Summary of Phenomenology, Hermeneutics and Existentialism

 Phenomenology, Hermeneutics and Existentialism

1          List five important themes in existentialism

Existentialism is the philosophy that makes the existence of an authentically human life possible in a world that is meaningless and absurd. However, what makes this current of inquiry distinct is not its concern with “existence” in general, but rather its claim that thinking about human existence requires new categories not found in the conceptual repertoire of ancient or modern thoughts, that is, humans can be understood neither as substances with fixed properties, nor as subjects interacting with a world of objects.

On the existential view, to understand the human person is not enough to know all the truths that natural science and psychology can tell us. Nor is the dualist who claims that humans are composed of independent substances “mind” and “body” better off in this regard than the physicalist who holds that human existence can be adequately explained in terms of the fundamental physical constituents of the universe. Existentialism however does not deny the validity of the basic categories of physics, biology, psychology, and the other sciences (categories such as matter, causality, force, function, organism, development, motivation, and so on), it claims only that humans cannot be fully understood in terms of these categories. Nor can such an understanding be gained by supplementing our scientific picture with a moral one. Categories of moral theory such as intention, blame, responsibility, character, duty, virtue, and the like do capture important aspects of the human condition, but neither moral thinking (governed by the norms of the good and the right) nor scientific thinking (governed by the norm of truth) suffices to explain human existence.

“Existentialism”, therefore, may be defined as the philosophical theory which holds that a further set of categories, governed by the norm of authenticity, is necessary to grasp human existence. But while it is true that the idea that philosophy cannot be practiced in the disinterested manner of an objective science is indeed central to existentialism, it is equally true that all the themes popularly associated with existentialism—passion, boredom, alienation, absurdity, authenticity, commitment, nothingness, and so on—find their philosophical significance in the context of the search for a new categorical framework, together with its governing norm.

The unifying principles of existentialists themes are the concerns that are interconnected in their works. The major existentialist themes are; Absurdity, Alienation, Rejection of meaning-giving narratives, Anxiety (Angst), Forlornness, Freedom, Situatedness, Responsibility, Authenticity (bad faith), Individuality, Passion or engagement and finally Death.

·         Absurdity

·         Anxiety or Angst

·         Authenticity or Bad fate

·         Alienation

·         Freedom

·         Death

Absurdity: To exist as human is inexplicable, and wholly absurd. Each of us is simply thrown into this time and place, but why now? For no reason, without necessary connection, only contingently, and so our lives are absurd contingent facts unless we make meaning and purpose- Albert Camus. According to existentialists, human existence is described as absurd according to the following senses. First, many existentialists argues that nature as a whole has no designed reason for existing. For, although the natural world can apparently be understood by physical science or metaphysics, it is better thought of as a description rather than an understanding or explanation. Hence, the achievement of the natural sciences empties nature of value and meaning. Thus, a created cosmos, scientifically described cannot answer our questions of value or meaning. The second meaning of absurdity is, my freedom will not only be undetermined by knowledge or reason, but later my freedom will even appear absurd. Absurdity is thus closely related to the theme of “being on its own”, that is, if I choose to follow a law that I have given myself, my choice of law will appear absurd, and likewise will my continuously reaffirmed choice to follow it. Finally, human existence as action is doomed to always destroy itself. A free action, once done, is no longer free; it has become an aspect of the world, a thing. The absurdity of human existence then seems to lie in the fact that in becoming myself (a free existence) I must be what I am not (a thing).  If I do not face up to this absurdity, and choose to be or pretend to be thing-like, I exist in-authentically.

The philosophical relevance is caught in Blaise Pascal’s summary that the consideration of the short duration of life, swallowed up in the eternity before and after, the little space we fill, and even can see, affords us the opportunity to make life worth living by asking the important questions and striving for the meaningfulness of life.

