Moran is more expansive but has more pages, not sure if that means anything though?

Hey there!

I’ve been reading bits of Husserl over the years (I’ve read The Crisis, parts of Ideas I and reading Dan Zahavi’s book now), but I find myself still struggling with what phenomenology actually ‘does’. I can grasp the theoretical implications and ideas, but lack insight into what ‘doing phenomenology’ actually looks like, seeing phenomenology happening. So, my question is whether any of you could point me towards some of Husserl’s works where I can find examples of him of him doing phenomenology in practice? (What I am looking for is probably in his notebooks as well?)

Thank you in advance for any recommendations!

I’m working on a paper on Merleau-Ponty that requires all quotes to be in the original French. I don’t know French and have no French copies of his work. I figured this sub was my best bet— can anyone help me locate some of my quotes in the original French texts? I need help with The Visible and the Invisible, Nature, and The Possibility of Philosophy. Thanks so much!!!!

In my understanding of Husserl is that he is saying that all conscious acts start and end with the subjective experience of the experience of those conscious moments of time. Narratives which define our collective understanding of objective categories such as physics, mathematics, politics, engineering, etc, are tools with which an individual can understand something which they didn't understand before.

However, what they understand is not an object in the objective world. It is an eidetic object in the reader's mind which they identify with a world of objects, this one known to some specific degree of feeling of familiarity or not, which lowers or raises the parameter of probability of being right about this thing.

Nowhere in that experience of the world, and the experience of learning about the world through narrative, can the reader actually experience the objective world as such. The objective world, the world that is "real" and "right" and "one thing for all people" is always only an idea that a subjective individual has.

This is the difference between considering the world as an objective world, specifically, we see ourselves as an object "in" a physical space and time world, and the importance of ordering the world around me, is to see myself as an object, in a world of objects. This is what Husserl refers to as the "Natural Attitude".

The subjective experience of consciousness is enacted by acts of consciousness (Noesis, or Noetic Acts) which are intended to (directed) towards the mental images of objects, which Husserl referred to as Eidetic (known through inner sight is how I think of that) objects. These are the Noema. The object as meant, as intended, in several senses of intention.

In a subjective world, we are not first an object, but first an agent, in a field of agency. We have a local model of the world, but we are corporeal, so when we act, we are acting on a corporeal world. When I see what I have done, I understand what it means to me, what it is I have changed in the world, and remember it subjectively, understand it subjectively.

And it is critical for the subjective to understand it is ontologically defined at only one point, through the corporeal unquestionableness of Here and Now. The corporeal is necessarily distinct but required for the Subjective to have ontological actuality, and the Objective can only be ontological through the imagination of the Subjective, Here and Now (The ontological moment).

I'm reading the Poetics of Space and really enjoying it. I'm wondering if anyone with fluency in French might illuminate the distinction between 'image' and 'metaphor' - I'm not totally seeing it and wondering if there is something lost in translation for me.

I am basically functioning in a bubble, I have no academic background or clique to discuss ideas. I have no functional idea of what's appropriate in an academic space, yet I am looking to contribute to a broader conversation (for my own benefit of engaging ideas). I have a "paper" that exploded into seven, collapsed into three, and oscillates so. It is inter-disciplinary which *seems* like a complication for engagement and there is still much work to do. What I am wondering is, when is it really appropriate to share a preprint on a platform like philarchive?

I continually find more to improve; I am continually plagued with imposter syndrome (nothing new for me but impedes none-the-less); I am engaged in formalization while also trying to conquer producing productive phenomological accounts that don't read like personal diary entries.

This is my current abstract, for example (creatively extending Levinas with a universal exteriority):

This essay proposes a graded phenomenological framework in which the lived contradiction disclosed by outward-directed embodied gestures in the lived A-series “now” is the phenomenological access point to infinite exteriority. This contradiction does not merely point toward the infinite; it is the site at which infinite exteriority irrupts into the finite, analogous to the way Descartes’s finite thinker possesses an idea of the infinite that cannot originate from itself. Grade 1 primary traces are direct gestures that disclose irreducible dialetheia (true contradictions in Priest’s sense) satisfying three criteria: structural disclosure, logical irreducibility, and overlapping gestural demand. These differ from Grade 0 raw disclosure and Grade 2+ anticipatory simplifications, with the contradiction of existence at the center. The framework isolates violence of the Third as a distinct non-totalizable disclosure (mode b) forced structurally by plural exteriority within otherwise pure Grade 1 gestures. Ethics as first philosophy consists in perpetual return to Grade 1 gestural sufficiency.

