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CHAPTER 1

METHODOLOGICAL CONSIDERATIONS

Let us begin with the analysis of the fundamental methodological principles that must underlie phenomenologically oriented pain research. In the introduction, I have identified this task as one of the three fundamental goals of this study as a whole. Here I want to contend that the methods of the epoché, the phenomenological reduction, and eidetic variation constitute such fundamental methodological principles. These three principles are necessary: only insofar as one subscribes to them does one have the right to identify one’s investigation as phenomenological in the Husserlian sense of the term. Nonetheless, these principles are not sufficient; they need to be supplemented with other phenomenological methods. As far as the phenomenology of pain is concerned, these three methodological principles need to be supplemented with two further methodological procedures: what we will here identify as the method of factual variation and the genetic method of intentional implications.¹

I will take four steps in my analysis. In the first section, I will present the methods of the epoché, the phenomenological reduction, and eidetic variation conceived of as the three principles that make up the methodological core of phenomenologically oriented pain research. In the second section, I will focus on three critiques that have been directed against phenomenology—the contentions that phenomenology is disguised psychologism, camouflaged introspectionism, and veiled solipsism. Responses to these three critiques will solidify the three methodological commitments mentioned above. In the third section, I will argue that the three fundamental phenomenological methods are necessary, yet not sufficient, and that the method of eidetic variation needs to be supplemented with the method of factual variation. We are in need of such a supplementation because in its absence, the method of eidetic variation is all too often understood as an excuse to engage in phenomenological reflections while dismissing (presumably, out of methodological considerations) all other scientific accomplishments that we come across in other fields of research. Phenomenology need not be the victim of its own purity: it must be open to the developments in other sciences—natural, social, and human—as well as to the advances in literature, poetry, cinema, and fine arts. Insofar as phenomenology is cross-disciplinary and cross-cultural, it merits being called dialogical. In the fourth section, I will qualify all the methods outlined above as the methodological commitments of static phenomenology, and I will further argue that they need to be supplemented with the methodological principles of genetic phenomenology. In such a way, we will obtain an answer to the first fundamental question of this study, which concerns the identification of the methodological principles of phenomenologically oriented pain research.

Phenomenology has been practiced in a large variety of ways, and, therefore, one cannot exclude the possibility that the phenomenology of pain might rely on some other methodological principles. While admitting such a possibility, I would like to stress two interrelated points. First, phenomenology is a method, and, therefore, anyone who wishes to argue that the static and the genetic methods are expendable must show what other phenomenological methods could replace them. Second, the methods presented here are not only fundamental to phenomenology, but also exceptionally fruitful for pain research, which is in need of a reliable methodology to clarify pain experience independently from pain biology and pain sociology, yet without denigrating it to the empirical level of personal accounts of the idiosyncratic nature of one’s own experience.

FUNDAMENTAL METHODOLOGICAL COMMITMENTS: EPOCHÉ, THE PHENOMENOLOGICAL REDUCTION, AND EIDETIC VARIATION

One commonly thinks of phenomenological analyses as reflections on experience, and things given in experience, from the first-person point of view. Such a general qualification all too easily leads to far-reaching ambiguities and confusions. These confusions are especially prevalent in such fields as pain research, where we come across investigations that are labeled as phenomenological simply because they provide a set of reflections on pain experience from the first-person point of view. One is thus left with the impression that any introspective, autobiographical, or even psychologistic set of reflections on pain experience can be characterized as phenomenological. Such a state of affairs has led to a misapprehension of the nature, goals, and function of phenomenology in pain research.

Clearly, not any kind of reflection on experience from the first-person point of view is phenomenological. At least from a Husserlian standpoint, one would say: it is the commitment to specific methodological principles that distinguishes phenomenologically oriented investigations from other studies of lived-experience. Such a standpoint suggests that an investigation can be labeled as phenomenological if, and only if, it subscribes to the fundamental principles of phenomenological methodology. What exactly are those principles?

It is not easy to answer this question. Ever since its emergence, the phenomenological method has been conceptualized in a number of ways, whose compatibility remains a contentious issue. On the one hand, there is the more apparent problem of methodological consistency that runs throughout the phenomenological movement. As Paul Ricoeur (1987, 9) has famously put it, the history of phenomenology is the history of Husserlian heresies. On the other hand, even if one limits oneself to classical phenomenology in general, and Husserlian phenomenology in particular, one nonetheless has to deal with questions concerning the compatibility of different methodological frameworks (say, those of static and genetic phenomenology), as well as of different accounts of the same methodological procedures (say, the account of the reduction as presented in Ideas I, First Philosophy II, and The Crisis of European Sciences and Transcendental Phenomenology). In the present context, it is not my goal to enter into this conflict of interpretations. I believe it is possible to bypass these controversies if one supplements methodological considerations with two qualifications. First, one needs to focus on the identification of the fundamental methodological principles, that is, those principles that could be qualified as necessary, although not necessarily sufficient. I will contend that the methods of the epoché, the phenomenological reduction, and eidetic variation are the fundamental principles of Husserlian phenomenology. I do not think that allegiance to these three phenomenological principles is sufficient to clarify what classical phenomenology (to say nothing of the phenomenological tradition as a whole) can contribute to pain research. It is therefore necessary to supplement these three methodological principles with further principles. Second, these three phenomenological principles, while necessary, can be conceptualized in more ways than one. The grandiose task of providing an exhaustive treatment of these principles is unattainable in the framework of a study that focuses on the phenomenology of pain. Here I strive to identify only the essential features of these methodological procedures, while at the same time conceding that they not only can be, but that they also have been, articulated in a number of complementary ways.

