111

Disciplines and
Ideas in the
Social Sciences
Quarter 2 – Module 10:
HERMENUETICAL
PHENOMENOLOGY
 What I Know
Identification:
Directions: Read the questions carefully, and choose your answer from the word
pool below. Write your answers in your activity notebook.

Phenomenology Hermeneutics Literal

Descriptive Phenomenology Hermeneutics

Allegorical Hermeneutics Hermeneutics Moral

Martin Heidegger Genetic Phenomenology

Hermeneutical Phenomenology Interpretative Phenomenology

1. It is the study of ―phenomena ―: appearances of things, or things as they appear

in our experience, or the ways in which we experience things, thus the meanings
that things have in our experience.

2. This is the theory and methodology of interpretation, especially the interpretation

of biblical texts, wisdom literature, and philosophical texts.

3. It is a philosophy of and a method for interpreting human experiences as a

means to understand the question of what it is to be human.

4. This seeks to establish exegetical principles by which ethical lessons may be

drawn from the various parts of the Bible.

5. He is best known for contributions to phenomenology, hermeneutics, and

existentialism.

6. Is an approach to psychological qualitative research with an idiographic focus,

which means that it aims to offer insights into how a given person, in a given
context, makes sense of a given phenomenon.

2
7. It is widely used in social science research as a method to explore and describe
the lived experience of individuals.

8. This refers to the interpretation which asserts that a biblical text is to be

interpreted according to the ―plain meaning ― conveyed by its grammatical
construction and historical context.

3
 9. This is a third type of hermeneutics that interprets the biblical narratives as
having a second level of reference beyond those persons, things, and events
explicitly mentioned in the text.

10. A type of Phenomenology that studies the emergence/genesis of meanings of

things within one's own stream of experience.What’s In

 What are the differences between gender ideology and gender inequality?

 How will you promote gender equality in our society?

What’s New

Activity 1: VISUAL INTERPRETATION

As shown in the pictures below (MINI YOGA ACTIVITY): Study the picture below,
and try to follow the actions as shown in each picture. After the activity, answer the
questions that follow in your activity notebook.

https://www.bookyogaretreats.com/welikande-
estate-wellness/3-days-mountain-yoga-and-
https://www.yogainvietnam.com/retreat- mini-yoga-and-meditation meditation-holiday-in-kandy-sri-lanka
 https://www.kalawhilllodge.com/wp- https://discoverydmc.com/wp-
content/uploads/2017/01/yoga3-300x225.jpg content/uploads/2017/12/Young-couple-exercising-yoga-
surrounded-by-tropical-greenery.-496573420_4896x3440.jpg

Guide questions:
1. What do you feel when you close your eyes and concentrate in doing the activity?
2. What came into your mind when you were performing the yoga activity?
3. Do you think yoga is helpful in relaxing your mind? Why? Why not?

What is It
Hermeneutics is the theory and methodology of interpretation, especially the interpretation
of biblical texts, wisdom literature, and philosophical texts. Hermeneutics is more than
interpretive principles or methods used when immediate comprehension fails and includes
the art of understanding and communication.
This is also the branch of knowledge that deals with interpretation, especially
of the Bible or literary texts. The primary need of Hermeneutics is to determine and
understand the meaning of Biblical text. The purpose of Hermeneutics is to bridge
the gap between our minds and the minds of the Biblical writers through a thorough
knowledge of the original languages, ancient history and the comparison of Scripture
with Scripture.
In the history of biblical interpretation, four major types of hermeneutics have
emerged: the literal, moral, allegorical, and anagogical. Literal interpretation asserts
that a biblical text is to be interpreted according to the ―plain meaning‖ conveyed by its
grammatical construction and historical context.