In looking at a Husserl reading agenda, the Ideas I pops up a lot, but not Ideas II, and I was wondering why. Is it not relevant to the directions his later works take, or is it lower quality, or repetitive?

It’s just curious to me, since other two volume works do often get recommended as a pair (Schopenhauer’s WaWaR, or Sartre’s “Critique of Dialectical Reason”).

I get we are already immersed in the world we percieve from our subjectivity since day 1, not being able to ever fully leave our context, experience (perception and practice) being the way we have of relating to the world, with it already being theoretical, as experience is of something percieved, being consciousness of something, but why is truth aetheleia considering language, for knoweledge emerges from the typification of experience, but why is truth aetheleia?????????????

It seems to me interesting that when I roam the great web, that I find myself having profound experiences in relation to the various media interfaces I encounter.

Take Reddit. It has a different culture and influence on my thinking and interacting than, say, Instagram.

Or.. I've noticed that:

• A digital place can feel warm and inviting, or cold and repellent.
• That the infinite scroll mechanism seems to influence our perception of time (as Gurwinder wrote in How Social Media Shortens Your Life)
• And feeling a new sense of "community" through disembodied parasocial relationships..

The list goes on.

Bottomline:

The nature of identity formation, education and communication is influenced. It seems that the future of phenomenology must consider the internet, or digital media, as a pretty important component.

Would be interesting to understand this subject more.

Let me know if you have any thoughts on this.

Roughly speaking, Husserl believes that we do not merely experience facts (contingent facts, such as that dog or that triangle or tha table), but that within these facts we grasp and intuit essences, that is, the typical, general modes of the appearance of phenomena.

The empiricists’ typical counter-argument is that we merely abstract these essences from the comparison of similar things and facts. We do not grasp ‘triangularity’ or ‘dog-ness’ as "Platonic forms", as universal general modes of existence, but rather ‘derive’ them from a series of empirical experiences of dogs and triangle; through repetion and comparison.

Now. A phenomenologist might concede this point. It is true that triangularity or dog-ness or table-ness are not essences (of course you can make a stronger case for triangles than for dogs, but still, let's concede), but rather, all things considered, arbitrary and often quite imprecise abstractions resulting from comparisons between similar facts... but point out that at the very least SIMILARITY is, in itself, an essence. Something fundamental and universal that does not arise from abstracting repeated experiences, but precedes them and presupposes them.

You can perceive similar things, and make very similar experiences... and recognize that what you are perceiving, and what the "lived situation" you are in, are connotated by this feature of... similarity (or sameness, identity). To "experience" that... you can't infer or deduce that from previous similar experiences. The notion of similarity must be either "pre-existent in your cognition" (kantian a priori) or to some degree "permeating reality" as a universal, as an "essence" that comes with, is brought and it is offered to your intution with any contingent facts

How would/could an empiricist respond to this?

I was working, loading trucks with heavy equipment. Autopilot task, mind figured out how to get it done, then kinda waited for the doing to be done. I got a call, guy said production line one changing products. I felt my imagination make a blob, a shadow maybe? A fuzzy thing in my awareness it tried to point in that direction. Breaking down, which line is which, what do I remember from this morning, where does that product get staged, all sorts of stuff adding on. Then a feeling maybe, "fuck that, remember that, use it when you need it." The blob disappeared and the chatter went quiet again. A sense of ease, then feeling of a "WTF was that?" Is there a name for that sort of thing?

Sorry if this is the wrong place to ask this sort of stuff.

The cover photograph is credited to David Hawkins, but not identified. What is it and why was it chosen as the cover illustration? A device with a knob on a plane--an unidentifiable object scarcely describable in words...

As I'm writing a thesis on everydayness, reaching to Husserl, Heidegger and Merleau-Ponty, but also trying to work out my very own approach, which quite phenomenologically would be neither empiricist nor rationalist. I got to a point where I'm thinking of phenomenology as a self-effacing path of research. By which I mean that a proper phenomenological move would be to move beyond phenomenology as a methodology, and move beyond phenomenology phenomenologically.