A few words on the fundamental goals of Husserlian phenomenology are appropriate here. Husserlian phenomenology is marked by the ambition to be a science of phenomena purified of all unwarranted assumptions, constructions, and interpretation. For this reason, it strives to be a descriptive science, which would present phenomena the way they appear, without distortions or misrepresentations. It is, however, not enough to describe phenomena in order to grasp them the way they appear, since descriptions all too often succumb to bias and manipulation. Precisely because it strives to describe phenomena exactly as they appear, without any contamination, the possibility of phenomenology hinges upon its capacity to design a suitable methodology that would ensure the reliability of phenomenological descriptions. The methods of the epoché, the phenomenological reduction, and eidetic variation are meant to demonstrate the possibility of phenomenology, conceived of as a method for studying pure phenomena in an unbiased way.

The Greek word epoché means “suspension, or bracketing.” To bracket, or suspend, means to put certain beliefs and commitments out of action and consideration. Husserl uses a number of expressions to characterize the epoché: abstention, dislocation, unplugging, exclusion, withholding, disregarding, abandoning, bracketing, putting out of action, or putting out of play. As all these descriptive approximations suggest, the epoché is a unique modification, which should not be confused with either doubt or negation.²

First and foremost, the phenomenological epoché is the abstention from all participation in the cognitions of the objective sciences—the putting out of play of any critical position-taking with regard to their truth or falsity. This is of great importance for the phenomenology of pain, since it suggests that phenomenological analysis is possible only if it places in brackets the accomplishments we come across in the science of pain. Pain phenomenology cannot rely either on pain biology or on pain sociology. However, such a suspension of scientific validity, radical as it is, does not exhaust the full meaning of the phenomenological epoché. This is because, “in concealment, the world’s validities are always founded on other validities, above the whole manifold but synthetically unified flow in which the world has and forever attains anew its content of meaning and its ontic validity” (Husserl 1970, 150). We can take this to mean that even if the researcher places all scientific validities in phenomenological brackets, that is, even if he refuses to accept these validities as validities, even under such circumstances, he cannot be assured that his research unfolds in an unbiased way, for even the natural and seemingly innocent assumption that the phenomena he addresses are natural phenomena (that is, parts of nature) already rests on unclarified presuppositions. This is of great importance for pain research, since it means that a phenomenologist should not conceive of pain as a natural occurrence, determined by some kind of natural causes, irrespective of whether or not these causes are known scientifically. Besides requiring that one bracket all scientific knowledge about pain, the method of the epoché also requires that one put out of action the fundamental presupposition that underlies the science of pain, namely, the assumption that pain is a natural or, more precisely, a neurophysiological phenomenon.

Taken by itself, it is unclear where the epoché leaves us. As far as the phenomenology of pain is concerned, it makes clear that a phenomenologist cannot accept either the scientific results that issue from or the fundamental assumptions that underlie the science of pain. These are negative determinations. The method of the epoché gains a positive sense when it is coupled with the phenomenological reduction.³

With reference to the phenomenological reduction, Husserl has remarked that “the understanding of all of phenomenology depends upon the understanding of this method” (1977, 144). This is hardly an overestimation, since the acquisition of phenomena in the phenomenological sense relies upon the performance of the phenomenological reduction. In the natural course of life, I stand on the ground of the world’s pregivenness: I accept the world’s being as a matter of course, without inquiring into those acts of consciousness, through which it obtains its meaning. My interests are exclusively absorbed in the objective world, and not in the flow of experience, through which it obtains the status of the objective world. We can conceive of the phenomenological reduction as a fundamental change of attitude that enables the phenomenologist to redirect his interests from objects in the world to his own experience. While in the natural attitude, I am naively absorbed in the performance of my experience and thus my interests are exclusively absorbed in the objects of my experience, in the phenomenological attitude, my new interests are redirected toward those very experiences through which the objects in the world and the world itself gain their meaning. It thereby becomes understandable why Husserl would contend that “subjectivity, and this universally and exclusively, is my theme” (1973a, 200). The crude mistake to avoid here is that of conceptualizing subjectivity as something mysteriously cut off from the world and different types of objectivity. Even though Husserl’s phenomenology is often subjected to such a critique, it is hard to come across any analyses of such subjectivity in his writings. Phenomenology is interested in subjectivity’s hidden constitutive accomplishments, through which objects in the world, and even the world itself, come to be what they are. The subjectivity thematized in phenomenology should be conceived of as a field of pure experience, or as a field of the world’s self-manifestation. By providing access to such a field, the phenomenological reduction opens the way to immanent knowledge.⁴

Besides providing access to the field of immanence, the phenomenological reduction also enables the phenomenologist to keep this field pure of all mundane contaminations. It is crucial to stress that the field of immanence that remains untouched by the epoché is not a region within the natural world, but a field of pure experience, within which nature and the world come to self-givenness. One can further qualify this region as fundamentally unnatural, comprising not things (natural or cultural), but merely pure phenomena. Phenomenology thematizes the field of pure experience as the region within which things come to their self-manifestation. In this way, phenomenology opens up a new science, “the science of pure subjectivity, in which thematic discourse concerns exclusively the lived experiences, the modes of consciousness and what is meant in their objectivity, but exclusively as meant” (Husserl 1977, 146).

What 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, even if one concedes that the method of eidetic variation presupposes a more original exposure to the essences of phenomena,⁷ one nonetheless has to agree that with the help of this method, one obtains a much more solid grasp of the essences in question. Insofar as it results in the insight into what is invariable, the method of eidetic variation solidifies our grasp of essences by transforming our vague and merely preconceptual understanding of phenomena into genuine, reliable, and intersubjectively verifiable knowledge of their essential predicates.

