“To understand qualitative methodology requires consideration of its foundations” (Pascal, 2006, p. 67).

“This study posits that cancer survivorhood is not a return to a normative self, but an interpretive space for understanding the temporal authenticity of care” (Pascal, 2006, p. 307).

Pascal, following Hoy (1999), makes an erroneous reading of Heidegger’s famous “turn” (Kehre) by describing it as a “hermeneutic turn”. This is because right from the beginning of Heidegger’s philosophical career, hermeneutics was his philosophical method, nothing else; in fact hermeneutics was the reason for his break with Husserl’s transcendental phenomenology.

Heidegger’s Kehre instead concerned itself with the shift of emphasis from Dasein to Sein itself. Rather than just hinting at the primordiality of being that makes Dasein‘s understanding of being possible, Heidegger, in his mid-career writings such as Contributions to Philosophy, conducted a holistic investigation of being in terms of its historicity, sanctity and possible future directions, all in reference to the troubled destiny of humanity in the modern world.

References

Pascal, J. (2006). The lived experience of cancer survival: Heideggerian perspectives. Unpublished thesis. La Trobe University.