what is phenomenology, its subject matter and the two main currents
1.0 INTRODUCTION:
The reality of the concept of phenomenology could be traced etymologically from its component Greek words-“phenomenon” and “logos” which means the study of phenomena: appearances of things, or things as they appear in our experience, or the ways we experience things, thus the meanings things have in our experience.
It is a branch of philosophy that occupied the mind of 20th century philosopher, beginning with Edmund Husserl. Certain elements of its existence could be seen at the works of philosophers before Husserl but in a mild and insignificant sense. Stephen Hicks writes that to understand phenomenology, one must identify its roots in the philosophy of Immanuel Kant. In his the Critique of Pure Reason, Kant distinguished between "phenomenon", and "noumena".
2.0 WHAT IS PHENOMENOLOGY?
Phenomenology is the primary objective of which is the direct investigation and description of phenomena as consciously experienced, without theories about their causal explanation and as free as possible from unexamined preconceptions and presuppositions. The knowledge of Phenomenology could be described as the science of experienced things ranging from seeing, hearing, touching, believing, remembering, wishing, deciding, imagining, feeling, judging and evaluating things. It is a description of the givens of immediate experience. It is an attempt to capture experience in process as lived, through descriptive analysis. It studies how things appear to consciousness or are given in experience, and not how they are in themselves, even if it is known that the given contains more than or is different from what is presented. For instance, assault victims may experience fear for months or years after the assault, even when no apparent danger exists. What does this fear mean? Where does it come from? How is it experienced? The answers bring us closer to the phenomenon that is lived. It is as well a method of knowing that "beginning with the things themselves, that tries to find a 'first opening' on the world free of our perceptions and interpretations, together with a methodology for reducing the interference of our preconceptions”. Accordingly, in the phenomenological tradition, phenomenology is given a much wider range, addressing the meaning things have in our experience, notably, the significance of objects, events, tools, the flow of time, the self, and others, as these things arise and are experienced in our “life-world”. Classical phenomenologists practiced some three distinguishable methods. Firstly we describe a type of experience just as we find it in our own past experience. Thus, Husserl and Merleau-Ponty spoke of pure description of lived experience. Secondly, we interpret a type of experience by relating it to relevant features of context. In this vein, Heidegger and his followers spoke of hermeneutics, the art of interpretation in context, especially social and linguistic context. Thirdly, we analyze the form of a type of experience. In the end, all the classical phenomenologists practiced analysis of experience, factoring out notable features for further elaboration.
3.0 THE SUBJECT OF PHENOMENOLOGY
Conscious experience is the starting point of phenomenology, but experience shades off into less overtly conscious phenomena. As Husserl and others stressed, we are only vaguely aware of things in the margin or periphery of attention, and we are only implicitly aware of the wider horizon of things in the world around us. Moreover, as Heidegger stressed, in practical activities like walking along, or hammering a nail, or speaking our native tongue, we are not explicitly conscious of our habitual patterns of action. We should allow, then, that the domain of phenomenology, our own experience spreads out from conscious experience into semi-conscious and even unconscious mental activity, along with relevant background conditions implicitly invoked in our experience. In his Logical Investigations, Husserl outlined a complex system of philosophy, moving from logic to philosophy of language, to ontology, to a phenomenological theory of intentionality, and finally to a phenomenological theory of knowledge. He focused squarely on phenomenology itself. Husserl defined phenomenology as “the science of the essence of consciousness”, centered on the defining trait of intentionality, and approached explicitly “in the first person”. In this spirit, we may say phenomenology is the study of consciousness.
4.0 MAIN CURRENTS OF PHENOMENOLOGY:
Certain conflicts arise from the field of phenomenology. This conflict gave rise to certain current in phenomenology. According to the demands of the assignment, I would immediately illustrate briefly the main current therein.
4.1 Transcendental Phenomenology:
The mind of proposing this current was to make some key elaborations to distinguish between the act of consciousness and the phenomena at which it is directed. Husserl in a later period concentrated more on the ideal, essential structures of consciousness. As he wanted to exclude any hypothesis on the existence of external objects, he introduced the method of phenomenological reduction to eliminate them. What was left over was the pure transcendental ego, as opposed to the concrete empirical ego. Now Transcendental Phenomenology is the study of the essential structures that are left in pure consciousness. Husserl described phenomenology as the rigorous science of all conceivable transcendental phenomena. All knowledge should be based on absolutely certain insights. The task of transcendental phenomenology is describing the lived world from the viewpoint of a detached observer.