Despite its difficulties, the method of eidetic variation is vital for phenomenology, since in its absence, phenomenology would not be in the position to make any reliable and intersubjectively verifiable claims. What exactly would a phenomenologist be left with if, methodologically, he relied only on the epoché and the phenomenological reduction? Following the methodological guidance of these two methods, one would reach the stream of experience and pure phenomena. Yet what would a phenomenological description of such a stream and such phenomena amount to? One would be left with a pure description of factual experiences and phenomena, yet without any right to claim that the description offered is of any relevance for other experiences or other phenomena. Insofar as one relies upon only the methods of the epoché and the reduction, one can already grasp phenomena in their phenomenological purity, yet one remains restricted to their singularity. Phenomenology is in need of a method that would enable it to transcend what is singular and factual. The method of eidetic variation is designed to take us beyond the Heracleitean flux of experience. The possibility of phenomenology, as a philosophy, rests on the shoulders of insights into essences of phenomena. In phenomenology, the method of eidetic variation is indispensable.

Let us briefly sum up the three methodological procedures that are necessary for phenomenologically oriented research on pain. First, by following the method of the epoché, the phenomenologist puts in brackets all the scientific discoveries about pain and even the fundamental assumption that underlies these discoveries, namely, the assumption that pain is a natural, that is, a neurophysiological phenomenon. Second, with the performance of the phenomenological reduction, the phenomenologist gains access to pain, conceived of as pure experience. Third, the method of eidetic variation enables phenomenology to engender intersubjectively verifiable claims about the essence of pain experience. For our purposes, this brief presentation of the fundamental methodological principles that must underlie the phenomenology of pain will have to suffice.

THREE ALLEGATIONS: PSYCHOLOGISM, INTROSPECTIONISM, AND SOLIPSISM

The method of eidetic variation has often been subjected to criticism, which left one with the impression that a safer way to proceed is to dispose of this method altogether. I do not see how such a presumably safe route can enable a phenomenologist to beget intersubjectively verifiable claims. With the epoché, the phenomenologist has cut off the possibility of relying on the accomplishments of the objective sciences; with the reduction, he has returned to the stream of pure experiences. Yet what can assure us that this stream is not a Heracleitean flux, into which one cannot set one’s foot twice? To make clear the dangers that phenomenology faces when one overlooks the eidetic nature of its claims, let us ask three interrelated questions: (1) When phenomenology is employed in such fields as pain research, does it not degenerate into a form of psychologism? (2) Moreover, can it be anything other than introspectionism? (3) Last but not least, is it not a type of solipsism? Addressing these questions will enable us to bolster the view that the methods of the epoché, the reduction, and eidetic variation are indispensable for phenomenologically oriented pain research.

1. We can answer the first question by opening a brief dialogue between the phenomenology of pain and the phenomenology of illness. In her recent study, Havi Carel bemoans philosophy’s indifference to illness. She speaks of the “philosophical tendency to resist thinking about illness” (Carel 2016, 5) and offers an original and highly valuable phenomenological response to this indifference. One should not, however, overlook just how common it is to begin phenomenologically oriented studies of illness with a confession concerning the author’s personal experience of pain and/or illness. What exactly is the role of confessions of such nature? To be sure, nobody is a stranger to pain and illness, be it personal or interpersonal. Moreover, any phenomenological account is always grounded in experience. Nonetheless, as far as phenomenologically oriented studies of pain and illness are concerned, one shoots oneself in the foot when one argues, whether openly or discreetly, that only those who suffer from severe forms of illness and/or pain have the right to address these themes philosophically. We face here a crude form of psychologism, conceived of as an illegitimate form of reductionism,⁸ which one could describe either as the incapacity to raise one’s own personal experience to the eidetic level, or as a matter of diminishing eidetic unities of meaning to the level of psychological experiences. In light of Husserl’s sweeping critique of psychologism in the Prolegomena to his Logical Investigations, anyone in phenomenology who reflects on what such a view implies will be led to discard it.⁹

A phenomenologically oriented study cannot consist of a set of reflections on the idiosyncratic nature of one’s own personal experiences, no matter how fortunate or unfortunate they might be. It is not just a question of personal justification that might underlie a phenomenological investigation of such phenomena as pain. What is at stake here is the very nature of an investigation that would make it phenomenological. We face here a deep confusion that continues to haunt phenomenologically oriented pain research. This confusion derives from the misunderstanding of the nature of phenomenologically oriented research. In light of the analysis undertaken in the previous section, we can say that this confusion derives from neglecting the eidetic nature of phenomenological investigations. The stream of pure experiences is not just a Heracleitean flux, which means that the phenomenology of pain is not pain autobiography and it should not be misconceived of as a code word for personal accounts of experience. To be sure, a phenomenologist has a full right to begin the analysis by focusing on first-person experience. Yet only insofar as one’s analysis involves some kind of epoché and reduction, and only insofar as it leads to insights into essences, does one have the right to qualify one’s account as phenomenological. With this in mind, let us once again stress that a phenomenologically oriented investigation is concerned with the eidetic structures of pain experience.¹⁰

2. Just as phenomenology is not psychologism, so also it is not introspectionism. This is another implication that follows from the analysis offered in the last section. Here we touch on a confusion that is widespread in the contemporary philosophy of pain, which is marked by a general willingness to enter into dialogue with phenomenology. Such openness to phenomenology relies upon the conjecture that phenomenology can fill a significant void in pain research. One presumes that pain is both physiological and experiential, and on this basis one further claims that the science of pain is in need of both a third-person experimental and a first-person experiential methodology. Within such a framework, one further conceives of phenomenology, along with Eastern meditative practices (see Price and Aydede 2005, 14), as a peculiar type of introspective method.¹¹ One thus presumes that phenomenology can fulfill an important yet partial task in the science of pain: it can clarify pain’s experiential dimensions (what Price and Aydede identify as the horizontal dimension), which then need to be further linked to their neurological underpinnings (what Price and Aydede refer to as the vertical dimension).

