of a material object, or that temporality is an invariant feature of lived-experience. With the discovery of such invariants, the essences of the phenomena come into view.⁶

      The method of eidetic variation culminates in the seeing of essences. With the help of this method, phenomenology can become a science of essences. Here we come across the reason why Husserlian phenomenology has often been conceived of as a revival of Platonism. This general characterization, so often employed as a tacit critique of phenomenology, is misleading: in phenomenology, essences are not interpreted in metaphysical terms as eidai that belong to an independent realm of true being. They are not paradigmatic things or atoms of true being. By essence, or eidos, we are to understand what the phenomenon is in terms of its necessary predicates. Put otherwise, essential predicates refer to those aspects of the phenomenon that belong to it invariantly. It is important not to overlook that Husserl (1983, §74) draws a distinction between exact essences, which can be exhaustively defined, and morphological essences, whose boundaries are imprecise and which are fundamentally inexact. For Husserl (1983, §§71–75), the kind of exactness possible in mathematics derives from its “ideal concepts” and is unattainable in the descriptive eidetics of the reduced consciousness (see also Bernet, Kern, and Marbach 1993, 86). We can take this to mean that the phenomenology of pain, conceived of as an eidetics of pain experience, need not be conceived of as a discipline that generates exact essences. As we will see, especially when it comes to embodied feelings, the exact lines of demarcation that separate different types of experience from each other are often blurred. As Husserl puts it in Ideas I, “An essence, and thus a purely apprehensible eidos, belongs to the sense of every accidental matter. . . . An individual object is not merely as such an individual, a ‘this, here!,’ a unique instance. . . . It has its own distinctive character, its stock of essential predicables” (1983, 7). The goal of the phenomenology of pain is to extricate these essential predicables from the concrete flow of experience.

      Out of these three methods, the last one is most problematic, and in the history of phenomenology, it has been subjected to diverse criticisms. For instance, consider the phenomenological view that what example one begins with is simply irrelevant. No matter how arbitrary the starting point might be, does the phenomenologist not have to rely on a certain preconceptual understanding of the example’s essence? How, otherwise, is the phenomenologist supposed to know what properties of the object can be subjected to imaginative variation? Should the cup of tea on my desk be my starting example, does the method of eidetic variation not rely upon my more basic understanding of the object’s perceptual properties and practical functions, thus on my prior capacity to distinguish the cup from the saucer and the teaspoon still before I start varying its different properties, such as its color, shape, texture, size, weight, and so on? Consider also Husserl’s own example of the tone used in Phenomenological Psychology (1977, 54ff.). Does one not already need to know what a tone is so as to be able to identify it as the starting point of one’s analysis as well as to be able to distinguish those properties that belong to it from those that don’t? It seems that the method of eidetic variation already presupposes a preconceptual insight into the essence of the phenomenon under scrutiny.

      Nonetheless, СКАЧАТЬ