Phenomenology and Philosophy Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2000 words

Phenomenology and Philosophy - Essay Example We may use our senses to make up our minds and pass judgment on certain issues but not to arrive at knowledge as such. Accordingly, and as stated, it is quite safe to say that the primary difficulty that a student faces when reading through Husserl's Phenomenology is that it forwards a different process of knowledge acquisition and the formulation of ideas than we have been conditioned to operate by. Despite the fact that Husserl's philosophy is quite different from the way in which we have been normally trained to think, leading to difficulty in fully understanding him, once we open our minds to his argument and his thoughts and consider them carefully, we are hit by the dawning realization that not only is Husserl's phenomenology directly relevant to the contemporary world but, in a way expressed ideas and conceptualizations of knowledge that exist in most cultures and in many schools of philosophy. This is especially evident in his discussion on "transcendental idealism" (40) and "phenomenological reduction" (41). As defined by G. As defined by G. Boland in "Phenomenology and Philosophy," phenomenology refers to a "20th-century philosophical movement dedicated to describing the structures of experiences as they present themselves to consciousness, without recourse to theory, deduction, or assumption from other disciplines such as the natural sciences." In other words, phenomenology is a school of philosophy which states that knowledge may be, and is, obtained from the senses and by experiences, and not only by the methods of science. Although such a statement on cognitive knowledge appears so obviously true that it requires no philosophical theories to argue on its behalf, the fact is that the growing reliance on scientific knowledge as compared to the decreasing dependence on, and trust in, the types of knowledge sources argued by this philosophy determine its importance and necessity. Not only that, but phenomenology, like other schools of philosophy, does not only state theories as such bu t precisely defines the intent of those theories and the scope which they cover. It is within the context of attempting to define precisely what phenomenology embraces and determine the types of knowledge that it can be cognitively produced, that Husserl undertook his philosophical inquiry and theorization. Husserl, a German philosopher, is considered one of the founders of the phenomenology school of philosophy and, in fact was the first to use the term, "phenomenology" (Bogland). As stated by Bogland, the main aim of Husserl's philosophical writings and studies was to the examination of "the structures of consciousness that enable consciousness to refer to objects outside itself." Doing so determined a complete focus on the human mind itself and the process of idea formation that occur within its limits. This process in which the mind itself, and nothing beyond it is studied, is referred to as "transcendental reduction" (Husserl, 12) and as "phenomenological reduction" (41). One of the interesting aspects of the human mind that Husserl called attention to is the fact that the mind is not only limited in thought and consideration to objects and things that actually do exist, but has