Anxiety or Angst: this is a generalized feeling of uneasiness, fear or dread which is not directed to any specific object. Thus, it is the dread of the nothingness of human existence. A key idea here is that human existence is in some way “on its own”; anxiety (or anguish) is the recognition of this fact. Anxiety here has two important implications. First, most existentialists tend to stress the significance of emotions or feelings, in so far as they were presumed to have a less culturally or intellectually mediated relation to one’s individual and separate existence. Second, anxiety as a general principle emphasizes the importance of psychologically critical moments where basic truths about human nature and existence come crashing down upon us, upsetting our preconceptions and shocking us into a new awareness about life. These “existential moments” of crisis then lead to more generalized feelings of dread, anxiety, or fear. This fear or dread is usually not regarded by existentialists as being necessarily directed at any specific object — it’s just there, a consequence of the meaninglessness of human existence or the emptiness of the universe. However it is conceived, it is treated as a universal condition of human existence, underlying everything about us. Angst is a German word which means simply anxiety or fear, but in existential philosophy it has acquired the more specific sense of having anxiety or fear as a result of the paradoxical implications of human freedom. We face an uncertain future, and we must fill our lives with our own choices. The dual problems of constant choices and the responsibility for those choices can produce angst in us. We are taught to expect certain things about life, and for the most part we are able to go about our lives as if those expectations were valid. At some point, however, the rationalized categories we rely upon will somehow fail us and then we understand that the universe is not the way we assumed. This produces an existential crisis which forces us to re-evaluate everything we believed. There are no easy, universal answers to what is going on in our lives, no magic bullets to solve our problems.

The philosophical relevance of anxiety is its ability to bring to mind the only way things will ever get done, and that we can give meaning or value to things done through our own choices and actions. Thus, we should be willing to make choices and take responsibility for them. This is what makes us uniquely human, standing out from the rest of existence around us.

Authenticity: Authenticity is the Greek notion of 'the good life'. The authentic being is able to recognise and affirm the nature of existence. Not, though, recognise the nature of existence as an intellectual fact, disengaged from life; but rather, the authentic being lives in accordance with this nature. The notion of authenticity is sometimes seen as connected to individualism, a direct contrast of collectivism. Certainly, if authenticity involves 'being on one's own', then there would seem to be some kind of value in celebrating and sustaining one's difference and independence from others. More so, authenticity is the degree to which one is true to one's own personality, spirit, or character, despite external pressures; the conscious self is seen as coming to terms with being in a material world and with encountering external forces, pressures, and influences which are very different from, and other than, itself. A lack of authenticity is considered in existentialism to be bad faith. According to Kierkegaard, authenticity is reliant on an individual finding authentic faith and becoming true to oneself. Kierkegaard conviction lies with the idea that mass-culture creates a loss of individual significance, which he refers to as “levelling.” Kierkegaard views the media as supporting a society that does not form its own opinions but utilizes the opinions constructed by the news. Kierkegaard believes that authentic faith can be achieved by “facing reality, making a choice and then passionately sticking with it. Jean-Paul Sartre’s conception of existentialist philosophy focuses upon the radical freedom that faces every human being as a product of authenticity. He further argued that the inability of an individual to recognize his/her authenticity and freedom introduces certain recourse to a deity and also the denial of self-responsibility which leads to bad faith.

The philosophical relevance of authenticity is that, it is an attempt to avoid the angst which accompanies the realization that our existence has no coherence style except for what we ourselves create. Thus, authenticity is the foundation of originality and uniqueness, while its contrast, collectivistic attitude, is only a by-product of misuse of freedom and choice, a consequence of bad faith that is, inability to accept responsibilities.

Alienation: Apart from my own conscious being, all else is otherness from which I am estranged. We are hemmed and estranged in a world of things which are opaque to us and which we cannot understand. This is the concept that people experience social distancing in a world in which they too occupy. Also, it refers to the estrangement that occurs in the relation between an individual and those to which he or she is relating. This break in the relation occurs in a variety of forms, such as the estrangements between an individual and his or her social community, natural environment; own self or even God. Although the philosophical notion of alienation was not fully developed until the modern period, it has its roots in classical thought. In the Republic, for example, Plato considers the psyche of the human soul as being a tripartite relation between reason, emotion, and the senses. A human being, then, only achieves psychological harmony or happiness through a rightly ordered soul that balances these parts in the appropriate manner. Plato develops this ideal order not only psychologically, but socially and politically. For in the ideal Polis there should be a similar harmony or order where each part is in concord with the whole and so members of each class maintain their proper station.

            Christian theologians suggested that three levels of alienation (individual alienation from one’s own self, social alienation from one another, and environmental alienation from all things) can be addressed by restoring the image of God, lost due to the human fall, at three different levels of relationships: as an individual being who is true to the God within the self, as a social being in relationship to others, and as a natural being who lives in harmony with all creation. In the classical Christian tradition, alienation is developed and understood as the estrangement of the individual soul from God, which initially occurred through original sin and the fall of humanity.

