June 5 at 3:32pm
I've leaned Continental for a while now. But still I find it hard to understand the aims of phenomenology (alternatively:what phenomenology is). Could someone ELI5 phenomenology for me?
June 5 at 3:56pm · Edited
One thing to bear in mind is that phenomenology has been understood and used in different ways by various thinkers. The most basic way to start understanding it is to think of it as a way of trying to let things tell us what they are, or to 'observe' phenomena and try to describe them in their various appearances and relationships. This sounds scientific, but it's actually pre-scientific because it (supposedly) allows us to understand what it is that makes science (and other kinds of thinking) possible. It is based on affirmation rather than doubt, in that it is rarely sceptical about the existence of the things it describes; it is more interested in the ways in which things happen, or the kinds of being that they have.