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From Fixing to Thinking: Martin Heidegger’s Contribution to Medical Cares

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Heidegger and Contemporary Philosophy

Part of the book series: Contributions to Hermeneutics ((CONT HERMEN,volume 8))

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Abstract

This paper aims to pursue two goals: first, it will explore the encounter and dialogue between Martin Heidegger’s thinking toward medicine, and in particular, psychiatry. Second, it will look toward understanding how this encounter can illuminate clinical practices and provide significant contributions within the fields of medical education and healthcare. The broader horizon of this paper is to underline how embracing a different approach to health can be of interest to both a medical and philosophical audience, inviting the former to progress in their scientific skills and de-personalize texts toward a more genuine and humanistic encounter with patients, while also engendering the latter to leave the dark and dusty halls of metaphysical thinking to move into the greener pastures of the social dimension.

«What makes one heroic? - To approach at the same time one’s highest suffering and one’s highest hope ».

F. Nietzsche, The Gay Science

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Notes

  1. 1.

    See D. Zahavi, J. Parnass, T. Saas, Phenomenological Psychopathology and Schizophrenia: Contemporary Approaches and Misunderstandings, in “Philosophy, Psychiatry, Psychology”, Vol. 18, No. 1 / March 2011, p. 7.

  2. 2.

    G. Stanghellini, R. Rosfort, Emotions and Personhood. Exploring Fragility - Making Sense of Vulnerability, Oxford: Oxford University Press 2013, p. 225.

  3. 3.

    See M. Heidegger, Zollikon Seminars, Northwestern University Press: Evanston, 2001, p. 307.

  4. 4.

    See F. Brencio, Befindlichkeit: Disposition in The Oxford Handbook of Phenomenological Psychopathology, ed. by G. Stanghellini, A. Raballo, M. Broome, A. V. Fernandez, P. Fusar-Poli, R. Rosfort., Oxford: Oxford University Press 2019, pp. 344-353.

  5. 5.

    G. Stanghellini, R. Rosfort, Emotions and Personhood. Exploring Fragility - Making Sense of Vulnerability, p. 206.

  6. 6.

    C. Kong, Cultural Translation, Human Meaning, and Genes: Why Interpretation Matters in Psychiatric Genomics, in Frimpong-Mansoh, Yaw A., and Caesar A. Atuire (eds.), Bioethics in Africa: Theories and Praxis, Vernon Press, 2019 (forthcoming).

  7. 7.

    See G. Stanghellini, Lost in dialogue, Oxford University Press, Oxford 2017.

    On this topic, I would recommend also A. T. Tymieniecka, E. Agazzi (eds.), Life. Interpretation and the sense of illness within the human condition. Medicine and Philosophy in a Dialogue, Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers 2001.

  8. 8.

    H. G. Gadamer, The Enigma of Health, Stanford: Stanford University Press 1996, p. 166.

  9. 9.

    F. Kafka, A Country doctor, full text in https://thespace.lrb.co.uk/article/a-country-doctor-by-franz-kafka-translated-by-michael-hofmann/

  10. 10.

    See H. Jonas, The Imperative of Responsibility: The Search of an Ethics for the Technological Age, University of Chicago Press: Chicago, 1984.

  11. 11.

    On this important and broad topic, see K.W.M. Fulford, G. Stanghellini, M. Broome, What can philosophy do for psychiatry?, in “World Psychiatry” 2004, 3(3), pp. 130–135; J. Radden J., The philosophy of psychiatry: a companion, Oxford University Press: Oxford 2004; K. W. M. Fulford, et al. (eds.), Nature and narrative: an introduction to the new philosophy of psychiatry, Oxford University Press: Oxford, 2003; K. W. M. Fulford, et al. (eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Philosophy and Psychiatry, Oxford University Press: Oxford, 2001; J. Parnas, D. Zahavi., The link: Philosophy-psychopathology-phenomenology, in D. Zahavi (Ed.), Exploring the self. Advances in Consciousness Research, John Benjamins Publishing Company: Amsterdam-Philadelphia, 2000; F. Svenaeus, The Hermeneutics of Medicine and the Phenomenology of Health. Steps Towards a Philosophy of Medical Practice, Springer 2000; H. W. Cohn, Existential Thought and Therapeutic Practice An Introduction to Existential Psychotherapy, SAGE Publications: London, 1997; K. Arens, Wilhelm Griesinger: Psychiatry between philosophy and praxis, in “Philosophy, Psychiatry, & Psychology”, 1996, 3, pp. 147-64; J. Z. Sadler, O. P. Wiggins, M. A. Schwartz (eds.) Philosophical perspectives on psychiatric diagnostic classification, Johns Hopkins University Press: Baltimore, 1994; H. Spiegelberg, Phenomenology in psychology and psychiatry. A historical introduction, Northwestern University Press: Evanston, 1972.

