Hi Shannon,
Yeh, what is phenomenology ? Phenomenology is a way of life. Phenomenology
is an attitude. Phenomenology is a moment of
amazement. Phenomenology is the art of holistic thinking and
feeling with your 'bare hands'. Phenomenology is the impartial
descriptive style of a pre-theoretically, detached consciousness.
Phenomenology is a ground-experience of realizing your being
part of, absorbed and immersed in the totality of your life-world
[Lebenswelt]. Phenomenology is an attunement to openness and
a careful movement, a free encounter, but an inevitable return to
the 'thing itself' [Zurueck zu den Sachen selbst]. Phenomenology
is a looking for the (hidden) essences, and a listening to the inner
voices, of the phenomena [gr. Phainesthai = showing off] in the
way they *must* show themselves as themselves.
Phenomenology is not an objective method to analyse empirical
data or to explain causal mechanisms, neither is it a subjective
evocation of a person's inner experiences and intuitions. What
phenomenology tries to accomplish is a philosophical synthesis
between Empirical Realism and Transcendantal Idealism. Where
Idealism is reducing the exteriour to my interiour and Realism is
reducing my interiour to the exteriour, Phenomenology tries to
emphasize the fundamental (pre-personal and pre-theoretical) and
original co-dependance [gleichurspruenglichkeit; cf SuZ] of the
interiour (subject) and the exteriour (object), the co-origination
of man and world.
But okay, you asked for an example of phenomenology. Well of
course there are millions of examples available, as many as the
manyfold phenomena of/in our life-world. But let's take the case
of DU (depleted uranium) refered to in the articles Henry and i
recently send to the list. A *Phenomenology of DU* would not
focus on the amounts of radioactivity measured, nor would it
objectively calculate the exact rates of birth defects and cancer,
and neither would it categorize all the physical abnormalities that
occured because of it. No, a phenomenology of DU, would try
-first of all- to describe the concrete life-world of the victims and
the perpetrators: f.e. the feelings of power and hopelessness in the
actions of soldiers when they pull the trigger; the coping and the
emotions of the mother that has given birth to a deformed baby;
the way politicians are lying in faked Parliaments; the way media
remain silent to hide the inescapable consequences; the way we're
played ignorant to the destruction of our earth. Here's your task
Shannon, write us ......
Yeh, what is phenomenology ? We can not do without it, as Rene
observed well: "There can be no world then."
yours,
Jan
btw. a small and excellent introduction to phenomenology is
Merleau-Ponty's preface to his "Phenomenology of Perception".
--- from list heidegger@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx ---
Yeh, what is phenomenology ? Phenomenology is a way of life. Phenomenology
is an attitude. Phenomenology is a moment of
amazement. Phenomenology is the art of holistic thinking and
feeling with your 'bare hands'. Phenomenology is the impartial
descriptive style of a pre-theoretically, detached consciousness.
Phenomenology is a ground-experience of realizing your being
part of, absorbed and immersed in the totality of your life-world
[Lebenswelt]. Phenomenology is an attunement to openness and
a careful movement, a free encounter, but an inevitable return to
the 'thing itself' [Zurueck zu den Sachen selbst]. Phenomenology
is a looking for the (hidden) essences, and a listening to the inner
voices, of the phenomena [gr. Phainesthai = showing off] in the
way they *must* show themselves as themselves.
Phenomenology is not an objective method to analyse empirical
data or to explain causal mechanisms, neither is it a subjective
evocation of a person's inner experiences and intuitions. What
phenomenology tries to accomplish is a philosophical synthesis
between Empirical Realism and Transcendantal Idealism. Where
Idealism is reducing the exteriour to my interiour and Realism is
reducing my interiour to the exteriour, Phenomenology tries to
emphasize the fundamental (pre-personal and pre-theoretical) and
original co-dependance [gleichurspruenglichkeit; cf SuZ] of the
interiour (subject) and the exteriour (object), the co-origination
of man and world.
But okay, you asked for an example of phenomenology. Well of
course there are millions of examples available, as many as the
manyfold phenomena of/in our life-world. But let's take the case
of DU (depleted uranium) refered to in the articles Henry and i
recently send to the list. A *Phenomenology of DU* would not
focus on the amounts of radioactivity measured, nor would it
objectively calculate the exact rates of birth defects and cancer,
and neither would it categorize all the physical abnormalities that
occured because of it. No, a phenomenology of DU, would try
-first of all- to describe the concrete life-world of the victims and
the perpetrators: f.e. the feelings of power and hopelessness in the
actions of soldiers when they pull the trigger; the coping and the
emotions of the mother that has given birth to a deformed baby;
the way politicians are lying in faked Parliaments; the way media
remain silent to hide the inescapable consequences; the way we're
played ignorant to the destruction of our earth. Here's your task
Shannon, write us ......
Yeh, what is phenomenology ? We can not do without it, as Rene
observed well: "There can be no world then."
yours,
Jan
btw. a small and excellent introduction to phenomenology is
Merleau-Ponty's preface to his "Phenomenology of Perception".
--- from list heidegger@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx ---