Peter Wilberg

Heidegger, Medicine and Scientific Method: The Unheeded Message of the Zollikon Seminars Peter Wilberg

The aim of Heidegger, Medicine and 'Scientific Method' is to ensure that the profound implications of the Zollikon Seminars Heidegger held for doctors and psychiatrists do not remain unheeded. In one short volume Peter Wilberg concisely summarises Heidegger's fundamental critique of 'scientific method', redefines the basic principles of the 'phenomenological method' and lays out the foundations of a new 'phenomenological' approach to medicine - one which understands that illnesses have meanings not 'causes'. Grounded in Heidegger's fundamental distinction between the physical body (Körper) and the 'lived' or 'felt' body (Leib), phenomenological medicine offers a highly practical and therapeutic understanding of the relation between a patient's clinical disease 'pathology' and the felt 'dis-ease' or pathos that it embodies.