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Phenomenology emerged at the start of the 20th century as an invitation: ‘back to the things themselves!’. For Edmund Husserl, widely considered to be the founder of phenomenology, doing this involved painstakingly precise descriptions of experience: attention to what is actually ‘given’ in experience, rather than attempts to categorise reality as a whole. In the hands of Martin Heidegger, Husserl’s pupil, Phenomenology emphasised concern for the fundamental conditions of human being-in-the-world. Phenomenology, as a philosophical methodology, has been applied to a very wide range of objects: logic, sensory perception, moods, intersubjectivity, ethical responsibility, even religious or mystical experience, and has gone through any number of ‘turns’ and ‘returns’.
Participants on this course will be introduced to Phenomenology as a school of thought and as a particular methodological approach to philosophical analysis, starting with Husserl’s ‘bracketing’ process through to contemporary voices in Phenomenology. We will take a tour through some of Phenomenology’s key concerns, namely certain fundamental conditions which shape the lived experience of human subjectivity: embodiment, embeddedness in the world, temporality and intersubjectivity, looking at these themes from different angles. We’ll also attend to the ‘Theological Turn’ in Phenomenology, considering different approaches to locating the transcendent within the immanence of our experience. Beyond Husserl and Heidegger, our philosophical companions will include Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Edith Stein, Emmanuel Levinas and Jean-Luc Marion, among others.
In this session, we will start to look at what Phenomenology is – as a tradition and as a method for doing philosophical reflection and analysis. We’ll look at a few of the key figures in the phenomenological tradition and critically engage some key ideas that unite them as a philosophical approach, particularly the ‘bracketing’ exercise that originates with Edmund Husserl.'
Reading: Dan Zahavi, ‘Phenomenology’ in The Routledge Companion to Twentieth Century Philosophy, Ch15
In this session we will look in more detail at what it means that, in Martin Heidegger’s language, human beings are, structurally, being-in-the-world. We’ll consider how this connects to Maurice Merleau Ponty’s claim that human beings are‘ subject-objects’. We’ll think about this from a few different angles, including the idea that subjectivity is ‘4E’ – embodied, embedded, enactive and extended.
Reading: Dermot Moran, ‘Lived Body, Intersubjectivity and Intercorporeality: The Body in Phenomenology’ in Body/Self/Other: The Phenomenology of Social Encounters, Ch10
In this session we will look at Husserl’s classic analysis of ‘internal time consciousness’ as a necessary element of the structure of lived experience. We will also consider some of the other temporal structures that phenomenologists have emphasised as shaping human life, including that of ‘thrownness’. Finally, we will look at the idea that consciousness is shaped by various rhythmic temporalities, and how these can be modified or disrupted in experiences of, for example, depression or anxiety.
Reading: Françoise Dastur, ‘Temporality and Existence’ in Questions of Phenomenology: Language, Alterity, Temporality, Ch9
In this session we will unpack Edith Stein’s account of Einfühlung, usually translated ‘empathy’, and how this cuts across traditional philosophical renderings of the so-called ‘problem of other minds.’ We’ll look at some of the different forms of intersubjectivity, and the ‘intercorporeality’ that underpins them, that different phenomenologists have discussed in the literature. These include direct encounter, joint attention and the assumption of a shared world. Of the former we’ll touch on Emmanuel Levinas’ assertion that moral responsibility is given in our direct perception of others.
Reading: Matthew Ratcliffe ‘The Structure of Interpersonal Experience’ in Phenomenology of Embodied Subjectivity, Ch12
In our final class we will look at the ‘Theological Turn’ in Phenomenology, as well as some its critics. We’ll look at Levinas and Jean-Luc Marion as exemplars of this ‘turn’, then consider some of the possible worries at the notion of bringing together phenomenology and theology.
Reading: Fiona Ellis, ‘The Quest for God: Rethinking Desire’, Royal Institute of Philosophy Supplement, 85.
Sarah Pawlett Jackson is Tutor in Religion, Philosophy and Ethics at the University of London, and a Visiting Lecturer at the University of Roehampton. She has lectured and tutored at a number of Higher Education Institutions, including Heythrop College, Oxford University Department for Continuing Education, and St Mellitus College. Her primary research interests in intersubjectivity, social cognition, phenomenology, ethics and philosophy of religion.
