Phenomenology

 Traditional study of philosophy begins with logic,

then metaphysics, then cosmology and ends with
philosophical psychology or philosophical
anthropology (philosophy of the human being).
 Man is defined by traditional scholastic
philosophy as rational animal, a
composite of body and soul.
 Under the aspect of body, man is like any
other animal, a substance: mortal, limited
by time and space.
 Under the aspect of the soul, man is
rational, free, immortal
 The
soul is deduced from the behavior of
man to think and decide
 Our critique of the traditional definition of man is
that:
 a) it is dualistic;
 b) it looks at man more as an object, an animal;
 c) it proceeds from the external to the internal.
 Thephenomenological approach, on the
other hand, is
 a) holistic;
 b)describes man from what is properly
human; c) proceeds from the internal to
the external.
 Phenomenology was started by Edmund
Husserl (1859-1938) whose aim
was to arrive at “philosophy as a rigorous
science.”
 By “philosophy as a rigorous science” Husserl
meant a
“presuppositionless philosophy,” philosophy with
the least number of presuppositions.
 Unlike Descrtes, Husserl was dissatisfied with the
sciences of his time because they start with a
complex of presuppositions.
 Inparticular , he was reacting against
naturalistic psychology which treats
mental activity as causally conditioned by
events of nature, in terms of S-R
relationship (stimulus-reaction).
Presupposition here is that man is a
mechanistic animal.
 So,Husserl wanted philosophy to be a
“science of ultimate grounds” where the
presuppositions are so basic and primary
they cannot be reduced further .
 How does one arrive at that philosophy?
By transcending the “natural attitude.”
 The natural attitude is the scientific
attitude which was predominant in
Husserl’s time and carried to the extreme
to become scientistic.
 Thescientific attitude observes things,
expresses their workings in
singular judgments, then by induction and
deduction, arrives at concrete results.
 But this attitude contains a number of assumptions:

 It assumes that there is no need to ask how we know,

 It assumes that the world (the object) is out there, existing and
explainable in objective laws, while man the subject is pure
consciousness, clear to itself, able to know the world as it is.

 It takes for granted the world-totality

 In short, the natural attitude looks at reality as
things, a “fact world” .
 The way of knowing in the natural attitude is
fragmented, partial,
fixed, clear , precise, manipulative, and there is no
room for mystery .it was moving away from the
heart of things.
 So, the motto for Husserl and the
phenomenologists was “back to things
themselves!”
 By
“back to things themselves” Husserl
meant the entire field of original
experience.
 Theultimate root of philosophy was not to
be found in a concept, nor in
principle, not in a Cogito.
 Phenomenology attempts to go back to
the phenomenon, to that which presents
itself to man, to see things as they really
are, independent of any prejudice. Thus
phenomenology is logos of the
phenomenon.
Some Characteristics of the Phenomenal
Attitude
 Certain characteristics of the
phenomenologjcal attitude clearly fulfills
the aim of Husserl & Co. to go back to
things themselves.
 The phenomenologist posits unity first before
analyzing the parts or aspects of this unity .

 By positing unity first, he is faithful to original

experience because in
original experience, we see no opposition
between subject and object.
 When he is interested in part, it is insofar as this lies in the
context of the
totality of human experience. E.g. language is not just a body
of words but the embodiment of thought, of culture.

 The phenomenologist describes, explicates, unfolds what is

already there.
 Because reality is rich and inexhaustible, the
description is never final.
 The
phenomenologist is primarily concerned with
experience and with man, with the world as lived by
man.

 The phenomenologist uses “epoche” the bracketing

of the natural
attitude.
Some Important Steps in the
Phenomenological Method
 Epoche literally means “bracketing”
which Husserl borrowed from
mathematics and applied to the natural
attitudes.
 What I bracket in the epoche is my
natural attitude towards the object I am
investigating, my prejudice, my clear and
conceptual knowledge of it that is
unquestioned.
 When I bracket, I do not deny nor affirm
but simply hold it in abeyance; I
suspend judgment on it.
 Epoche is important in order to see the
world with “new eyes” and return to the
original experience from where our
conceptual natural attitude was derived.
 Eidetic
Reduction is one of the important
reductions in the
phenomenological method.
 “Reduction” is another mathematical
term to refer to the procedure by which
we are placed in the “transcendental
sphere,” the sphere in which we can see
things as they really are, independent of
any prejudice.
 “Eidetic”
is derived from “eidos” which
means essence. in eidetic
reduction I reduce the experience to its
essence.
Iarrive at the essence of the experience
by starting out with an individual example,
then finding out what changes can be
made without it ceasing to be what it is.
that which I cannot change making the
object cease to be the thing it is, is the
invariant, the eidos, of the experience.
 Forexample, I am doing a phenomenology of love. I
start by bracketing
my biases on love. Then I reduce the object to the
phenomenon of love. in eidetic reduction, I begin
with an example of a relationship of love between
two people. I change their age, race, social status,
and all these do not matter in love. what us it I
cannot change?
Perhaps, the unconditional giving of
self to the other as he is. this then
forms part of the essence of love.
Phenomenological Transcendental
Reduction reduces the experience
further to the very activity of my
consciousness, to my loving, my
seeing, my hearing, etc.
Here, I now become conscious of the
subject, the “I” who must decide on the
validity of the object.
I now become aware of the subjective
aspects of the object when I inquire into the
beliefs, feelings, desires which shape the
experience.
The object is seen in relation to
the subject and the subject in
relation to the object.
 In
our example of love, maybe I see the
essence of love as giving of oneself to the
other because of my perspective as a
lover. if I take the perspective of the
beloved, maybe the essence is more
receiving than giving. if I take the
perspective of a religious, maybe love is
seen as activity of God.
Example of “rain” ( cf. clipping)
 It
is in the transcendental reduction that
Husserl came up with the main insight of
phenomenology: intentionality of
consciousness.
 Intentionality
of consciousness means that
consciousness is intentional, that
consciousness is always consciousness of
something other than consciousness itself.
 There is no object without a subject, and
no subject without an object. the subject-
of -the-object is called noesis, the object-
for-the-subject is called noema.
 There
is no world without man, and no
man without a world.
 Marcel uses a phenomenological method
less technical than Husserl’s. He calls it
secondary reflection.
 Primary reflection breaks the unity of
experience and is the foundation of
scientific knowledge. this is equivalent to
the natural attitude in Husserl.
 Secondary reflection recuperates the
unity of original experience. It does
not go against the data of primary
reflection but refuses to accept it as final.
 Example: Who am I?
Primary reflection: I am so and so, born on
this day, in such a place, with height and
weight, etc. – items on the ID card.
Secondary reflection: I am more
than the items above, I enter into
my inner core .
 Example: My body
Primary reflection: a body like other
bodies, detached from the “I,” the body
examined by the doctor, studied by
medical students, or the body sold by a
prostitute.
 Tosummarize, phenomenology as a
method is a method in which the relation
between the investigator and the
investigated object is considered to
belong essentially to the object itself.
 Incases where the object of investigation
is a human being, phenomenology
becomes a method in which all the
relevant items of research exclusively
considered only with regard to the totality
of the human being.