The philosophical relevance of this theme rests on the fact that it affords us the opportunity to create a harmony in our relationship to God, ourselves, to others and to the environment. For as a being in the polis, we are expected to balance our social, political, spiritual and fraternal lives in other to bridge the vacuum of estrangement. It also helps us to become familiar with apt attention to our reasons and desires.

Freedom:  this can usefully be linked to the concept of anguish, because extreme freedom is in part defined by the isolation of ones decisions from any determination by a deity, or by previously existent values or knowledge. This led to an increasing secular society, and the rise of scientific or philosophical movements that questioned traditional accounts of value or the shattering experience of two world wars and the phenomenon of mass genocide. For existentialism freedom entails something like responsibility, for myself and for my actions. Given that my situation is one of being on its own – recognised in anxiety – then both my freedom and my responsibility are absolute. The isolation in freedom means that there is nothing else that acts through me, or that shoulders my responsibility. Likewise, unless human existence is to be understood as arbitrarily changing moment to moment, this freedom and responsibility must stretch across time. Thus, when I exist as an authentically free being, I assume maximum responsibility for my whole life, for a ‘project’ or a ‘commitment’: freedom as autonomy.

The philosophical import of freedom consists in the ability to randomly or arbitrarily bind oneself to a law that is given by the self in recognition of its responsibilities without recourse to external forces.

Death: Nothingness in the form of death, which is my final nothingness, hangs over me like a sword of Damocles at each moment of my life. Death is my total nonexistence. Death is as absurd as birth—it is no ultimate, authentic moment of my life, it is nothing but the wiping out of my existence as conscious being. Death is only another witness to the absurdity of human existence. Death is existentially significant when one perceives one’s existence in the light of being. According to Heidegger, this analysis enables us to have an understanding of our finitude, and this awareness makes authentic existence possible. Heidegger does not give an explanation of death itself but offers a phenomenology of our relationship to death. His philosophy is thoughtful but gloomy. His account of death portrays a no-hope mode of Being and he has often been criticized for this. However, facing one’s death is radically different from being concerned with the death of others. My own death means the end of my possibilities, the total disintegration and the end of my world. The fear of death comes from the fear of extinction as a human. This causes one a great deal of anxiety. Heidegger’s analysis of death is not concerned with how people feel when they are about to die nor with death as a biological event, instead it focuses on the existential significance which this certain ‘yet-to-come’ death has to human life, i.e. to Dasein’s being-in-the-world. For Heidegger, understanding the phenomenon of death involves grasping the Being of Dasein as a whole. If Dasein is understood existentially as a possibility, then it becomes clear that Dasein’s authentic being in its totality is ‘Being-towards-death’. Through facing death, Dasein understands what it means to be. In the everyday mode of being, Dasein interprets the phenomenon of death as an event constantly occurring in the world. It is a ‘case’ that happens to others. Karl Jasper on the other end holds that death is an inevitable condition of man’s existence which signifies the end of man’s ‘being-in-the-world’. Jaspers sees death as the ceasing of existence as an objective fact or as a specific boundary situation, that is, facing one’s own death is a specific boundary situation and it is personal because Existenz convinces itself that Dasein – the basis of its empirical bodily existence is temporal and transient and has to come to an end.

Philosophically, death is relevant because it satisfies the boundary situation which suggests that anything we do as possible in existence has to be ‘in view of death’. In a sense, life becomes a continuous and meaningful process of learning to die.

2          What does the putative novelty of existentialism consist in. as a modern literary and critical theory?

Existentialism is by far one of the most influential philosophical efforts in twentieth century. It has profoundly influenced the intellectual culture of the European man. Its legacy to philosophy is that thought is not necessarily superior to action, that thinking and acting are coordinate perspectives and that philosophy should address the concrete problems of human existence. More importantly, existentialism has shown that the irrational cannot be ignored in philosophy. One of the main innovations of existentialism in contemporary thought is the rejection of all-inclusive systems. All-inclusive system refers to man’s tendency towards totalization. Organized religions such as Christianity and any system of thought that arrogates a rational grasp of the totality of experiences to itself such as Platonism and Hegelianism are eloquent examples of all-inclusive systems. In his orchestrated blast upon Christendom, Kierkegaard argues that organized Christianity, by its system of dogmas and liturgy, has made it impossible for the individual human being to become a genuine Christian. For Kierkegaard, to become a genuine Christian one has to accept the absurd – that God came became a historical individual (i.e. Christ) lived among men and died in humiliation.

