Is it useful to understand disease through Husserl’s transcendental phenomenology?

Abstract

This article explores the relationship between disease and our understanding of it through the lens of Husserl’s phenomenology. It argues that understanding disease requires us to examine the fundamental conditions and various aspects and that phenomenology provides a way to do this. Husserl’s transcendental phenomenology helps us identify the structures of experience necessary for the possibility of experiencing disease, and to recognize how these structures shape our understanding of it. His transcendental philosophy reveals that the subjective experience of illness can be understood in terms of general concepts. In this point, this article will critically sketch some misunderstandings of disease, followed by an exploration of phenomenological explorative methods. Husserl’s phenomenological inquiry is significant in its disclosure of ways in which internal experiences can be shared as general concepts.