The Phenomenology Reader

Rating:
Summary: Consciousness-raising...
Review: It is somewhat ironic that Phenomenology, as a term or as a philosophical school, has yet to really reach the popular consciousness, given that phenomenology is in many respects a study of consciousness and how reality impacts consciousness. Phenomenology in the most formal sense of being a school of philosophy is largely traced to Franz Brentano (1838-1917) and Edmund Husserl (1859-1938). Husserl's great work at the turn of the last century, Logical Investigations, set the stage for the development of phenomenology as a way of seeing, a descriptive study with roots in empiricism going back to inspiration from Aristotelian ideas. This is a key word - description. Rather than being a set of constructs and principles typical of previous philosophical systems, Phenomenology attempts to describe reality fully as reality is presented to our senses.

Phenomenology is different from scientific study in that it does not pretend toward a universal truth or experience unmediated through our subjectivity (a principle modern science seems to be incorporating more and more). Editor Dermot Moran has a solid introduction to the subject, including distinctions of different kinds of study, some of the personalities involved in the development of phenomenology, and the current state of the discipline.

The list of names of those involved in phenomenology as a discipline or as a method reads like a who's who of twentieth century intellectuals - Derrida, Ricoeur, Arendt, Heidegger, Sartre, Levinas, and others. Each of these, in addition to Husserl and Brentano, have articles and extracts included in this volume, along with some other thinkers as well. The collection here shows the breadth of the influence of phenomenology on the intellectual development of the past hundred years, as well as take the reader through a sequenced development of phenomenology using representative primary texts, provided here in an accessible, English-language edition.

This book can be used as a collection of readings in connection with Dermot Moran's text, Introduction to Phenomenology (also by the Routledge Press, 2000). It can also be used as a stand-alone survey of phenomenology with success, particularly if the reader takes advantage of the lists of further readings at the end of each section.

Phenomenology is a fascinating subject, and the method of learning the subject from the original sources, the primary texts of the foundational thinkers, is second to none.