Contemporary Philosophy:

Introduction to Phenomenology

ALEXANDER REY, LPT

MAEd-Educational Management
 Introduction to Phenomenology

Phenomenology and its Predecessors

Edmund Husserl
Martin Heidegger
Alfred Schurtz
Peter Berger
 Introduction to Phenomenology

Phenomenology and its Predecessors

Edmund Husserl

Martin Heidegger
 Phenomenology and its
Predecessors
Phenomenology is both a philosophical movement
and method.
It is many things to many people and its definition
is hotly contested in a way that is, perhaps,
symptomatic of the heterogenous development
within contemporary philosophy.
 Phenomenology and its Predecessors

It is perhaps most helpful to think of it as a solution to a

problem.
Phenomenologists assert that the study of phenomena is
the correct and most primordial objective of
philosophers.
 Phenomenology and its Predecessors

This would be in contrast to:

Ethics - The Study of Right and Wrong
Epistemology - The Study of Knowledge
 The field of Phenomenology begins with Plato and his
Allegory of the Cave:

Plato argued that people uneducated in the forms would

mistake the shadows on the wall for the real thing.
Put another way we could say that they would mistake
the phenomena with the real thing itself.
The was the birthplace of the classical Greek distinction
between:
The Form and its Phenomenon
Phenomenology and its Predecessors

Reality
Versus
Our experience of reality.
Phenomenology and its Predecessors

Or put another way:

The distinction between things

themselves and our experience of them.
Phenomenology and its Predecessors

The problem of the (im)possibility of

objective experience has been a focus
for Metaphysics since the beginning of
philosophy and has consequences for
nearly all branches of philosophical
thought.
Phenomenology is an attempt to
answer this (seemingly) basic question:
Phenomenology and its Predecessors

How can we have knowledge

of the world, as it really is?
Phenomenology and its Predecessors

How can we distinguish between

the shadow of a rabbit and a
rabbit?
Phenomenology and its Predecessors

Despite having its roots as far back at

Plato; Phenomenology came into its own in
the work of the German turn-of-the-century
Philosopher Edmund Husserl
 TO BE
CONTINUED