What is Phenomenology? The Philosophy of Husserl and Heidegger

The Phenomenology philosophy is a school of philosophy that originated in the 20th century. With Edmund Husserl Phenomenology was born but it was the phenomenology Heidegger innovated that reoriented the course of European philosophy. The Phenomenology of Husserl and Heidegger (whose respective philosophies are called Transcendental Phenomenology and Existential Phenomenology) does not seek after external objective truth—as philosophy and science generally do—phenomenology strives for subjective truth—in Husserl’s case it is an attempt to make a subjective science of consciousness. Husserl developed a method for attaining this truth which involves reducing away the noise so as to isolate the essence of a phenomenon. Heidegger parted from Husserl saying that phenomenology could not be a science with knowledge because the meaning of a phenomenon is context-dependent. Heidegger moves from Husserl’s epistemological project to an ontological program. There is a growing scholarship looking at the connection
Back to Top