Another way we can grasp the novelty of existentialism is to contrast it with some of the basic tenets of traditional philosophy. The central point of difference between traditional philosophy and existentialism is concerns the issue of “essence” and “existence”. Whereas the Philosophers of the older tradition are concerned with essence, existentialists are principally interested in existence. These Philosophers of the older tradition have tried to determine the essence or substance of things with a view to distinguishing the “real” from the “unreal” so that human knowledge could be founded on a sound basis. To say that things have essences is to say that there is some substratum underlying the appearance of things.

Existentialists however reject the view that things have hidden essences. They denied that the distinction made by the traditional philosophers, between appearance and reality, can legitimately be made. As Sartre puts it “the being of an existent is exactly what it appears – what it is, it is absolutely, for it reveals itself and it is.” In other words, the appearance of a thing is partly the reality of that thing. Traditional philosophers often make a sharp distinction between subject and object, between the knower and what is known. Such distinction, it claimed, enables the inquirer to study entities objectively and impersonally. But existentialists argue that such view of epistemic subject and object and the external world is entirely mistaken. The external world is there, real and needs no proof at all. Similarly, both the object and subject are real and are very closely related. Although objects in the world have independent “existence” (i.e they are whether we think about them or not, it would not make any sense to talk about them without the knowing subject, the being of man). In the same way, for the being of man to be conscious at all, it has to be conscious of something, an object in the world.  Hence, what is known must bear a direct relationship with the knower.

Furthermore, existentialists have criticized traditional philosophers who were preoccupied with fashioning out systems, over-all schemes for guiding social, economic and political actions. Existentialists argued that reality cannot be systematize, or neatly packaged in concepts. Kierkegaard argues that we cannot think existence, because we abrogate existence the moment we think it. He further argues that while a logical system is possible, an existential system is not possible. If we say P implies q, for example, we must assert q whenever we sate P. Hence a logical system is possible. But in issues concerning concrete existence, systematization would fail us.  Hunger, for example is the casue of eating. But hunger cannot put food into your mouth. You could be hungry and yet refuse to eat.

Finally, while traditional philosophers emphasise human reason, existentialists point to human affects. Existential analysis of the being of man shows that man is largely a sentient being with numerous outlets for cathartic expression. Existentialists therefore wonder why man is defined as a rational rather than as a sentient being. if reason plays part in philosophy, feeling also plays a role. A philosophy which emphasizes reason and shuns feeling misses the whole man. The whole man, the integrated person is a man of reason and affects.

3          Identify and discuss the key concepts of Phenomenology, the requirement for becoming a phenomenologist, as well as the main stages in the phenomenological culture.

Phenomenology is the study of human lived conscious experiences in historicality and situatedness. It is the objective study of things usually considered subjective in character such as; consciousness, emotions and perception. The central structure of an experience is its intentionality that is, it being directed toward something, as it is an experience of or about some objects. As an experience, it is directed towards an object by virtue of its content or meaning (which represents the object) together with appropriate enabling conditions. Phenomenology as a discipline is distinct from but related to other key disciplines in philosophy, such as ontology, epistemology, logic, and ethics. Phenomenology has been practiced in various guises for centuries, but it came into its own in the early 20th century in the works of Husserl, Heidegger, Sartre, Merleau-Ponty and others. Phenomenological issues of intentionality, consciousness, qualia, and first-person perspective have been prominent in recent philosophy of mind.

More so, the discipline of phenomenology may also be defined as the study of structures of experience, or consciousness. Literally, phenomenology is the study of “phenomena”: appearances of things, or things as they appear in our experience, or the ways we experience things, thus, the meanings things have in our experience. Phenomenology studies conscious experience as experienced from the subjective or first person point of view.

According to Edmund Hurssel, phenomenology discusses all that we perceive which are all that there is, and whatever we can capture is all that exist, that is, the phenomena. For the phenomena cannot be without consciousness lest, things in the world would remain ambiguous, uncharacterized and undifferentiated. However, Husserl’s phenomenology rests on the fact that there is an intentional operation of consciousness, that is, consciousness is always consciousness of something. For whenever we think or are conscious, we think or are conscious of something (object). Hence, in phenomenology, the object and subject of experience is simultaneously given in consciousness.

