Temporality and illness

A phenomenological perspective

John Brough

pp. 29-46

in: Toombs (ed), Handbook of phenomenology and medicine, Berlin, Springer, 2001

Abstract

In ordinary living, we are absorbed in the routine of our days, focused on objects that momentarily hold our attention, on tasks that must be done, and on a host of other activities that distract, delight, and sometimes disturb us. In the midst of this busy engagement, we scarcely give a thought to time. True, calendars are ubiquitous in our lives — How many days are left before Christmas? When does spring break begin? — and we consult our watches in anticipation of an appointment with the doctor or glance at the clock to see whether it is time to take our medicine. This common attending to time, however, is largely oblivious to the myriad ways in which time permeates our experience. All of the tasks and objects and activities that form the stuff of our daily lives are soaked with time. Collectively, they form the realm of temporality; and our consciousness of them, whatever else it may be, is timeconsciousness. We ourselves are not only beings in time but beings whose very fabric, mental and physical, is temporal. We compare our consciousness to a stream, and we know and feel that our bodies age. Both we, and the world we experience, are temporal through and through, though this remains, for the most part, veiled from us.