The Significance of Phenomenology Department of Philosophy, University of Amsterdam Spring 2013 Jenny Slatman (Department of Health, Ethics and Society, Maastricht University) Phenomenology of the body in health and medicine Thursday 28th March, 16.00-18.00 Location: F.022, Bushuis, Kloveniersburgwal 48 http://www.uva.nl/over-de-uva/de-uva-in-amsterdam/locaties/content/bushuis.html (PLEASE NOTE DIFFERENT LOCATION FROM PREVIOUS LECTURES) Abstract: Phenomenological reflections on the body and embodiment, such as developed by Husserl, Merleau-Ponty and Sartre, are frequently used in critical and ethical analyses of contemporary medicine. As we all know, in most medical practices, the body is mainly considered and treated as an object.   A phenomenological approach that takes its lead from lived embodied self-experiences, agency and subjectivity counters this instrumental and objectifying view on the body. Although this focus on embodied subjectivity is only to be welcomed, “good” care and treatment does not simply follow from a repudiation of the ‘body as object’. To do justice to embodied human existence, medicine should consider both the ‘body as subject’ and the ‘body as object’, and it is especially in this respect that phenomenology can be very insightful. For, as I see it, a phenomenological perspective on the body entails more than simply replacing an external third person perspective on the body with a first person perspective. In my talk, I would like to present phenomenology as an approach that entails a multiple view on the body, and as such reveal a multi-layered body ontology. It is exactly because of this multiplicity that a phenomenology of the body can complement biomedical considerations (and actions) as well as medical sociological analyses. I will illustrate my theoretical claims while drawing on my current research project on bodily disfigurements.