Sonja Rinofner-Kreidl

This paper pursues two aims. First, it outlines the main intentions of a recently established research project dealing with problems of subjectivity in the field of medicine. Secondly, it discusses Viktor von Weizsäcker’s Gestaltkreis with a view to what this famous physician considers a phenomenological method appropriate to the special requirements of his field of work. Considering whether his ideas make sense from the point of view of a phenomenological philosophy, we try to explain some basic correspondences of phenomenology and Weizsäcker’s anthropological medicine. Doing this, we focus on two issues, namely objectivity and subjectivity, and theory and practice. Referring to the latter there are two meanings of ‚practice‘ which have to be carefully distinguished: natural experience embedded in our daily life-world activities on the one hand, and applications of (natural-)scientific knowledge on the other hand. mehr