Abstract

Although much research has been dedicated to describing the ethical and communicative conditions of the
encounter between a health care professional and a patient, in fact we know very little of the encounter itself,
nor of the concept of the identity of the subjects they implicitly fall back upon. By contrast, in this paper we
want to start from the fundamental question: what happens when two people meet in a patients room? How
do we take hold of the uncertainty and unpredictability in every new encounter? To address this lack we turn
to the work of the French Philosopher Jean Luc Nancy and his notion of the singular and its importance for the
encounter in the healthcare setting. Nancy examines the philosophical presuppositions inherent in the ways
we speak of human identity. We explain his analysis of together or with, and of singularity. Then we apply
his idea of singular identity to shed a new light on the encounter mentioned above.

Key Words ethics, health care, Jean-Luc Nancy, patient, professionalism, relationship, singularity

Meeting a Patient as a Singular Event:

A Philosophical Reflection
Ignaas devisch &
francine wynn
A precarious encounter
Both for the patient and the health care professional, entering into a patients room or nearing his bedside always creates a moment of uncertainty. For the patient this uncertainty
is determined by such concerns as who the care giver is,
what she is going to do and for how long, or if good or bad
news will be shared. For the health care professional, it also
means a step accompanied by questions such as who will he
or she encounter, and under what conditions, and how this
patient will respond to the information or treatment given.
A nurse about to wash a patient or do a painful but necessary treatment, a doctor coming to discuss the results of

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her surgery or a physical therapist beginning rehabilitation

exercise with the patient, share at least one fundamental
characteristic: the artificial coming together of two persons
who are often not familiar with each other and who possibly
will not see each other again. They all meet each other in
sometimes precarious circumstances.
Although much research has been dedicated to describing
the ethical and communicative conditions of this encounter,
[See for instance: 1,2-6] in fact there is still a need for on
ongoing and profound reflection on the clinical encounter
itself. How for instance do we take hold of the uncertainty
and unpredictability in each new encounter, with not knowing what to do in advance when meeting a patient, despite
the existing guidelines, competences and skills which are
at hand? This encounter is of course a specific one with on
the one hand, a patient in acute need of healthcare services,
and on the other a person charged with professional skills
and competencies. When these two meet at the bedside or
in the clinic, this encounter asks for particular reflections
about how to get along. Sometimes, for example, a patient

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MEETING A PATIENT AS A SINGULAR EVENT

may be fearful, in pain, sad or even aggressive, while doctor

or nurse may be exhausted, rushed or uncertain about the
potential effectiveness of treatment.
We understand this question of such an encounter to be a
genuine philosophical one. As is most often the case with
philosophical questions, they deal with topics which most
of us take for granted, but our answers to them are nevertheless crucial for the way we think and act. We will show that
not only does this question on the encounter pre-exist all
other questions concerning the relationship of a patient and a
health care professional but the answer to it can highly determine the conditions through which this encounter is worked
out. In particular, an unquestioning reliance on the concepts
of personal identity and autonomy are crucial in this.
To address these questions, we turn to the work of the philosopher Jean-Luc Nancy and his notion of the singular.
Nancy not only writes in detail on the subject of what he
calls being-with or being-together,[7-11] he also examines
the philosophical and ontological presuppositions inherent
in the ways we speak of human identity, be it singular or
plural. Since we use his work to ground our analysis, we will
explain first a few of his concepts, in particular his analysis
of together or with, and of singularity. Then we will apply
his idea of singular identity to shed a new light on the clinical
encounter. By the singular aspects of our identity, we mean
the temporary differences of a person which are unique in
time and place. These differences are infra-individual, meaning for example, if a physician is confronted with the sorrow
of a patient or with his joy of recovery in an encounter, he
will likely enter the next caught up in this mood of sorrow
or joy. Both the patient and healthcare professional can be
quite different from time to time, from place to place, from
person to person.
This means that a meeting between two individuals can
greatly differ depending on the circumstances. In one situation, if a surgeon shares bad news with an oncology patient
before or after surgery, it can mean an enormous difference
to the patient. In the first case, surgery may have been of
help, in the second case, the surgery has probably failed and
the patient maybe facing the terminal phase of the disease.
In another, an elderly widowed woman readmitted for leukemia (with an eight year hiatus) is talkative and engaging.
Her nursing student enjoys caring for her but after an adverse
reaction to treatment this patient is withdrawn and at times
aggressive and the student forces herself to approach her
bedside.

