What Is Phenomenology?
Aug 12th, 2008 by Micah Tillman | 9 Comments |
People often ask me that when I tell them what I’m doing my dissertation on.
Here it is in a nutshell:
Phenomenology is the study of the structures of experience.
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That is its essence. But instead of description-by-essence, I could use contextual description:
- It was developed by Edmund Husserl in his attempt to reach a full understanding of mathematics and logic.
- Existentialism (e.g., Heidegger and Sartre) and postmodernism (e.g., Levinas and Derrida) are responses to (or attempts to develop) it.
- It is the form of philosophy which Pope John Paul II did.
- It influenced T.S. Eliot and Kurt Gödel.
- It was influenced by the psychological work of William James and Franz Brentano.
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And there are still other ways of describing it:
- It is neither classical, modernist, nor postmodern, though it shares aspects of each:
- It is both Aristotelian/Scholastic in its methodology and Platonic in its belief in ideal objects, but it is modernist in its focus on subjectivity.
- It is modernist in its desire to work without presuppositions, but anti-modernist in its epistemology
- It is postmodern in its attempt to reengage the premodern and in its critique of modernism, but non-postmodern in its relative normalness.
- Its central tenet is that “conscious” is a transitive verb. To be conscious is to be conscious of [something].
- This is usually expressed though the claim that “mind is intentional.”
- “Intention” comes from a Latin word that means the same as, roughly, “to stretch toward.”
- It is also often expressed in the claim that “mind is of essence object-directed.”
- This is usually expressed though the claim that “mind is intentional.”
- This leads phenomenology to not only be an epistemology, but an ontology.
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Specifically, my dissertation is on Husserl’s theory of “empty” and “filled” intentions.
Husserl believes that the way in which you move from thinking about an object in its absence (”empty” intention) to encountering it in its presence (”filled” intention) is different for each type of object (i.e., symphonies, poems, people, deities, numbers, emotions, etc.).
You can, therefore, learn a lot about an object through understanding how to “fulfill” empty intentions of it, and Husserl exploits this fact throughout his investigations.
What would Husserl say in response to the Kantian distinction between Phenomena and Noumenal realities?
While I appreciate the ontological perspective that phenomenology takes, I tend to think that other thinkers such as Heidegger and Sartre take it to a ridiculous level. I haven’t read much on Husserl, though, so I would be interested to hear what he has to say on the topic.
Husserl is critical of Kantianism on that point, though he tends to be Kantian in many respects.
He agrees that there is a difference between appearance and object (since one and the same object can be given in many different appearances), but believes that we encounter objects through their appearances, rather than simply encountering the appearances.
Appearances (sensations, perceptions, intuitions) are much more like windows for Husserl than for Kant/Hume/Locke. His basic claim is that you see objects, not appearances.
Thus, we do encounter “the objects themselves” — rather than merely encountering their appearances — according to Husserl. The question is to what extent we encounter the objects.
To see an object, for example, is to see the object itself. But that does not mean you’re seeing it from all sides, and in all its aspects. The more “sides” or “aspects” of a thing you “see,” the more complete or “adequate” your experience of the thing is.
The total experience of an object in all its sides and aspects is, Husserl says, a Kantian Idea. It is the goal of all thinking about/experiencing of an object, and therefore allows us to rank experiences based on their completeness and clarity. But it cannot actually be achieved for most types of objects (though it can be approached).
Husserl wasn’t very happy with what Heidegger did with phenomenology, if I understand correctly. I have no idea whether he knew Sartre’s work at all, however. I should check up on that.
Interesting. Thanks.
Pretty sure if Husserl didn’t agree with Heidegger, he wouldn’t agree with Sartre. Sartre piggybacked off of Heidegger and advanced it even more from where he took it. He just brought it to more of an understandable and applicable level.
I recall some anecdote (perhaps related by Simone de Beauvoir?) about Sartre’s going to visit Heidegger, and finding him to have turned into an “old mystic.” Or something like that. *grin*
It’s been a long time since I read Being and Nothingness, but I intend to get back to it eventually.
So much to read, so little time.
Thanks for the comments and info!
Yeah, well, Heidegger belonging to the Nazi party didn’t bode well in his later life. I am sure he was “off his rocker” after that devastation.
I personally am a big Kierkegaard fan.
Phenomenology can also be applied to the act of reading, if you’re interested in that sort of thing. See Wolfgang Iser, “The Reading Process: A Phenomenological Approach” (available on JSTOR, which I assume you can access through your uni… probably available on other article database sites, for that matter, but JSTOR is what I use). It is moderately interesting.
Now see, you’ve both gone and done it. Jason brings up Heidegger’s stint (later repented of, if I remember) as a National Socialist, and Christine knows something about phenomenology.
We have rules, here, people. The most important of which is that I’m the only one who knows anything about phenomenology.
The Heidegger rule is more a guideline than a rule.
Christine, I hereby penalize you three points, and you lose a turn.
Hahaha.
Yeah, well I don’t hold it against him (just because it seemed he did it more as assimiliation and not as active action, but even then it still makes me cringe). I was just saying that he may have regreted it, plus I think he was imprisoned for awhile when Germany was occupied by the Allies. So, that probably wasn’t fun. Didn’t it destroy his academic career as well? I can’t remember.
Sorry that I broke the unwritten guideline. ;P
Well, if you’d rather ignore Iser (and thereby, me), you can read Stanley Fish’s retort: “Why No One’s Afraid of Wolfgang Iser”. Although for what it’s worth, I think that Iser’s on the better track… Fish takes an extremely radical approach to the idea of the reader-response and I don’t think his ideas hold much water, although they do hold much weight.