While appreciating the general openness toward phenomenology, I would nonetheless claim that we face here a highly misleading appropriation of phenomenology.¹² The confusion in question derives from a misunderstanding of the privilege phenomenology accords to reflection and intuition. One reasons as follows: since phenomenology is a reflective discipline whose fundamental concepts are established intuitively, what else can it be if not introspectionism—a first-person examination of one’s conscious thoughts and feelings, which can be given only reflectively and intuitively? But if so, then the devastating critique of introspectionism, and especially in behaviorist psychology, must also apply to phenomenology. This critique has demonstrated that first-person reports appear to rest only on immediate self-givenness, while in truth they entail inferences drawn from overt behavior and from the judgments of others. The recent critiques in the philosophy of mind, which reproach phenomenology for being naively reliant on introspectionist methodology and for failing to find a single universalizable method (see Dennett 1991, 44; Metzinger 2003, 591), thereby become understandable. Supposedly, since phenomenology relies on introspectionist methodology, it inevitably generates inconsistencies, which it has no means to resolve.¹³

We face here widespread confusions. Francisco J. Varela (1996, 334) is fully justified when he maintains that one mixes up apples and oranges when one puts phenomenology and introspectionism into the same bag. Even though it privileges reflection and intuition, phenomenology is not introspectionism. While introspection is focused on individual instances of subjective experience, phenomenology is concerned with experiential essences, that is, with invariants. As Shaun Gallagher has it, “Phenomenology is not simply about subjective experience understood as an internal felt sensation or phenomenal consciousness” (2012, 58). Or as Dan Zahavi maintains, “All the major figures in the phenomenological tradition have openly and unequivocally denied that they are engaged in some kind of introspective psychology and that the method they employ is a method of introspection” (2013, 25–26).¹⁴

This should not be taken to mean that introspectionism and phenomenology do not have anything in common. Both introspectionism and phenomenology could be qualified as methods designed to examine one’s thoughts and feelings as they are given through the first-person perspective. So also, both could be qualified as analyses of essentially nonextensive phenomena, which can be given only reflectively and intuitively. Yet these significant affinities should not overshadow fundamental differences between them, which are both methodological and thematic. Put in the language common in the philosophy of mind, one could say that both introspectionism and phenomenology obey the mentality condition: both are concerned with generating knowledge about conscious experience, and not about physical events that lie presumably outside one’s conscious experience. Yet phenomenology does not obey two other important conditions that introspectionism obeys, namely, the first-person condition and the temporal proximity condition. First, we need to draw a clear distinction between what in phenomenology is called the first-person perspective and what in the philosophy of mind is called the first-person condition. Introspection meets the first-person condition in that it is a process that is aimed at generating knowledge or beliefs about one’s own mind only, not anyone else’s. By contrast, phenomenology is not concerned with the idiosyncratic nature of anyone’s experience, be it my own or anyone else’s; it is not meant to offer a description of anyone’s mind in particular, but is exclusively focused on generating knowledge about the eidetic structures that must underlie any experience whatsoever. Second, introspectionism obeys the temporal proximity condition insofar as it is a process of learning about one’s own currently ongoing, or very recently past, mental states or processes. By contrast, phenomenology is not concerned with a particular group of temporal experiences, but with the temporality of experience as such.

To this twofold distinction between phenomenology and introspectionism, one can add a third point of divergence. It concerns the breadth of introspective and phenomenological research. Introspectionism has been employed to study only relatively simple phenomena (for instance, the responses of different subjects under the same and/or different conditions to the same stimulus), while much more complex phenomena (for instance, those that concern mental disorders and personality) could not be addressed introspectively. By contrast, the phenomenological method is meant to enable the researcher to address the essences of any experience, irrespective of how simple or complex it might be.

3. What does it mean to assert that phenomenology, claims to 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.

REVAMPING EIDETIC VARIATION: FROM PURE TO DIALOGICAL PHENOMENOLOGY

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 that underlie and the results that follow from the natural, social, and human sciences, either one can strictly adhere to the fundamental phenomenological principles, or one can build on the basis of the results obtained in the sciences of the natural attitude. It seems that these are the two approaches between which one must choose.

Admittedly, phenomenology cannot, and should not, accept the insights derived from these highly diverse sources as straightforward validities. However, one has a full right to incorporate these insights into the phenomenological field by transforming them into possibilities, which in their own turn would enable the researcher to expand the horizons of eidetic variation. Insofar as one accepts the results from diverse sciences as possibilities, one does not treat them as matters of fact or as reliable conclusions that follow from sound arguments. If accepted as mere possibilities, scientific discoveries can enlarge the horizon of those imaginative possibilities, which the phenomenologist must take into account while employing the method of eidetic variation. In this sense, and in this sense alone, dialogical phenomenology’s openness to the results that stem from other fields of research does not compromise its methodological orientation.

The fact that scientific findings can be accepted in phenomenology only as possibilities means that factual variations should not be conceived of as an independent method alongside the method of eidetic variation. Rather, the coupling of these procedures enables one to give up a certain conception of the method of eidetic variation as illegitimate; it enables one to reject the view that eidetic variation closes off all possibilities of opening a dialogue between phenomenology and other sciences and that therefore, presumably, a phenomenologist must be an intellectual hermit, whose research must unfold in methodological and thematic solitude. By supplementing imaginative variations with factual variations, one liberates phenomenology from its insularity and opens the way to pursue a dialogue between phenomenology and other sciences.¹⁶

The coupling of imaginative variations with factual variations is especially needed when one turns to such complex phenomena as pain. Especially then the need arises for dialogical phenomenology, which would be open to descriptions and analyses we come across in other fields of research. Consider in this regard Dan Zahavi’s following observation about thought experiments:

It might, occasionally, be better to abandon fiction altogether and instead pay more attention to the startling facts found in the actual world. . . . If we are looking for phenomena that can shake our ingrained assumptions and force us to refine, revise, or even abandon our habitual way of thinking, all we have to do is to turn to psychopathology, along with neurology, developmental psychology, and ethnology; all of these disciplines present us with rich sources of challenging material. (2005, 141–42)