4.2 Existential Phenomenology:
Existential phenomenology differs from transcendental phenomenology by its rejection of the transcendental ego. Merleau-Ponty objects to the ego's transcendence of the world, which for Husserl leaves the world spread out and completely transparent before the conscious. Existential phenomenology insists that the observer cannot separate himself from the world. Existential phenomenologists followed out more rigorously the implications of the doctrine of intentionality of consciousness. Since consciousness is always consciousness of…, the world is not only the correlate of consciousness but that without which there would be no consciousness. Heidegger thinks of a conscious being as always already in the world. Transcendence is maintained in existential phenomenology to the extent that the method of phenomenology must take a presuppositionless starting point - transcending claims about the world arising from, for example, natural or scientific attitudes or theories of the ontological nature of the world.
5.0 HUSSERL ON TRANSCENDENTAL SUBJECTIVITY VIS-À-VIS THE PROBLEM HE CREATED
Husserl, in his doctrine of transcendental subjectivity adopts a self-reflective method as a basic phenomenological method. This reflects that subjectivity is antecedent to all objective reality. Just like descartes’ methodic doubt, Husserl established the doctrine of epoche arriving at the pure and transcendental ego. Transcendental subjectivity is a goal of transcendental reduction otherwise noted as epoche. Thus, the pure Ego and its cognitions are the realms of transcendental subjectivity incepted many philosophical problems. It is very crucial to note clearly the problems surrounded by this doctrine of Husserl.
Husserl’s concept of transcendental subjectivity unfolds another aspect of unknown and unfamiliar transcendental ontology. Thus, his talk on transcendental being becomes very unclear, vague and ambiguous.
Husserl in his attempt to establish the ground for transcendental phenomenology, created two irreducible distinction between the realms of natural world and the realm of transcendental world. Describing these two ontological realms, the natural world depends ontologically to the transcendental world. He fall into the problem of reversing his epistemological theories into an ontological mode.
6.0 CONCLUSION
Phenomenology has had a pervasive influence on 20th-century thought. Certain philosophers like Martin Heidegger, Jean Paul Sartre and Merleau-Ponty contributed immensely on the discourse of phenomenology. Phenomenology also has a very contrasting nature with positivism and empiricism even though there are few similarities. Phenomenology does not restrict these data to the range of sense experience but admits on equal terms such non-sensory data as relations and values, as long as they present themselves intuitively.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Microsoft ® Encarta ® 2009. © 1993-2008 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.
Hick, S. Understanding Postmodernism: Skepticism and Socialism from Rousseau to Foucault,( Tempe, AZ: Scholargy)
Rollinger, Robin (1999), Husserl's Position in the School of Brentano, Dordrecht / Boston / London: Kluwer
Husserl, Edmund. The Crisis of the European Sciences and Transcendental Phenomenology. Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1970,
Dreyfus, H., with Hall, H. (eds.), 1982, Husserl, Intentionality and Cognitive Science. Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT Press
Heidegger, M. (1982 ). The basic problems of phe-nomenology (A. Hofstadter, Trans.) Blooming-ton, IN: Indiana University Press.
Heidegger, M. (1996). Being and time (J. Stam-baugh, Trans). Albany, NY: State University of
New York Press.
Hurley, S. L. (1998). Consciousness in action. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Hurley, S. L., & No ¨e, A. (2003 ). Neural plasticity and consciousness. Biology and Philosophy, 18, 13 1–168.
Husserl, E. (1970). The Crisis of European Sciencesand Transcendental Phenomenology (D. Carr, Trans.). Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press.
Husserl, E. 1973 . Zur Ph ¨anomenologie der Intersub-jektivit ¨at, Dreiter Teil: 192 9–1935 . Husserliana (Vol. 15 ). The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff.
Husserl, E. (1975 ). Experience and judgment (J. S. Churchill, Trans.) Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press.
MLA Style: "Phenomenology." Encyclopædia Britannica. Encyclopaedia Britannica Student and Home Edition. Chicago: Encyclopædia Britannica, 2010.
Husserl, E. (1989). Ideas pertaining to a pure phe-nomenology and to a phenomenological philoso-phy, second book (R. Rojcewicz & A. Schuwer, Trans). Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publish-ers.
Husserl, E. (1991). On the phenomenology of the consciousness of internal time (1893 –1917) (J. B. Brough, Trans.) Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers.
Husserl, E. (2000). Logical investigations I–II (J. N. Findley, Trans.). London: Routledge Press.
