A Brief Survey of the Phenomenology of Husserl and Heidegger
Introduction
In general terms, phenomenology is a philosophy of experience. It attempts to understand how meaning is made in human experience, and it sees our lived experience of the world as the foundation of meaning. For phenomenology, how the speaking or writing subject uses language is primary both because it is how we experience its rules and conventions, in their use, and because this is the source of semantic innovation. New meaning, novelty in the world, and the possibility of a future different from the past are some of phenomenology's defining values. In this paper I will be sketching a brief survey of the phenomenology of Husserl and Heidegger.
Husserl's Transcendental Phenomenology
Edmund Husserl is considered to be the modern founder of phenomenology. Though later phenomenology abandoned many of his assumptions and aims, it did so by working through them, criticizing and revising them, so that many of his key concepts are preserved even if in a different form. Even Husserl's own self-critique has led him to abandon his early idealism -- his quest for indubitable, universal structures of knowledge in the cogito -- to see meaning in the "lived world" (Lebenswelt) -- a notion which places consciousness in the body, history, and the social world where existential phenomenology begins. Similarly self-transformative, Husserl's analysis of what he calls "intentionality" lead to theories of knowledge and interpretation that question his original goal of developing a "presuppositionless philosophy" that was purely descriptive in its methods.
1. The Principle of Evidence
Husserl finds the leading principle of the development of philosophy's own scientifi...
... middle of paper ...
...sis of a radical suspension of all theories, traditional points of view and interpretations as well as naive assumptions based on the natural institution. Describing the existence of aspects, however, is endless and complex, as a result of the complex character of the conscious experience of sense (Theron, 1995).
8. Acting intention
The viewing of the existence of the clear cognition as such reveals its fundamental structure ("ego cogito"). Even though the existence of the real world (at which the natural institution is aimed) is eliminated, it cannot be wiped out without leaving traces in the clear cognition. The cognition of the real world with everything it implies, such as aspects and values, is an absolute given in the area of the clear cognition. And so, even though this reality is in fact eliminated, cognition still retains its bond with this world.
The three readings that form the basis of this essay all deal with the existence
In section 15 of The Crisis, Husserl proposes an introspective enquiry of ourselves that is guided by the teleology of philosophy. As part of trying to understand ourselves, we must go back and look at what other philosophers in history have been saying in a bid to “understand the unity running through all the [philosophical] projects of history that oppose one another and work together in their changing forms”. In as much as this historical analysis is personal, we are just a part of the whole history of philosophy, and have a role to build up on what has been established before. In order to understand the teleological journey of philosophy, and how we are part of it, we cannot just look at it from the outside. We have to try and understand it from the inside - we already have the spiritual-historical connection - if we are to truly know who we are.
In my presentation today I shall focus first on Heidegger's attempt to tackle the problem of "metaphysics" and his wish to transcend it. Then I shall try to evaluate his thoughts about transcending metaphysics in connection with his interpretation of Nietzsche's anthropology which he considers to be the top achievement of metaphysics.
Genetic phenomenology is Husserl's philosophical successor to his earlier eidetic phenomenology; it represents the highest development in Husserl's project. Husserl's eidetic phenomenology holds that both the structure of intentional acts and the intentional object are given (Detmer 165). Husserl later comes to doubt the givenness in eidetic phenomenology; these structures and objects of consciousness must have developed throughout history (Detmer 166). This is the process of sedimentation: patterns of understanding and expectations gradually influence later experiences (Zahavi 94). Intentional acts themselves have eidetic structures that are not immediately given; they must be analyzed if the phenomenological project is to continue. A close
In the final entry to her London notebooks, Simone Weil writes "Philosophy is exclusively an affair of action and practice. That is why it is so difficult to write about. Difficult in the same way as a treatise on tennis or running, but much more so." (Allen, p. 157) In these next few pages I will try to relay the basic ideas contained in Simone Weil's works. Because of the extensiveness and complexity of her work, I will be using her words exactly, as often as possible.