1. Hermeneutics Literal interpretation asserts that a biblical text is to be

interpreted according to the ―plain meaning‖ conveyed by its grammatical
construction and historical context. The literal meaning is held to correspond
to the intention of the authors.
 2. Hermeneutics Moral which seeks to establish exegetical principles by which
ethical lessons may be drawn from the various parts of the Bible.
3. Allegorical Hermeneutics a third type of hermeneutics, interprets the
biblical narratives as having a second level of reference beyond those
persons, things, and events explicitly mentioned in the text.
4. Interpretation Hermeneutics. This mode of interpretation seeks to explain
biblical events as they relate to or prefigure the life to come.
Friedrich Schleiermacher, also known as the father of modern theology, and
recently the father of modern hermeneutics, took the theory of interpretation onto a
whole new level. He transformed the traditional Biblical hermeneutics into a general
hermeneutic which incorporated texts of all kinds.

Hermeneutics is the theory and methodology of interpretation, especially the

interpretation of biblical texts, wisdom literature, and philosophical texts. Indeed, it is
the science and art of Biblical interpretation. It is a science because it is guided by
rules within a system; and it is an art because the application of the rules is by skill,
and not by mechanical imitation.

Phenomenology (from Greek phainómenon ―that which appears ― and lógos ―study
―) is the philosophical study of the structures of experience and consciousness. As a
philosophical movement it was founded in the early years of the 20 th century by
Edmund Husserl and was later expanded upon by a circle of his followers at the
universities of Göttingen and Munich in Germany.

The science of phenomena as distinct from that of the nature of being. An

approach that concentrates on the study of consciousness and the objects of direct
experience. Literally, phenomenology is the study of ―phenomena ―: appearances
of things, or things as they appear in our experience, or the ways we experience
things, thus the meanings things have in our experience.
Phenomenology studies conscious experience as experienced from the
subjective or first person point of view. It is a broad discipline and method of inquiry
in philosophy, developed largely by the German philosophers Edmund Husserl and
Martin Heidegger, which is based on the premise that reality consists of objects and
events (―phenomena ―) as they are perceived or understood in the
human consciousness. Phenomenology, as a method has four characteristics,
namely: descriptive, reduction, essence and intentionality. to investigate as it
happens. Observations ensure that the form of the description are the things
themselves. We can use the historical perspective to clarify the earlier statement that
there are several types of phenomenology.
Phenomenology is concerned about reduction, a way of bracketing our
experience of being in the world so as to let us encounter the phenomena, presence,
and the being of life in the world itself.
HERMENUETICS PHILOSOPHERS:
1. Martin Heidegger was a German philosopher and a
seminal thinker in the Continental tradition of philosophy. He
is best known for contributions to phenomenology,
hermeneutics, and existentialism. In Being and Time (1927),
Heidegger addresses the meaning of ―being‖ by considering
the question, ―what is common to all entities that
makes them entities? ―Heidegger approaches this question
through an analysis of Dasein, his term for the specific type
of being that humans possess, and which he associates https://upload.wikimedia.org/wiki
closely with his concept of ―being-in-the-world‖ (In-der- pedia/commons/thumb/6/64/Heid
Welt-sein).This conception of the human is in contrast with egger_2_%281960%29.jpg/220px-
Heidegger_2_%281960%29.jpg
that of Rationalist thinkers like René Descartes, who had
understood human existence most basically as thinking, as in Cogito ergo sum (―I
think therefore I am‖).
Heidegger's later work includes criticism of the view, common in the Western
tradition, that all of nature is a ―standing reserve ― on call for human purposes.
Heidegger was a member and supporter of the Nazi Party. There is controversy
as to the relationship between his philosophy and his Nazism.

Paul Nicolai Hartmann was a Baltic German philosopher. He is

regarded as a key representative of critical realism and as one of
the most important twentieth century metaphysicians. Hartmann's
ontological theory, the levels of reality are:
(1) the inorganic level
(2) the organic level
(3) the psychical/emotional and
(4) the intellectual/cultural level.
https://alchetron.com/cdn/nicolai-
hartmann-66c9c761-1c6d-4fea-
Hartmann postulates four laws that apply to the levels of a05d-403cc8d05f8-resize-750.j

reality, namely:

