NOTE: Free essay sample provided on this page should be used for references or sample purposes only. The sample essay is available to anyone, so any direct quoting without mentioning the source will be considered plagiarism by schools, colleges and universities that use plagiarism detection software. To get a completely brand-new, plagiarism-free essay, please use our essay writing service.
One click instant price quote
Phenomenology Nowadays concept of Phenomenology serves as a term of wide comprehension in science. For example, it is used in modern architecture to define a type of design, which requires applying physical and haptic techniques for construction materials. In physical sciences this term can be understood as a type of information, which can be received from experimental observations and which may not contradict the theories, but can not be directly derived from those theoretical postulates. The most known understanding of Phenomenology is the following: studying Phenomenon as something, which can take place and be observed, but can not be explained by theory. But sometimes the idea of Phenomenon is too very abstract for science, thats why the best interpretation of it can be taken from its philosophic context. There are two meanings of the term Phenomenology in contemporary philosophy: first is the name of a philosophical discipline, which is one of the central concepts of modern philosophy, and second is the name of a philosophical historical movement of 20 th century.
Phenomenology is a current of philosophy, which studies and interprets human conscious experience in order to investigate the phenomena (things, objects, events, or situations, which can appear or take place on our daily life) and understand the ways we experience these things through recognizing of meaning of such things in our experience. As Dr. Howard R. Pollio notices in one of his works, the main purpose of Phenomenology is a rigorous description of human life as it is lived and reflected upon in all of its first-person concreteness, urgency, and ambiguity (Season, 2002) In other words, philosophic discipline of Phenomenology means examination of human conscious experience of different phenomena and attempting to define essential characteristics and meaning of such experiences. Also, Phenomenology is a subjective study, i. e.
study from own point of view of the philosopher. In order to receive sufficient results and conclusions, phenomenological study can be interconnected with other important concepts in philosophy, like logic, ontology, aesthetics, etc. Historical movement of Phenomenology (the other concept) was that very power, which has been developing this discipline. It started in the first half of the 20 th century with the ideas of Edmund Husserl, a famous German mathematician, logiest and philosopher, father of Phenomenology, who sourced his philosophic viewpoints from the School of Franz Bretano and Carl Stumpf. Also, the development of E. Husserl as a philosopher-innovator came under great effect of classical German philosophy, especially works of Kant and Hegel.
Husserl borrowed their approaches and a part of terminological apparatus. Further, his thoughts were supported by many other philosophers and psychologists, like Martin Heidegger, Jean-Paul Sartre, Michael Henry, or Maurice Merleau-Ponty. The book of Edmund Husserl Logical Investigations (Logische Untersuchungen, 1990 - 1913) became a starting point of the whole movement of Phenomenology. It, actually, introduces the concept of Phenomenology as a new method in philosophy. Husserl defined Phenomenology as a theory in philosophical study of essences, and an act of introducing such essences into daily experiences. He considered it to be a piece of transcendental philosophy, which is dealing with only results of reduction.
The core of his book was launching the concept of intentionality, taken from Bretano. Husserl's Phenomenology starts with his thesis Back to Things in Themselves, which means the necessity to refuse deductive philosophical systems of Hegel. Husserl offered to introduce in every philosophical subject such a reduction, which would prove the existence of the external world before the reflection starts. He presented Phenomenology like a method of examining human experience as the latter appears in time and space, or like an attempt to describe an experiment directly, without going deep into its reasons or origin. Husserl supposed that in order to remain scientifically correct, any science must use or analyze only purified meanings of subjects.
That is why he thought that any meaning of subject in science had to be purified by Phenomenological reduction. As a result of such reduction the subject will be freed from all casual connections and from reflections of particular aim of a person. So, such purified object will not be somehow connected with the results of some activity, or will not be taken as a product of some forces. It will become Object of science, object in itself. This opinion of Husserl revealed his negativism and criticism as to the ideas of philosophical naturalism. In order to achieve such a purification, Husserl offered the concept of epoch: a philosopher starts reduction from the very essentials and moves to their meaning; or he starts from the realities of implemented tasks and then moves to the realities of their meaning, but these realities must be kept in conditions, similar to their natural surrounding.
Later on many European philosophers used to re-define this principal idea of Phenomenology again and again, trying to adapt it for their own special concepts. According to imagination of Husserl, in its pure meaning Phenomenology was philosophy of consciousness. Husserl used to believe that human consciousness is always directed on something, and also that it keeps idealistic views. Besides, he raised some philosophical problems, connected with consciousness, which can be simplified to the following: Do we know, what is our consciousness, and can we understand another person, who has the same (or not the same) consciousness? If we can not understand another person, what exactly we can not understand or recognize? Can we use our consciousness?
Also Husserl described Phenomenon of consciousness (pure consciousness) as something alternative to an act of consciousness. Phenomenon of consciousness in its intentionality takes an object as something existing, not functioning. At the same time, such objects of consciousness become objects of cognition. They form absolute subjectivity as consciousness, directed to the object. Consciousness is intentional and dynamic, because it always tries to extend own limits and move onto an object. That is why consciousness forms meaning of an object.