The key concepts in phenomenology are;

·    Epoche

·    Intentionality

·    Subjectivity

Epoche: This is called phenomenological epoche by Husserl. One important requirement of phenomenology is that the inquirer should distance himself from the object of his inquiry and to let it manifest itself clearly as it is. “Epoche” is a Greek word for “bracketing”. The method of phenomenology consist in focusing on my part or all of my experience and then observing, analysing, abstracting and describing that experience by removing myself from the immediate and lived engagement in it. I must observe the experience in question from a distance. With epoche, we destroy all interest in order to reconstruct experience or to reconstitute the world. It is the demolition exercise motivated by the genuine desire to reconstruct. The virtue of it is that we gravitate towards the essential structures of experience or that we construct the world as it is when we suspend all judgments as we focus attention on any given fact of experience. With epoche, phenomenology graduates into a science purified of unwarranted prior interpretations, constructions and assumptions, or of lawless description of the pervasive traits of experience, not the concern with regional specialties within experiences, as is the case with laboratory science.

Intentionality: the doctrine of intentionality is an eye-opener to the nature of consciousness. In phenomenology, consciousness is manifested in intentionality. Intentionality signifies the fact that consciousness is directional that it is given in experience as an outward moving vector. Consciousness is like a steam or a stream that flow between subject and object. The object of any consciousness, is something permeated by the fact that consciousness relates itself to objects. This relationship is an essential characteristic to every act of consciousness. Consciousness is always consciousness of something intended by the subject. And one of the hallmarks of my being as a conscious being is that I am free and can spontaneously bring about certain states of affairs. I am, in other words, an agent. But does intentionality bestow freedom and selfhood?

Subjectivity: intentional analysis reveals that the phenomenological subject and its objects are correlative. To be at all is to be the object of some subject’s contemplation and to contemplate at all is to be the subject of some object. Objectivity has meaning only in relation to subjectivity. There is no meaning to the pure subject or isolated ego. A subject is what is because objects are presented to it. To be a subject means to confront an object, just as to be an object means to be perceived by a subject. The essential interrelationship and interdependency of subject and object is another central fact of experience designated by the term intentionality, consciousness is a matrix for events. 

Objects do not have meaning in the abstract. Things are not intelligible a priori. They are only meaningful for us. It is not possible to confront an object which cannot be intended or meant by a subject. There are no objects except intentional objects, and intentional objects are intelligible because and insofar as we understand them. Intelligibility thus is an intentional trait of objects, i.e a trait which they have because they are objects for a subject. Whatever has meaning for or is intelligible to the subject must be connected to the world one way or the other. And whatever is presented to the subject as an object in the world must in some sense be real about the world.

Becoming a phenomenologist

Anyone who wishes to become a phenomenologist should first of all acquaint himself with what authors and competent experts of phenomenology have said about the discipline whether favourable or unfavourable. The prospective phenomenologist should be able to explicate what Husserl and/or his successors have said on the subject-matter of phenomenology. In other words, becoming a phenomenologist calls for a thorough mastery of available literature on the subject-matter and also, a demonstration of competence at critical exposition and/or defence of phenomenology. In becoming a phenomenologist, it is also important that one expounds the concept of the phenomenon which is a preliminary stage in the phenomenological enterprise.

A prospective phenomenologist should imbibe and adopt the doctrine of epoche. The phenomenologist should put in abeyance all previous hang-ups about the object of inquiry which in essence is an implicit performance of the epoche. He should be able to distinguish the task before him from, say that which is before a specialised scientist (i.e the psychologist). He should know that his calling demands a bias free attitude to object of inquiry. He should know that his interest is principally on the “what” of his experience. He simply focuses on immediate experience and analyses it precisely as it occurs to him. The initiate should also understand that what a phenomenologist deals with is not the existence or non-existence of an object but with the object of thought itself.

Main stages in Phenomenological Culture

Husserl distinguishes three main stages in the phenomenological orientation, which corresponds to an initial demolition exercise intended to reveal the basis of a phenomenological problematic.

The first stage

            Phenomenology here is regarded as a critical knowledge, and it proceeds in the fashion of Descartes methodic doubt. It is a form of knowledge that questions all knowledge. How can phenomenology as a critique of cognition proceed with the task of questioning all cognition if it is itself a form of cognition – i.e a cognition of cognition?

