About this topic
Summary | Phenomenology refers to both a general branch of philosophy as well as a movement within the history of philosophy. As a branch of philosophy, phenomenology studies conscious experience from a perspective internal to it, elucidating the structures of lived experience, as well as the conditions under which it becomes meaningful. The historical movement called phenomenology is generally regarded as beginning with Edmund Husserl, who made phenomenological questions central to his entire philosophical approach, arguing that a phenomenological investigation of consciousness should ground philosophy construed broadly as well as the sciences. Under the influence of a second generation of phenomenologists, most famously Martin Heidegger, the centrality of consciousness was often called into question. Nonetheless, the name phenomenology continues to be used to describe the whole tradition that developed out of this Husserlian/Heideggerian framework. As such, there have been "phenomenological" approaches to virtually every other branch of philosophy, including ontology, epistemology, ethics, aesthetics, political philosophy, etc. In this regard, phenomenology remains one of the core movements that defines 20th century continental philosophy, where it is associated with adjacent (or sub) movements such as existentialism, phenomenological hermeneutics and deconstruction. |
Key works | Husserl was constantly formulating and reformulating the phenomenological project. Logical Investigations (Husserl 2000) was his first systematic approach to phenomenology. Ideas (Husserl 1980) reformulated the project, introducing the core notion of the transcendental reduction. The work of early phenomenologists such as Edith Stein (Stein 1964) and Max Scheler (Scheler 1992) on emotion, empathy and value theory helps to account for phenomenology's importance in the social sciences. The Phenomenological Movement (Spiegelberg 1965) describes the work of Husserl and other early phenomenologists in great detail. In the course of developing their own philosophical projects, subsequent generations would also reformulate how they understood phenomenology. Edmund Husserl published Heidegger's Being and Time (Heidegger et al 1967) in order to help Heidegger secure Husserl's own chair at Freiburg. It was only after its publication that he realized just how much Heidegger's approach to phenomenology departed from and revised his own. Under the influence of both Husserl and Heidegger, Jean-Paul Sartre's Being and Nothingness (Sartre 1956) and Maurice Merleau-Ponty's Phenomenology of Perception (Merleau-Ponty 1962), developed an existential phenomenology which dominated French intellectual thought in the mid twentieth century and which played a crucial role in introducing phenomenology to the English speaking world. Jacques Derrida's work on Husserl early in his career, particularly his Introduction to the Origin of Geometry and Voice and Phenomena (Derrida 2011) demonstrated the continued importance of phenomenology to post-structuralism (despite the avowal of many other postructuralists). |
Introductions | Husserl and Heidegger wrote an encyclopedia entry for phenomenology in Encyclopedia Brittanica (Heidegger 2009). |
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Subcategories: History/traditions: Phenomenology
Aron Gurwitsch (10)
Martin Heidegger (10,557)
Michel Henry (192)
Edmund Husserl (15,358 | 3,094)
Husserl: Metaphysics and Epistemology (1,047 | 98)
Husserl: Metaphysics (344 | 89)
Husserl: Epistemology (347 | 67)
Husserl: Philosophy of Mind (4,991 | 1,226)
Husserl: The Self (264 | 6)
Husserl: Perception (330)
Husserl: Phenomenology* (1,751 | 294)
Husserl: Imagination (261)
Husserl: Phenomenology (1,751 | 294)
Husserl: Phenomenological Method (654 | 50)
Husserl: Phenomenology and Psychology (257 | 138)
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Husserl: Value Theory (231 | 30)
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Roman Ingarden (32)
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Edith Stein (58)
Phenomenology, Misc (811)
- Hegel: Phenomenology (69 | 35)
- Husserl: Phenomenology (1,751 | 294)
- Derrida: Phenomenology (123)
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