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Phenomenology and Husserl

Post structuralist Approaches to Language and Culture

Nadine Al-Qafee

Introduction

Phenomenology is the philosophical study of the structures of experience and

consciousness. As a philosophical movement it was founded in the early years of

the 20th century by Edmund Husserl.

What is phenomenology?

Husserl argued that phenomenology did not deny the existence of the real world,

but sought instead to clarify the sense of this world (which everyone accepts) as

actually existing.

Husserl lays out what we already have going on: Typical acts of consciousness- he

assigns them as two spheres: they are worldly; they are “psychological”.

The Two Spheres:

The two spheres are connected only by the mind’s ability to pass between them as

easily as it can meander around and through them; the mind also can combine,

linger within, focus and disperse. I can just imagine these spheres just like an

example of a (Cow) for a normal person cow is only a cow but for Indian it’s a

holy cow and if I dreamed of a cow will not make a different but if an Indian

dreamed of that …. Then things will go another direction of being holy person or a

good thing coming up to their life and so on .

Husserl believes there is a third unity - that of the consciousness, where

experiences and intuition act out their part. Husserl’s task is to get from these

spheres and into this other field that is quite unlike them: he calls this the sphere of

absolute consciousness and it encompasses the Living unity of Consciousness as it

flows along in a stream of experiences.

Each of these three unities has and exhibits its own distinctive kind of identity and

persistence.

For example, you can tell when the object occupying your consciousness is a

physical thing because it does not present itself all at once. Instead, you are invited

into a perspective, to move around from one side to the other, to perceive some

more about the thing. All the while, the thing keeps it’s unity to itself, as the

reference point of all the angles it gives you.

However, the essences give themselves to you all at once. You do not have to

consider the north face of a building and then a south face to get the whole picture.

But the third unity, consciousness, while it can present itself as essence or fact, it is

always contextualized as a foreground.

To get to the sphere of absolute consciousness, you have to let the worldly go away

and then inhabit what’s left. To inhabit what’s left, you must look to the

Phenomenological method.

What is the phenomenological method?

Husserl tells us why we need the method of Phenomenological Reduction:

A general example of the concept of reduction can be taken from a piece of wax:

The wax appears to be flat, opaque, hard and extended to certain dimensions in

space.

Most of these quantities can be negated as necessary to the piece of wax continuing

to be a piece of wax. The smell, taste, texture, if heated will continue to be the

same piece of wax, however the small, taste and texture will obviously have

changed. The only things that remain (mass, chemical makeup) are the things that

are required for its existence. Husserl uses eidetic Phenomenological Reduction: he

calls it bracketing away /suspending / disconnecting. It seeks to momentarily

reduce, effectively erase the world of speculation by returning the subject to their

primordial experience of the matter, whether the object of inquiry is a feeling, an

idea or a perception.

Bracketing (epoche) is the act of suspending judgment about the natural world. The

systematic removal (SLIDE: The pealing onion) one by one, of the inessential

aspects,the symbolic meanings, context, to get to the core: leaving only the essence

of what constitutes the thing.

Thus, one’s subjective perception is the truest form of experience one can have in

perceiving it. This allows one to examine phenomena as they are originally given

to consciousness.

It involves setting aside the question of real existence, as well as questions about

its physical nature; these questions are left to the natural sciences. For example, the

experience of seeing a tree qualifies as an experience, whether the tree appears in

reality, in a dream or in a hallucination. (Reminds us of my thopoeic thought). We

are to suspend belief in what we ordinarily take for granted.

Husserl tells us we need to reduce the natural world to its pure consciousness, so

that what we are left with is a pure framework with which to consider the mindset

and methodology of phenomenology.

The procedure of bracketing is essential: the phenomenological reduction helps us to free ourselves from prejudices and secure the purity of our detachment as

observers, so that we can encounter “things as they are in themselves” independently of any presuppositions. The goal of phenomenology for Husserl is

then a descriptive, detached. Phenomenological reduction is also a method of bracketing empirical intuitions away from philosophical inquiry, by refraining

from making judgments upon them. Husserl uses the term epoche (Greek, for "a cessation") to refer to this suspension of judgment regarding the true nature of

reality. Bracketed judgment is an epoche or suspension of inquiry, which places in brackets whatever facts belong to essential being.

Bracketing is also a neutralization of belief. "Doxic positing" (the positing of

belief) may be actual or potential. Doxic positing may occur in every kind of consciousness, because every consciousness may actually or potentially posit

something about being.

analysis of consciousness in which objects, as its correlates, are constituted.