  12. 12.

    T. S. Szasz, The myth of mental illness, in “American Psychologist”, 1960, 15, pp. 113–118.

  13. 13.

    See M. Foucault, Madness and Civilization: A History of Insanity in the Age of Reason, Tavistock: London, 1971; A. V. Horwitz., Creating Mental Illness, Chicago University Press: Chicago, 2002.

  14. 14.

    The critical literature on this topic is very broad. I refer the reader to the pivotal studies that have contributed to a better understanding of Heidegger’s critique of science and its relations with metaphysics: B. Babich, Heidegger’s Philosophy of Science: Calculation, Thought, and Gelassenheit, in B. Babich (ed.), From Phenomenology to Thought, Errancy, and Desire, Dordrecht: Kluwer, 1995, pp. 589–600; R. Crease, Heidegger and the Empirical Turn in the Continental Philosophy of Science, in T. Glazebrook (ed.), Heidegger on Science, Albany: State University of New York Press, 2012), 225–38; A. J. Wendland, Heidegger vs. Kuhn: Does Science Think?, in A. J. Wendland, C. Merwin, and C. Hadjioannou (eds.), Heidegger on Technology, NY: Routledge 2019, pp. 282–298.

  15. 15.

    W. J. Richardson S.J., Heidegger’s critique of Science, in “The New Scholasticism”, 42 (4) 1968, p. 511.

  16. 16.

    M. Heidegger, Zollikon Seminars, p. 19.

  17. 17.

    M. Heidegger, Mindfulness, trans. by P. Emad and T. Kalary, London: Continuum, 2006, p. 14.

  18. 18.

    M. Heidegger, Contributions to Philosophy (From Enowning), trans. by P. Emad and K. Maly, Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1999, p. 108.

  19. 19.

    M. Heidegger, Zollikon Seminars, p. 20.

  20. 20.

    M. Heidegger, Mindfulness, p. 304.

  21. 21.

    M. Heidegger, What is called thinking? (trans. by J. Glenn Gray): NY: Harper & Row, 1968. p. 8

  22. 22.

    D. Ginev, The Critique of Biology Implied by The Fundamental Concepts Of Metaphysics, in “Gatherings: The Heidegger Circle Annual”, 8, 2018, p. 71.

  23. 23.

    M. Heidegger, Zollikon Seminars, pp. 17-18.

  24. 24.

    M. Heidegger, Mindfulness, p. 79.

  25. 25.

    On this topic see T. Kessel Phänomenologie des Lebendigen: Heideggers Kritik an den Leitbegriffen der neuzeitlichen Biologie, Freiburg: Karl Alber Verlag, 2011.

  26. 26.

    M. Heidegger, The Fundamental Concepts of Metaphysics: World, Finitude, Solitude, trans. by W. McNeill and N. Walker, Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1995, p. 271.

  27. 27.

    M. Heidegger, Nietzsche, Volume III, trans. by J. Stambaugh, D. Farrell Krell, and F. Capuzzi, San Francisco: HarperCollins, 1991, p. 41.

  28. 28.

    M. Heidegger, Pathmarks, trans. by W. McNeill, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998.p. 41.

  29. 29.

    D. Ginev, The Critique of Biology Implied by The Fundamental Concepts of Metaphysics, p. 39.

  30. 30.

    M. Heidegger, Basic Writings, David Farrell Krell (ed.), San Francisco: Harper, 1993, p. 434.

  31. 31.

    M. Heidegger, Zollikon Seminars, p. 19.

  32. 32.

    M. Heidegger, Zollikon Seminars, pp. 26-27.

  33. 33.

    M. Heidegger, Hölderlin’s Hymn “Remembrance”, trans. by W. McNeill and J. Ireland, Bloomington: Indiana University Press 2018, p. 71.

  34. 34.

