What is Phenomenology?

Phenomenology is a philosophical movement during the 20th century that studies reality as subjectively experienced. Its name comes from the Greek words φαινόμενον (phainómenon), which means "that which appears," and λόγος (lόgos), or "study." Hence, phenomenology is generally defined as the science of phenomenon or that which appears. More specifically, it seeks to investigate the universal features of consciousness while avoiding assumptions about the external world, aiming to describe phenomena as they appear to the subject, and to explore the meaning and significance of the lived experiences.

In philosophy, phenomenology refers to the tradition began by Edmund Husserl (1859-1938) at the beginning of the 20th century. Although the term had been used in different senses in other philosophy texts since the 18th century, it was however Franz Brentano’s (1838-1917) use of it that became definitive for Husserl. From Brentano, Husserl took the conviction that philosophy must commit itself to description of what is "given in direct 'self-evidence'."

A Brief History

Phenomenology is often traced back to the Austrian-German philosopher Edmund Husserl’s work entitled Logical Investigations (1900). It contains Husserl’s attack on psychologism (the view that logic can be reduced to psychology), an account of phenomenology as the descriptive study of the structure of the varieties of experience, as well as some concrete phenomenological analyses.

Husserl’s assistant at the University of Freiburg, the German philosopher Martin Heidegger (1889-1976), took phenomenology in a new direction. In his famous work Being and Time (1927), he combined Husserl’s concern for legitimating concepts through phenomenology with his interest in the question of the meaning of being. Heidegger referred to his own phenomenological investigations as “fundamental ontology,” bearing little relation to classical Husserlian phenomenology.

Husserl and Heidegger’s work had a decisive influence on the development of French existentialist phenomenology. Following Heidegger, Jean-Paul Sartre’s (1905-1980) Being and Nothingness (1943) developed a phenomenological account of consciousness, freedom, and concrete human relations that perhaps defines the term “existentialism.” Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s (1908-1961) Phenomenology of Perception (1945), on the other hand, uses both phenomenology and empirical psychology in according the body a central role in the possibility of experience.

Although none of the abovementioned philosophers can be considered as classical Husserlian phenomenologists, nevertheless it was Husserl who had set their phenomenological agenda. As such, much of the contemporary interest in phenomenological topics and methodology continue to draw inspiration from Husserl’s work.

Key Concepts

1. Phenomena

Phenomenology is the science of phenomena. But what are phenomena? And how should phenomenology as a science be understood? To answer this, it is useful to briefly turn to the German modern philosopher Immanuel Kant (1724-1804).

Kant proposed the theory of transcendental idealism, which distinguishes between “phenomena” (things as they appear) and “noumena” (things as they are in themselves). According to him, we can only know about the former. In using the term phenomena, all major phenomenologists refer to Kantian phenomena, to things as they appear. For them, phenomena are not mental states but worldly things considered in a certain way. Moreover, they tend to reject Kantian noumena, or things as they are in themselves.

Phenomenology, therefore, is the study of things as they appear (i.e. phenomena). It is descriptive in its approach, rather than explanatory. Its central task is to provide a clear, undistorted description of the ways things appear, rather than giving, for example, causal explanations.

2. Intentionality

First of all, the term “intentionality” should not be confused with the everyday meaning of the word “intentional.” Rather, it should be understood in relation to its Latin root “intendere,” meaning “to stretch out (towards something)." "Intentionality" originated with the Medieval scholastics and was resurrected by Husserl’s teacher, Franz Brentano. Husserl later on refined the term and made it the cornerstone of his theory of consciousness.

Intentionality refers to the notion that consciousness is always the consciousness of something. It is the "aboutness" of consciousness (i.e.. consciousness is always about something). For example, seeing a cup of coffee in front of you, imagining an ideal vacation, or remembering the book you read yesterday are all acts of consciousness that have an object: the cup of coffee, the vacation, and the book.

Now take note that whether that something is real or imaginary is inconsequential to the concept of intentionality. The object of consciousness does not have to be a physical object apprehended in perception; it can be something imaginary, a memory, etc. Consequently, these "structures" of consciousness (i.e., perception, memory, fantasy, etc.) are called “intentionalities.”

3. Phenomenological Reduction

In ordinary experience we take it for granted that the world around us exists independently of both us and our consciousness of it. In other words, we share an implicit belief in the independent existence of the world, and unconsciously this belief permeates and informs our everyday experience.

Husserl refers to this positing of the world and everything that exists within it as independent—as something out there—as “the natural attitude” (Husserl 1982, sec. 30). This attitude is found in the empirical sciences, and is, according to Husserl, problematic for philosophy. For if philosophy were to be a rigorous science, it should be free from presuppositions, including those of the natural attitude, such as the presupposition that the world and everything within it is real.

For this reason, Husserl in Ideas I introduces the concept of “epoché,” according to which all judgements that posit the independent existence of the world and everything within it (i.e., the natural attitude), and all judgements that presuppose such judgements, are to be “bracketed”—or not to be used—in phenomenological analysis. Now since all of the empirical sciences adapt the natural attitude, none of their claims, therefore, Husserl argues, should be used in phenomenology.

The epoché is the most important part of Husserl’s “phenomenological reduction”, whose purpose is to open us up to the world of phenomena, that is, to how the world and the entities within it are given. In part, the phenomenological reduction enables the phenomenologist to go “back to the ‘things themselves'” (Husserl 2001, 168), meaning to the ways that things are actually given in experience. Husserl believes that it is precisely here—in the realm of phenomena—that we will find that indubitable evidence that will ultimately serve as the foundation for all scientific disciplines.

4. Eidetic Reduction

Husserl did not intend phenomenology to be a mere collection of descriptions about objects and consciousness. Rather, he hoped that it would be able to arrive at facts about the essential natures of phenomena and their modes of givenness.

But how can phenomenology realize this if its method is descriptive, that is, a careful description of experience? Husserl’s answer to this problem is a second reduction called “eidetic” reduction. The purpose of the eidetic reduction, according to Husserl, is to bracket any considerations concerning the contingent and accidental, and concentrate on—"intuit”—the essential natures or essences of the objects and acts of consciousness (Husserl 1982, sec. 2).

This intuition of essences proceeds via what Husserl calls “free variation in imagination.” What is it in that object that endures amidst these variations? What is in it that is necessary or essential, without which it is inconceivable? By asking so, we will eventually come up against something that cannot be varied without destroying that object as an instance of its kind. For example, because we can easily vary the color of an apple in our imagination—from green to red to brown or black—without affecting what it really is (i.e., as an apple) means that its color is not part of its essence (i.e., it is not necessary to its being an apple).

Eidetic intuition is, in short, an a priori method of gaining intuitive knowledge of essences. And these essences show themselves to us not to sensory intuition, but to categorial or eidetic intuition (Husserl 2001, 292-4).

References

Biemel, W., Spiegelberg, H. "Phenomenology." Encyclopedia Britannica, March 21, 2025. Accessed December 15, 2023. https://www.britannica.com/topic/phenomenology.

Smith, J. “Phenomenology.” Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Accessed December 15, 2023. https://iep.utm.edu/phenom/.

Teoli, M. “Naturalism and the Natural Attitude.” Edmund Husserl Society, April 4, 2023. Accessed December 15, 2023. https://husserlorg.wordpress.com/2023/04/04/naturalism-and-the-natural-attitude/?amp=1.