I don't mean only the historical fact that Husserl could never finish his own project of the ultimate grounding of sciences, or that Heidegger left the label phenomenology behind (his last seminar ever was on Husserl's Logical Investigations by the way, quite fitting after all), or the fact that Merleau-Ponty phenomenologically played with a lot of other stuff, in his typically modest approach to thinking. A rather larger claim lurks somewhere there for me, that in the end entire phenomenological project goes back to the beginning at some point of the road and effaces itself eventually (but not in a pejorative way of course).

Has anybody written about it? It is a claim which seems quite natural to me, but I haven't really read anyone going in that direction directly. Cheers for any pointers.

I am exploring film phenomonology and I am interested in films which either represent the human-animal relation or the human-animal perception, such Au Balthazar, EO, Gunda, Leviathan, etc. I understand there are anthropocentric limitations, but I think it would be even more anthropocentric to sidestep the animal question all together.

Hello to everyone

I know my questions have already been asked several times but I swear I can't grasp the nuances of phenomenology.

Can phenomenology say something "scientific" about the phenomena indipendently from the subjective experience?

Does phenomenology say something about the process of subjective interpretation?

Is phenomenology more focused on studying the things as they are, or more about studying the way the consciousness perceive them?

Thanks in advance!

PS: I'm not an expert in philosophy, actually I don't have anything to do with it in my real life, so apologize for my lack of foundational knowledge

He estado leyendo "Los cuatro viajes del intelecto" y Sadra (un filósofo chiíta iraní del siglo XVII) parece anticipar gran parte de la fenomenología con su conocimiento de la teoría de la presencia y su tesis de que la existencia precede a la esencia. ¿Alguna opinión al respecto? ¿Se le puede considerar un fenomenólogo avant-la-lettre?

(https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/mulla-sadra/)

Hello, I'm interested in this branch of philosophy. I'm finishing Bachelard's Poetics of Space and it's been my introduction to phenomenology.

I would love to know where to go now. I'm interested in vision, imagination, poetry and narrative fiction.

Hola, desde hace mucho tiempo he tenido esta pregunta que me ha hecho pensar demasiado:

En el sentido de la fenomenología acerca de la conciencia interna del tiempo, como se presentaría el fenómeno del tiempo subjetivo cuando se recuerda un acontecimiento pero como si estuviera pasando ahora mismo (ej: recordar el cumpleaños de un familiar pero en vez de usar verbos en pasado, se usan en presente). Gracias. 

The following formulation is from a Japanese theoretical and experimental researcher, Satoru Watanabe.

This is incredible.
And it’s beautiful.

The mechanism by which
“loneliness (a wall)”
transforms into
“love (a bond)”
is expressed using Einstein’s equation.

Δm × c² + ΔE(coh) = 0

This is not a metaphor.
Not a personal impression.
Not an interpretation.

It is presented as a formal structure.

Using the very form humanity has relied on
to speak about truth,
something at the deepest level of human experience
is being articulated.

If this is true,
the premises of the world change.

I’ve been wrestling with a subtle but fundamental question about the nature of subjective experience, especially aesthetic and emotional experiences, and I want to lay it out fully. Subjective experience seems to arise from a relationship between a subject and an object. For example, someone reading a physical book might enjoy the tactile feel of pages, the smell, and the ritual of turning them, while someone reading the same text on a Kindle might enjoy portability, adjustable lighting, or ease of annotation. Both experiences are real and pleasurable, but they clearly differ between subjects. This suggests that differences in experience depend on a combination of macro-level variables — object properties, context, implicit and explicit appraisals, viewpoint — and micro-level variables, like tiny neural states, timing of activations, and fine-grained brain structure.

I’m particularly interested in the texture of experience itself — the fine-grained phenomenal “what-it’s-like” — not just preferences or pleasure. Macro variables can, in principle, be replicated: two people can be made to see the same object in the same context and appraise it similarly. Micro variables, however, are practically impossible to replicate perfectly, which immediately makes experiences unique. This leads to a subtle question: if two subjects could somehow share all macro variables, would the texture of their experience be identical, or is it inherently unique to each first-person perspective? Is uniqueness of experience absolute, an irreducible first-person property, or merely practical, arising from inevitable differences in micro-level variables?

