Introduction to Phenomenology

1. Introduction to Phenomenology ERSH 7400 Kathy Roulston The University of Georgia

2. Disciplinary roots • Philosophy Phenomenology: describes “how one orients to lived experience.” From a phenomenological point of view, to do research is always to “question the way we experience the world, to want to know the world in which we live as human beings.” (Van Manen, 1990, p.5)

3. Hermeneutics • describes “how one interprets the texts of life” • The theory and practice of interpretation • Hermeneutic phenomenology tries to be attentive to both terms: it is a descriptive (phenomenological) methodology because it wants to be attentive to how things appear, it wants to let things speak for themselves: it is an interpretive (hermeneutic) methodology because it claims that there are no such things as uninterpreted phenomena (p.180)

4. Historical background • Began in the philosophical reflections of Edmund Husserl in Germany in the mid-1890s • Realistic phenomenology (Spielberg) • Constitutive phenomenology (Schutz) • Existential phenomenology (Heidegger, de Beauvoir, Merleau Ponty, Sartre) • Hermeneutical phenomenology (Gadamer)

5. Focus • Lived experience • Describes what is given to us in immediate experience without being obstructed by preconceptions and theoretical notions • Understanding the structure of experience through a new perspective (“new eyes”) • What is the nature of meaning of something?

6. Human science • Dilthey distinguishes between “human science” and “natural science” • For Dilthey, the subject matter of human science is characterized by “Geist” (mind, thoughts, consciousness, values, feelings, emotions, actions, purposes) which find their objectifications in languages, beliefs, arts, and institutions