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Phenomenology
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Phenomenology is the study of structures of consciousness as experienced from the first-person point of view. The central structure of an experience is its intentionality, its being directed toward something, as it is an experience of or about some object. An experience is directed toward an object by virtue of its content or meaning (which represents the object) together with appropriate enabling conditions.
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Phenomenology is the theory of self-centerdness. It postulates that you do not exist and that in fact it (and other ideas) are the only things that exist (the only possible exception is Adrian Hall who is the only consciousness that could possibly exist, as it is the only one he has ever been able to experience). Over the last few billion years it may have come under fire from many humans, extra-terrestrial species and chunks of unconscious matter. Despite this, it may still be at least considered by teenagers and adults who have managed to remain open-minded to the most disturbing mysteries of the universe without committing suicide.
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Phenomenology has its origins in the thinking of the German philosopher Husserl and the French phenomenologist Merleau-Ponty, that which Crotty (1996) calls the classical phenomenologist approach. For research in the 1990's it is a question of whether it is a philosophical enterprise or a phenomenological enterprise. According to Van Manen (1990) it is an exploration of 'the essence of lived experience'. With the development of postpositivist approaches phenomenology has been adopted by different disciplines as an appropriate way of exploring research questions which led to a different way of knowledge being constructed. A project for further research is that of investigating the different models of phenomenological inquiry which are being developed within different disciplines to see whether there are identifiable differences of approach in the way phenomenological research is carried out. Gillian Rose (1993) in a book called Feminism and Geography describes how she sees the discipline of geography being influenced by feminist studies.
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Phenomenology has had a pervasive influence on 20th-century thought. Phenomenological versions of theology, sociology, psychology, psychiatry, and literary criticism have been developed, and phenomenology remains one of the most important schools of contemporary philosophy.
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Phenomenology, beginning with Edmund Husserl, urges that the world of immediate or "lived" experience takes precendence over the objectified and abstract world of the "natural attitude" of natural science. Science as such... is secondary to the world of concrete, lived experience. Phenomenology, therefore, engages in a process known as "bracketing" in which the "natural attitude" is placed aside such that the researcher may begin with "the things themselves," as Husserl said — or, in other words, in the phenomena as they show themselves in experience. In Heidegger's terminology, phenomenology involves letting things "show themselves from themselves in the very way in which they show themselves from themselves." By definition, phenomenology never begins with a theory, but, instead, always begins anew with the phenomena under consideration. Maurice Merleau-Ponty's famous description of phenomenology is quite instructive; as he writes, the phenomenologist returns "to the world which precedes (scientific description), (the world) of which science always speaks, and in relation to which every scientific characterization is an abstract and derivative sign language, as is geography in relation to the countryside."
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Phenomenology came into its own with Husserl, much as epistemology came into its own with Descartes, and ontology or metaphysics came into its own with Aristotle on the heels of Plato. Yet phenomenology has been practiced, with or without the name, for many centuries. When Hindu and Buddhist philosophers reflected on states of consciousness achieved in a variety of meditative states, they were practicing phenomenology. When Descartes, Hume, and Kant characterized states of perception, thought, and imagination, they were practicing phenomenology. When Brentano classified varieties of mental phenomena (defined by the directedness of consciousness), he was practicing phenomenology. When William James appraised kinds of mental activity in the stream of consciousness (including their embodiment and their dependence on habit), he too was practicing phenomenology.
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Phenomenology