Contemporary Philosophy:

Introduction to Phenomenology
Introduction to Phenomenology

Phenomenology and its Predecessors

Edmund Husserl

Martin Heidegger
Introduction to Phenomenology

Phenomenology and its Predecessors

Edmund Husserl

Martin Heidegger
Introduction to Phenomenology
Phenomenology and its Predecessors

Phenomenology is both a philosophical movement and

method.

It is many things to many people and its definition is

hotly contested in a way that is, perhaps, symptomatic
of the heterogenous development within contemporary
philosophy.

It is perhaps most helpful to think of it as a

solution to a problem.
Introduction to Phenomenology
Phenomenology and its Predecessors

Phenomenologists assert that the study of

phenomena is the correct and most primordial
objective of philosophers.
Introduction to Phenomenology
Phenomenology and its Predecessors

This would be in contrast to:

Ethics - The Study of Right and Wrong

Epistemology - The Study of Knowledge

Introduction to Phenomenology
The field of Phenomenology begins with Plato and his
Allegory of the Cave:

Plato argued that people uneducated in the forms would

mistake the shadows on the wall for the real thing. Put
another way we could say that they would mistake the
phenomena with the real thing itself.

The was the birthplace of the classical greek distinction

between:
The Form and its Phenomenon
Phenomenology and its Predecessors
Reality

Versus

Our experience of reality.

Phenomenology and its Predecessors
Or put another way:

The distinction between things themselves

and our experience of them.
Phenomenology and its Predecessors
The problem of the (im)possibility of
objective experience has been a focus for
Metaphysics since the beginning of
philosophy and has consequences for
nearly all branches of philosophical thought.

Phenomenology is an attempt to answer this

(seemingly) basic question:
Phenomenology and its Predecessors

How can we have knowledge

of the world, as it really is?
Phenomenology and its Predecessors
How can we distinguish between the
shadow of a rabbit and a rabbit?
Phenomenology and its Predecessors
Despite having its roots as far back at Plato;
Phenomenology came into its own in the
work of the German turn-of-the-century
Philosopher Edmund Husserl
Introduction to Phenomenology

Phenomenology and its Predecessors

Edmund Husserl

Martin Heidegger
Edmund Husserl
Edmund Husserl was born April 8, 1859, into a Jewish family in the town of Prossnitz in Moravia, then a part of the
Austrian Empire.

He went to school in Vienna and was a mediocre student keen on Mathematics and Science.

1876 Went to Leipzig University and continued his studies in Maths, Physics and now Philosophy.

After a spell in Berlin, he completed his PhD Studies in Vienna on a theory of the calculus of variations in 1883.

In 1886 he went to Halle and wrote on a theory of numbers, was baptised as a Christian and the next year was married.

They h ad 3 children one of which died during the First World War at Verdun.

In 1916 he was appointed to professorship at Freiburg University. It was there that he acquired the brilliant protg, Heidegger.

Later, during the Nazi persecution of the jews Husserl, with the help of his own student, Heidegger, was removed from office
at Freiburg.

Before dying in 1938 he likened himself to a great explorer who has discovered the promised land of Phenomenology.
The cultivation of its fields would only come after his death.
Phenomenology and its Predecessors

How can we have knowledge

of the world, as it really is?
Phenomenology and its Predecessors
Descartes also approached this question.

Employing the method of radical doubt he

concluded that the only thing that one can
know with certainty is that a thing is doing
some thinking: Cogito Ergo Sum

This thinking may be described as

Rationalism.
Phenomenology and its Predecessors
In contrast Empiricists approach the
problem by rejecting the existence of extra-
worldly phenomena like ideas/spirit/soul and
seek an explanation from observable
phenomena.
Phenomenology and its Predecessors
Phenomenology and its Predecessors
 Edmund Husserl
What is Phenomenology?

CONTRA Descartes and Locke, Husserl argues that in order to answer the question of how we can
have knowledge of the world ; we ought to turn our attention to the study of our experience of it.

Phenomenology studies the structure of various types of experience including:

Perception
Thought
Memory
Imagination
 Edmund Husserl
What is Phenomenology?

The structure of these forms of experience typically involves what Husserl called "intentionality",
that is, the directedness of experience toward things in the world, the property of consciousness
that it is a consciousness of or about something.

According to classical Husserlian phenomenology, our experience is directed toward things only
through particular concepts, thoughts, ideas, images, etc.

These make up the meaning or content of a given experience, and are distinct from the things
they present or mean.
 Edmund Husserl
Returning to the Hammer
 Edmund Husserl
As what do we experience this hammer? It is many things to many people.

To a carpenter it is a TOOL.

To a retailer it is MERCHANDISE..

To a killer it is a WEAPON.

To a lecturer it is a PROP.

To my girlfriend it is a NUISANCE.

To a communist it is a SYMBOL.
 Edmund Husserl

Describing experiences?

Feelings?

Emotions?

Fantasies?