Many other disciplines besides the ones mentioned here can also oblige us to revise our cognitive habits. To repeat, revisions of this kind can also be triggered by the resources provided in fine arts, literature, poetry, cinema, or any kind of (auto)biographies. In principle, any instituted framework can provide the resources to supplement imaginative variations with factual variations and thereby enable us to obtain more reliable access to the essence of the phenomenon. In general, the more complex the phenomenon, the less reliable the merely personal imaginative variation and the greater the need to enrich it with factual variations. To follow up on Zahavi’s analysis, “If we wish to test our assumptions about the unity of mind, the privacy of mental states, the nature of agency, or the role of emotions, far more may be learned from a close examination of pathological phenomena such as depersonalization, thought insertion, multiple personality disorder, cases of apraxia, or states of anhedonia than from thought experiments involving swapped brains or teletransporters” (2005, 142). As we will see in chapter 3, a lot is to be learned about the essence of pain from pain dissociation syndromes, such as congenital insensitivity to pain, threat hypersymbolia, or asymbolia for pain. By incorporating such themes into phenomenologically oriented pain research, we can supplement the analysis built on personally motivated imaginative variations with phenomenological reflections that rely on factual variations.

To repeat, we should not think of factual variation as a separate method that is set alongside the method of eidetic variation. Rather, it is an addendum, or qualification, that enables one to liberate oneself from a certain—to my mind, illegitimate—conception of eidetic variation. By supplementing imaginative variation with factual variation, we are in a good position to respond to the hermeneutical critique, which suggests that phenomenology does not sufficiently acknowledge its own embeddedness in the structures of particular languages. This critique runs along the following lines: the phenomenologist who employs the method of eidetic variation cannot help but do so while using a particular language. Yet languages have their own particular grammatical and syntactical structures, which tacitly determine the style and limits of phenomenological descriptions. Such being the case, just as eidetic intuition can never be pure, so also, phenomenological descriptions can never be pure descriptions.

To appreciate the significance of this critique, we could think here of the notorious critiques of Descartes that highlight the philologically questionable employment of the concept of the ego in Descartes’s account of the “ego cogito.” We could also think of Nietzsche’s contention that the philosophical distinction between substance and attribute is not as innocent as it might seem. Presumably, this distinction is of philological origins: it derives from the distinction between the subject and the predicate that is characteristic of Indo-Germanic languages, although this distinction is missing in many other languages that belong to other language groups. Philological critiques of such kind bring into question the possibility of pure descriptions. They suggest that all intuitions and experiences are always already shot through with structures that derive from particular languages. We are thereby invited to concede that the seeing of essences, which is meant to result from eidetic variation, is also predetermined by these structures. Presumably, we can never reach the assurance that these structures do not disfigure the phenomenological descriptions of the alleged essences of the phenomena.

Dialogical phenomenology, which is willing to supplement imaginative variations with factual variations, is in a good position to answer this critique. A concrete phenomenological analysis that is built upon the methods of the epoché, the reduction, and eidetic variation (conceived only in terms of one’s own imaginative variation) might indeed fail to provide us with reliable insights into the essence of the phenomena, and the reasons for this failure might concern the grammatical and syntactical structures of language. Precisely, therefore, dialogical phenomenology must be open not only to research undertaken in other disciplines, but also to research undertaken in other cultural settings and in other languages. Besides being cross-disciplinary, dialogical phenomenology also needs to be cross-cultural—open to the possibility that descriptions of the phenomenon undertaken in other cultural settings and other languages might provide the incentive to refine and revise the results obtained in one’s own eidetic analysis.

We can say about eidetic variation what Merleau-Ponty (1962, xiv) famously said about the reduction: the greatest lesson of the eidetic variation is the impossibility of a complete eidetic variation. Insofar as dialogical phenomenology is open to descriptions offered in other disciplines and other languages, it is never in the position to foreclose its own analysis of the phenomenon. As a phenomenologist, one must risk making eidetic claims, yet one cannot foreclose the possibility that these claims will have to be refined and revised. A phenomenologist is a perpetual beginner.

THE GENETIC METHOD IN PHENOMENOLOGY

Although indispensable for phenomenologically oriented pain research, the methods outlined above do not exhaust the methodological resources of the phenomenological standpoint. We could qualify these methods as the fundamental methodological principles of static phenomenology, and to this we could add that they need to be supplemented with the fundamental methodological principles of genetic phenomenology.¹⁷ It is, however, extremely difficult to qualify the fundamental methodological orientation that makes up the core of genetically oriented analyses.¹⁸ We can avoid serious confusion if we recognize that genetic phenomenology is meant not to replace, but to supplement, the static method. More precisely, the genetic method is meant to clarify some of the fundamental presuppositions that underlie static methodology. In this section, I will take a detour to the fundamental methodological principles of genetic phenomenology, and only at its very end will I return to the question that is of central importance for our purposes, namely, the question concerning the significance of the genetic method for phenomenologically oriented pain research.

In his early writings, Husserl did not consider genetic investigations appropriate to phenomenology. He thought genetic investigations were of an empirical nature, that they had to rely on empirical methods, and that their significance was also only empirical. Such was the view Husserl held in the Logical Investigations (2000; first published in 1900–1901), where phenomenology, conceived of as descriptive psychology, was methodologically compelled to exclude all genetic considerations.¹⁹ In the first volume of the Ideas (1983; first published in 1913), Husserl also defended such a perspective.²⁰ According to Husserl of Ideas I, questions about essences are fundamentally different from questions about facts.

