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.
ABSTRACT: Phenomenology and logical positivism both subscribed to an empirical-verifiability criterion of mental or linguistic meaning. The acceptance of this criterion confronted them with the same problem: how to understand the Other as a subject with his own experience, if the existence and nature of the Other's experiences cannot be verified. Husserl tackled this problem in the Cartesian Meditations, but he could not reconcile the verifiability criterion with understanding the Other's feelings and sensations. Carnap's solution was to embrace behaviorism and eliminate the idea of private sensations, but behaviorism has well-known difficulties. Heidegger broke this impasse by suggesting that each person's being included being-with, an innate capacity for understanding the Other. To be human is to be "hard-wired" to make sense of the Other without having to verify the Other's private sensations. I suggest that being-with emerged from an evolutionary imperative for conspecific animals to recognize each other and to coordinate their activities. Wittgenstein also rejected the verifiability criterion. He theorized that the meaning of a term is its usage and that terms about private sensations were meaningful because they have functions in our language-games. For example, "I'm in pain," like a cry of pain, functions to get the attention of others and motivate others to help. Wittgenstein's theory shows how Dasein's being-with includes "primitive" adaptive behavior such as cries, smiles, and threatening or playful gesture. As Dasein is acculturated, these behaviors are partially superseded by functionally equivalent linguistic expressions.
Accepting that we cannot establish the "objectivity" of our experiences' content, Kant nevertheless attempts to resist a slide into relativism by insisting that they are mediated by rationally delineated categories which supposedly insure the transcendental or universal nature of their form, thereby providing an absolute standard against which we might check the veridicality of our descriptions of, and communications concerning, them. However as a priori preconditions of the possibility of experience such categories are obviously inexperienceable in themselves, and consequently must also fall to the phenomenological reduction. (3) Nevertheless, a moments reflection will confirm that our experiences do indeed exhibit structure or form, and that we are able, even from within, or wholly upon the basis of, the (phenomenologically reduced) realm of, our experiences per se, to distinguish between the flux of constantly changing and interrupted subjective appearances, and the relatively unchanging and continuously existing objects constituted therein. Husserl confirms:
Following in the path of Kant and Fichte, Hegel has become one of the most influential philosophers in history. His philosophy has influenced important people, such as Karl Marx, and influential schools of thought, such as the Frankfurt School. This influence rides heavily on the chapter, Master and Slave in his book Phenomenology of Spirit. This chapter examines the relationship between two self-consciousnesses, and the process of self-creating. The relationship between the two self-consciousnesses and the eventual path to ‘acknowledgment’ or recognition of the self is outlined in the first line of the chapter: “Self-consciousness exists in itself and for itself, in that, and by the fact that it exists for another self-consciousness; that
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 term paper, I have tried to tackle the metaphysical issues of consciousness by first defining consciousness and doing a thorough study about the term. Then I proceeded to the metaphysical aspects of consciousness, examining and understanding them.
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.
American Philosophical Quarterly 21, no. 3 (1984): 227-36.
Wittgenstein, Ludwig; G. E. M. Anscombe, P.M.S. Hacker and Joachim Schulte (eds. and trans.). Philosophical Investigations. 4th edition, Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, 2009. Print.
In the Transcendental aesthetics, Kant defines the objective validity of Space and Time as concepts a priori with the help from of Geometry, showing that if we believe in the validity of Geometry, we have to believe that Space and Time are concepts a priori. In the Pure Concepts of Understanding, Kant claims that our intuitions are dependent on sensibility; everything we sense accumulates into our brain and our understanding of the information we sensed relies on organizing that data so that we can recognize the object. Thus, he asserts that understanding is not a faculty of intuition but sensibility. Furthermore, the act of organizing the data into one representation is defined as function and these functions serve as a bridge between the object and its concepts because concepts are not directly related to an object but just some representations of it. This, when function and concepts are put together, Kant concludes is defined as judgment, knowledge of the fact that there is ...
Heidegger makes a point of making sure there is an understanding of phenomenology. Studying the method, or a way of doing philosophy, seems important because it gives a descriptive technique of how things look through every individual’s own eyes and mind. Heidegger states that “what we are seeking is Being. And we have formally defined ‘phenomenon’ in the phenomenological sense as that which shows itself as Being and as a structure of Being” (91). Furthermore, “Worldhood is an ontological concept,” and stands for the structure of one of the “constitutive items of Being-in-the-world. But we know Being-in-the-world as a way in which Dasein’s character is defined existenti...
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
Consciousness begins as what Hegel calls "a natural consciousness" (56). That which is known to this consciousness "will prove to be knowledge only in conception, not in reality" (56). This kind of consciousness assumes knowledge of reality that is often refuted. Hegel says, "since natural consciousness does forthwith think it really knows, it views its own experiential course in a negative light, taking the very realization of its conception to be instead its own loss" (57), demonstrating the frailty of this method of thought.
"Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy." Beauvoir, Simone de []. N.p., n.d. Web. 28 Apr. 2014. .
The so-called "hermeneutic turn" is unquestionably one of the major events that took place in the contemporary philosophical scene, and its impact goes beyond the boundaries of any academic discipline, embracing the whole field of the human sciences. For this reason, the word "hermeneutics" refers today not only to a philosophical movement, but ...
Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich, Arnold V. Miller, and J. N. Findlay. Phenomenology of Spirit. Oxford [England: Clarendon, 1977. Print.