    M. Heidegger, Kant and the Problem of Metaphysics, Indiana University Press, Bloomington 1965, p. 216.

  35. 35.

    M. Heidegger, Zollikon Seminars, p. 103.

  36. 36.

    «In every individual event soma and psyche form an inseparable unity. The two stand in mutual reciprocity which shows itself more directly in psychopathology than it does in normal psychology (…). [I]nsight into the aetiology of psychic events cannot be achieved without some knowledge of somatic function, more particularly the physiology of the nervous system. Thus, psychopathology finds in neurology, internal medicine and physiology its most valuable auxiliary sciences. Investigation of somatic function, including the most complex cortical activity, is bound up with investigation of psychic function, and the unity of soma and psyche seems indisputable. Yet we must remember that neither line of enquiry encounters the other so directly that we can speak of some specific psychic event as directly associated with some specific somatic event or of an actual parallelism. The situation is analogous with the exploration of an unknown continent from opposite directions, where the explorers never meet because of the impenetrable country that intervenes. We only know the end links in the chain of causation from soma to psyche and vice versa and from both these terminal points we endeavour to advance», K. Jaspers, General psychopathology, trans. by J. Hoenig, M.W. Hamilton, Johns Hopkins University Press: Baltimore, 1997 (seventh ed.), pp. 3-4.

  37. 37.

    «The psychiatrist as a practitioner deals with individuals, with the human being as a whole», K. Jaspers, General psychopathology, p. 1.

  38. 38.

    O. Dörr, Hermeneutical and Dialectical Thinking in Psychiatry and the Contribution of Karl Jaspers, in T. Fuchs, T. Breyer, C. Mundt (eds.), Karl Jaspers’ Philosophy and Psychopathology, Springer: London, 2014, p. 20.

  39. 39.

    On this topic see M. R. Broome, Jaspers and Neuroscience, in G. Stanghellini, T. Fuchs (eds.), One Century of Karl Jaspers’ General Psychopathology, Oxford University Press: Oxford, 2013, pp. 121-132.

  40. 40.

    M. Heidegger, Zollikon Seminars, p. 28.

  41. 41.

    M. Boss, Preface in M. Heidegger, Zollikon Seminars, p. XVII.

  42. 42.

    M. Boss, Preface in M. Heidegger, Zollikon Seminars, p. XXI.

  43. 43.

    See L. Binswanger, Die Bedeutung der Daseinsanalytik Martin Heideggers, in L. Binswanger (ed.), Ausgewählte

    Vorträge und Aufsätze, Bern: Francke, 1955, pp. 264-278.

  44. 44.

    L. Binswanger, Existential analysis and psychotherapy, in F. Fromm-Reichmann & J. L. Moreno (Eds.), Progress in psychotherapy, NY: Grune and Stratton, 1956, p. 193.

  45. 45.

    L. Binswanger, Existential analysis and psychotherapy, p. 194.

  46. 46.

    L. Binswanger, Existential analysis and psychotherapy, p. 196.

  47. 47.

    See M. Boss, Existential foundations of medicine and psychology, Northvale: J. Aronson Press, 1977.

  48. 48.

    See F. Brencio, Heidegger and Binswanger: just a misunderstanding? in “The Humanistic Psychologist”, vol. 43, 3, 2015, pp. 278-296.

  49. 49.

    Data released on April ninth, 2018 - http://www.who.int/en/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/mental-disorders

  50. 50.

    M. Heidegger, Zollikon Seminars, p. 157.

  51. 51.

    M. Heidegger, Zollikon Seminars, p. 217.

  52. 52.

    M. Heidegger, Zollikon Seminars, p. 217.

  53. 53.

    K. Aho, Heidegger’s Neglect of the Body, SUNY, New York, 2009, p. 122.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Philosophy, University of Seville, Seville, Spain

    Francesca Brencio

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  1. Francesca Brencio
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Correspondence to Francesca Brencio .

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  1. Dipartimento di Filosofia “Piero Martinetti”, Università degli Studi di Milano, Milano, Italy

    Carmine Di Martino

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Brencio, F. (2021). From Fixing to Thinking: Martin Heidegger’s Contribution to Medical Cares. In: Di Martino, C. (eds) Heidegger and Contemporary Philosophy. Contributions to Hermeneutics, vol 8. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-56566-4_9

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