Talk:Phenomenology (philosophy)

Possible Disambiguation Topic

Phenomenology is:

A) an administrative way of getting alternative views; B) a behavioural response to personal stimuli; C) a computable way of formating or viewing things from an indididual's perspective; E) an empiricist way of validating one's thoughts; I) an ideal way of formating personal attributes; P) a phenomenologist way of viewing things from a mental view; S) a solipsist way of viewing how one's view of one's world affects one;

This is a strange sort of article. Is is possible to have a more conventional sort of write-up, too?

• I'm not really sure who would really be looking for any of these lettered topics. I would imagine people coming to this page would be looking for either (1) what is the meaning of the term "phenomenology", or (2) information about the philosophical school of phenomenology. But I was philosophy student, so I might not be the best judge. AdamDiCarlo 15:49, 13 October 2005 (UTC)

Variants and Schools within Phenomenology

The article reads a little like a quick biography of Husserl. As well as Brian Shapiros point that Hegel was an important influence there is little on Heidegger's role and nothing whatsoever on Maurice Merleau-Ponty. I'd like to see a broadening of the article to cover more of the variation within phenomenology. This might also better elucidate the common unifying themes that help define the school. Dr Headgear April 1 2004

• [Regarding schools or strands of Phenomenology,] I dont think these should necessarily have seperate pages, rather a few paragraphs on each. --Dr Headgear 15:01, 2 Apr 2004 (UTC)
  • Well, Munich phenomenology rejected Husserl's later transcendental turn, so they are fundamentally different. However, we do not need to decide this now. We should rather start working on them as sections within the phenomenology article and see later on whether they need an article of their own. Cat 15:49, 2 Apr 2004 (UTC)
    • OK, agreed, lets write and see what comes out. --Dr Headgear 16:53, 2 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Realist Phenomenology

A small subsection, outlining phenomenology as espoused in the _Logical Investigations_. Link to it from Munich phenomenology. AdamDiCarlo 15:58, 13 October 2005 (UTC)

Transcendental Phenomenology

Phenomenology as espoused in the _Ideen_. Probably what people generally mean when the say phenomenology. Another topic referred to by the Munich phenomenology page. AdamDiCarlo 15:58, 13 October 2005 (UTC)

Munich phenomenology

• There's already a separate article on this, I guess we need to link to it. AdamDiCarlo 15:49, 13 October 2005 (UTC)

Existential phenomenology

Existential phenomenology differs from transcendental phenomenology by it's rejection of the transcendental ego. Merleau-Ponty objects to the ego's transcendence of the world, which for Husserl leaves the world spread out and completely transperent before the concious. Heidegger thinks of conscious being as always and already in the world. Transcendence is maintained in existential phenomenology to the extent that the method of phenomenology must take a presuppositionless starting point - transcending claims about the world arising from, for example, natural or scientific attitudes or theories of the ontological nature of the world.

Impact of Phenomenology

I'd suggest adding to all of this, something about the general influence of phenomenology and its relationship to other streams of thought, e.g. structuralism, poststructuralism, analytic philosophy, consciousness studies. Mporter 01:56, 9 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Rejection of Cartesian Dualism and Realism ==

• Does this fit well enough for both trans. and ext. Ph. ? Dr Headgear

Phenomenology arises from the failure of naturalism. Naturalist disciplines, like obviously the natural sciences, need a firm foundation to account for their status. However, you cannot employ a naturalist epistemology to found the validity of naturalist disciplines, because this leads to a vicious circle of a method "proving" its own validity. Phenomenology observes that not all knowledge is empirical and hence not all science needs to be naturalist. We do experience ourselves (or "our selves") in a completely different way as we experience external objects. Moreover, when we employ methodological scepticism, we see that we could be misled about everything appearing in our senses except our own consciousness about it. This would lead to solipsism, except that while we live in this limbo of suspending our judgements over the existence of external objects, we are in a privileged position to investigate their essence. We can use all logical possibilities, and not mere empirical generalisation, to categorise and analyse the objects that we experience with our senses by uncovering their essence, i.e. what makes them objects of one kind instead of another. Doing this without having to refer to really existing things "out there", produces invaluable results because, by suspending the naturalist prejudice, we can produce a non-empirical and hence non-circular foundation for the natural sciences. There are various concrete analyses given in the works of phenomenologists like Pfänder, Daubert, Scheler etc. concerning values, ethics, art, law, right, etc. but one of the most impressive examples is that of Adolf Reinach who gave an analysis of legal language that led him to the discovery of speech acts, 50 years before John Austin, who eventually also spoke of linguistic phenomenology in reference to his own work. Does this answer your request at least partially? I have tried to avoid most typical phenomenological terminology, but if you want me to, I'll use "transcendental" in the next one ... . Cat 13:19, 14 September 2005 (UTC)

Precursors of Phenomenology (Berkeley)

I'm surprised that there isn't more mention of Berkeley's idealism in relation to phenomenology. Berkeley's idealism asserted that our only direct, immediate knowledge is of the ideas, representations, and perceptual pictures in our mind. We don't directly know what is external to our mind, that is, what is considered to be "real." Husserl's bracketing of reality and focus on mental phenomena seem to follow Berkeley's thinking. 152.163.100.11 16:44, 18 September 2005 (UTC)James Moriarty, Professor of Mathematics

• I would agree, this is clearly a precursor of phenomenology, as is skepticism, both from the ancients and from Hume. It would be worthwhile to add a section indicating precursors of phenomenology. AdamDiCarlo 15:49, 13 October 2005 (UTC)

• Also it isn't entirely clear that Husserl escaped a form of idealism himself. Johnor 10:11, 17 January 2006 (UTC)

Lifeworld

The lifeworld ("Lebenswalt" if I remember correctly) was a key element of later phenomenological writings of Husserl, and probably deserves at least a quick mention and definition. AdamDiCarlo 15:49, 13 October 2005 (UTC)

Critique of Phenomenology

A survey of some of the most salient critiques of phenomenology.

