Phenomenology

:This article treats the philosophical movement of phenomenology. For other meanings see Phenomenology (Disambiguation).

Husserl and the origin of Phenomenology

Husserl derived many important concepts that are central to phenomenology from the works and lectures of his teachers, the philosophers and psychologists Franz Brentano and Carl Stumpf.

Related Topics:
Franz Brentano - Carl Stumpf

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An important element of phenomenology that Husserl took over from Brentano was intentionality, the notion that the main characteristic of consciousness is that it is always intentional. While often summarised as "aboutness" or the relationship between mental acts and the external world, Brentano defined it as the main characteristic of mental phenomena. Every mental phenomenon, every psychological act has a content, is directed at an object (the intentional object). Every belief, desire etc. has an object that it is about: the believed, the wanted. The property of being intentional, of having an intentional object, was the key feature to distinguish psychical phenomena (minds) and physical phenomena (objects), because physical phenomena lack intentionality altogether.

Related Topics:
Intentionality - Consciousness

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Some years after the publication of his main work, the Logische Untersuchungen (Logical Investigations; first edition, 1900-1901), Husserl made some key discoveries that led him to the distinction between the act of consciousness (noesis) and the phenomena at which it is directed (the noemata).

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• "noetic" refers to the act of consciousness (believing, willing, hating and loving ...)
• "noematic" refers to the object (noema) which appears in the noetic acts (respectively the believed, wanted, hated and loved ...).

What we observe is not the object as it is in itself, but how and inasmuch it is given in the intentional acts. Knowledge of essences would only be possible by "bracketing" all assumptions about the existence of an external world and the inessential (subjective) aspects of how the object is concretely given to us. This procedure Husserl called epoché.

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Husserl in a later period concentrated more on the ideal, essential structures of consciousness. As he wanted to exclude any hypothesis on the existence of external objects, he introduced the method of phenomenological reduction to eliminate them. What was left over was the pure transcendental ego, as opposed to the concrete empirical ego. Now (transcendental) phenomenology is the study of the essential structures that are left in pure consciousness: this amounts in practice to the study of the noemata and the relations among them.

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