Phenomenology

Phenomenology (from <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ancient_Greek" title="Ancient Greek">Greek</a> phainómenon "that which appears" and lógos "study") is the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philosophy" title="Philosophy">philosophical</a> study of the structures of experience and <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consciousness" title="Consciousness">consciousness</a>.

As a <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philosophical_movement" title="Philosophical movement">philosophical movement</a> it was founded in the early years of the 20th century by <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edmund_Husserl" title="Edmund Husserl">Edmund Husserl</a> and was later expanded upon by a circle of his followers at the universities of <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/University_of_G%C3%B6ttingen" title="University of Göttingen">Göttingen</a> and <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ludwig_Maximilian_University_of_Munich" title="Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich">Munich</a> in <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Germany" title="Germany">Germany</a>. It then spread to <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/France" title="France">France</a>, the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States" title="United States">United States</a>, and elsewhere, often in contexts far removed from Husserl's early work.<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phenomenology%28philosophy%29#cite_note-Husserlhistory-1">[1]</a> Phenomenology should not be considered as a unitary movement; rather, different authors share a common family resemblance but also with many significant differences. Accordingly, “A unique and final definition of phenomenology is dangerous and perhaps even paradoxical as it lacks a thematic focus. In fact, it is not a doctrine, nor a philosophical school, but rather a style of thought, a method, an open and ever-renewed experience having different results, and this may disorient anyone wishing to define the meaning of phenomenology”.<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phenomenology%28philosophy%29#cite_note-2">[2]</a>

Phenomenology, in Husserl's conception, is primarily concerned with the systematic reflection on and study of the structures of consciousness and the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phenomena" class="mw-redirect" title="Phenomena">phenomena</a> that appear in acts of consciousness. Phenomenology can be clearly differentiated from the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cartesian_dualism" class="mw-redirect" title="Cartesian dualism">Cartesian</a> method of analysis which sees the world as objects, sets of objects, and objects acting and reacting upon one another.

Husserl's conception of phenomenology has been criticized and developed not only by himself but also by students, such as <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edith_Stein" title="Edith Stein">Edith Stein</a> and <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_Ingarden" title="Roman Ingarden">Roman Ingarden</a>, by <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hermeneutics" title="Hermeneutics">hermeneutic philosophers</a>, such as <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martin_Heidegger" title="Martin Heidegger">Martin Heidegger</a>, by <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Existentialism" title="Existentialism">existentialists</a>, such as <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicolai_Hartmann" title="Nicolai Hartmann">Nicolai Hartmann</a>, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gabriel_Marcel" title="Gabriel Marcel">Gabriel Marcel</a>, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maurice_Merleau-Ponty" title="Maurice Merleau-Ponty">Maurice Merleau-Ponty</a>, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean-Paul_Sartre" title="Jean-Paul Sartre">Jean-Paul Sartre</a>, and by other philosophers, such as <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Max_Scheler" title="Max Scheler">Max Scheler</a>, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Ricoeur" class="mw-redirect" title="Paul Ricoeur">Paul Ricoeur</a>, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean-Luc_Marion" title="Jean-Luc Marion">Jean-Luc Marion</a>, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emmanuel_Levinas" title="Emmanuel Levinas">Emmanuel Levinas</a>, and sociologists <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alfred_Sch%C3%BCtz" title="Alfred Schütz">Alfred Schütz</a> and <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eric_Voegelin" title="Eric Voegelin">Eric Voegelin</a>.

<h2>Overview</h2>

In its most basic form, phenomenology attempts to create conditions for the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Objectivity%28philosophy%29" title="Objectivity (philosophy)">objective</a> study of topics usually regarded as <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subject%28philosophy%29" title="Subject (philosophy)">subjective</a>: consciousness and the content of conscious experiences such as <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Judgement" title="Judgement">judgments</a>, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perceptions" class="mw-redirect" title="Perceptions">perceptions</a>, and <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emotions" class="mw-redirect" title="Emotions">emotions</a>. Although phenomenology seeks to be scientific, it does not attempt to study consciousness from the perspective of clinical psychology or neurology. Instead, it seeks through systematic reflection to determine the essential properties and structures of experience.<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phenomenology_%28philosophy%29#cite_note-3">[3]</a>

There are several assumptions behind phenomenology that help explain its foundations:

<ol>

<li>It rejects the concept of objective research. Phenomenologists prefer grouping assumptions through a process called phenomenological epoche.</li>