Therefore, according to Husserl, an act of conscious (as focusing on a subject and observing it) does not mean observation of objectivity. There is no objective reality in this. Husserl supposed that objectivity belonged to experience, or even to logic of receiving information when interacting with natural surrounding. Speaking phenomenologically, objectivity can be achieved with the help of special characteristics of conscious focusing and with the help of logic, which exists in these characteristics. One more important concept in Phenomenology was offered by Husserl in his late researches.
When discovering meaning of the things, he introduced the term of normal (from Greek: normal thought), which could express content of a subject the way it exists in consciousness, or, in other words, subjective content of a thought. Besides, Husserl found out some distinctive characteristics between the very act of consciousness (called as noetic) and object of a conscious thought (called as nematic object). Therefore, the initial concept of Husserl's Phenomenology goes to philosophical analysis of direct experience of consciousness, and this consciousness must be taken not as an empirical subject of psychological study, but as pure myself. Also, early developers of this concept tried to rebuild all fundamentals of philosophy and base it on Phenomenology, as an alternative to hypothesizes of epistemology or metaphysic. In his book Situations J. -P. Sartre, Husserl's student and follower, analyzed the main ideas of Phenomenological approach.
Sartre wrote that total illusion of objectivism and naturalism was in the fact that any subject formed own understanding of a thing, equating it to the very thing. Consciousness and things exist simultaneously, they are connected in time, but they can not substitute one another. Besides, Sartre underlined that cognition and consciousness were not the same: cognitive characteristics of a thing were subjective and, therefore, they had to be withheld. So, Sartre interpreted Husserl's slogan Back to Things in Themselves as the necessity to suspend thoughts about the qualities of objects.
Commenting on Husserl's concept of intentionality of consciousness, Sartre added that consciousness (subject) and the world (object) co-existed with each other, being external for each other. Moreover, consciousness, being directed to the subject, has no own content: it exists outside of it itself, it does not define itself as an essential and this way identifies itself as consciousness. Another specialist, whose contribution into the development of philosophic Phenomenology can not be omitted, is German philosopher Martin Heidegger. He made significant changes in Husserl's principles of Phenomenology and offered his own methodology. He agreed with Husserl on the point that Phenomenology could be fundamental basis of the whole philosophy, but he also stated that philosophy must be taken as fundamental basis for the whole science. He also defined being as a key point of philosophy, when Husserl used to understand it only as a link of consciousness.
Heidegger stated that "being is the proper and sole theme of philosophy." (Wikipedia, Aug. 2005) Taking source from this assumption, Heidegger has changed the concept of Phenomenological reduction. According to him, it must start from Phenomenological concept of being and lead back to philosophic understanding of such being, unrelated to any natural outlook of a person. Phenomenological ideas and discoveries of Husserl and Heidegger caused a great effect on the developers of existentialism and existential Phenomenology. Numerous followers of the ideas of Husserl and Heidegger have been developing and extending philosophic Phenomenology. Now this concept consists of several traditional currents, some of them are: (1) Realistic Phenomenology, which concentrates on consciousness and intentionality, directed on universal essences in real world; (2) Naturalistic constitutive Phenomenology, which studies consciousness as a part of natural world; (3) Transcendental Phenomenology, which studies connections between consciousness and objects without any relation to the surrounding world; (4) Existential Phenomenology, built around studying human experience, (5) Hermeneutical Phenomenology, which analyzes human existence as something interpretive, etc. Therefore, Phenomenology is cognition of structured meaning of an object, independently from characteristics of such structure and such object.
Likely to physical vision, Phenomenology is not a science, it has no scientific methodology. But if physical vision can see an object in its physical shape, Phenomenological vision sees its textualist. Phenomenology helps to understand, what an object is about, and helps to reach adequate understanding of it. Contemporary Phenomenology is a philosophic method, which can hardly be defined unambiguously. It is supposed to be still in the process of developing its definition. In the nearest future the developments are expected to be related with correlation of the existing postulates with philosophical anthropology, religion, ecology, or politics; and also stabilization of connections of Phenomenology with other philosophic currents can take place.
But, unfortunately, the majority of modern philosophers, who are thoroughly revising and extending parameters of Phenomenology, have never touched a practical side of it. For them Phenomenology always was and remains as only philosophic experience. Bibliography: Embree, L. (1997, March) What is Phenomenology? Center for Advanced Research in Phenomenology. Retrieved September 06, 2005, from the World Wide Web: < web >. Heidegger, M. (1927).
The Basic Problems of Phenomenology. Marxists. Internet Archive. Retrieved September 06, 2005, from the World Wide Web: < web >. Phenomenology. (2005, August 9). Wikipedia.
The Free Encyclopedia Online. Retrieved September 06, 2005, from the World Wide Web: < web >. Season, D. (2002). Phenomenology, Place, Environment, and Architecture: a Review of Literature. Phenomenology Online. Ed.
Max van Make. Retrieved September 06, 2005, from the World Wide Web: < web >. Smith, D. V. (2003). Phenomenology. Stanford University.
Online Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Retrieved September 06, 2005, from the World Wide Web: < web >.
Free research essays on topics related to: 20 th century, human experience, martin heidegger, great effect, 2005 from the world wide
Research essay sample on 2005 From The World Wide 20 Th Century