Consider examples. Twins share genetics, upbringing, and many traits, yet each is a distinct person. If both twins develop feelings for the same girl, and the relationship variables — features, context, attention, appraisal — were identical, would their feelings for her be the same in quality? Even if they adopt the same “lens” — paying attention to the same features, using the same reasoning, and aligning context — could the resulting experiences be identical, or would their first-person perspectives ensure uniqueness? Could the experiences differ strongly, not just subtly?

We can also look at a single person over time. A boy may like a girl because of a specific configuration of macro and micro variables — features, appraisals, emotions, neurotransmitter states. Later, even if all macro variables appear the same, he might stop liking her. Does this happen because new variables override the old ones, or can the same variables stop eliciting the same response due to internal dynamics? This shows that experience is dynamic and evolving, not a static function of macro or micro variables.

Finally, physics frames the possibilities. Classical deterministic physics would suggest that perfectly matched macro and micro states would produce identical experiences, making uniqueness practical rather than absolute. Quantum mechanics, however, introduces fundamental indeterminacy: if quantum fluctuations meaningfully influence neural activity, even identical brains could experience divergent qualia, providing a physical basis for absolute uniqueness. Even without quantum effects, chaotic and sensitive neural dynamics ensure practical uniqueness.

So my questions are: how much of the qualitative essence of experience comes from macro variables like appraisals, attention, and context, versus micro-level neural dynamics? Can two people ever truly share the same “what-it’s-like,” or is first-person experience inherently irreducible? Could experiences diverge strongly even when subjects share macro lenses, identical micro states, and dynamic contexts? And if uniqueness is absolute, is it grounded purely in micro variables, or is there a non-deterministic component that makes the essence of subjective experience irreducibly unique?

Good evening (I assume that whoever is reading this is in the same time zone as me). I am a university student and I recently started a course in theory, working on Husserl's idea of phenomenology.

In section b ('second step of phenomenological consideration'), prior to the lectures, Husserl, at one point, talks about 'ideating abstraction'. Right. My professor, commenting on these passages, spoke of this abstraction as a production of consciousness. He emphasised that Husserl is not a Platonist, so the idea is not grasped by the object perceived by immanent knowledge. Therefore, according to this interpretation, consciousness would be a 'producer' and, in this sense, transcend immanent knowledge ('producing' the idea).

I have an objection (I am very verbose, but I will try to be concise): in his Logical Investigations, Husserl endeavours to refute, or criticise, psychologism. Psychologism (source: Dan Zahavi, Husserl's Phenomenology (Italian edition), pp. 11-13) is the position that believes that no scientific theory or logical law can be constructed because it is 'corroborated' (I mean 'tainted') by psychic phenomena. It would therefore be impossible to construct a universal apodictic logical law a priori, according to psychologism. It is easy to refute this: it would suffice to have an individual (subjectivity) state a proposition that has universal and timeless validity: 'Donald Trump is, to date, the president of the United States of America'. This proposition is valid today, tomorrow and even, if we postulate that Australopithecus could see into the future, if uttered by an Australopithecus many years ago. Fine.

Now, my criticism is this: if consciousness is ideating, in the sense that it constructs ideas on the basis of perception, does Husserl not risk taking a step backwards with respect to what he had established in his Logical Investigations? Does he not risk falling into subjective ideation (production)? Does generalising and universalising from multiple particular observations not cause us to fall into psychologism, mental induction and psychic invention? Husserl tells us, instead, that consciousness CONSTITUTES (is this not correct? Obviously, not in the sense that it creates ex nihilo. But that it 'gives form' to what is perceived). Not in the sense that it invents, but that it makes an ideality visible. The ideal givenness; the eidetic essence, which was already there, is now HERE (in this sense, ideating abstraction transcends the material given and constitutes; it grasps the essence, the previously invisible idea. It therefore reveals appearance, which does not have an immanent ideality in itself to the extent that it is perceived by consciousness. But it is what transcends it, yet can be grasped phenomenologically.

Could I raise this objection with my professor on Monday at the beginning of the lesson?