Together
If we articulate an encounter at its most abstract level, perhaps
it would be like this: when two people meet in a patients
room, they come together. This expression seems banal but it
is not. Although most of the time we pretend as if we know
what together means, it is far from sure that we actually
do. How can we speak of a together in this encounter? How
can we understand it? Together (translation of the French
ensemble) is a concept Jean-Luc Nancy first introduces in
a text on compearance written on the occasion of the fall
of communism.[12] Compearance is a juridical concept that
means becoming a defendant, appearing before a judge.
Compearance also has the general meaning of a gathering
or meeting. Moreover, it is a linguistic relative of the Greek
parousia, the anticipated (second) coming of the Lord in
Christian religion and thus also with dies irae, the day of the
Last Judgment.[13]
The meaning of compearance circles around the appearance
or arrival of something, on the one hand, and the multiplicity
of that arrival, on the other. This is also why co-appearing (in
French: comparatre) means that the appearing (paratre)
takes place never other than as co (with). It is, according to
Nancy, never a matter of appearance itself, but about an existential condition for every appearance. There is no appearance, no coming to the world and no being in the world that
does not take place as withness, Nancy writes:
Compearance, then, must signifybecause this is
what is now at stakethat appearing (coming into
the world and being in the world, or existence as
such) is strictly inseparable, indiscernible from the
cum or the with, which is not only its place and its
taking place, but alsoand this is the same thing
its fundamental ontological structure.[11, translation
modified,13]
Nancy employs this meaning of compearance in order to lay
bare what he calls the ontological structure of an encounter
between people. An encounter means we are, at least for
some moments, together. Being-together, he writes, is beingone-with-another, a we. Such a we can be a group, a network, a people, a couple, but it always denotes a contingent
we, a we that appears and disappears in an ever temporarily,
unique and therefore singular manner. Every we arises with
each renewed encounter in a different way, it is no substantial and permanently existing whole. For instance we Americans or the patient refers time and again to another reality
because the identity of this we is unfixed.

The singular
This brings us to the next concept of Nancys, singularity. For

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MEETING A PATIENT AS A SINGULAR EVENT

readers unfamiliar with his oeuvre, the next consideration

obviously needs some further explanation: every singularity is
plural, but every plurality is also singular. This central thought
coming from Being Singular Plural, is crucial to his conceptualization of human being-together and to what he means
by singularity. Although in Being Singular Plural, Nancy often
refers to the singular or singularity; it is in his earlier essay
Un sujet?[14] That he sets out what singularity signifies,
albeit by way of a detour. Here, Nancy enquires into our
historical-philosophical understanding of the subject, the
philosophical expression for the human individual. In this
understanding, a subject is understood as a self-actualizing
entity that, present to it, is itself the permanent base from
which the outside world is represented to consciousness.
This notion of subject can be attributed to the founding father
of modern philosophy, Ren Descartes, for whom the world
is an object to be understood by a subject positioned outside
that object.[14] In this connection, this subject is, in a way,
floating above the concrete world and does not take part in
the world.
Most of the time when we speak about human beings and
call them, for instance, autonomous or unique, we fall back
upon this Cartesian idea of a subject; or as Nancy says: a
substantial and permanent identity of the individual. Consequently, when we talk about an encounter in healthcare,
we then would be talking about the coming together of two
people with such permanent or fixed identities. As a result,
we develop guidelines about how they should meet each
other in a professional context, thereby presupposing that
these identities remain always the same. The whole idea of
patient-centeredness, for instance, is based upon this point
of view: in the first place, the patient is an autonomous and
undivided individual.[15,16]
On the other hand, Nancys perspective on an encounter is
quite different. In the place of the term subject, he speaks
of singular existence. According to him, existing is singular
before anything else; it is not founded in a specific essence
that may or may not precede existence. Existence has a purely
singular place and does not exist on the basis of the presence
of a fixed and consolidated identity always identical to itself,
but from the uncountable moments during which existing
occurs or takes place. My existence is singular insofar as it is
not my own and not my possession, insofar as it takes place
an uncountable number of times in my individuality itself,
as Nancy has explained in a footnote to The Experience of
Freedom:
Singularity is what distinguishes the existent from the
subject, for the subject is essentially what appropri-