<li>Phenomenology believes that analyzing daily human behavior can provide one with a greater understanding of nature.</li>

<li>Persons should be explored. This is because persons can be understood through the unique ways they reflect the society they live in.</li>

<li>Phenomenologists prefer to gather “capta,” or conscious experience, rather than traditional data.</li>

<li>Phenomenology is considered to be oriented on discovery, and therefore phenomenologists gather research using methods that are far less restricting than in other sciences.<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phenomenology_%28philosophy%29#cite_note-4">[4]</a></li>

</ol>

Husserl derived many important concepts central to phenomenology from the works and lectures of his teachers, the philosophers and psychologists <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Franz_Brentano" title="Franz Brentano">Franz Brentano</a> and <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carl_Stumpf" title="Carl Stumpf">Carl Stumpf</a>.<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phenomenology%28philosophy%29#cite_note-5">[5]</a> An important element of phenomenology that Husserl borrowed from Brentano is <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intentionality" title="Intentionality">intentionality</a> (often described as "aboutness"), the notion that consciousness is always consciousness of something. The object of consciousness is called the intentional object, and this object is constituted for consciousness in many different ways, through, for instance, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perception" title="Perception">perception</a>, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Memory" title="Memory">memory</a>, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Retention_and_protention" title="Retention and protention">retention and protention</a>, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sign%28semiotics%29" title="Sign (semiotics)">signification</a>, etc. Throughout these different intentionalities, though they have different structures and different ways of being "about" the object, an object is still constituted as the identical object; consciousness is directed at the same intentional object in direct perception as it is in the immediately following retention of this object and the eventual remembering of it.

Though many of the phenomenological methods involve various reductions, phenomenology is, in essence, anti-<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reductionism" title="Reductionism">reductionistic</a>; the reductions are mere tools to better understand and describe the workings of consciousness, not to reduce any phenomenon to these descriptions. In other words, when a reference is made to a thing's essence or idea, or when one details the constitution of an identical coherent thing by describing what one "really" sees as being only these sides and aspects, these surfaces, it does not mean that the thing is only and exclusively what is described here: The ultimate goal of these reductions is to understand how these different aspects are constituted into the actual thing as experienced by the person experiencing it. Phenomenology is a direct reaction to the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychologism" title="Psychologism">psychologism</a> and <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Physicalism" title="Physicalism">physicalism</a> of Husserl's time.<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phenomenology%28philosophy%29#cite_note-Husserl.28Phenom.vs._Psych..29-6">[6]</a>

Although previously employed by <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georg_Wilhelm_Friedrich_Hegel" title="Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel">Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel</a> in his <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Phenomenology_of_Spirit" title="The Phenomenology of Spirit">Phenomenology of Spirit</a>, it was Husserl's adoption of this term (circa 1900) that propelled it into becoming the designation of a philosophical school. As a philosophical perspective, phenomenology is its method, though the specific meaning of the term varies according to how it is conceived by a given philosopher. As envisioned by Husserl, phenomenology is a method of philosophical inquiry that rejects the rationalist bias that has dominated Western thought since <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plato" title="Plato">Plato</a> in favor of a method of reflective attentiveness that discloses the individual's "lived experience."<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phenomenology%28philosophy%29#cite_note-7">[7]</a> Loosely rooted in an epistemological device, with <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sceptic" class="mw-redirect" title="Sceptic">Sceptic</a> roots, called <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epoch%C3%A9" title="Epoché">epoché</a>, Husserl's method entails the suspension of judgment while relying on the intuitive grasp of knowledge, free of presuppositions and intellectualizing. Sometimes depicted as the "science of experience," the phenomenological method is rooted in intentionality, Husserl's theory of consciousness (developed from Brentano). Intentionality represents an alternative to the representational theory of consciousness, which holds that reality cannot be grasped directly because it is available only through perceptions of reality that are representations of it in the mind. Husserl countered that consciousness is not "in" the mind but rather conscious of something other than itself (the intentional object), whether the object is a substance or a figment of <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imagination" title="Imagination">imagination</a> (i.e., the real processes associated with and underlying the figment). Hence the phenomenological method relies on the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phenomenological_description" title="Phenomenological description">description of phenomena</a> as they are given to consciousness, in their <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immediacy%28philosophy%29" title="Immediacy (philosophy)">immediacy</a>.

Phenomenology

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