Husserl's Phenomenology: Method of Philosophizing - Key Concepts - PHILO-notes Whiteboard Edition

hello everyone welcome once again sue filo notes and before I get started with today's topic I would like to thank you for visiting us today for another edition of our daily whiteboard in this edition I will discuss one of the methods of philosophizing that is whose or elles phenomenology or the phenomenological method of philosophizing the hers aurelion tradition please note however that whose or elles philosophy is very broad as it's impossible to capsulize his philosophy just within this edition so what I will be presenting here are only the key concepts in whose rels phenomenology for us to gain a basic understanding of the phenomenological method the philosophizing now let's begin with a brief historical background of the topic phenomenology was originally a form of critique on the Cartesian methodic doubts as we know Rene dexhart the acclaimed father of modern philosophy initiated the philosophical revolution in maternity by offering a method of philosophizing that seeks to ground knowledge on the most universal and self-evident truth that I exist and that the eye that exists is essentially a thinking eye the cogito this is a variation of the famous Cartesian victim cogito ergo zoom which means I think therefore I am the idea here is that decart employed the methodical in his search for certainty but systematically doubting everything at first but in the process of doubting everything there is one thing that decart cannot doubt that he is doubting now if he is doubting then he must be thinking therefore if he is thinking then he must be existing because the act of thinking presupposes the existence of the one that thinks thus with a discovery of the self of the eye that thinks decart concluded that certainty can be attained [Music] unlike Dekker to systematically doubted the certitude of the world outside of the self or ego as his starting point in obtaining certain C Edmund Husserl affirmed the existence of a world outside of the self and for whose rel who was the forerunner of modern phenomenology the thinking eye is always conscious of this world it is for this reason that whose real accuses dexhart of failing to properly understand the nature of consciousness which is always a consciousness of something other than itself and this is the starting point of who's our else phenomenological investigation for us to fully understand phenomenology is a method of philosophizing we need to define phenomenology first and so what is phenomenology phenomenology comes from the two Greek words phenomenon which means appearance and logos which means reason or study hence etymologically speaking phenomenology means the study of phenomenon the term phenomenon means anything that exists of which the mind is conscious a book is a concrete example of a phenomenon a book is their existing material and the mind is conscious of it however phenomenology is formally defined as the investigation of the essence or the nature of material things or things that appear to us it is important to know that whose role did not invent phenomenology out of the vacuum the context here is that realism and idealism had reached an impasse toward the end of the 19th century regarding the status of the knower and the thing known as is well known the realists argue for the independence of the object of knowledge while the idealists argue for the primary of the subject that is the knower it is in the view of this impasse that whose rayul offered his phenomenology as a way out but instead of making a philosophical speculation of the nature of reality whose really argued for the need for philosophy to turn to a pure description of the what is of the thing as it appears to us does the famous was really an motto back to the things themselves an irrational man a study in existential philosophy William Barrett writes for whose real phenomenology was a discipline that attempts to describe what is given to us and experience without obscuring preconceptions or hypothetical speculations with this note let me now briefly sketch whose or else notion of phenomenology is a method of philosophizing please note that I will not discuss in great detail who's really smart all of phenomenology as our concern here is just to know the nature and dynamics of phenomenology as a method of philosophizing and for a detailed discussion of the nature and dynamics of whose eros model of phenomenology see the internet encyclopedia of philosophy titled the phenomenological reduction again phenomenology for whose RL is a discipline that attempts to describe or understand what is given to us in experience in other words phenomenology for whose RL provides an account of how things are phenomena appear to our awareness or ultimately how the world appears to us in terms of our subjective experience of it so phenomenology deals primarily with a determination of the nature and structure of human conscious experience indeed phenomenology is about reflecting upon our everyday immediate or to lived experiences in order to gain some understanding of its underlying order coherence and structure now it's to begin with within who Israel's model of phenomenology which is by the way called pure phenomenology and contra distinction to the existential phenomenology of his followers such as Martin Heidegger Maurice merleau-ponty and jean-paul Sartre is the idea that we normally view a reality from the vantage point of