Bracketing brackets too much

Phenomenology assumes that mental activities are completely transparent. No account is taken of the influence of, say, native language on thought processes themselves. The theory of object constitution, a large topic of the _Ideen_, takes no account of the impact of linguistic terms as "pre-given" as it were to the perceiving subject. It is difficult if not impossible to modify the phenomenological study of mental apperception to account for linguistic or historical factors. AdamDiCarlo 15:49, 13 October 2005 (UTC)

Fall of Phenomenology

It might be worthwhile to look at what happened to the influence of phenomenology, specifically, its dwindling influence. The phenomenological school does have an arc, where it grew and then shrank. By the 60s it was almost completely gone.

I would suggest that phenomenology represented one of the last great "aufklarung" projects of total knowledge. That is, it assumes a complete knowability of the mind. It also envisioned philosophy being crowned again as the apex of the sciences. More "partial" philosophies such as post-structuralism, deconstructionism, situationalism reflected a more limited role that philosophy was to limit itself. Basically, the enlightenment becoming the post-enlightenment. This is probably too broad and editorial however. AdamDiCarlo 15:49, 13 October 2005 (UTC)

Article structure

I made some changes based on Adam's suggestions and on the Italian article. I hope the "stubby" sections and the lists can be expanded to something better. Just two more points to make here: 1) Husserl's realist phenomenology of the first edition of the LI is not the same as later realist phenomenology by the Munich group and others. Also the Munich current is not coincidental with all of realist phenomenology, i.e. not all realists are Munich realists. AS reported on the CARP page, recent realists include Barry Smith and Karl Schuhmann. So I'd keep two separate sections on Husserl's early stuff and later realism. 2) The one big glaring omission is that of the transcendental-phenomenological reduction. Perhaps we should do something about that before worrying about precursors and decline and such. :) Cat 10:58, 14 October 2005 (UTC)

Is there something left out in the first words?

Shouldn't

Phenomenology is a current philosophy

be

Phenomenology is a current in philosophy

?--Imz 03:53, 29 October 2005 (UTC)

Corrected. Cat 16:31, 31 October 2005 (UTC)

Existential Phenomenology

Is it right to call Heidegger an Existential Phenomenologist? As far as my limited knowledge of the subject goes, this term - not widely in use, in my experience - connotes the Existentialism of Sartre with whom Heidegger has been lumped, and also with Levinas, who was certainly greatly influenced by Heidegger's thought but had little to do with Sartre's interpretations, again. Heidegger does repeatedly make use of the terms existentiality, existence, etc but they mean different things and Heidegger himself objected to Sartre's use of the words. Sartre popularised the term Existentialism to refer to the rather different ideas expressed in Being and Nothingness - any comments/ revision suggestions? -- Simonides 06:18, 5 February 2006 (UTC)

Though Heidegger repudiated the term, he is considered nevertheless an existentialist. Furthermore, though he distanced himself critically from Husserl's phenomenology, he is considered a phenomenologist. Therefore the most suitable label, even if it's use is not widespread, is to call him an "existential phenomenologist". This term is used with explicit reference to Heidegger, for instance here (tendencies and stages-existential phenomenology) For Heidegger as an existentialist see here. Hope this helps. Cat 09:54, 5 February 2006 (UTC)

He is of course a phenomenologist, my quibble is with the preface "existential" which is not used by any philosophers of note. Historians of philosophy tend to come up with phrases that oversimplify philosophical terms and have little philosophical content, for instance by calling Kierkegaard, Kafka, et al "Existentialist" - I don't think we should adopt the dilution of the terms. -- Simonides 23:40, 5 February 2006 (UTC)

"not used by any philosophers of note" is a vague criterium: do you consider of note those who I consider of note? The authors of the two webpages I linked above are two established scholars, tenured professors in their field and they use the label "existential phenomenology" for Heidegger's philosophy. They do not call him existentialist, but existential phenomenologist, which clearly distinguishes him from Sartre (whom few would call "phenomenologist"). If you are really offended by the epiteton "existentialist" you could call him an "ontological phenomenologist", however, considering the research area of organisations such as SPEP I don't think anyone in the field actually has many qualms about associating Heidegger with existential philosophy / phenomenology. Cat 09:47, 6 February 2006 (UTC)

Shall we clarify the definition?

The very beginning of the definition goes:

Phenomenology is an approach to philosophy that takes the intuitive experience of phenomena (what presents itself to us in conscious experience) as its starting point and tries to extract from it the essential features of experiences and the essence of what we experience.

Now, let's clarify here what is that "it" in the sentence referring to. It's clear to me. In short, let's look at the structure of the sentence: Phenomenology is an approach that takes something as its starting point and tries to extract something from it. It what?

If would be nice to clarify that part.