Being-With-Parkinson's. The role of existential phenomenology in modern medicine
Julius Friedrich Wilhelm Schulten
Essay from the year 2020 in the subject Philosophy - Miscellaneous, grade: 1,0, Saarland University (Philosophie), course: "Death as the Possibility of the Impossibility": Decision and Mortality in Heidegger and Kierkegaard, language: English, abstract: Why should the practitioner of internal medicine care if another method, rivalling his state-of-the-art medicine is available? I argue that this is an illusion. If the primary or the internal physician, who see most patients, does not take the time to explore the patient’s being, how could psychiatric disease or even existential suffering be detected? The best method might be a synthesis of modern algorithm- and evidence-based medicine with existential-phenomenological approaches since the physician does not know what ails the patient if there is no insight into his mode of being.Medicine has a growing interest in existential phenomenology and existential literature has a negatively connotated but nevertheless relevant interest in medicine. As is shown in the case of Ivan Ilych, we should strive to translate the fields into one another to further understanding: what does it mean for an illness to be existential? Great progress has been made to operationalize this concept by the likes of GRECH, MARKS (2017). Now it is time for doctors to pick it up and put it to good use in two ways: first, understand the patients’ existential worries; second, communicate in existential terms, not esoteric pathophysiology.