The recognition that genetic considerations need to be incorporated into phenomenology was triggered by the realization that static phenomenology relies upon presuppositions that call for genetic clarifications. Phenomenology is a study of consciousness, yet consciousness is not just a field of experience, but also a stream of experiences, and insofar as it is a stream, it must be studied not only in terms of its essential structures, but also in terms of its development. The synchronic study of consciousness that we come across in static phenomenology needs to be supplemented with a diachronic investigation.

Recall my earlier observation about eidetic variation. As an investigator, I must already have a vague grasp of the phenomenon before I subject it to the method of eidetic variation. Yet, precisely because this vague understanding is inexplicit, that is, precisely because I do not know what is entailed in my largely preconceptual understanding of the phenomenon, I am in need of eidetic variation—a method that would enable me to purify the phenomenon’s essence from various confusions and misapprehensions. This means that the method of eidetic variation hangs on the shoulders of the investigator’s mundane grasp of phenomena: it is a method for testing, revising, and refining the already pregiven understanding of the phenomena.

What does phenomenology have to say about this preconceptual understanding? As far as the method of eidetic variation is concerned, phenomenology merely relies on its availability, without inquiring into its possibility. Precisely, therefore, we are in need of genetic considerations. Such a supplementation is necessary, since in its absence we would have to conclude that phenomenology itself rests on presuppositions that can be handled only by means of other kinds of investigations. That is, we would have to concede that the phenomenological analysis of essences is possible if, and only if, one already has a largely preconceptual grasp of phenomena that can be clarified only nonphenomenologically. Such a state of affairs would compromise phenomenology’s aspiration to be a fundamental science of pure experience, which neither rests on naturalistic preconceptions nor limits itself to filling in the gaps left open in other fields of research, but which clarifies the fundamental concepts and fundamental presuppositions that are at work in other investigations. We thus need to ask: How does preconceptual understanding originate, and how does it develop? Genetic phenomenology is meant to answer these two questions.

Genetic considerations arise from the need to supplement the analyses of being with reflections on becoming.²¹ Questions about the genesis of the preconceptual understanding of phenomena can be appropriated in phenomenology if, and only if, one demonstrates that the sphere of becoming can itself be studied, not at the factual, but at the eidetic level.²² To demonstrate that the sphere of becoming is a legitimate phenomenological theme, one must show that the genesis of the preconceptual understanding of phenomena is itself ruled by certain principles, which can be clarified phenomenologically.

Husserl (2001, 629) identifies genetic phenomenology as explanatory, as opposed to static phenomenology, which he qualifies as descriptive. These qualifications suggest that insofar as one follows the principles of static phenomenology, one must zero in on the intuitively given phenomenon, and, following the method of eidetic variation, one must describe its essential characteristics. By contrast, the genetic method requires that one trespass the boundaries of pure description. As seen from the genetic standpoint, it does not suffice to describe; rather, one must explain. Insofar as genetic explanation is a matter of interpretation, one could characterize genetic phenomenology as genetically oriented hermeneutics of subjective life and the life-world (see Luft 2004, 226). Yet, obviously, not any kind of explanation or interpretation is phenomenological in the genetic sense of the term. Here we turn to the crucial question: What, then, are the fundamental principles that make up the methodological core of genetic phenomenology? Despite the basic nature of this question, it is extremely difficult to answer.²³

The fundamental methodological difference between static and genetic phenomenology can be clarified by focusing on the different paths to the phenomenological reduction.²⁴ While static phenomenology relies upon the so-called Cartesian path, genetic phenomenology offers two alternative paths, which Husserl identifies as the path through psychology and the path through the life-world.²⁵ A detailed account of these two paths is not possible in the present context. Fortunately, it is also not necessary. My task here is to portray these two genetic paths in broad strokes and to highlight their common methodological features. It is these common features, I will suggest, that make up the methodological basis of genetic phenomenology.

Both genetic paths to the reduction are alternatives to the Cartesian path, which is dominant in static phenomenology. The Cartesian path is motivated by the recognition of the irrevocable contingency that characterizes the general thesis of the natural standpoint. This thesis runs as follows: “the” world as actuality is always already there (see Husserl 1983, §30; and Husserl 1959, §33). The recognition that this thesis is irretrievably contingent calls for a radical alteration of the natural thesis, which Husserl conceptualizes under the heading of the phenomenological epoché. In its own turn, the epoché provides us with the possibility to turn our attention to the field of pure experience, conceived of as the phenomenological residuum. The phenomenological reduction is nothing other than this “universal overthrow” (Husserl 1959, 68) of the natural attitude, which one could also characterize as the radical deliverance of attention from its worldly absorption and its redirection to the newly discovered field of transcendental experience.

As seen from the genetic standpoint, the Cartesian path to the reduction suffers from two chief limitations. First, it gives the false impression that the transcendental field of experience is empty of content (or at least any content that would clearly correspond to the content of mundane experience). It thus seems that phenomenology is reinvigorated Platonism, which liberates us from the shadows in the cave and directs us away from the field of everyday experience to another world of ideas and essences. Second, the conception of the reduction that prevails in static phenomenology, and especially when coupled with the method of eidetic variation, gives the misleading impression that phenomenology can conceptualize the field of pure experience only synchronically (that is, in terms of eidetic structures, which characterize all possible experience) and not diachronically. It thus seems that such an approach to the reduction overlooks the full-fledged significance of the temporal nature of the experiential field, conceiving of it only as a pure form, and not as a field of genesis.

