Page 60 - Contribution To Phenomenology

PHENOMENOLOGY AND THE CLINICAL EVENT 53

decisions. Evidenz is strictly correlated to the modes of givenness
(Gegenbenheitsweise), the ways in and by means of which the things
known are encountered as "they themselves," as Husserl says, "in
person"^^ (leiblich)—in the ways specific to the "things" in question.
In the case of the pregnancy, this demand for sound evidence was
very prominent. A family obstetrician first referred the couple on the
basis on what he saw on ultrasound and from his clinical examination.
The referral center's obstetricians not only saw that first ultrasound but
obtained another as well as other tests and, together with radiologists
experienced in "reading" such images and laboratory findings, came to a
weighted judgment that the fetus had certain severe problems. Having no
experience or knowledge of such things, the couple could base their
beliefs and concerns only on what they were told by the physicians
("hear-say" evidence, even if from "experts"). But the physicians' notion
that the couple "seemed angry at us for mentioning 'abortion'" was not
well-grounded. Indeed, it turned out not to be evident at all; that belief
was quite wrong even while the claim that they were "angry" was correct.
Since these matters are pre-eminently practical, leading directly to
decisions with their aftermaths, it was quite essential that these respec-
tive claims and evidences be cautiously sorted out on pains of reaching
mistaken or misleading decisions.

D, Free-Phantasy Variation
In more technical terms, to consider any clinical case as an example
is to practice a version of what Husserl termed "free-phantasy variation"
[36] to which he gave extraordinary significance. For instance, it is said
to be " . . . the fundamental form of all particular transcendental
methods'' even to provide "the legitimate sense of a transcendental
phenomenology" ([11], p. 12)P While Husserl sought to establish

^^ Thus, Husserl can say that evidence "consists in the giving of something-
itself" along with the discipline of giving them faithful linguistic expression (which
he includes in his "normative principle" of evidence) ([11], p. 14).

^^ Husserl carefully distinguished his method as "a variation carried on with
the freedom of pure phantasy and with the consciousness of its purely optional
character—^the consciousness of the 'pure' Anything Whatever," and thus as focused
on each actual or possible example as exemplifying the purely possible. He thus
distinguished it from "empirical variation;" the method is a strictly philosophical one,
although there are, as I argue in the text, a number of interesting versions of the
method even in empirical science and medicine ([12], pp 247-248). Earlier, he