Edmund Husserl the phantom of phenomenology

Dive in Edmund Husserl's Mind: Understanding Phenomenology and its Profound Impact on Contemporary Thought

Edmund Husserl (1859-1938) was the German philosopher recognized as the founder of phenomenology - a philosophical tradition influencing diverse areas from existentialism to psychology. Husserl, a Moravian native who was raised in Proßnitz, began his academic career by majoring in mathematics at the universities of Leipzig and Berlin before switching to philosophy. Husserl studied under psychologist-philosopher Franz Brentano after getting his PhD in 1883; Brentano's work on intentionality had a significant influence on Husserl's thinking.

Starting in 1887, Husserl began his academic career by giving philosophy lectures in Halle. He wrote his important Logical Investigations (1900–1901) during this time, which criticised empiricism and contributed to his renown. Husserl spent the following 16 years as a full professor of philosophy at Göttingen University after being appointed to the position in 1901. His two-volume Ideas Pertaining to a Pure Phenomenology (1913), which methodically outlined his phenomenological approach, was published during this incredibly prolific period.

The fundamental components of consciousness and subjective experience are examined by phenomenology. Husserl suggested that rather than emphasising scientific data or abstract theories, philosophy should revert back to investigating lived experience. He advocated the "phenomenological reduction" approach, which suspends assumptions about the outside world in favour of concentrating on how experiences manifest in the conscious mind. Intentionality, lived experience (Lebenswelt), epoché, and intersubjectivity are key ideas in Husserl's phenomenology. He sought to provide science and knowledge a radical foundation based on the present-tense of conscious experience.

Husserl developed a deep science of consciousness that encompasses imagination, temporality, intersubjectivity, and frontiers of meaning despite accusations of solipsism. His phenomenology is still relevant in an era that is becoming more and more removed from the fundamental reality of existence because it asserts the fundamental character of direct subjective experience. Husserl provided philosophy with a useful approach and terminology for appreciating the marvel of existence.

Delving into the Core Principles of Phenomenology

Phenomenology is a first-person investigative technique that focuses on the indescribably subjective aspect of experience, despite its complexity. Husserl started a tradition that still influences how we think about the mind, perception, and lived meanings. Its approaches, in my opinion, are useful for understanding the vast richness of conscious life. Here are a few key concepts that were developed by Husserl.

Intentionality, or the notion that consciousness is always focused on something, is one key premise. There is no such thing as awareness without it being cognisant of anything, whether actual, imagined, or remembered; all mental acts are directed at some object or content. Husserl maintained that this deliberate pairing of subject and object in conscious experience is where meaning comes from.

ex.Imagine yourself working at your desk while seated. Your attention is drawn to and concentrated on the computer monitor in front of you. You scroll down the pages of a document as you consciously read it. You come across a particular sentence that confounds you. Your mind immediately directs its attention to a recollection from the day before, when a coworker had been going over this subject in detail on the page. You recall his words, his expressions, and the feelings you experienced during that exchange.

After reflecting for a moment, the memory passes, and your consciousness returns to its intentional focus on the screen. Your deliberate search into previous experience gave the necessary context, allowing you to understand the perplexing sentence now. Without looking away, you start typing an email while keeping the document's instructions fresh in your mind.

This tale serves to illustrate some fundamental phenomenological ideas. Intentionally focused attention was given to both physical (the screen, the keyboard) and mental (the memory, the meaning of the sentence) items. When necessary to clarify a confusing situation in the present, the memory of the previous talk was summoned instantaneously. Your mind effortlessly switched between several deliberate focus modes—reading, recalling, comprehending, and typing—assemblying meaning over time.

So in short, the concept of intentionality recognizes the directedness of all consciousness towards objects, contents, experiences etc. It is active awareness as opposed to passive awareness of something. This intention-filled nature of the mind was foundational for Husserl's phenomenological approach.

Epoché, or bracketing, is a key phenomenological technique. Imagine you are taking a walk through a park on a sunny day. As a phenomenologist, you would make an effort to suspend or bracket any interpretive views or preconceptions about the outside world. Instead, you would concentrate on outlining the specific conscious details of your walk.

The sun's warmth touches your skin, while a light wind caresses your arm. As you walk along the meandering road, the vibrant green grass sprigs beneath your feet. You can hear lovely bird singing coming from the woods above. As you go closer to a cherry tree in bloom, a light floral aroma follows you. One of its pink petals gently lands in your outstretched palm while the others flutter below.

You avoid speculating about the park's metaphysical existence, the how sunlight works, or the biology of bird singing in this description. You keep your attention solely on the vivid sensory experiences that are still fresh in your mind: the visual beauty, the rustling sounds, and the tactile sensations against your hand. Epoché, also known as bracketing, allows you to stop judgement and mental categorisation in order to focus solely on the landscape as it is currently being experienced.

The idea of the "lifeworld" is connected. This is speaking of the subjective realm of personal meanings and experiences. Imagine you are travelling to work in the morning on the subway. You hold on to a pole while standing inside a moving train car and consider the experience through a phenomenological lens.

Around turns, you can feel the train's velocity and the shoving of other passengers. Both the clacking of the rails below and a close discussion are audible. People can be seen reading, talking on their phones, or looking aimlessly ahead as you scan the car. You can smell coffee and the air is stale. A video makes someone laugh out loud. Your relief is palpable as you step onto the platform at your stop where sunlight is streaming down from above.

