Editing Phenomenology (philosophy) (section)

==History==
Edmund Husserl "set the phenomenological agenda" for even those who did not strictly adhere to his teachings, such as [[Martin Heidegger]], [[Jean-Paul Sartre]], and [[Maurice Merleau-Ponty]], to name just the foremost.{{sfn|Smith|2023|loc=§1}}{{sfn|Smith|2022|loc=Introduction, §1}} Each thinker has "different conceptions of phenomenology, different methods, and different results."{{sfn|Smith|2022|loc=§4}}

===Husserl's conceptions===
{{Main|Edmund Husserl}}
[[File:Edmund Husserl 1900.jpg|thumb|Edmund Husserl in 1900]]
Husserl derived many important concepts central to phenomenology from the works and lectures of his teachers, the philosophers and psychologists [[Franz Brentano]] and [[Carl Stumpf]].{{sfn|Rollinger|1999}} An important element of phenomenology that Husserl borrowed from Brentano is [[intentionality]] (often described as "aboutness" or "directedness"{{sfn|Smith|2023|loc=§3}}), the notion that consciousness is always consciousness ''of'' something. The object of consciousness is called the ''intentional object'', and this object is constituted for consciousness in many different ways, through, for instance, [[perception]], [[memory]], [[Sign (semiotics)|signification]], and so forth. Throughout these different intentionalities, though they have different structures and different ways of being "about" the object, an object is still constituted as the identical object; consciousness is directed at the same intentional object in direct perception as it is in the immediately-following retention of this object and the eventual remembering of it.

As envisioned by Husserl, phenomenology is a method of philosophical inquiry that rejects the [[rationalist]] bias that has dominated Western thought since [[Plato]] in favor of a method of reflective attentiveness that discloses the individual's "lived experience."{{sfn|Husserl|1970|page= 240}} Loosely rooted in an epistemological device called [[epoché]], Husserl's method entails the suspension of judgment while relying on the intuitive grasp of knowledge, free of presuppositions and intellectualizing. Sometimes depicted as the "science of experience," the phenomenological method, rooted in intentionality, represents an alternative to the representational theory of consciousness. That theory holds that reality cannot be grasped directly because it is available only through perceptions of reality that are representations in the mind. In Husserl's own words:

<blockquote>experience is not an opening through which a world, existing prior to all experience, shines into a room of consciousness; it is not a mere taking of something alien to consciousness into consciousness... Experience is the performance in which for me, the experiencer, experienced being "is there", and is there ''as what'' it is, with the whole content and the mode of being that experience itself, by the performance going on in its intentionality, attributes to it.{{sfn|Husserl|1969|loc=§94}}</blockquote>

In effect, he counters that consciousness is not "in" the mind; rather, consciousness is conscious of something other than itself (the intentional object), regardless of whether the object is a physical thing or just a figment of the imagination.

====''Logical Investigations'' (1900/1901)====
<!--'Mental act' and 'Pre-reflective self-consciousness' redirect here-->

In the first edition of the ''[[Logical Investigations (Husserl)|Logical Investigations]]'', under the influence of Brentano, Husserl describes his position as "[[Descriptive psychology (Brentano)|descriptive psychology]]." Husserl analyzes the intentional structures of '''mental acts'''<!--boldface per WP:R#PLA--> and how they are directed at both real and ideal objects. The first volume of the ''Logical Investigations'', the ''Prolegomena to Pure Logic'', begins with a critique of [[psychologism]], that is, the attempt to subsume the ''a priori'' validity of the laws of logic under psychology. Husserl establishes a separate field for research in logic, philosophy, and phenomenology, independently from the empirical sciences.{{sfn|Zahavi|Stjernfelt|2002}}{{sfn|Mohanty|1977}}{{sfn|Smith|2023|loc=§1}}

"'''Pre-reflective self-consciousness'''"<!--boldface per WP:R#PLA--> is [[Shaun Gallagher]] and [[Dan Zahavi]]'s term for Husserl's (1900/1901) idea that [[self-consciousness]] always involves a self-appearance or self-manifestation prior to [[self-reflection]].{{sfn|Gallagher|Zahavi|2023}} This is one point of nearly unanimous agreement among phenomenologists: "a minimal form of self-consciousness is a constant structural feature of conscious experience. Experience happens for the experiencing subject in an immediate way and as part of this immediacy, it is implicitly marked as ''my'' experience."{{sfn|Gallagher|Zahavi|2021|page=50}}

====''Ideas'' (1913)====
<!--'Transcendental phenomenology' redirects here-->
In 1913, Husserl published ''Ideas: General Introduction to Pure Phenomenology''. In this work, he presents phenomenology as a form of "[[transcendental idealism]]". Although Husserl claimed to have always been a transcendental idealist, this was not how many of his admirers had interpreted the ''Logical Investigations'', and some were alienated as a result.{{sfn|Smith|2023|loc=§1}}

This work introduced distinctions between the act of consciousness (''[[Noesis (phenomenology)|noesis]]'') and the phenomena at which it is directed (the ''[[noema]]ta''). ''Noetic'' refers to the intentional act of consciousness (believing, willing, etc.). ''Noematic'' refers to the object or content ''(noema)'', which appears in the noetic acts (the believed, wanted, hated, loved, etc.).{{sfn|Smith|2023|loc=§3.c}}

