Understanding Phenomenology

Abstract

This chapter outlines an introductory understanding examining classical Husserlian phenomenology as well as illustrating some of its limitations, various critiques and further developments. For Merleau-Ponty phenomenology in general is discernible as a specific style and movement of thought, as expressed in the quotation above. Accordingly, it is characterized by a flexible and vivid way of inquiry, as it takes different directions and tries out new ways of reasoning continuously. Thus, it approaches the experienced phenomena in question and their various and inexhaustible dimensions of meaning and ambiguities from different perspectives through showing gestures towards a living understanding (Hass, 2008: 5–6, 7). In this manner, phenomenology can be seen as an attempt to understand what experience is and means, and is, in its classical form, a formalized account of conscious experience and its implications.

Phenomenology allows itself to be practice and recognized as a manner or as a style, or that it exists as a movement, prior to having reached a full philosophical consciousness.

— Merleau-Ponty, 2012: 8