CONTEMPORARY PHILOSOPHY PART 1:

Phenomenology
Reporter: Clyde Zamora
PHENOMENOLOGY

study of phenomena: appearances of things, or things as they appear in our experience, or the ways
we experience things, thus the meanings things have in our experience

a philosophical movement rooted from the thoughts of Edmund Husserl

Edmund Husserl

founder of modern phenomenology

Through our consciousness, we look forward to the future and retain the past.

Experience by itself is not a science.

Max Ferdinand Scheler

A German intellectual

Wrote:
o Phenomenology and Theory of the Feeling of Sympathy and of Love and Hate (1913)
o Formalism in Ethics and Non-Formal Ethics of Value (Part 1 1913, Part 2 1916)
o The Genius of War and the German War (1915)

Values and Pleasure

Man strives first for goods, not in the pleasure of goods.

Man is first and foremost a loving being (ens amans) before he is ever a knowing being (ens
cogitans).

Major Ethics:
o Personalism

People must see the eternal values embodied on model persons whom they will
inspire to imitate.
o A Philosophy of Plenitude

plenitude and inner harmony of the person are indispensable goals of mans ethical
striving
o History Oriented Moral Philosophy

The very meaning of history lies in the unceasing growth and development of
concrete modes of humanity.

Whoever grasps the ordo amoris of man, has hold of man himself.

Children do not exist simply in order to become adults, for childhood has an irreplaceable value of
its own.

The world has evolved in reality until it found expression in man, and man should evolve ideally until
he or she becomes a world!

The one who loves, dies lightly.

Terminologies:

Becoming - existence is seldom static; it is always in the process of becoming something new, of
transcending itself, with the goal of fulfilling one's possibilities.
Being-in-the-world acting with awareness, responsibility, and freedom within a context of given
world-conditions.
Epoche- learning to look at things in a way such that we see only what stands before our eyes, only
what we can describe and define. This attempt to suspend any and all beliefs as we observe and
listen is an attempt to minimize interpretation.
Transcendental going beyond
Noesis - how beliefs are acquired; how it is that we are experiencing what we are experiencing.
Verstehen - (German for "understanding") through influence and empathy people can understand
each other. Experience is not just hidden inside the person, but appears in the words, on our faces,
and in our language.

CONTEMPORARY PHILOSOPHY PART 1:

Phenomenology
Clyde Zamora