This apparent difficulty in the methodological procedure of a critique of cognition is surmountable on two counts: when we ask that doubts be cast on all forms of knowledge, that we should accept nothing as given which was not clearly and distinctly presented to the mind, we do not in any way imply that knowledge in every case is dubious or that knowledge is not possible. What a form of cognition purports to accomplish is actually accomplished given its methodological procedure. On the second count, for a critique of knowledge to concern itself with the possibility of cognition, it must have at the background knowledge the possibility of cognition which is itself beyond all reasonable doubts. Thus the first stage in phenomenological orientation is to uncover the indubitable data of cognition of a special kind about which no reasonable doubt is possible.

The second stage

This is the stage of eidetic reduction. A stage in which we intuit essences or “see” “pure phenomenon” as a truly absolute datum. It is then a stage in which we achieve a higher level of clarity concerning the nature of phenomenological research and its problems, and it therefore calls for a new stratum of considerations.

We proceed here by subjecting the Cartesian cogitio to the discipline of a phenomenological reduction. The psychological phenomenon in psychological apperception and objectification is not a truly absolute datum. The truly absolute datum is the pure phenomenon, that which is reduced. The mentally active ego, the object, man in time, the thing among things etc., are not absolute data; hence man’s mental activity as his activity is no absolute data, hence man’s mental activity is no absolute datum either. We abandon finally the standpoint of psychology, even of descriptive psychology. By considerations of these sorts, Husserl says, we have reduced the muddle-headed question of how cognition can reach beyond itself to its object to the “pure basic question.

Not only have we reduced the preliminary question about the possibility of cognition we have also reduced the concept of “genuine immanence”. Immanence no longer means something real, something in me, in my consciousness. Immanence means something that is given to pure intuition. What we see now is pure phenomenon. And with the pure phenomenon seen, one appears to have arrived at a full-fledged phenomenology.

To resolve this single “seeing”, we have to execute “eidetic abstraction”. Eidetic abstraction through which we arrive at the doctrine of essences or universal is in accord with Descartes’ teachings about “clear and distinct perceptions”. Now like the clear and distinct perceptions of Rene Descartes, the cognitiones are guaranteed by their self-givenness, that is, by their givenness to pure intuition. Thus through eidetic reduction, we grasp the objectivity of essenses.

The third stage

            After locating the pure data (the cognitationes) of phenomenological inquiry and after determining the absolutely self-given and how far it can reach in the eidetic abstraction, it remains for the phenomenological reduction to be accomplished on our own acts. In our cognitive acts, we “see” the absolute data of cognition and their immanent objectivity. What we should do now, according to Husserl, is to lift that which is seen into consciousness of universality. And this is by no means an easy task, considering the fact that the cognitationes which we thought were simple data, upon close scrutiny, turn out to hide all sorts of transcendences.

From the previous stages of phenomenological reduction we know that things are given in pure phenomenon, that is, that things are given in appearance. Husserl says that we cannot talk of a thing in isolation of its appearance, for it is only in virtue of appearance that they give themselves to consciousness. When we talk of a thing it imply that it is that which appears to a mind. This state of affairs reminds us of the correlativity of the phenomenological subjects and its objects. So that it is only in pure givenness that things are constituted in consciousness. But even in the midst of pure givenness or true immanence, a contrast exists between appearance and that which appears. So the phenomena which we thought was pure from the onset are an ambiguous concept. Hence enormous difficulties beset pure analysis and the inspection of essences.

4          What is Phenonemenology and Paul Ricoeur’s analysis of the contrast and relationship between Husserl’s phenomenology and the Heidegger-Gadamer hermeneutic models

Phenomenology is a philosophy of experience. For phenomenology the ultimate source of all meaning and value is the lived experience of human beings. All philosophical systems, scientific theories, or aesthetic judgments have the status of abstractions from the ebb and flow of the lived world. The task of the philosopher, according to phenomenology, is to describe the structures of experience, in particular consciousness, the imagination, relations with other persons, and the situatedness of the human subject in society and history. Phenomenological theories of literature regard works of art as mediators between the consciousness of the author and the reader or as attempts to disclose aspects of the being of humans and their worlds. Edmund Husserl sought to make philosophy ‘a rigorous science’ by returning its attention to the things themselves. He does not mean by this that philosophy should become empirical, as if "facts" could be determined objectively and absolutely. Rather, searching for foundations on which philosophers could ground their knowledge with certainty, Husserl proposes that reflection put out of play all unprovable assumptions and describe what is given in experience. The road to a presuppositionless philosophy, he argues, begins with suspending the "natural attitude" of everyday knowing, which assumes that things are simply there in the external world. Philosophers should "bracket" the object-world and, in a process he calls epoché, or "reduction," focus their attention on what is immanent in consciousness itself, without presupposing anything about its origins or supports.

