![]() Thus, the famous Husserlian motto: “back to the things themselves.” In Irrational Man: A Study in Existential Philosophy, William Barrett writes: “For Husserl, phenomenology was a discipline that attempts to describe what is given to us in experience without obscuring preconceptions or hypothetical speculations.” ![]() But instead of making a philosophical speculation of the nature of reality, Husserl argued for the need for philosophy to turn to a pure description of the “what is,” of the thing as it appears to us. It is in view of this impasse that Husserl offered his phenomenology as a way out. As is well known, the realists argue for the independence of the “object” of knowledge, while the idealists argue for the primacy of the “subject,” that is, the knower. The context here is that realism and idealism had reached an impasse toward the end of the nineteenth century regarding that status of the knower and the thing known. It is important to note that Husserl did not invent phenomenology out of a vacuum. ![]() However, phenomenology is formally defined as the investigation of the essence or the nature of material things or things that appear to us. A book is there existing materially, and the mind is conscious of it. A “book” is a concrete example of a phenomenon. Phenomenology comes from the two Greek words phainomenon, which means “appearance,” and logos, which means “reason” or “study.” Hence, etymologically speaking, phenomenology means “study of phenomenon.” The term phenomenon means anything that exists of which the mind is conscious.
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