 The law of recurrence: Lower categories recur in the higher levels as a sub-
aspect of higher categories, but never vice versa.
 The law of modification: The categorial elements modify in their recurrence in the
higher levels (they are shaped by the characteristics of the higher levels).
 The law of the novum: The higher category is composed of a diversity of lower
elements, but it is a specific novum that is not included in the lower levels.
 The law of distance between levels: Since the different levels do not develop
continuously but in leaps, they can be clearly distinguished.
 The central concept of Hartmann's ethical theory is that of a value. Hartmann's
1926 book, Ethik, elaborates a material ethics of value according to which moral
knowledge is achieved through phenomenological investigation into our experiences
of values. Moral phenomena is understood by Hartmann to be experiences of a
realm of being which is distinct from that of material things, namely, the realm of
values. The values inhabiting this realm are unchanging, super-temporal, and super-
historical, though human consciousness of them shifts in focus over time. Borrowing
a style of phrase from Kant, Hartmann characterizes values as conditions of the
possibility of goods; in other words, values are what make it possible for situations in
the world to be good. Our knowledge of the goodness (or badness) of situations is
derived from our emotional experiences of them, experiences which are made
possible by a prior capacity for the appreciation of value. For Hartmann, this means
that our awareness of the value of a state of affairs is not arrived at through a
process of reasoning, but rather, by way of an experience of feeling, which he calls
valuational consciousness. If, then, ethics is the study of what one ought to do, or
what states of affairs ought to bring about, such studies, according to Hartmann,
must be carried out by paying close attention to our emotional capacities to discern
what is valuable in the world. As such, Hartmann's conception of proper moral
philosophy contrasts with rationalist and formalist theories, such as Kant’s, according
to which ethical knowledge is derived from purely rational principles.

2. Gabriel Honoré Marcel (1889–1973) was a French

philosopher, playwright, music critic and leading Christian
existentialist. The author of over a dozen books and at least
thirty plays, Marcel's work focused on the modern
individual's struggle in a technologically dehumanizing
society. Though often regarded as the first French
existentialist, he dissociated himself from figures such as
Jean-Paul Sartre, preferring the term philosophy of
existence or neo-Socrateanism to define his own thought. https://www.nndb.com/p
eople/407/000170894/ga
The Mystery of Being is a well-known two-volume work briel-marcel-1-sized.jpg
authored by Marcel.

He is often classified as one of the earliest existentialists, although he

dreaded being placed in the same category as Jean-Paul Sartre; Marcel came to
prefer the label neo-Socratic (possibly because of Søren Kierkegaard, the father
of Christian existentialism, who was a neo-Socratic thinker himself). While Marcel
recognized that human interaction often involved objective characterization of
―the other‖, he still asserted the possibility of ―communion‖ – a state where both
individuals can perceive each other's subjectivity.
Two main approaches to Phenomenology:

1. Descriptive Phenomenology is widely used in social science research as a

method to explore and describe the lived experience of individuals. It is a
philosophy and a scientific method and has undertaken many variations as it
has.
2. Interpretative Phenomenology is an approach to psychological qualitative
research with an idiographic focus, which means that it aims to offer insights
into how a given person, in a given context, makes sense of a given
phenomenon.

Types of Phenomenology

1. Transcendental Constitutive Phenomenology studies how objects are

constituted in transcendental consciousness, setting aside questions of any
relation to the natural world.
2. Naturalistic Constitutive Phenomenology (see naturalism) studies how
consciousness constitutes things in the world of nature, assuming with the natural
attitude that consciousness is part of nature.
3. Generative Historicist Phenomenology studies how meaning—as found in our
experience—is generated in historical processes of collective experience over
time.
4. Genetic Phenomenology studies the emergence/genesis of meanings of things
within one's own stream of experience.
5. Hermeneutical Phenomenology studies interpretive structures of experience.
This approach was introduced in Martin Heidegger's early work.

Hermeneutical phenomenology is a philosophy of and a method for interpreting

human experiences as a means to understand the question of what it is to be
human. This philosophy was developed by Martin Heidegger (1889–1976) as a
continuation and divergence from phenomenology, the philosophy developed by his
mentor and colleague, Edmund Husserl. Hermeneutical phenomenology is
sometimes referred to as interpretative phenomenology. While the phenomenology
developed by Husserl is sometimes referred to as descriptive phenomenology or
pure phenomenology. This is an inquiry on how the human mind can grasp the true
nature of things as experienced in the world.