Dreams?
 Edmund Husserl

If this all sounds a bit like Psychology..it should!

Husserl was greatly influenced by the fledgling discipline

pioneered by his contemporaries:
Edmund Husserl

Franz Brentano Sigmund Freud William James

1838 - 1917 1856-1939 1842 - 1910
Edmund Husserl

Logical Investigation Psycho-Logical Investigation

Objective Facts Subjective Events
Edmund Husserl
Critique of Science

Husserl argued that the scientific method was delusional.

The impossibility of casual passive observation meant that the notion of

1. Observing the world

2. Discerning Patterns
3. Deriving Laws

Was not as simple as scientists would have us believe.

Rather, our attention is always directed at the object of our experience and so
before the scientist can only prove the accuracy of their original assumption.

Put simply, Science was not fundamental in a way that would satisfy Husserl
Because if refused to concede the presuppositions upon which its enquiries
were based.
Edmund Husserl
In order to draw the distinction between these two different ways of
our experiences of the world he employed two greek terms:

noesis
The intentional process of consciousness is called noesis. Phenomenology describes the objects
of consciousness.

noema,
The Ideal contect of noesis is noema. Phenomenology also describes consciousness itself.

In this way it seeks to draw from both scientific and psychological descriptions of the world.

The Objective and Subjective are correlative but never reducible to eachother.
Edmund Husserl
The Phenomenological Reduction

The purpose of this inquiry into the structure of experience is, remember, to
provide a basis for knowledge about the world.

Husserl argued that all consciousness is consciousness of something.

There is always something towards which consciousness is directed.

Therefore: If we are to gain knowledge about the object of consciousness we

must first examine consciousness.

The consequence of this is that consciousness is the pre-condition for

knowledge.

Let us return to our hammer.

 Edmund Husserl
The Phenomenological Reduction

Let us consider the following:

Each of us is currently having an experience of the hammer. We are having a

noesis of this object.

However we are unable to get knowledge of noema or the thing in itself because
we are unaware of the schematic, psychological and scientific preconceptions
upon which our experience (noesis) rests.

Husserl argued through a radical reduction, it is possible to bracket off these

schema and gain knowledge of the thing as it is in itself.

In what he describes as an epoche the subject [brackets off] the natural attitude.

The place to begin this enquiry is from our own experience of the world. From
Our first-person-point-of-view.
Edmund Husserl
The Phenomenological Reduction
In the phenomenological reduction one needs to strip away the theoretical or scientific conceptions
and thematizations that overlay the phenomenon one wishes to study, and which prevents one
from seeing the phenomenon in a non-abstracting manner.

The Epoche is the moment in which we break free from our everyday experience of the world.

An everyday experience in which we rely upon unquestioningly and unaware of a number of the
suppositions of science.

This moment is transcendental.

If the epoche is the name for whatever method we use to free ourselves from the captivity of the
unquestioned acceptance of the everyday world. Then the reduction is the recognition of that
acceptance as an acceptance.
Hammer Reduction
Let us return to our hammer; we have already spoken about the different
ways we may encounter it, as a tool, a weapone etc.

But have we gone far enough?

Our questioning is only beginning.

What are the assumptions governing your experience of this hammer at this
moment?

Scientific Assumptions
Perceptive Assumptions
Sociological Assumptions

How do these affect your experience?

 Martin Heidegger
Heidegger was a protg of Husserls and subscribed to many of his ideas.
However, he had his own ideas about the method of Phenomenology.

Husserl bracketed out the question of the existence of the real world
and focussed instead on the fundamental experience of consciousness within
It. This has been characterised as a transcendental turn and has inspired much
comparison with Buddhist meditation.

For Heidegger the transcendental turn was the wrong move for phenomenology.

Heidegger argued that bracketing out the question of the existence of the real
world was not helpful.

For him, the study of experience had to being where experiences occur and for
whom.

Heidegger proposed that Phenomenology was a fundamental Ontology. Put

simply the description of experiences has to begin with People in the World.
Martin Heidegger
Phenomenologist

Ontologist

Philosopher

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Martin Heidegger
Ontology

Epistemology seeks to answer the question: How can we have knowledge?

Ontology seeks to answer the question: What is Being?

Heidegger concurred with Husserl that neither radical empiricism or rationalism

would provide a solid understanding of our experience of the world.

For Heidegger however the goal of phenomenology was not to allow an access
to the things themselves!.

The goal of phenomenology was to make transparent the Being of Being

transparent to the Being for whom Being is an issue.

Put another way:

Martin Heidegger
The Hammer has no Being-in-itself. The Being for whom Being is an
issue is the human being (Dasein).

Heidegger makes the distinction between:

Being Sein
beings seindes

If Phenomenology is to describe our experience of the world; then it

ought to begin with the most basic experiences. Things like our
experience of picking up a hammer to put up a shelf.

As what do we experience the hammer? We experience it as a tool

ready-to-hand to be employed in the process of hammering.
Martin Heidegger
The most important experience that phenomenology has to provide an
account of is the experience of being.

