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