The path to the reduction through psychology is marked by the refusal to suspend the thesis of the natural attitude in one go. This path prefigures transcendental phenomenology. It invites the investigator to focus on specific acts phenomenologically, even before one performs the universal epoché and the universal reduction.²⁶ To follow this path is to engage in mundane phenomenology, which still hasn’t brought into question the belief in the world (see Held 2003, 28–29). We can thereby see how the genetic approach overcomes the first limitation of the static approach I have identified above. Anything and everything we come across in the natural attitude can be reabsorbed within the field of transcendental experience and thereby transformed into a phenomenological theme.²⁷ Following the psychological path, one demonstrates that the field of experience is not empty of content: there is absolutely nothing in the field of mundane experience that cannot be redeemed phenomenologically. Moreover, following the genetic path also enables one to overcome the second limitation, which concerns the prospects of a diachronic analysis of the field of experience. If it is indeed true that all acts of mundane experience can be “translated” into transcendental acts, then we can say the following: “Just as I in the natural attitude, as I-this-person, retrospectively and prospectively know about my past and future life, so also, as I practice the transcendental reduction, I know about my transcendental being or life in the past and the future; and I know this from my transcendental experience” (Husserl 1959, 84; my translation—SG). The goal of the psychological path to the reduction is to unveil the full content of universal transcendental experience: to deliver the transcendental present, past, and future and thereby provide the resources needed to further conceptualize the field of experience as a field of genesis.

The ontological path to the reduction is also marked by the refusal to suspend the general thesis of the natural attitude at the outset. While the path through psychology directs the phenomenologist’s attention to the psychological acts of mundane consciousness, the ontological path leads to the general correlate of all mundane acts, namely, it leads to the life-world. The life-world is to be understood as the world that the natural attitude has as its correlate. It is the subjective-relative world, conceived of as being at once the ground and the horizon of all human action, both natural and scientific. The ontological path to the reduction leads us to the life-world, conceived of as the forgotten ground of scientific accomplishments, and further thematizes the life-world as the constitutive accomplishment of transcendental subjectivity. In this regard, one may rightly claim that the ontological path faces a twofold task. Its first central task is to purify such a world of all idealistic and naturalistic misconceptions, to recover its original meaning prior to that meaning having been covered up by the “veil of ideas” that experience itself has imposed on the world. Put paradoxically, the first task is to offer a science of the prescientific world, which would provide us with the understanding of its most essential structures. Yet this first task must be coupled with the second one, namely, to demonstrate that such a prescientific world is itself a hidden accomplishment of transcendental (inter)subjectivity. As seen from the perspective of genetic phenomenology, our understanding of the life-world remains limited for as long as we do not recognize that the life-world is an intentional correlate of transcendental (inter)subjectivity.

In light of the above, one can say that the second and the third ways to the reduction are complementary in three ways: they both begin at the level of mundane experience, they are both regressive, and they both culminate at the level of transcendental (inter)subjectivity.²⁸ What makes such a methodological orientation genetic is its regressive nature, and so as to understand it more precisely, we need to supplement the foregoing analysis with reflections on the method of intentional implications.²⁹ At first glance, this method might appear inconsequential. To follow up on Husserl’s own examples, within the field of reduced experience, my act of recollection intentionally implies my foregoing act of perception; so also, my act of anticipation intentionally implies my future perception (although, admittedly, with a different kind of evidence). Thus, “I recall having a conversation with you in the hallway” intentionally implies “I had such a conversation with you in the hallway.” Claims of this nature border on being trivial. Nonetheless, the method of intentional implications proves to be remarkably resourceful, and it would be hardly an overstatement to qualify it as the engine of genetic methodology in general. What is ultimately at stake in this method is not just the recognition of the double-sided complexity inscribed in the reproductive acts of recollection, phantasy, and anticipation.³⁰ Of much greater methodological significance is the realization that the method of intentional implications enables us to conceive of present experiences as configurations of sense that rely upon more basic experiences. Conceived of from a genetic point of view, each and every intentional experience always intends more in the object than is given in pure intuition, and this surplus of meaning points to the intentional accomplishments of foregoing experiences. The method of intentional implications is designed to demonstrate that my whole past is intentionally implicated in each and every one of my present intentional experiences. In the final analysis, the method of intentional implications provides the methodological basis upon which to thematize the realm of pure experiences as a developmental field of apperceptive accomplishments.

We thereby obtain the methodological basis for studying the formation of preconceptual understanding in terms of “lawful regularities that regulate the formation of apperceptions” (Husserl 2001, 624). Apperceptions are intentional lived-experiences that prescribe to the given phenomenon dimensions of sense that exceed their intuitive justification. The phenomenological concept of apperception is meant to capture the excess of meaning that trespasses the boundaries of the phenomenon’s intuitive self-givenness.³¹ As seen from the standpoint of genetic phenomenology, each and every consciousness is apperceptive: “We cannot even conceive of a consciousness that would not go beyond the strict present in its essential flux from presence to new presences” (Husserl 2001, 626). It is, however, not enough to characterize apperceptive consciousness as a consciousness of the surplus of meaning that exceeds the bounds of intuition and that accompanies each and every experience. Apperceptive consciousness is focused on what is given intuitively and it finds within the intuitively given a motivation for a consciousness of something that exceeds the boundaries of intuition. That is, apperceptive consciousness is not just conscious of something intuitively given and in addition still conscious of dimensions of sense that exceed the boundaries of intuition; rather, it is a consciousness that intentionally points toward the nonintuitive as that which is motivated intuitively (see Husserl 2001, 627). To a large degree, the goal of genetic phenomenology is to discover the fundamental principles in accordance with which apperceptions are formed and in accordance with which ever-new apperceptions necessarily arise from other apperceptions.³² They can be formed at different levels of experience, which Husserl (2001, 631) identifies as the level of pure activity, the intermediary level between passivity and activity, and the level of pure passivity.

