As the fall semester comes to an end, I’ve once again been a bit too busy to write about philosophy here on this blog. I’ll pick up next week with the fourth installment of my Philosopher Fridays sub-series “Expecting Ambiguity“: Anselm’s Ontological Argument.
Until then, I invite you to check out Philosophy and Fiction’s treatment on Husserl’s Phenomenology. Writing about Husserl in a blog-friendly way is no easy feat (I – have – tried), and the author’s handling of the Eidos is particularly impressive. Husserl is tricky, but the post worth taking the time to read all the way through to the author’s final explanation:
“So what we have here is actually a purer kind of empiricism, a Trans-empiricism which does away with philosophical preconceptions, including the traditional rationalist/empiricist divide. Since experience is now cleared of natural biases, philosophical biases, theorizing and abstractions, we can engage in a different sort of enquiry—seeing and describing.”
If I may rephrase, Husserl is attempting to look objectively at the subjective without reducing its narrative quality to mere rationalism while simultaneously looking subjectively at the objective without reducing its universality to our own limited narrative.
Ideas Pertaining to a Pure Phenomenology and to a Phenomenological Philosophy (I)
Try saying that five times rapidly.
Reducing such a complex work to a simple blog post is likely to prove a disaster, but I’m gonna try it anyway, keeping the jargon to a minimum. Well, at least explaining the jargon.
Edmund Husserl’s goal was to do away with the problem of dualism and secure a rigorous foundation for philosophy. In order to see Husserl clearly, it’s important to go back to Descartes, with whom many of you are familiar. He’s the philosopher who brought the problem of dualism into sharp focus.
Cogito ergo sum—I think; therefore, I am. This grain of truth has great force, but isn’t sufficient to get Descartes “out of his head” to establish the existence of external things, a condition or philosophical position known as solipsism. How do I know this computer in front…
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2 thoughts on “Explanation of Husserl’s Phenomenology”
rung2diotimasladder
Thanks for the reblog! What an honor!
Michelle Joelle
Your welcome! The honor is mine.