Hostname: page-component-8448b6f56d-mp689 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-04-18T05:02:52.854Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

PHENOMENOLOGICAL EXISTENTIALISM

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 February 2010

Get access

Extract

As good a place to begin as any is the meaning of the term ‘phenomenology’ itself. It is indeed a reasoned inquiry which discovers the inherent essences of appearances. But what is an appearance? The answer to this question leads to one of the major themes of phenomenology: an appearance is anything of which one is conscious. Anything at all which appears to consciousness is a legitimate area of philosophical investigation. Moreover, an appearance is a manifestation of the essence of that of which it is the appearance. Surprising as it may sound, other philosophic points of view have refused to make this move. One can characterize phenomenological philosophy as centering on the following basic themes: a return to the traditional tasks of philosophy, the search for a philosophy without presuppositions, the intentionality of consciousness, and the rejection of the subject–object dichotomy.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © The Royal Institute of Philosophy 2010

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Stewart, David & Mickunas, Algis, Exploring Phenomenology, pp. 35 & 63–71.Google Scholar
Barrett, William, Irrational Man: A Study in Existential Philosophy, pp. 190192.Google Scholar
Natanson, Maurice, ‘Phenomenology and the Social Sciences,’ In Natanson, M. (Ed.), Phenomenology and the Social Sciences, Volume 1, pp. 45; 6–8; 54–57.Google Scholar
Bidney, David, ‘Phenomenological Method and the Anthropological Science of the Cultural Life-World,’ In Natanson, M. (Ed.), Phenomenology and the Social Sciences, Volume 1, p. 57.Google Scholar
Dillon, M. C., Merleau-Ponty's Ontology, p. 71.Google Scholar
Luijpen, William A. & Koren, Henry J., A First Introduction to Existential Phenomenology, pp. 1821.Google Scholar
Audi, Robert (Ed.), The Cambridge Dictionary of Philosophy, p. 323324.Google Scholar
Woolfolk, Robert L., Sass, Louis A., & Messer, Stanley B., ‘Introduction to Hermeneutics,’ In Messer, Sass & Woolfolk, (Eds.), Hermeneutics and Psychological Theory, pp. 1218.Google Scholar
Grassi, Ernesto, Heidegger and Renaissance Humanism, pp. 3135 & 90–91.Google Scholar
Roy, M., “Derrida's Philosophical Deconstruction”, Transcerdent Philosophy Journal, Vol. 9, Dec. 2008, pp. 237246. (http://www.iranianstudies.org/Journal/v9n1/Trans-Phil-Vol9-Dec-2008.pdf).Google Scholar