Later phenomenologists have been skeptical of Husserl’s contention that description can occur without presuppositions, in part because of Husserl’s own analysis of the structure of knowledge. According to Husserl, consciousness is made up of “intentional acts” correlated to “intentional objects.” “The intentionality of consciousness” is its directedness toward objects, which it helps to constitute. Objects are always grasped partially and incompletely, in “aspects” that are filled out and synthesized according to the attitudes, interests, and expectations of the perceiver. Every perception includes a "horizon" of potentialities that the observer assumes, on the basis of past experiences with or beliefs about such entities will be fulfilled by subsequent perceptions.

Interpretation and language were the central themes of late twentieth-century phenomenology. In order to prevent its reflections from becoming solipsistic and ahistorical, Paul Ricoeur calls on phenomenology to take a hermeneutic turn and to direct its attention, not toward individual consciousness, but toward cultural objects, which provide social, historical evidence of existence. Because "the cogito can be recovered only by the detour of a decipherment of the documents of its life," reflection must become interpretation, that is, "the appropriation of our effort to exist and of our desire ‘to be’ by means of the works which testify to this effort and this desire. Hermeneutic phenomenology must also explore the conflict of interpretations because the possibility of "very different, even opposing, methods" of understanding is a fundamental aspect of our experience as interpreting beings. A concern with how new, different modes of understanding and expression emerge leads Ricoeur to pay special attention to creativity in language, especially the semantic innovations of metaphor. Phenomenology denies that structure alone can adequately explain language, because new ways of meaning can only be introduced through events of speech, which may extend or overturn the limits of existing conventions. Phenomenology also denies that language is self-enclosed. As Ricoeur argues, "Texts speak of possible worlds and of possible ways of orientating oneself in those worlds" Language and interpretation are not stable, closed systems for phenomenology, because meaning, like experience, is endlessly open to new developments.

The fundamental theory of Husserlian Idealism holds that all transcendence is doubtful because it proceeds by “shadowing” and by “outlines or profiles”, because the convergence of these “shadowing” is always presumptive. This is because the presumption can be deceived by inner discordances and finally because consciousness can form the hyperbolic hypothesis of the discordance between appearance. However, immanence is not doubtful because it is not given by “profiles or outlines” and therefore, it implies nothing presumptive, but alone permits the coincidence of reflection with what “has just been” experienced.

Husserl’s phenomenology and phenomenological psychology are parallel although they both constitute a “duplicate” which suggest one as transcendental and the other empirical. But reduction and philosophical conversion thus causes their separation and distinctions. Hence, the principle of parallelism holds that the phenomenological is the psychological reduced.

Hermeneutics contra Husserlian Idealism

The ontological condition of finitude: hermeneutics questions Husserlian idealism of expressing its immense and unexceedable discovery of intentionality in terms of a conceptuality which weakens its scope in terms of the object-subject relationship. That is, what makes the object’s unity of meaning and what constitutes subjectivity. Hermeneutics however, holds that the problem of objectivity presupposes a relationship of inclusion which unites the autonomous subject and the adverse object. Ricoeurs calls this relationship “belonging-to”. And so, the ontological pre-eminence of the relationship ‘belonging-to’ suggests that the question of foundation does not coincide with ultimate justification.

For hermeneutics, the idea of ultimate justification belongs to the same sphere of objectifying thoughts as long as the ideal of scientificity is not questioned. Hence, there is a force of regression from the idea of scientificity to the ontological condition of ‘belonging-to’. Belonging-to therefore is apprehended as finitude of knowledge.

The mediated necessity of all comprehension of interpretation: if interpretation were only a historico-hermeneutical concept, it would remain as regional as the “sciences of the spirit”. But the usages of interpretation in the historico-hermeneutical science is only the anchoring point for a universal concept of interpretation which has the same extension as that of comprehension and finally as that of belonging-to. According to Riceour, interpretation is the process by which in the exchange of question and response, the speaker and hearer determine together the contextual values which structure their conversation. Conversation on the other end is the dialogic relationship contained within the borders of face to face. Thus, the universality of interpretation is attested in the use of natural language in the conversational situation. However, the hypothesis of philosophical hermeneutics is that interpretation is an open process that no single vision closes.

