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Existential phenomenology encompasses a wide range of thinkers who take up the view that philosophy must begin from experience like phenomenology, but argues for the temporality of personal existence as the framework for analysis of the human condition. [1]
In Being and Time , Martin Heidegger reframes Edmund Husserl's phenomenological project into what he terms fundamental ontology. This is based on an observation and analysis of Dasein ("being-there"), human being, investigating the fundamental structure of the Lebenswelt (lifeworld, Husserl's term) underlying all so-called regional ontologies of the special sciences. In Heidegger's philosophy, people are thrown into the world in a given situation, but they are also a project towards the future, possibility, freedom, wait, hope, anguish. [2] In contrast with the philosopher Kierkegaard, Heidegger wanted to explore the problem of Dasein existentially (existenzial), rather than existentielly (existenziell) because Heidegger argued that Kierkegaard had already described the latter in "penetrating fashion".[ citation needed ] Most existentialist phenomenologists were concerned with how people are constituted by their experiences and yet how they are also free in some respect to modify both themselves and the greater world in which they live.
Building on Heidegger's language that people are "thrown into the world", Jean-Paul Sartre says that "man is a being whose existence precedes his essence". [3] Both point out that any individual's identity is a matter of the social, historical, political, and economic situation into which he or she is born. This frees phenomenology from needing to find a universal ground to all experience, since it will always be partial and influenced by the philosopher's own situation. Maurice Merleau-Ponty argued that the lesson of Husserl's reduction is that "there is no complete reduction" because even phenomenologists cannot resist how they have been shaped by their history, culture, society, and language. [4] In her work The Second Sex , Simone de Beauvoir explored how greatly norms of gender shape the very sense of self that women have, in distinction from men. Hannah Arendt discusses how totalitarian regimes in the 20th century presented entirely new regimes of terror that shaped how people understand political life in her work The Human Condition . [5] Frantz Fanon explored the legacy of racism and colonialism on the psyches' of black men. [6] [7] However, they all in different ways also stressed the freedom which humans have to alter their experiences through rebellion, political action, writing, thinking, and being. If people are constituted by the human social world, then it is only humans that created it and can create a new world if they take up this task.
Besides Heidegger, other existential phenomenologists were Max Scheler, Wilhelmus Luijpen, Hannah Arendt, Karl Jaspers, Emmanuel Levinas, Gabriel Marcel, Jean-Paul Sartre, Simone de Beauvoir, Edith Stein, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Enzo Paci and Samuel Todes. Many of these phenomenologists' conceptions of the self and self-consciousness are built on criticisms of or response to Edmund Husserl's initial views. [8]
Sartre synthesized Husserl and Heidegger's ideas. His modifications include his replacement of Husserl's concept, epoche, with Heidegger's structure of being-in-the -world. [9] His existential phenomenology, which is articulated in his works such as Being and Nothingness (1943), is based on the distinction between being-in-itself and being-for-itself. [10] Beauvoir placed her discourse on existential phenomenology within her intertwining of literature and philosophy as a way to reflect concrete experience. In her works on women's lived experiences, she attempted to address the problems between the sexes as well as the reconciliation of related strands of continental philosophical traditions, which include the philosophy of Heidegger, the phenomenological methods of Husserl and Sartre, and George Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel's philosophy of history. [11]
Arendt's existential phenomenology reflected a distrust of mass society and her preference for the preservation of social groups citing the persecution of Jews as an example of victimization by societies' atomizing processes. [11]
Existential phenomenology also extends to other disciplines. For example, Leo Steinberg's essay "The Philosophical Brothel" describes Picasso's Les Demoiselles d'Avignon in a perspective that is existential-phenomenological. It has also impacted architectural theory, especially in the phenomenological and Heideggerian approaches to space, place, dwelling, technology, etc. [12] In literary theory and criticism, Robert Magliola's Phenomenology and Literature: An Introduction (Purdue UP, 1977; rpt. 1978) was the first book [13] to explain to Anglophonic academics – systematically and comprehensively – the range of literary theories and practices identified with "phenomenological literary criticism" on the Continent. The practices of the Francophone Geneva School (-of literary criticism), those of the Swiss-German theorist and critic Emil Staiger, and those of several other theorists/critics, are explained in detail. The influences of the phenomenological theorist Roman Ingarden, the early-phase (existentialist) Martin Heidegger, and of Mikel Dufrenne receive a treatment over 100 pages long all-told. The polemics involving phenomenology and its opponents are addressed in separate chapters, entitled respectively "Phenomenology Confronts Parisian Structuralism," and "The Problem of Validity in E. D. Hirsch and Husserl. The 1978 rpt. of Magliola's book features on its back cover very strong endorsements from Robert Scholes, Eugene Kaelin, Monroe Beardsley and Ralph Freedman.
The field of psychology includes an approach known as “existential-phenomenological psychology.”
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Edmund Gustav Albrecht Husserl was an Austrian-German philosopher and mathematician who established the school of phenomenology.
Existentialism is a form of philosophical inquiry that explores the issue of human existence. Existentialist philosophers explore questions related to the meaning, purpose, and value of human existence. Common concepts in existentialist thought include existential crisis, dread, and anxiety in the face of an absurd world, as well as authenticity, courage, and virtue.
Maurice Jean Jacques Merleau-Ponty was a French phenomenological philosopher, strongly influenced by Edmund Husserl and Martin Heidegger. The constitution of meaning in human experience was his main interest and he wrote on perception, art, politics, religion, biology, psychology, psychoanalysis, language, nature, and history. He was the lead editor of Les Temps modernes, the leftist magazine he established with Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir in 1945.
