Phenomenology

Phenomenology is the study of the different structures of consciousness that are experienced from the point of view of the first person. The central structure of an experience is its intentionality, it is directed towards something, since it is an experience of or about some object. An experience is directed towards an object by virtue of what the object represents along with the appropriate enabling conditions. Phenomenology as a discipline is different from other branches of philosophy, such as ontology, epistemology, logic and ethics, but at the same time, it is related to them. The phenomenological questions of intentionality, consciousness, qualia and perspective in the first person have been prominent in the philosophy of the recent mind.

Related topics

Epistemology, nihilism

What is phenomenology?

Phenomenology is a science of philosophy that studies everything related to the events surrounding a certain object, its relationship with the environment, the way things happen and how this object influences the phenomenon. It studies the behavior of a fact, product or service.

What does phenomenology study?

Phenomenology as a method of study does not dismiss the elements that are generally not related to the fact or are not taken into account from the beginning because they are considered wrong. These studies are deductive and start from the relationship with the environment, with the good, the bad, the right and the wrong. It seeks to study and obtain the maximum knowledge on all the fundamental aspects and also of those that are not essential for the process that suffers  certain phenomenon.

Characteristics of phenomenology

The main characteristics of phenomenology are:

• It describes the meanings of the experiences that have been lived by a person or several people with respect to a certain concept.
• It is not interested in the explanation, but rather, it is concerned with the essential aspects of the lived experience.
• It is the systematic study of subjectivity.
• It seeks to describe what underlies the way people usually describe their experiences.
• It studies the coexistence between a person within a group.
• It concentrates on an eidetic reduction.
• It has transcendental reduction.
• It methodically leads to the discovery and analysis of things or objects in the world.
• It seeks to understand how people construct the meaning of things.
• It investigates experiences as they are lived by those who experience them and the meaning that these people give them.
• Critical truths about reality are based on people’s experiences.
• It consists mainly of in-depth conversations.
• The researcher and informants are often considered secondary participants.

Objective

The objective of phenomenology is the direct investigation and description of phenomena as experiences that are made consciously, without having theories about causal explanations or objective reality. In other words, it seeks to understand how people construct the meaning of things that happen to them.

Types

• Realist Phenomenology: Husserl’s early formulation, based on the first edition of his research on logic, had as its objective the analysis of the intentional structures of mental acts, since, for him, these are directed at both, real and ideal objects. This was the preferred version of the University of Munich at the beginning of the 20th century, and was directed by Johannes Daubert and Adolf Reinach, Alexander Pfänder, Max Scheler and Roman Ingarden.
• Transcendental or constitutive phenomenology: this is Husserl’s subsequent formulation, based on his ideas in 1913, in which he took as his starting point the intuitive experience of phenomena and tried to extract from it the essential generalized characteristics of experiences and the essence of what he experienced, leaving aside the questions of any relationship with the natural world that surrounds us.
• Existential phenomenology: it is the expanded formulation of Heidegger, as it is exposed in his “Being and Time” of 1927, that says that the observer cannot separate from the world and, therefore, it is a combination of the phenomenological method with the importance of understanding man in his existential world.

Representatives of phenomenology

The main representatives of phenomenology are:

• Edmund Husserl: it was a German philosopher who founded the phenomenological school.
• Martin Heidegger: German philosopher who said that phenomenology should bring to light what was hidden in experiences.
• Jan Patocka: Czech philosopher who greatly influenced phenomenology, follower of Husserl and defender of Heidegger.

Importance

It is important because it studies realities which nature and structure can only be captured from the inner part of the individual who experiences them. It ends with those strict and definitive truths and gives way to possibilities and speculation, to investigation, doubt, approach and rethinking of a certain phenomenon. It is the way to make possible the scientific method in all the branches of knowledge and truth.

Examples

Instead of doing studies on the programs that are used to integrate minority groups, phenomenology will study the type of experience that a person has within a place.

In the field of psychology, phenomenology does not study the cause or illness, but looks for ways to help overcome people’s suffering by exploring the personal background of the situation.