What is observed is not the object as it is in itself, but how and inasmuch it is given in the intentional acts. Knowledge of [[essence]]s would only be possible by "[[Bracketing (phenomenology)|bracketing]]" all assumptions about the existence of an external world and the inessential (subjective) aspects of how the object is concretely given to us. This ''phenomenological reduction'' is the second stage of Husserl's procedure of [[epoché]]. That which is essential is then determined by the imaginative work of ''eidetic variation'', which is a method for clarifying the features of a thing without which it would not be what it is.{{sfn|Gallagher|Zahavi|2021|pages=23–30}}

Husserl concentrated more on the ideal, essential structures of consciousness. As he wanted to exclude any hypothesis on the existence of external objects, he introduced the method of phenomenological reduction to eliminate them. What was left over was the pure [[Transcendence (philosophy)|transcendental]] ego, as opposed to the concrete empirical ego.

'''Transcendental phenomenology'''<!--boldface per WP:R#PLA--> is the study of the essential structures that are left in pure consciousness: this amounts in practice to the study of the noemata and the relations among them.

====Munich phenomenology====
{{Main|Munich phenomenology}}

Some phenomenologists were critical of the new theories espoused in ''Ideas''. Members of the [[Munich phenomenology|Munich group]], such as [[Max Scheler]] and [[Roman Ingarden]], distanced themselves from Husserl's new transcendental phenomenology. Their theoretical allegiance was to the earlier, realist phenomenology of the first edition of ''Logical Investigations''.

===Heidegger's conception===
{{Main|Martin Heidegger}}
Martin Heidegger modified Husserl's conception of phenomenology because of what Heidegger perceived as Husserl's subjectivist tendencies. Whereas Husserl conceived humans as having been constituted by states of consciousness, Heidegger countered that consciousness is peripheral to the primacy of one's existence, for which he introduces [[Dasein]] as a technical term, which cannot be reduced to a mode of consciousness. From this angle, one's state of mind is an "effect" rather than a determinant of existence, including those aspects of existence of which one is not conscious. By shifting the center of gravity to existence in what he calls [[fundamental ontology]], Heidegger altered the subsequent direction of phenomenology.

According to Heidegger, ontologically-inflected phenomenology is more fundamental than modern scientific inquiry. According to him, science is only one way of knowing the world with no special access to truth. Furthermore, the scientific mindset itself is built on a much more "primordial" foundation of practical, everyday knowledge. This emphasis on the fundamental status of a person's pre-cognitive, practical orientation in the world, sometimes called "know-how", would be adopted by both Sartre and Merleau-Ponty.{{sfn|Smith|2023|loc=§2.d}}

While for Husserl, in the epoché, being appeared only as a correlate of consciousness, for Heidegger the pre-conscious grasp of being is the starting point. For this reason, he replaces Husserl's concept of intentionality with the notion of ''comportment'', which is presented as "more primitive" than the "conceptually structured" acts analyzed by Husserl. Paradigmatic examples of comportment can be found in the unreflective ''dealing'' with ''equipment'' that presents itself as simply "ready-to-hand" in what Heidegger calls the normally ''circumspect'' mode of engagement within the world.{{sfn|Smith|2023|loc=§3.d}}

For Husserl, all concrete determinations of the empirical ego would have to be abstracted in order to attain pure consciousness. By contrast, Heidegger claims that "the possibilities and destinies of philosophy are bound up with man's existence, and thus with temporality and with historicality."{{sfn|Heidegger|1975|loc=Introduction}} For this reason, all experience must be seen as shaped by social context, which for Heidegger joins phenomenology with philosophical [[hermeneutics]].{{sfn|Smith|2022|loc=§2}}

Husserl charged Heidegger with raising the question of ontology but failing to answer it, instead switching the topic to Dasein. That is neither ontology nor phenomenology, according to Husserl, but merely abstract anthropology.

While ''[[Being and Time]]'' and other early works are clearly engaged with Husserlian issues, Heidegger's later philosophy has little relation to the problems and methods of classical phenomenology.{{sfn|Smith|2023|loc=§1}}

===Merleau-Ponty's conception===
{{main|Maurice Merleau-Ponty}}
Maurice Merleau-Ponty develops his distinctive mode of phenomenology by drawing, in particular, upon Husserl's unpublished writings, Heidegger's analysis of being-in-the-world, [[Gestalt theory]], and other contemporary psychology research. In his most famous work, ''[[The Phenomenology of Perception]]'', Merleau-Ponty critiques empiricist and intellectualist accounts to chart a "third way" that avoids their metaphysical assumptions about an objective, pre-given world.{{sfn|Toadvine|2023|loc=§3. ''Phenomenology of Perception''}}

The central contentions of this work are that the body is the locus of engagement with the world, and that the body's modes of engagement are more fundamental than what phenomenology describes as consequent acts of objectification. Merleau-Ponty reinterprets concepts like intentionality, the phenomenological reduction, and the eidetic method to capture our inherence in the perceived world, that is, our embodied coexistence with things through a kind of reciprocal exchange. According to Merleau-Ponty, perception discloses a meaningful world that can never be completely determined, but which nevertheless aims at truth.{{sfn|Toadvine|2023|loc=§3. ''Phenomenology of Perception''}}