Heideggers Conceptual Essences: Being and the Nothing, Humanism, and Technology Being and the Nothing are the same. The ancient philosopher Lao-tzu believed that the world entertains no separations and that opposites do not actually exist. His grounding for this seemingly preposterous proposition lies in the fact that because alleged opposites depend on one another and their definitions rely on their differences, they cannot possibly exist without each other. Therefore, they are not actually opposites. The simple and uncomplex natured reasoning behind this outrageous statement is useful when trying to understand and describe Martin Heideggers deeply leveled philosophy of Being and the nothing. Lao-tzus uncomplicated rationale used in stating that supposed opposites create each other, so cannot be opposite, is not unlike Heideggers description of the similarity between the opposites Being and the nothing. Unlike Lao-tzu, Heidegger does not claim that no opposites exist. He does however say that two obviously opposite concepts are the same, and in this way, the two philosophies are similar. He believes that the separation of beings from Being creates the nothing between them. Without the nothing, Being would cease to be. If there were not the nothing, there could not be anything, because this separation between beings and Being is necessary. Heidegger even goes so far as to say that Being itself actually becomes the nothing via its essential finity. This statement implies a synonymity between the relation of life to death and the relation of Being to nothingness. To Heidegger, the only end is death. It is completely absolute, so it is a gateway into the nothing. This proposition makes Being and the nothing the two halves of the whole. Both of their roles are equally important and necessary in the cycle of life and death. Each individual life inevitably ends in death, but without this death, Life would be allowed no progression: The nothing does not merely serve as the counterconcept of beings; rather, it originally belongs to their essential unfolding as such (104). Likewise, death cannot occur without finite life. In concordance with the statement that the nothing separates beings from Being, the idea that death leads to the nothing implies that death is just the loss of the theoretical sandwich's bread slices, leaving nothing for the rest of ever. The existence of death, therefore, is much more important in the whole because it magnifies the nothing into virtually everything.
The aim of the research is outlined as an attempt to understand the phenomenology of
An important precondition for Hegel's examination of the sensual is his caveat that sense-certainty must not use complex concepts of any kind to express that which it knows. In this sense, Hegel treats sense-certainty as the realm whose truth is expressed as pure being or ISNESS, as opposed to mediated forms that understand ISNESS in a wider context of meaning (Hegel, 91). By insisting on this limitation, Hegel treats sense-certainty as stripped down to bare assertions of sensual experience, allowing the phenomenologist to examine the sensual based solely on what it is capable of showing us on its own. Indeed, it is this litmus test of self-sufficient communication that sets the stage for Hegel to return sensuality to the universal conceptual framework that supports it once it has been seen to fail in its own right.
In this paper, I will explain and argue for two-way interactive substance dualism. Dualism is a term referred to the idea that there are only two basic kinds of things and everything real is categorized under those two things. Dualism is split into two types, substance dualism, and property dualism. Substance dualism is the idea that the mind and body are two different sorts of basic substance, whereas property dualism is our mental and physical properties are two separate types of basic properties even though they may be properties of the same thing (lecture). Branching from dualism, mind-body dualism argues that the mind and body are two separate entities. Although they are two different substances, i.e. brain/body being material and
Husserl, Edmund. The Crisis of European Sciences and Transcendental Phenomenology. Translated by David Carr. Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1970.
In this essay I will argue that Rosenthal's Higher Order Thought Theory provides a possible account of conscious awareness, in doing so addresses and gets to solve the mind-body problem for that particular mental phenomenon.
. Its most famous defender is Descartes, who argues that as a subject of conscious thought and experience, he cannot consist simply of spatially extended matter. His essential nature must be non-m...
As presented in the Phenomenology of Spirit, the aim of Life is to free itself from confinement "in-itself" and thus to become "for-itself." Not only does Hegel place this unfolding of Life at the very beginning of the dialectical development of self-consciousness; Hegel characterizes self-consciousness itself as a form of Life and even refers us to the development of self-consciousness in the Master/Slave dialectic as an essential moment in the fulfillment of this aim of Life to become 'for-itself.' The following paper delineates this overlooked thread of the dialectic. The central thesis is that each step along the path of self-consciousness' attempt at making the truth of its unity with itself explicit, is simultaneously a step in the realization of the aim of Life: to become 'for-itself.' In the review of the Master/Slave dialectic, it reveals itself that the necessary condition for the fulfillment of Life's aim lies in work. Yet...
The purpose of this essay is to discuss how dualism describes reality more accurate than materialism, idealism, and transcendental idealism. Even though dualism doesn’t describe reality one hundred percent just like the other theories about the nature of reality, it is the most accurate argument out of the four major theories about the nature of reality and substance. Dualism was a concept that was not originated by Rene Descartes but coined by him. The concept was that our mind is more than just our brain. The concept was not originated by Rene Descartes because the Bible explains that we are more than our body and brains. It teaches that we have a separate mind, soul, and spirit. One argument for dualism is that the physical and mental territories have different properties. The mental events have qualities such as what does it feel like, what does it look like, or what it sounds like. Another argument is the lack of any understanding of how any possible reaction can take place between the mind and brain. The essay will include reasons for favoring the Thomistic and Cartesian forms of substance dualism and the counter arguments that are against them.
Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich, Arnold V. Miller, and J. N. Findlay. Phenomenology of Spirit. Oxford [England: Clarendon, 1977. Print.