For Heidegger then Phenomenoloy was transformed into fundamental

Ontology.
Martin Heidegger
Ontology

He seeks to describe this entity we call Being (Da-Sein) in its average

everydayness.

He denotes the categories of experience as existentiale: In answer to the

question: What is Being?

Heidegger replies that a fundamental and reflective approach to

descriptive phenomenology reveals the following categories of Being:

Being-In-The-World
Being-With-Others
Being-Towards-Death
Martin Heidegger
Being-In-The-World

It does not make sense to talk of experience occurring outside-of-the-

world as in the Cartesian exercise.

Dasein (Being) is always being-in-the-world at a certain place and time.

But the World should not be thought of as a collection of objects as under

the extreme empiricist viewpoint.

Rather the World is understood as the horizon in which experience takes

place.

Being is Being-In-The-World.
Martin Heidegger
Being-With-Others

Being in the world is Being-With-Other people.

This signifies that we are with other Beings in a way more complex than
we are being alongside beings.

How is this kind of Being-With-Others characterised? It is characterised

by our caring about other people.

Being is Being-With-Others
Martin Heidegger
Being-Towards-Death

To be is not to be.

One of the fundamental facets of Being is the fact that all Being is Being-
Towards-Death.

Being is Being-Towards-Death.
Martin Heidegger
Hermeneutics

Hermione was a messenger between mortals and gods in ancient

Greece.

She was also a terrible trickster figure and would often deliberately
miscommunicate the messages of the gods.

This obfuscation inspired the school of thinking called Hermeneutics.

Heidegger wrote that Ontology is the Hermeneutics of Facticity.

Factical objects in the world are never uncovered without preconceptions.

Martin Heidegger
Authentic and Inauthentic Being: A Qualitative Distinction

For Heidegger one could have an authentic or inauthentic attitude

towards ones Being.

As what does one experience oneself in everyday existence?

It is both shocking and unnerving to hear that in everyday existence we

do not experience ourselves as anything like we truly are.

Instead we have an inauthentic apprehension of our selves.

Most tragic is an inauthentic being-towards-death.

 How to Philosophise with a
Hammer
To conclude our example of the hammer:

The Cartesian/Rational Approach would deny the possibility of having certain

knowledge; under the method of radical scepticism.

The Empirical Approach would affirm the scientific existence of the hammer
but would give us no information about the hammer as we experience it.

The Husserlian Transcendental model would ask us to gain knowledge of the

hammer as-it-is-in-itself by bracketing off the presuppositions and schema that
we bring to the act of perceiving it.

The Heideggerean/Hermeneutic model would argue that the hammer has no

Being. Any knowledge we can gain about the hammer must be first examined for
hermeneutic impurities and is subject to change.
SEVEN TYPES OF PHENOMENOLOGY
(1) Transcendental constitutive phenomenology studies how objects
are constituted in pure or transcendental consciousness, setting aside
questions of any relation to the natural world around us.
(2) Naturalistic constitutive phenomenology studies how
consciousness constitutes or takes things in the world of nature, assuming
with the natural attitude that consciousness is part of nature.
(3) Existential phenomenology studies concrete human existence,
including our experience of free choice or action in concrete situations.
(4) Generative historicist phenomenology studies how meaning, as
found in our experience, is generated in historical processes of collective
experience over time.
(5) Genetic phenomenology studies the genesis of meanings of things
within one's own stream of experience.
(6) Hermeneutical phenomenology studies interpretive structures of
experience, how we understand and engage things around us in our
human world, including ourselves and others.
(7) Realistic phenomenology studies the structure of consciousness and
intentionality, assuming it occurs in a real world that is largely external to
consciousness and not somehow brought into being by consciousness.
 In Conclusion
What are the common threads of Phenomenology?

1. In order to gain knowledge of the world we must examine experience.

2. To achieve this in a fundamental way we must avoid all existing
preconditions to our understanding of experience: Sciientific, Historical,
Aesthetic, Historical.
3. A demand that we reject the stale, arid and non-vital examination of the
world typified by Neo-Kantian tradition. Experience is a living, vital and wet
thing.
4. A desire to enhance the richness and vitality of everyday lived experience.
5. A fear and avoidance of the kind of thinking that results in the doubting of the
existence of the outside world.
There are several assumptions behind phenomenology that help explain
its foundations.
First, it rejects the concept of objective research. Phenomenologists prefer
grouping assumptions through a process called phenomenological epoche.
Second, phenomenology believes that analyzing daily human behavior can
provide one with a greater understanding of nature.
The third assumption is that persons should be explored. This is because
persons can be understood through the unique ways they reflect the
society they live in.
Fourth, phenomenologists prefer to gather capta, or conscious
experience, rather than traditional data.
Finally, phenomenology is considered to be oriented on discovery, and
therefore phenomenologists gather research using methods that are far
less restricting than in other sciences.[4]