Martin Heidegger was a German philosopher who is best known for contributions to phenomenology, hermeneutics, and existentialism. He is often considered to be among the most important and influential philosophers of the 20th century.
Phenomenology is the philosophical study of objectivity and reality as subjectively lived and experienced.
Being and Time is the 1927 magnum opus of German philosopher Martin Heidegger and a key document of existentialism. Being and Time had a notable impact on subsequent philosophy, literary theory and many other fields. Though controversial, its stature in intellectual history has been compared with works by Kant and Hegel. The book attempts to revive ontology through an analysis of Dasein, or "being-in-the-world." It is also noted for an array of neologisms and complex language, as well as an extended treatment of "authenticity" as a means to grasp and confront the unique and finite possibilities of the individual.
Feminism is a collection of movements aimed at defining, establishing, and defending equal political, economic, and social rights for women. Existentialism is a philosophical and cultural movement which holds that the starting point of philosophical thinking must be the individual and the experiences of the individual, that moral thinking and scientific thinking together are not sufficient for understanding all of human existence, and, therefore, that a further set of categories, governed by the norm of authenticity, is necessary to understand human existence. This philosophy analyzes relationships between the individual and things, or other human beings, and how they limit or condition choice.
Existential psychotherapy is a form of psychotherapy based on the model of human nature and experience developed by the existential tradition of European philosophy. It focuses on concepts that are universally applicable to human existence including death, freedom, responsibility, and the meaning of life. Instead of regarding human experiences such as anxiety, alienation and depression as implying the presence of mental illness, existential psychotherapy sees these experiences as natural stages in a normal process of human development and maturation. In facilitating this process of development and maturation existential psychotherapy involves a philosophical exploration of an individual's experiences while stressing the individual's freedom and responsibility to facilitate a higher degree of meaning and well-being in his or her life.
Architectural phenomenology is the discursive and realist attempt to understand and embody the philosophical insights of phenomenology within the discipline of architecture. The phenomenology of architecture is the philosophical study of architecture employing the methods of phenomenology.
Phenomenology of Perception is a 1945 book about perception by the French philosopher Maurice Merleau-Ponty, in which the author expounds his thesis of "the primacy of perception". The work established Merleau-Ponty as the pre-eminent philosopher of the body, and is considered a major statement of French existentialism.
Phenomenology or phenomenological psychology, a sub-discipline of psychology, is the scientific study of subjective experiences. It is an approach to psychological subject matter that attempts to explain experiences from the point of view of the subject via the analysis of their written or spoken words. The approach has its roots in the phenomenological philosophical work of Edmund Husserl.
Robert L. Bernasconi is Edwin Erle Sparks Professor of Philosophy at Pennsylvania State University. He is known as a reader of Martin Heidegger and Emmanuel Levinas, and for his work on the concept of race. He has also written on the history of philosophy.
20th-century French philosophy is a strand of contemporary philosophy generally associated with post-World War II French thinkers, although it is directly influenced by previous philosophical movements.
This is a list of articles in continental philosophy.
The World Phenomenology Institute is an academic organization founded in 1976 to promote scholarship in the area of phenomenology. The organisation was founded by Anna-Teresa Tymieniecka.
The Society for Phenomenology and Existential Philosophy (SPEP) is a philosophical society whose initial purpose was to promote the study of phenomenology and existentialism but has since expanded to a wide array of contemporary philosophical pursuits, including critical theory, feminist philosophy, poststructuralism, critical race theory, and increasingly non-Eurocentric philosophies. SPEP was created in 1962 by American philosophers who were interested in Continental philosophy and were dissatisfied with the analytic dominance of the American Philosophical Association. It has since emerged as the second most important philosophical society in the United States. Alan D. Schrift and Shannon Sullivan are the current Executive Co-Directors of SPEP.
Phenomenological description is a method of phenomenology that attempts to depict the structure of first person lived experience, rather than theoretically explain it. This method was first conceived of by Edmund Husserl. It was developed through the latter work of Martin Heidegger, Jean-Paul Sartre, Emmanuel Levinas and Maurice Merleau-Ponty — and others. It has also been developed with recent strands of modern psychology and cognitive science.
Yvanka B. Raynova is a Bulgarian philosopher, feminist, editor, translator, and publisher. She is full professor of contemporary philosophy at the Institute of Philosophy and Sociology at the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences and director of the Institute for Axiological Research in Vienna. She elaborated a post-personalist hermeneutic phenomenology based on some gnostic ideas. Her works include studies on continental philosophy, phenomenology, hermeneutics, axiology, feminist philosophy, intercultural philosophy, religious studies, and translation studies.
At the Existentialist Café: Freedom, Being, and Apricot Cocktails is a 2016 book written by Sarah Bakewell that covers the philosophy and history of the 20th century movement existentialism. The book provides an account of the modern day existentialists who came into their own before and during the second world war. The book discusses the ideas of the phenomenologist Edmund Husserl, and how his teaching influenced the rise of existentialism through the likes of Martin Heidegger, Jean Paul Sartre, Simone De Beauvoir, who are the main protagonists of the book. The title refers to an incident in which Sartre's close friend and fellow philosopher Raymond Aron startled him when they were in a cafe, by pointing to the glass in front of him and stating, "You can make a philosophy out of this cocktail."