And So, while phenomenology is primarily concerned with the systematic

reflection and analysis of the structures of consciousness, it is to take place from a

highly modified “first person” viewpoint: studying phenomena not as they appear

to “my” consciousness, but to any consciousness whatsoever. Husserl believed that

phenomenology could provide a firm basis for all human knowledge, including

scientific knowledge, and could establish philosophy as a rigorous science.

Now let’s talk about ideas of Phenomenology:

The Ideas are divided into four sections:

(1) The Nature and Knowledge of Essential Being, (2) The Fundamental Phenomenological Outlook,

(3) Procedure of Pure Phenomenology In Respect of Methods and Problems," (4) Reason and Reality." The first section describes how the realm of essence

differs from the realm of facts.

The second section describes how phenomenological reduction may be used as a method of philosophical inquiry. The third section describes

how noesis and noema may be defined as phases of intentionality. The fourth section describes the relation between consciousness and noematic meaning.

Husserl distinguishes between phenomenology as a science of pure consciousness and psychology as a science of empirical facts. For Husserl, the realm of pure

consciousness is distinct from the realm of real experience. Husserl explains that phenomenology is a theory of pure phenomena, and that it is not a theory of actual experiences (or of actual facts or realities).

According to Husserl, essential being must be distinguished from actual existence, just as the pure ego must be distinguished from the psychological ego. Essences

are non-real, while facts are real. The realm of transcendentally reduced phenomena is non-real, while the realm of actual experience is real. Thus, phenomenological reduction leads from knowledge of the essentially real to

knowledge of the essentially non-real.

Phenomenological reduction is a process of defining the pure essence of a

psychological phenomenon. It is a process whereby empirical subjectivity is suspended, so that pure consciousness may be defined in its essential and absolute being. This is accomplished by a method of "bracketing" empirical data away from

consideration. "Bracketing" empirical data away from further investigation leaves pure consciousness, pure phenomena, and the pure ego as the residue of

phenomenological reduction.

Facts or realities are the objective data of empirical intution, says Husserl, but essences are the objective data of essential intuition. Empirical intuition may lead

to essential intuition (or essential insight), which may be adequate or inadequate in terms of its clearness and distinctness. Empirical or non-empirical objects may

have varying degrees of intuitability, and empirical or non-empirical intuitions may vary in their clearness and distinctness. Non-empirical intuitions may apprehend

objects that are produced by fantasy or imagination.

Husserl describes consciousness as intentional insofar as it refers to, or is directed at, an object. Intentionality is a property of directedness toward an object.

Consciousness may have intentional and non-intentional phases, but intentionality is the property that gives consciousness its objective meaning.

The cogito ("I think") is the principle of the pure ego. The pure ego performs acts

of consciousness (cogitations) that may be immanently or transcendently directed. Immanently directed acts of consciousness refer to objects that are within the same

ego or that belong to the same stream of consciousness. Transcendently directed

acts of consciousness refer to objects that are outside the ego or that belong to a different stream of consciousness. The objects of consciousness (cogitata) are the

embodied or unembodied things that are perceived and consciously experienced.

The difference between immanent and transcendent perception reflects the

difference between being as experience and being as thing.1 Things as they exist in themselves cannot be perceived immanently, and they can only be perceived transcendently. The difference between immanent and transcendent perception also

reflects the difference in the way in which things are given and presented to consciousness. Givenness may be adequate or inadequate in terms of its clearness

and distinctness, and in terms of its intuitability.

Immanently perceived objects have an absolute being insofar as their existence is logically necessary. The existence of transcendently perceived objects is not

logically necessary, insofar as their existence is not proved by the being of conciousness itself. Consciousness itself is absolute being, but the spatial-temporal

world is merely phenomenal being.

Husserl emphasizes that phenomenology is concerned with the essence of whatever is immanent in consciousness, and that it is concerned with describing

immanent essences. To confuse the essences of things with the mental representations of those essences is to confuse the aims of phenomenology and

psychology. Phenomenology is a descriptive analysis of being as consciousness, while psychology is a descriptive analysis of being as reality. The difference

between being as consciousness and being as reality is also the difference between transcendental and transcendent being.

Every actual cogito has an intentional object (and is a mode of

thinking about something). The cogito itself may become a cogitatum if the principle that "I think" becomes an object of consciousness. Thus, in the cogito, the

act of thinking may become an intentional object. However, in contrast to the Cartesian principle that "I think, therefore I am" (cogito ergo sum), the

phenomenologically reduced cogito is a suspension of judgment about whether "I am" or whether "I exist." The phenomenologically reduced cogito is a suspension

of judgment about the question of whether thinking implies existence. Thus, phenomenology examines the cogito as a pure intuition, and as an act of pure

consciousness.