what who Zurich all's the natural attitude for whose real this natural attitude toward things suggest that people conduct their life with a common natural belief that the reality that they inhabit is fundamentally separable from their subjective experience of it in other words for those people with a natural attitude the world is out there relative to their experience of its in contrast to this natural attitude who's really that it is possible for people to adopt a phenomenological attitude wherein they suspend or bracket their belief and natural attitude and eventually recognize that it is just a natural attitude that the knowledge that they gain from this attitude is not real or true knowledge this act of bracketing which is called epic a allows people that turn their attention to the ongoing activity of their consciousness to which their experience of reality or things is ultimately constituted according to who's real the overall act of employing epic a that is suspending or bracketing all preconceived notions and prejudice about a particular phenomenon under study and then record identify and then put to one side for us to gain an understanding of the true nature of reality is called phenomenological reduction and according to Richard Schmitt it is called phenomenological because it transforms the world into a phenomenon and it is called reduction because it leads us back to the source of the meaning and existence of the experienced world and according to frog stuff the concept of epic AR bracketing can be better understood in terms of the phenomenological activity it is supposed to make possible that is the unpacking of the phenomena or in other words systematically peeling away their symbolic meanings like layers of an onion until only the thing itself as meant and experienced remains thus once subjective perception of the bracketed phenomenon is examined and analyzed in its purity it must be noted however that in phenomenological reduction the mind does not make up features of reality that everything must conform to on the contrary objects in the world or phenomena already have some kind of structure or unity and these objective meaningful features of the things or phenomena are disclosed to us in our experience by means of the interpretations we can give to them in this way our mind can be viewed as active because it can create interpretations of our experience in meaningful ways however it must be remembered that there is already something meaningful in the objects or phenomena themselves which can provide confirmation of our contradiction to that interpretation now with a phenomenological reduction people are able to have a shift in perspective and it is important to note that this basic shift in perspective as a result of the employment of phenomenological reduction enables us to assume a phenomenological attitude toward our experience according to some scholars this can produce some surprising insights into the fundamental nature of things in other words with phenomenological reduction one is able to get at a pure phenomena from a user's point of view put differently through phenomenological reduction we are able to know and understand the essence or meaning of things as they appear to us now to provide a concrete example let us take man as a phenomenon and then apply a phenomenological reduction to it for us to know the essence of man so the natural attitude may say man is a rational animal here man is simply perceived as an animal that thinks but from the standpoint of a phenomenological attitude the nature of man or the understanding of man depends on how one experiences man thus with a phenomenological attitude man can be viewed as a being that possesses freedom or a being that it escapes definition here man is more than a thinking animal this means that the meaning of a man can vary considerably depending on the way in which we view a man whether from the vantage point of a natural attitude or from the phenomenological attitude there are some techniques of doing phenomenology of the way to go about exploring our consciousness of reality one way of doing this is to undertake what who zero calls eidetic reduction by the way for whose real identity reduction is a second reduction which follows the moment when we have turned our reflective awareness toward experience by employing the phenomenological reduction in fact identical reduction is a way of understanding the essence of some experience this is precisely what whose recalls to the movement from the fact to essence it must be noted that for who 0 epoch a has two fundamental moments namely the reduction to the sphere of imminence and the movement from fact to essence so the first moment involves a suspension of the natural attitude and placing and abeyance all beliefs in the transcendental world and it is important to know that hoosier L did not use the term transcendental in the mystical sense for example the way it is used in the phrase transcendent God now for us to understand who else use of the word transcendent or transcendental let us visit this word vis-a-vis the term materiality in whose our alien phenomenology materiality could mean the physical existence of things such as tables chairs books trees cars and alike on the other hand transcendental phenomena are those phenomena that have transcended their materiality such as feelings thoughts experiences memories and the like it is for this reason that who's really Sofi is transcendental because it is concerned