The reality of the concept of phenomenology could be traced etymologically from its component Greek words-“phenomenon” and “logos” which means the study of phenomena: appearances of things, or things as they appear in our experience, or the ways we experience things, thus the meanings things have in our experience.
It is a branch of philosophy that occupied the mind of 20th century philosopher, beginning with Edmund Husserl. Certain elements of its existence could be seen at the works of philosophers before Husserl but in a mild and insignificant sense. Stephen Hicks writes that to understand phenomenology, one must identify its roots in the philosophy of Immanuel Kant. In his the Critique of Pure Reason, Kant distinguished between "phenomenon", and "noumena".
2.0 WHAT IS PHENOMENOLOGY?
Phenomenology is the primary objective of which is the direct investigation and description of phenomena as consciously experienced, without theories about their causal explanation and as free as possible from unexamined preconceptions and presuppositions. The knowledge of Phenomenology could be described as the science of experienced things ranging from seeing, hearing, touching, believing, remembering, wishing, deciding, imagining, feeling, judging and evaluating things. It is a description of the givens of immediate experience. It is an attempt to capture experience in process as lived, through descriptive analysis. It studies how things appear to consciousness or are given in experience, and not how they are in themselves, even if it is known that the given contains more than or is different from what is presented. For instance, assault victims may experience fear for months or years after the assault, even when no apparent danger exists. What does this fear mean? Where does it come from? How is it experienced? The answers bring us closer to the phenomenon that is lived. It is as well a method of knowing that "beginning with the things themselves, that tries to find a 'first opening' on the world free of our perceptions and interpretations, together with a methodology for reducing the interference of our preconceptions”. Accordingly, in the phenomenological tradition, phenomenology is given a much wider range, addressing the meaning things have in our experience, notably, the significance of objects, events, tools, the flow of time, the self, and others, as these things arise and are experienced in our “life-world”. Classical phenomenologists practiced some three distinguishable methods. Firstly we describe a type of experience just as we find it in our own past experience. Thus, Husserl and Merleau-Ponty spoke of pure description of lived experience. Secondly, we interpret a type of experience by relating it to relevant features of context. In this vein, Heidegger and his followers spoke of hermeneutics, the art of interpretation in context, especially social and linguistic context. Thirdly, we analyze the form of a type of experience. In the end, all the classical phenomenologists practiced analysis of experience, factoring out notable features for further elaboration.
3.0 THE SUBJECT OF PHENOMENOLOGY
Conscious experience is the starting point of phenomenology, but experience shades off into less overtly conscious phenomena. As Husserl and others stressed, we are only vaguely aware of things in the margin or periphery of attention, and we are only implicitly aware of the wider horizon of things in the world around us. Moreover, as Heidegger stressed, in practical activities like walking along, or hammering a nail, or speaking our native tongue, we are not explicitly conscious of our habitual patterns of action. We should allow, then, that the domain of phenomenology, our own experience spreads out from conscious experience into semi-conscious and even unconscious mental activity, along with relevant background conditions implicitly invoked in our experience. In his Logical Investigations, Husserl outlined a complex system of philosophy, moving from logic to philosophy of language, to ontology, to a phenomenological theory of intentionality, and finally to a phenomenological theory of knowledge. He focused squarely on phenomenology itself. Husserl defined phenomenology as “the science of the essence of consciousness”, centered on the defining trait of intentionality, and approached explicitly “in the first person”. In this spirit, we may say phenomenology is the study of consciousness.
4.0 MAIN CURRENTS OF PHENOMENOLOGY:
Certain conflicts arise from the field of phenomenology. This conflict gave rise to certain current in phenomenology. According to the demands of the assignment, I would immediately illustrate briefly the main current therein.
4.1 Transcendental Phenomenology:
The mind of proposing this current was to make some key elaborations to distinguish between the act of consciousness and the phenomena at which it is directed. Husserl in a later period concentrated more on the ideal, essential structures of consciousness. As he wanted to exclude any hypothesis on the existence of external objects, he introduced the method of phenomenological reduction to eliminate them. What was left over was the pure transcendental ego, as opposed to the concrete empirical ego. Now Transcendental Phenomenology is the study of the essential structures that are left in pure consciousness. Husserl described phenomenology as the rigorous science of all conceivable transcendental phenomena. All knowledge should be based on absolutely certain insights. The task of transcendental phenomenology is describing the lived world from the viewpoint of a detached observer.