The phenomenology perspective tells us to remove our preconceived ideas in

order to arrive at a pure description of our experiences. On the other hand, it
similarly seeks the truth in things as experienced in the world. However, it attempts
to see the truth in things as a means to understand what it is to be human. Humans
are born in a particular historical period, country, community and background.
 What’s More

Answer the following questions in your activity notebook:

1. What is the importance of Phenomenology as a student?

2. What is the contribution of Hermeneutic Phenomenology to Social Science?

What I Have Learned

Answer the questions below. Write your answers in your activity notebook.

1. What is the goal of Hermeneutics?

2. Why is Hermeneutic Phenomenology important to our society?
3. What are the advantages of Phenomenology?
4. Discuss the differences between Descriptive Phenomenology and
Interpretative Phenomenology

What I Can Do
Directions: In the box below, explain the concepts of Phenomenology briefly. Copy
and answer the chart below in your activity notebook.

SEVEN PHENOMENOLOGY CONCEPTS

1. Transcendental constitutive phenomenology

2. Naturalistic constitutive phenomenology

3. Generative Historicist Phenomenology

4. Genetic Phenomenology

5. Hermeneutical phenomenology
 Assessment

POST-TEST
Directions: Read the questions carefully, and choose your answer from the word
pool below. Write your answers in your activity notebook.

Phenomenology Hermeneutics Literal

Descriptive Phenomenology Hermeneutics

Allegorical Hermeneutics Hermeneutics Moral

Martin Heidegger Interpretative Phenomenology

Hermeneutical Phenomenology Genetic Phenomenology

1. Is an approach to psychological qualitative research with an idiographic focus,

which means that it aims to offer insights into how a given person, in a given
context, makes sense of a given phenomenon.

2. A type of Phenomenology that studies the emergence/genesis of meanings of

things within one's own stream of experience.

3. It is widely used in social science research as a method to explore and

describe the lived experience of individuals.

4. This refers to the interpretation asserts that a biblical text is to be interpreted

according to the ―plain meaning‖ conveyed by its grammatical
construction and historical context.

5. This is a third type of hermeneutics that interprets the biblical narratives as

having a second level of reference beyond those persons, things, and events
explicitly mentioned in the text.

6. It is the study of ―phenomena ―: appearances of things, or things as

they appear in our experience, or the ways we experience things, thus the
meanings things have in our experience.

7. This is the theory and methodology of interpretation, especially the

interpretation of biblical texts, wisdom literature, and philosophical texts.
 8. It is a philosophy of and a method for interpreting human experiences to
understand the question of what it is to be human.

9. This seeks to establish exegetical principles by which ethical lessons may be

drawn from the various parts of the Bible.

10. He is best known for contributions to phenomenology, hermeneutics, and

existentialism.

Glossary
Descriptive phenomenology is widely used in social science research as a method to explore and
describe the lived experience of individuals. It is a philosophy and a scientific method and has undertaken
many variations as it has.
Generative historicist phenomenology studies how meaning—as found in our
experience—is generated in historical processes of collective experience
over time.
Hermeneutical phenomenology studies interpretive structures of experience. This
approach was introduced in Martin Heidegger's early work.
Interpretative phenomenology is an approach to psychological qualitative research
with an idiographic focus, which means that it aims to offer insights into
how a given person, in a given context, makes sense of a given
phenomenon.
Naturalistic constitutive phenomenology (see naturalism) studies how
consciousness constitutes things in the world of nature, assuming with the
natural attitude that consciousness is part of nature.
Phenomenology is the study of ―phenomena ―: appearances of things, or things as
they appear in our experience, or the ways we experience things, thus the
meanings things have in our experience.
Transcendental constitutive phenomenology studies how objects are constituted in transcendental
consciousness, setting aside questions of any relation to the naturalworld