At this point we can come back to the twofold question raised at the beginning of this section: How does preconceptual understanding originate, and how does it develop? Having addressed the fundamental methodological principles that underlie genetic phenomenology, we are in the position to appreciate the remarkably rich answer genetic phenomenology offers to this question. This answer is fundamentally twofold. On the one hand, by focusing on the hidden accomplishments of transcendental subjectivity, genetic phenomenology demonstrates that preconceptual understanding originates and develops within the framework of subjective experience. Genetic phenomenology focuses on the field of transcendental experience from a diachronic standpoint and inquires into the fundamental laws and principles in accordance with which transcendental experience develops. On the other hand, genetic phenomenology also strives to show that preconceptual understanding originates and develops in the life-world. In this regard, the questions that prove central to phenomenology concern the life-world’s fundamental structures, the way in which objects in the life-world obtain their meaning, and the way in which our basic rootedness in the life-world prefigures our theoretical activities.

We are finally in the position to ask: Of what significance is the genetic method for phenomenologically oriented analyses of pain? What we just said about preconceptual understanding in general, we can also say about such bodily experiences as pain. We can ask: How does the experience of pain originate and how does it develop? The second and third paths to the reduction, coupled with the method of intentional implications, provide us with the methodological basis for addressing these questions phenomenologically. Following the guidelines of genetic methodology, we can investigate how the experience of pain originates both in the field of experience in general and in the life-world. In this regard, in what follows it will be important to show that pain originates as a rupture in the field of experience that unsettles one’s otherwise natural absorption in the world of things. In the natural course of life, we are, for the most part, delivered from internal life. Everything for us is outside, in the world, on the road, in the town, in the midst of the crowd (see Sartre 1970, 5). The emergence of pain puts a stop to our natural excentricity: the door through which we used to naturally fly out into the world is now, as it were, blocked with a mirror, in which we see reflected the incapacity of the inborn movement to get off the ground. Pain belongs to a group of feelings that compel us to discover our own immanence. Yet pain does not only occur, it also lingers, which means that one cannot grasp its nature without understanding its temporality. Following the genetic method, we can investigate the temporal nature of pain experience not only in terms of its formal structures, but also in light of its development, paying close attention to the significance of retention and protention, as well as memory and anticipation. Moreover, following the genetic method, we can also investigate how the experience of pain is incorporated into various apperceptions—both conceptual and affective—and how these apperceptions codetermine the nature of pain experience. The analysis of these themes will require that we understand pain not only as a depersonalizing, but also as a repersonalizing experience: not only as an experience that robs us of our selfhood, but also as an experience that invites us to reconstitute ourselves anew. Last but not least, the genetic method also invites us to examine the significance of the person’s immersion in the life-world. In this regard, a genetically oriented phenomenology of pain can demonstrate to what extent the processes of somatization and psychologization codetermine the nature of pain experience.

As my references to such processes as depersonalization and repersonalization, as well as somatization and psychologization, suggest, genetically oriented phenomenology of pain must be pursued in dialogue with other disciplines—such as cultural anthropology, cultural psychopathology, and psychoanalysis—which study the same processes on the basis of other methodological principles. In this regard, genetic phenomenology, much like the method of factual variation, liberates phenomenology from insularity by opening exchanges with other fields of research.

* * *

Let us sum up these methodological considerations. I presented the methods of the epoché, the phenomenological reduction, and eidetic variation as the three fundamental methodological principles that make up the basic core of phenomenologically oriented investigations. I further argued that these three principles are necessary, although not sufficient. In virtue of inherent limitations, they need to be supplemented with further methodological considerations. As we saw, even though the method of eidetic variation is meant to provide the researcher with access to the essence of the phenomenon, it cannot guarantee that the investigator will not confuse this essence with a generalized factual description. Such being the case, the method of eidetic variation needs to be supplemented with the possibilities opened up by factual variation. Such a supplementation significantly enriches the phenomenological field of analysis, even though, admittedly, it does not close off the open possibility that the phenomenological insights might still fail to reach the essence of the phenomenon. Such a methodological supplementation, which reconceptualizes factual variation as a necessary ingredient of eidetic variation, imparts upon phenomenology a much-needed dialogical orientation. Phenomenology need not be disadvantaged by its own purity. Insofar as it is willing to supplement imaginative variations with factual variations, it can build on the basis of accomplishments derived from other sciences by transforming these accomplishments into pure possibilities. Insofar as phenomenology is willing to take on such a methodological orientation, it loses its insularity and becomes dialogical.

Such a dialogical approach is especially called for in pain research. As Gallagher has it, “Phenomena that pertain to biological and specifically human behavior and experience are so complex, that we cannot always grasp the imaginative possibilities in a unified intentional act” (2012, 55). Pain is such a phenomenon. Thus, even though I will begin my analysis in chapter 2 by building phenomenological descriptions in line with the first three fundamental phenomenological methods, it will soon become apparent that a dialogue between phenomenology and a number of other disciplines—such as cognitive science, cultural anthropology, and psychoanalysis—is of great importance for phenomenologically oriented pain research. In addition to supplementing eidetic descriptions with resources obtained from other disciplines, it will also prove necessary to supplement static analyses with genetic investigations. In phenomenology, it does not suffice to clarify the nature of pain experience in terms of its fundamental structures. This is a great task in itself, and it can be achieved by following the methodological guidelines of static phenomenology. Nonetheless, the phenomenological determination of the nature of pain experience remains formal in the absence of genetic investigations, and it therefore needs to be supplemented with an inquiry into the origins and development of pain experience. Such a genetic inquiry supplements the static account by demonstrating the astonishing degree to which pain experience is nested in apperceptions and rooted in the life-world. Genetic phenomenology provides us with the methods needed to study these apperceptions in terms of the fundamental laws that guide their development.

In the introduction, I suggested that the science of pain is in need of phenomenology for two central and interrelated reasons: first, it does not have a reliable method to study the nature of pain experience; and second, it is not in the position to inquire into the compatibility of the findings obtained by means of the first-person and third-person methodologies. The methodological considerations offered in this chapter provide the science of pain with the methodological foundation that it can rely upon as it strives to accomplish both tasks.