4.2 Existential Phenomenology:
Existential phenomenology differs from transcendental phenomenology by its rejection of the transcendental ego. Merleau-Ponty objects to the ego's transcendence of the world, which for Husserl leaves the world spread out and completely transparent before the conscious. Existential phenomenology insists that the observer cannot separate himself from the world. Existential phenomenologists followed out more rigorously the implications of the doctrine of intentionality of consciousness. Since consciousness is always consciousness of…, the world is not only the correlate of consciousness but that without which there would be no consciousness. Heidegger thinks of a conscious being as always already in the world. Transcendence is maintained in existential phenomenology to the extent that the method of phenomenology must take a presuppositionless starting point - transcending claims about the world arising from, for example, natural or scientific attitudes or theories of the ontological nature of the world.
5.0 HUSSERL ON TRANSCENDENTAL SUBJECTIVITY VIS-À-VIS THE PROBLEM HE CREATED
Husserl, in his doctrine of transcendental subjectivity adopts a self-reflective method as a basic phenomenological method. This reflects that subjectivity is antecedent to all objective reality. Just like descartes’ methodic doubt, Husserl established the doctrine of epoche arriving at the pure and transcendental ego. Transcendental subjectivity is a goal of transcendental reduction otherwise noted as epoche. Thus, the pure Ego and its cognitions are the realms of transcendental subjectivity incepted many philosophical problems. It is very crucial to note clearly the problems surrounded by this doctrine of Husserl.
Husserl’s concept of transcendental subjectivity unfolds another aspect of unknown and unfamiliar transcendental ontology. Thus, his talk on transcendental being becomes very unclear, vague and ambiguous.
Husserl in his attempt to establish the ground for transcendental phenomenology, created two irreducible distinction between the realms of natural world and the realm of transcendental world. Describing these two ontological realms, the natural world depends ontologically to the transcendental world. He fall into the problem of reversing his epistemological theories into an ontological mode.
6.0 CONCLUSION
Phenomenology has had a pervasive influence on 20th-century thought. Certain philosophers like Martin Heidegger, Jean Paul Sartre and Merleau-Ponty contributed immensely on the discourse of phenomenology. Phenomenology also has a very contrasting nature with positivism and empiricism even though there are few similarities. Phenomenology does not restrict these data to the range of sense experience but admits on equal terms such non-sensory data as relations and values, as long as they present themselves intuitively.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Microsoft ® Encarta ® 2009. © 1993-2008 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.
Hick, S. Understanding Postmodernism: Skepticism and Socialism from Rousseau to Foucault,( Tempe, AZ: Scholargy)
Rollinger, Robin (1999), Husserl's Position in the School of Brentano, Dordrecht / Boston / London: Kluwer
Husserl, Edmund. The Crisis of the European Sciences and Transcendental Phenomenology. Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1970,
Dreyfus, H., with Hall, H. (eds.), 1982, Husserl, Intentionality and Cognitive Science. Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT Press
Heidegger, M. (1982 ). The basic problems of phe-nomenology (A. Hofstadter, Trans.) Blooming-ton, IN: Indiana University Press.
Heidegger, M. (1996). Being and time (J. Stam-baugh, Trans). Albany, NY: State University of
New York Press.
Hurley, S. L. (1998). Consciousness in action. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Hurley, S. L., & No ¨e, A. (2003 ). Neural plasticity and consciousness. Biology and Philosophy, 18, 13 1–168.
Husserl, E. (1970). The Crisis of European Sciencesand Transcendental Phenomenology (D. Carr, Trans.). Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press.
Husserl, E. 1973 . Zur Ph ¨anomenologie der Intersub-jektivit ¨at, Dreiter Teil: 192 9–1935 . Husserliana (Vol. 15 ). The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff.
Husserl, E. (1975 ). Experience and judgment (J. S. Churchill, Trans.) Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press.
MLA Style: "Phenomenology." Encyclopædia Britannica. Encyclopaedia Britannica Student and Home Edition. Chicago: Encyclopædia Britannica, 2010.
Husserl, E. (1989). Ideas pertaining to a pure phe-nomenology and to a phenomenological philoso-phy, second book (R. Rojcewicz & A. Schuwer, Trans). Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publish-ers.
Husserl, E. (1991). On the phenomenology of the consciousness of internal time (1893 –1917) (J. B. Brough, Trans.) Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers.
Husserl, E. (2000). Logical investigations I–II (J. N. Findley, Trans.). London: Routledge Press.
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