Phenomenology

The Phenomenology is the study of the different structures of consciousness that are experienced from the point of view of the first person. The central structure of an experience is its intentionality, it is directed towards something, since it is an experience of or about some object. An experience is directed toward an object by virtue of what the object represents together with the appropriate enabling conditions. Phenomenology as a discipline is different from other branches of philosophy , such as ontology, epistemology, logic and ethics, but at the same time it is relatedwith them. The phenomenological issues of intentionality, consciousness, qualia, and first-person perspective have been prominent in recent philosophy of mind.

What does phenomenology study

Phenomenology as a study method does not rule out elements that are generally not related to the fact or are not taken into account from the beginning because they are considered wrong. These studies are deductive and start from the relationship with the environment, with the good, the bad, the correct and the incorrect. It seeks to study and obtain the maximum knowledge about all the fundamental aspects and also those that are not essential of the process that a certain phenomenon undergoes .

Characteristics of phenomenology

The main characteristics of phenomenology are:

• It describes the meanings of the experiences that have been lived by a person or several with respect to a certain concept.
• It is not interested in explanation , rather, it is concerned with the essential aspects of lived experience.
• It is the systematic study of subjectivity .
• Seeks to describe what is underlying the way people generally describe their experiences.
• Study how is the coexistence between a person within a group.
• It focuses on an eidetic reduction .
• It has a momentous reduction .
• It leads methodically to the discovery and analysis of things or objects in the world.
• Seeks to understand how people construct the meaning of things.
• Investigate experiences as those who experience them live them and the meaning these people give them.
• The critical truths about reality are based on the experiences of people.
• It consists mainly of in-depth conversations .
• The researcher and informants are often considered secondary participants.

Target

The objective of phenomenology is the direct investigation and description of phenomena as experiences that are made consciously , without having theories about causal explanations or objective reality . In other words, it looks for a way to understand the way in which people construct the meaning of the things that happen to them.

Types

• Realistic Phenomenology : it is Husserl’s early formulation, based on the first edition of his research on logic , which aimed to analyze the intentional structures of mental acts , since, for him, these are directed to both real objects as ideals. This was the preferred version of the University of Munich in the early 20th century, and was led by Johannes Daubert and Adolf Reinach, Alexander Pfänder, Max Scheler, and Román Ingarden.
• Transcendental or constitutive phenomenology : it is Husserl’s later formulation, based on his ideas in 1913, in which he took the intuitive experience of phenomena as his starting point and tries to extract from it the generalized essential characteristics of experiences and essence of what I experience, leaving aside the questions of any relationship with the natural world that surrounds us.
• Existential phenomenology : it is Heidegger’s expanded formulation, as expounded in his “Being and Time” of 1927, which says that the observer cannot be separated from the world and, therefore, is a combination of the phenomenological method with the importance of understanding man in his existential world .

Representatives of phenomenology

The main representatives of phenomenology are:

• Edmund Husserl : He was a German philosopher who founded the phenomenological school.
• Martin Heidegger : German philosopher who said that phenomenology should bring to light what was hidden in experiences.
• Jan Patocka : Czech philosopher who greatly influenced phenomenology, follower of Husserl and defender of Heidegger.

Importance

It is important because it studies the realities whose nature and structure can only be grasped from the internal part of the individual who experiences them. It ends with those final and definitive truths and gives way to possibilities and speculation , to investigation, doubt, approach and rethinking of a certain phenomenon . It is the way to enable the scientific method in all branches of knowledge and truth .

Examples

Instead of doing studies on the programs that are used to integrate minority groups, phenomenology will study what the type of experience or experience that a person has within a place is like.

In the field of psychology , phenomenology does not study the cause or disease, but rather seeks a way to help overcome the suffering of people by investigating the personal background of the situation.