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ates itself, according to its own proximity and law. Yet

the advent of a subjectivity is itself a singularity.[9]
This does not mean that there is no self, but that the self
has no abiding essence. The singular does not result from
the production, the foundation or the autonomy of something. On the contrary, it gives the subject no final ground
or first cause, as one classically intends by the Latin word
subiectum, which literally presupposed being, the foundation of every act. The singular exists in the always simple act
of essenceless existence. In this act of existence, the singular
is present but not as a subject that is self-present.
The presentation of the singular is a coming to presence of
a moment, always anew, in every act in which it appears. In
this sense, the singular is never present to itself. As beingin-the-world, it is always exposed to other singularities, or
better, to other singular moments. We is one by one and one
with one, as Nancy cryptically describes it [one by one is
his translation of the Latin singuli].[11] And also: the singular is each time, only this time [ chaque fois, une seule
fois].[9]
Nancys specific test for this general notion of singularity is
the coupling of singularity and plurality: there is no singular
that is not placed in plurality and reciprocally, no plurality
that is not always singular. The singular is (as) plural, with and
between others, it is the one, punctual indivisibility in each
unique encounter in which it takes place:
The singular is thus this indivisible unity. It is not
something which one can relate to an essence, or
spiritual version to the soul, or materialist version
to the body. Its singularity is its unity as unique existence. The decisive category of the singular evolves
exactly around this, to that extent precisely that it,
perhaps is not even a category or is at the limit of
every category [] The singular cannot be classified;
the singular is the act through which one departs from
classification, through which one departs from the
logical and cognitive order of substance.[14; authors
translation]
The singular is indivisible, but not as a subject or a whole
in which all empirical bodies are absorbed. With each
indivisible and unique act, the singular reappears, and with
the disappearance of each act, it disappears once more. A
singular existence is at each moment temporarily indivisible
for the time of the event or its singularization. This event can
be infra-individual differences within the same individual
but also transindividual differences within the same group
of individuals. Meeting friends at a bar or a street party can
each form singularities, but meeting the same friends at the
bedside of their sick friend at the hospital makes another
singularity of them.

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MEETING A PATIENT AS A SINGULAR EVENT

Therefore, from a Nancian viewpoint meeting a patient is

a singular event. As singularization involves always being
exposed to others, every singular encounter is another exposure. Although we often use typologies to classify people
this is in particular the case in healthcare a type is never
as such a type seen from a singular perspective. What is an
elderly patient for instance? If a nurse enters a room and her
colleagues have told her that the patient is an old woman,
what do they mean by that? It is as if all old women are of
one category, and even as if the same old woman is always
the same person. Yet someone may have paid her a surprise
visit which results in a renewed courage.

things typify her, but they do so not on the basis of a number

of fixed characteristics of a substantial identity.

In every encounter, the relation between singularities is their

incommensurability. They can never be reduced to each
other but their mutual differences are not substantial characteristics that can lead to a specific, demarcated whole of
singularities either. We are different from each other, but not
because of a substance or an archetype. Characteristics such
as ethnicity, a people or a culture are contingent rather than
exclusivities that permit or disallow someone from the outset
from categorizing people into types or vast characters.

In principle, if we are talking about a professional encounter,

we talk about persons who do not know each other; who are
not friends, not family; they have no privileged relationship
or bond with each other. In short, everything is at hand to
describe it as merely a functional, professional, superficial
relation or relatively unimportant within the whole of a
human life as compared with long term relationships with
friends and family.

It is thus a question of singular differences, the infra-individual differences that make someone always plurally, locally
and momentarily different. I do not differ just from others but
also differ continuously from myself. With a friend I behave
differently than with my family; when I am sick, my world is
upside down, but that of others is not. In different contexts I
can also behave differently toward the same person. People
never meet person Y as such, but always person Y with specific infra-individual qualities or characteristics.
This is why people are not to be distinguished from each
other on the basis of whether or not they share a common
denominator. There are no archetypal points of comparison
or one or another essence against which each character trait
can be measured. The smile of an old Turkish man after his
hip surgery does not typify him on the basis of some substantial characteristics of either being Turkish or being a man.
The smile typifies this man at that moment, at that fleeting
moment at which he laughs and you imagine he will recover
soon. Even an encounter with the same man, at the same
place and time and with the same smile but with someone
else in the patients room, creates a completely different
meeting and thus another singular moment. Maybe he smiles
because of his visitor and not because of his successful surgery. These, says Nancy, are the everyday characteristics that
reveal the plural singular. The moment someone raises her
arm in a specific way, when she adjusts her skirt, when she
smiles or casts a shy look at the world, and so forth. These

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Nancys praxis of encounters

After our short journey through some of Nancys vocabulary,
let us now return to the question we started with, namely
what can we learn from Nancys concepts of singularity and
being-together to analyze the encounter between a patient
and a health care professional? In other words: why might the
nurse or the physician require an understanding of identity
and human encounters based in singularity? What is the surplus value of categorizing encounters as singular events?