Husserl describes noesis and noema as two phases of intentionality. Noesis is the process of cogitation, while the noemata (or cogitata) are that which is cogitated.

Every intentional experience has a noetic (real) phase and a noematic (non-real) phase. Every noetic phase of consciousness corresponds to a noematic phase of

consciousness. Noesis is a process of reasoning that assigns meaning to intentional objects. Both noesis and noema may be sources of objective meaning. The noetic

meaning of transcendent objects is discoverable by reason, while the noematic meaning of immanent objects is discoverable by pure intuition. Noetic meaning is

transcendent, while noematic meaning is immanent. Thus, noesis and noema correspond respectively to experience and essence.

Existential phenomenology

Existential phenomenology differs from transcendental phenomenology by its

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 transparent before the conscious. Heidegger thinks of a conscious being

as always 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.

While Husserl thought of philosophy as a scientific discipline that had to be

founded on a phenomenology understood as epistemology, Heidegger held a

radically different view. Heidegger himself states their differences this way:

For Husserl, the phenomenological reduction is the method of leading

phenomenological vision from the natural attitude of the human being whose life is

involved in the world of things and persons back to the transcendental life of

consciousness and its noetic-noematic experiences, in which objects are constituted

as correlates of consciousness. For us, phenomenological reduction means leading

phenomenological vision back from the apprehension of a being, whatever may be

the character of that apprehension, to the understanding of the Being of this being

(projecting upon the way it is unconcealed).

According to Heidegger, philosophy was not at all a scientific discipline, but more

fundamental than science itself. According to him science is only one way of

knowing the world with no special access to truth. Furthermore, the scientific

mindset itself is built on a much more "primordial" foundation of practical,

everyday knowledge. Husserl was skeptical of this approach, which he regarded as

quasi-mystical, and it contributed to the divergence in their thinking.

Instead of taking phenomenology as prima philosophia or a foundational

discipline, Heidegger took it as a metaphysical ontology: "being is the proper and

sole theme of philosophy... this means that philosophy is not a science of beings

but of being.". Yet to confuse phenomenology and ontology is an obvious error.

Phenomena are not the foundation or Ground of Being. Neither are they

appearances, for, as Heidegger argues in Being and Time, an appearance is "that

which shows itself in something else," while a phenomenon is "that which shows

itself in itself."

While for Husserl, in the epoché, being appeared only as a correlate of

consciousness, for Heidegger being is the starting point. While for Husserl we

would have to abstract from all concrete determinations of our empirical ego, to be

able to turn to the field of pure consciousness, Heidegger claims that "the

possibilities and destinies of philosophy are bound up with man's existence, and

thus with temporality and with historicality.

However, ontological being and existential being are different categories, so

Heidegger's conflation of these categories is, according to Husserl's view, the root

of Heidegger's error. Husserl charged Heidegger with raising the question of

ontology but failing to answer it, instead switching the topic to the Dasein, the only

being for whom being is an issue. That is neither ontology nor phenomenology,

according to Husserl, but merely abstract anthropology. To clarify, perhaps, by

abstract anthropology, as a non-existentialist searching for essences, Husserl

rejected the existentialism implicit in Heidegger's distinction between being (sein)

as things in reality and Being (Dasein) as the encounter with being, as when being

becomes present to us, that is, is unconcealed.

Existential phenomenologists include: Martin Heidegger (1889–1976), Hannah

Arendt (1906–1975), Emmanuel Levinas (1906–1995), Gabriel Marcel (1889–

1973),Jean-Paul Sartre (1905–1980), Paul Ricoeur (1913–2005) and Maurice

Merleau-Ponty (1908–1961).

Eastern thoughts

Some researchers in phenomenology (in particular in reference to Heidegger's

legacy) it has been claimed that a number of elements within phenomenology

(mainly Heidegger's thought) have some resonance with Eastern philosophical

ideas, particularly with Zen Buddhism and Taoism According to Tomonubu

Imamichi, the concept of Dasein was inspired — although Heidegger remained

silent on this — by Okakura Kakuzo's concept of das-in-der-Welt-sein (being in

the world) expressed in The Book of Tea to describe Zhuangzi's philosophy,

which Imamichi's teacher had offered to Heidegger in 1919, after having

studied with him the year before.

There are also recent signs of the reception of phenomenology (and Heidegger's

thought in particular) within scholarly circles focused on studying the impetus

ofmetaphysics in the history of ideas in Islam and Early Islamic

philosophy; perhaps under the indirect influence of the tradition of the French

Orientalist and philosopher Henri Corbin.