with a conditions of possibility that make an experience possible indeed thoughts memories experiences and feelings service of the conditions of possibility that make an experience possible and the second moment sometimes called a debt Achra duction involves a shift to consider things not as realities but as instances of idealities that is as pure possibilities rather than actualities in this way objects are no longer conceived as material things but as a census that is meanings categories ideal types and laws now let me give an example in order to drive my point clearly so we may ask the question what is a table here it is important to remember according to some scholars in news er L that what Israel is after is a special moment in the inquiries reflective awareness a special moment in which Jews are calls intuition was real distinguishes between perception and intuition in perception the person may perceive and be conscious of the fact that she perceives an object but without understanding its meaning in essence intuition on the other hand is an insight into the nature and meaning of something through the experience of that something now according to whose are L eidetic reduction helps bring about an intuition into something as essence by employing a method known as imaginary variation in imaginary variation The Inquirer varies all the possible attributes of an experience as a way of exploring what is truly necessary for it to be what it is that's in the question what is a table we may raise the following points one a table has four legs to a table is made of wood three a table has a flat surface for a table is rectangular in shape and five a table is used primarily for dining or putting things on it or we may ask the following as a way of varying all possible attributes of an experience would it still be a table if it has no legs would it still be a table if it has no flat surface would it still be a table if it is not made up of wood would it still be a table if it's not rectangular in shape and would it still be a table if it is not used for dining or putting things on it eventually according to WHO Israel this kind of explanation helps the Inquirer reach or attain a special moment of intuition about her experience of the table thus she may say a table is a four-legged furniture made up of wood has a flat surface rectangular in shape and is used primarily for dining or putting things on it this what makes a table a table indeed this is the nature of the phenomenon table in this case as it appears to us that is as we experienced it according to some scholars this is the kind of aha moment in which the Inquirer realizes the overall essential nature of experience this is exactly what is meant by the dictum back to the things themselves as that which characterizes hoosier else project it must be noted however that whose realistic tone back to the things themselves meant the things as we experience them rather than take them for granted [Music] finally some of the implications as a result of doing pure phenomenology is the realization that consciousness is intentional for whose Riddle consciousness is understood as fundamentally intentional this means that consciousness is an act is always consciousness of or about something this consciousness in whose ralien phenomenology is not directed toward itself but toward phenomena in the world it follows therefore that any form of thinking is based ultimately on the phenomena in the world for this reason consciousness or thinking is just secondary to the lived experience of phenomena as they show themselves this explains why for Israel the world of immediate our lived experience takes precedence over the objectified world of Natural Sciences in the phenomenological parlance intentionality denotes two things first the intentionality of consciousness means that consciousness is always an act of doing something this consciousness is an activity this is what is meant when Hooser l say that to be conscious is to experience an act of knowing or noises in which the subject is aware of an object and second intentionality of consciousness means that consciousness is always referential that is consciousness is always pointing or referring to something that is also what is meant when who is real said that a conscious act is an act of awareness in which the subject is presented with an object or no way ma let's take for example the act of thinking about the definition of a table thinking about the definition of a table involves actual thinking or Nueces at the same time it involves a referent that is a table which is the pneuma at the end of it all for whose real consciousness is not like a box that contains some perceptions on the contrary consciousness an active ongoing referential process all right that's it for today keep looking forward to our series of daily whiteboard editions as we try to make the learning and understanding of philosophy incredibly easy thanks for joining us today in this edition of our daily whiteboard here at filo notes I hope you find this material helpful and if you do don't forget to subscribe thanks take care

Channel: PHILO-notes

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Keywords: Husserl’s Phenomenology, Edmund Husserl, What Is Phenomenology, Husserlian Motto, Pure Phenomenology, Phenomenological Reduction, Eidetic Reduction, Epoche, Natural Attitude, Phenomenological Attitude

Id: ePQIagmcCXc

Length: 23min 22sec (1402 seconds)

Published: Mon Feb 05 2018