The primary goal of this first-person vignette is to convey some of the fundamental textures of the train trip as it is consciously experienced. It focuses on banal sensory sensations that typically recede into the background. Phenomenology encourages re-discovering the subtleties hidden inside our familiar and abstracted everyday realities. Riding the subway is typically mediated through the transportation, engineering, and transit systems conceptual language. However, residing phenomenologically in the real lifeworld reveals novel intricacies of a typical circumstance.

Husserl demonstrated how phenomenology could reveal fresh facets of everyday experience through examples like these. His method encourages us to pay more attention to details of the shared human lifeworld that often go unnoticed. Here, I'll quickly talk about four of Husserl's most important works that helped build phenomenology as a school of philosophy that still has an impact on how people think today:

Edmund Husserl’s Major Works

Edmund Husserl produced several influential philosophical works over the course of his career that expanded and refined his phenomenological approach. These significant books, however somewhat difficult and technical, sought to establish a methodical foundation for knowing by dissecting the fundamental mental architectures. Here, I shall succinctly review four of Husserl's key works that contributed to the development of phenomenology as a school of philosophy influencing contemporary thought:

(1900–1901) Logical Investigations

Husserl's reputation at the time was solidified by this two-volume work for its thorough analysis of logic and rejection of empiricism. He argued against relativism by stating that logical laws are independent of contingent human psychology. This paper established an objective idealism, which served as the conceptual groundwork for Husserl's later phenomenology.

Thoughts on a Pure Phenomenology (1913)

In this enormous two-volume work, Husserl's thoughts were fully realised. Important phenomenological ideas like the epoché, transcendental reduction, intentionality, and the lifeworld were carefully laid forth by him. Husserl used phenomenological techniques to elucidate the absolute essences hidden underneath conscious experience in order to establish philosophy in a rigors science of consciousness. This incredibly thorough work solidified phenomenology as Husserl's go-to philosophical strategy.

(1931) Cartesian Meditations

In the late 1920s, this little but significant book rekindled interest in Husserl's ideas. It investigated phenomenological explanations of the lifeworld, intentionality, intersubjectivity, ego cogito ergo sum, and intentionality. Husserl reworked Descartes' meditations in order to combat the solipsistic accusations that were following him more and more closely by defending transcendental phenomenology.

European Science's Crisis (1936)

In his final major work, Husserl connected the spiritual crisis of Western reason to the emergence of relativism and the absence of a solid scientific foundation in early 20th-century Europe. He argued that only phenomenology, which recovers the experiencing lifeworld hidden by contemporary objectivism, could offer true scientific knowledge. As Europe headed towards war, this passionate poem addressed mounting existential worries.

Husserl's corpus, however extensive, offers a wealth of resources for anybody wishing to comprehend the development of his transcendental phenomenology. The way that subjectivity, meaning, and the interaction between consciousness and the outside world are treated in modern philosophy has been profoundly influenced by these books.

Closing notes

Trying to read Husserl's writings at first was like trying to grasp phantom. The language can be complicated, technical, and occasionally unintelligible. Parsing Ideas or Cartesian Meditations sections was like deciphering secret messages. However, deep understandings of the underlying structures of lived experience were hidden beneath the intellectual complexity. Core concepts like the nature of internal time consciousness, the role of the body in perception, and the entwining of self and reality would immediately come to mind. Husserl's ideas felt revelatory when they made sense and that’s when it felt like it was all worth it.

I think Husserl's advice to get back "to the things themselves" is profoundly relevant in today's fast-paced digital environment. We run the risk of losing touch with reality and taking the marvels of conscious experience for granted. My slowing down is encouraged by phenomenology, which cuts through abstractions to plain acts of living. These little pleasures—noticing the warmth of the sun, the flavour of the morning coffee, or the crunch of leaves underfoot—get lost. Husserl provides us with the means to identify and express the poetry in daily life.

Phenomenology has greatly influenced my worldview and sensibilities on a personal level. I find myself with a higher sense of awareness the various changes in my own consciousness, such as memories coming to mind, my focus shifting then settling, and the way my thinking changes into daydreaming. When I'm outside, I can hear children shouting down the street, trees swaying, and the faint sound of an aeroplane, among other subjective textures of perception. Husserl's lifeworld is all around and inside us.

Applying Phenomenology to Philosophical Journaling

Here are some tips for journaling from a phenomenological perspective:

• Describe experiences just as they show up in your consciousness, without imposing external frameworks or interpretation. Stick to the "phenomena" as directly lived.

• Use all your senses to capture the full experiential texture - sights, sounds, smells, tastes, textures against your skin. The body is a pathway to lifeworld.

• Be concrete and detailed about the situation being lived through. Phenomena are situated in a particular time, place, context.

• Focus on the quality and meaning of the experience itself, not just external actions. How does it feel to move through an environment? What moods and emotions arise?

• Pay attention to shifts in experience - how one perception, thought, or feeling transitions to another within the stream of consciousness.

• Notice the horizons that surround experience - how each impression implies broader wholes. We see surfaces, but sense deeper backgrounds.

• Observe how attention itself moves, broadens and contracts, becomes absorbed or distracted. The act of experiencing is an experience.

• Allow curiosity into overlooked background phenomena that normally escape notice. Phenomena hide in plain sight.

• Suspend conceptual labeling and classification of experiences. Stick to intuition and description.

• Be profoundly present with yourself and the aliveness of each moment as it unfolds.