In addition, the work of Jim Ruddy in the field of comparative philosophy,

combined the concept of Transcendental Ego in Husserl's phenomenology with

the concept of the primacy of self-consciousness in the work of Sankaracharya.

In the course of this work, Ruddy uncovered a wholly new eidetic

phenomenological science, which he called "convergent phenomenology." This

new phenomenology takes over where Husserl left off, and deals with the

constitution of relation-like, rather than merely thing-like, or "intentional"

objectivity.

Technoethics

Phenomenological approach to technology

James Moor has argued that computers show up policy vacuums that require

new thinking and the establishment of new policies. Others have argued that the

resources provided by classical ethical theory such

as utilitarianism, consequentialism and deontological ethics is more than

enough to deal with all the ethical issues emerging from our design and use of

information technology.

For the phenomenologist the ‘impact view’ of technology as well as the

constructivist view of the technology/society relationships is valid but not

adequate (Heidegger 1977, Borgmann 1985, Winograd and Flores 1987, Ihde

1990, Dreyfus 1992, 2001). They argue that these accounts of technology, and

the technology/societyrelationship, posit technology and society as if speaking

about the one does not immediately and already draw upon the other for its

ongoing sense or meaning. For the

phenomenologist, society and technology co-constitute each other; they are

each other's ongoing condition, or possibility for being what they are. For them

technology is not just the artifact. Rather, the artifact already emerges from a

prior ‘technological’ attitude towards the world (Heidegger 1977).

Summary:

Phenomenology is concerned with the relationship between the reality which exists outside our minds (objective reality) and the variety of thoughts and ideas each of us may have about reality (subjectivity ( . From the phenomenological approach we

experience the phenomena in the world rather than the world itself.

Phenomenology first emerged as a distinctive philosophical discipline with

Husserl. ”To the things themselves” was Husserl’s approach. The aim of phenomenology is to bypass the presuppositions built into traditional theories

(including psychology, physiology and epistemology) in order to describe what shows up in the flow of lived experience prior to reflection (Dancy & Sosa,

1996:342).The key discovery is that all forms of consciousness are characterized by intentionality, a directness towards things such that consciousness is always

about or of something.

Husserl officially defined the science of phenomenology as the study of the essence of conscious experience, and especially of intentional experience , and he

defined consciousness as “pure” rational, mental activity, and developed a theory of the essential structures of consciousness in terms of the parts and moments of our mental acts . Husserl called the method the phenomenological reduction

or epoché. By carrying out the reduction we abandon the “natural” or “naturalistic” attitude which takes the world for granted and come to adopt instead the

phenomenological or the “transcendental” attitude. The use of the method includes the grasp of consciousness being directed towards an object; consciousness is

consciousness of something, and that such attention involves no concern for whether these objects really exist. As we have seen, Heidegger´s investigation of

being is phenomenological. As method phenomenology has much to offer psychotherapy in the sense of searching for meaning and what is being qua being.

All psychological theories are about the human being, but here most similarities end. There are many different theories and approaches to psychotherapy. By a

phenomenological method it might be possible to investigate the science of psychology to pursue a more adequate understanding of the central concerns of

psychology. Heidegger’s conception of authenticity might help us make sense of dimensions of therapeutic practice, by providing a basis for understanding our

embeddedness in a wider context of meaning .

It seems that in the Scandinavian countries there are some resistance against

existential psychotherapy and phenomenological psychology in both the academic field as well as in the practical field (official hospitals etc). But interesting enough,

a lot of students both in psychology and philosophy addresses this topic with great interest. I believe the future will look different. My guess and hope is that the same

will happen in the field of existential psychotherapy.

References:

Zahavi, Dan (2003), Husserl's Phenomenology, Stanford: Stanford University Press

Jump up ^ Orbe, Mark P. (2009). Phenomenology. In S. Littlejohn, & K. Foss (Eds.),

Encyclopedia of communication theory. (pp. 750-752). Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE

Publications, Inc.

Jump up ^ Rollinger, Robin (1999), Husserl's Position in the School of Brentano,

Dordrecht / Boston / London: Kluwer

Jump up ^ Husserl, Edmund. The Crisis of the European Sciences and Transcendental

Phenomenology. Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1970, pg. 240

http://www.angelfire.com/md2/timewarp/husserl.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phenomenology_(philosophy)

http://www.filosofiskpraksis.com/index-filer/index-fagartikler-filer/page499.htm

http://ndpr.nd.edu/news/49329-phenomenology-and-embodiment-husserl-and-the-

constitution-of-subjectivity/

Written by:

Nadine Al-Qafee