And yet, is often not the opposite the case? To meet a patient
is time and again a moment of uncertainty and unpredictability, and therefore a very powerful event. Someone is sick
or injured and is exposed in the most literal sense of the
word. In Corpus, Nancy calls this exposure to one another
expeausitionplaying on the term exposition: peau, in
French, means skin.[17,18] Skin is literally exposed to contact with another skin or surface. Such exposure and such
contact is more than occasionally the case for the encounter
of a patient and a health care professional. Not only the singular expeausition of the patient is at stake here, but also that
of a health care professional. He touches, supports, helps
and is therefore himself also touched in the broadest sense of
the word. For both parties in this encounter, their selves are
exposed to a heteronomy, a sharedness. This is what Nancy
calls partage, which means being shared as well as being
divided. Only from out of this shared space, an encounter
can take place.[19] If a patient and a health care professional
meet, they are both sharing the same space and time: a nurse
who has to tend to patient after an episode of severe bleeding, is confronted with a very intimate and close encounter
with another human being when she bathes him, changes
his linen, and comforts him. And of course, she has to be
very professional in her acting and communicating, but is
that all we should tell about their encounter? Does it really
stop here?

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MEETING A PATIENT AS A SINGULAR EVENT

Singularity within healthcare

What can we describe as the main characteristics of the
encounter of a patient and a health care professional seen
from a Nancian viewpoint? Every encounter is unique in time
and place, even if the two persons know each other, as every
meeting is singular due to their moods at that very moment.
For example, the encounter can be shaped by the patients
hope of recovery or his lack of it, the sunshine outside, or
the nurses distress over an earlier interaction with another
patient. Each encounter is as concrete as possible and
always operates in a here and now or a space-time; it always
stands for a plurality, a sharing, an intertwining of beings. To
encounter presupposes a space and time that every I shares
with others.
When Nancy makes a stand for singularity within human
encounters, his point of departure is our existential condition
which demonstrates that being plural singular makes the plurality of encounters possible. Nancy describes the encounter
as a sharing, and not as a fusion, as an exposure, or as an
immanence.[8] Everyday encounters can be very diverse:
encounters with whom, when, how often, why? There are
encounters that are literally encounters, approaches that bear
no demands with them; there are distant contacts, but there
are also intense bonds between friends; there are encounters
that we scarcely can remember, others that have put their
stamp on us; there are aggressive or traumatic encounters.
Being-together or being-with reveals itself just as much in
everydayness as in the privileged encounter, says Nancy.
An encounter is an act, a moment, and although temporary, not a standardized or individualized one. If we meet a
patient, we can of course neglect these aspects and foreclose
ourselves into models of professionalism and communication; these are, once again, useful and necessary, but when
privileged as the one-dimensional perspective of the encounter between a patient and a health care professional, we miss
a crucial aspect: the encounter itself. The encounter is what
escapes from our guidelines, is what makes me whether I
am a patient or a health care professional be surprised,
disappointed or happy, be exposed and expeaused.

Conclusion
A singular exposure is crucial to an encounter, albeit a professional one. Meeting begins with the exposure to plurality
and with the sharing of a unique moment and place. Such
exposure means being summoned and judged. The idea
of compearance does no longer start from any theological
judge before whom we must appear. Dies irea, the Day of

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Judgment, is not a day that could ever occur in history, but it

is the tribunal of plurality before which we appear at every
moment. To encounter is being exposed to plurality. Consequently, this exposure confronts us with a responsibility for
the unique moment we meet another person.
Consequently, an encounter is not an abstract reality of a
patient versus a professional, but always concerns an act and
praxis. The event of the encounter of one person to another is
always unique and has to be thought from its radical temporality, from the fact that an encounter concerns no other unity
than its subsequent singular moments, nothing other than its
multitudinous moments. The question of the encounter of a
patient and a healthcare professional is not only a question
of developing professional guidelines and skills, but is also
a matter of always being exposed over and over again, of
being surprised time and again by the singular meetings with
patients. Isnt that the simple evidence medicine should be
based upon?

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Contact Information for Author:

Ignaas Devisch, Ph.D.
Professor in Ethics, Philosophy, and Medicine
University of Ghent Artevelde University College
de Pintelaan 185
9000 Ghent
Belgium
Email: [email protected]
Francine Wynn, RN, Ph.D.
Lecturer
University of Toronto
The Bloomberg Faculty of Nursing

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