Subjectivity as the ultimate foundation is doubtful: Husserl believes that self-knowledge could not be presumptive because it does not proceed from “outlines or profiles”. But for Riceour, self-consciousness can be presumptive for other reasons like; in the measure to which self-consciousness is a dialogue of the soul with itself, as interiorized communication and systematic violent distortion of the structures of communication. For Riceour hermeneutic of communication could assume the task of critiquing ideologies in self-comprehension in two ways: firstly, by revealing the insurmountable character of the ideological phenomenon on the basis of its own meditation on the role of pre-comprehension. Secondly by revealing the necessities of critiques of ideologies not based on pre-comprehension but on the element of distantiation. Distantiation however, is the dialectical counterpart of belonging-to, in the sense that our manner of belonging to a historical tradition is to be related according to a distance which oscillates between remoteness and proximity. Thus, to interpret is to bring close the far (temporal, cultural, spiritual or geographical). Riceour holds that hermeneutics is capable of taking into account the insurmountable character of ideological pheneomenon and the possibility of beginning without finishing a critique of ideologies because different from phenomenological idealism, it subjects is open to the efficacy of history.

Questioning the primacy of subjectivity: according to Gadamer, the hermeneutical task is to discern the “thing” of the text and not the psychology of the author. The thing of the text is to its structures as in the proposition, the reference is to sense. With this sense and reference, Riceour attempts to prove that we cannot just rely on the ideal of the object, so we move to its claim about truth. The same thing happens when we do not get satisfied with the immanent structure of a text, we then strive to unfold the internal world that the text projects although literature especial fiction and poetry tries to abolish all references to everyday reality.

On the impact of Husserlian idealism on hermeneutics centered on the text, Riceour holds that idealist theory of the constitution of meaning in consciousness has hypostasize subjectivity because of the difficult created by the above “parallelism” between phenomenology and psychology. These difficulties attest that phenomenology is always in danger of being reduced to transcendental subjectivism. Riceour thus suggest that the radical way of putting an end to this danger is to move the axis of interpretation from the question of subjectivity to that of the world (objectivity). Hence, that is what the “theory of text” proposes to do, by shifting from the question of the “intention of the author to the thing of the text”.

Category of the theory of Comprehension: theory of text is a good guide because it shows that the act of subjectivity is less what starts than what completes, and because it does not pretend to rejoin the original subjectivity which carried the meaning of the text. Instead it responds to the text and is the counterpart distantiation. It is also the counterpart of another type of distantiation by which the new being-in-the-world, projected by the text withdraws from false evidences of everyday reality. Thus, appropriation is a moment of the theory of interpretation, without ever fraudulently reintroducing the primacy of subjectivity.

Riceour goes further to explain that appropriation differs from points of views because to appropriate is to make what is strange appropriate, and thus what is appropriated then is the “text”. But then, the text becomes my own says Riceour if I disappropriate myself from myself for the “thing of the text to be”. This process he calls distantiation which constitutes the critical moment par excellence in comprehension.

Towards a Hermeneutical phenomenology

According to Riceour, the hermeneutical critique of Husserlian idealism is the programmatic and exploratory title of hermeneutical phenomenology which remains an indispensable presupposition.

1          The most fundamental phenomenological presupposition of a philosophy of interpretation is that every question about any kind of “being” is a question about the “meaning of being”.

2          Hermeneutics is related in another way to phenomenology, by its recourse to distantiation at the heart of the experience of belonging-to. Thus, the distantiation according to hermeneutics is not without rapport with the epoche of phenomenology but with an epoche interpreted in a non-idealistic sense; as an aspect of intentional movement of consciousness towards meaning. Hence, every consciousness of meaning involves a moment of distantiation of placing “lived experience”.

3          Hermeneutics also shares with phenomenology the thesis of the derived character of merely linguistic meaning.

4          The kinship between the ante-predicative of phenomenology and that of hermeneutics is all closer as Husserlian phenomenology has itself begun to spread the phenomenology of perception in the direction of a hermeneutic of historic experience.

5          Phenomenology can only be the presupposition of hermeneutics in the measure to which it, in its turn, involves a hermeneutical presupposition. By hermeneutical presupposition Riceour essentially intend the necessity for phenomenology to conceive of its method as an exegesis, an explication, and an interpretation.

6          Phenomenology and hermeneutics remain the presuppositions of each other to the extent that the idealism of Husserlian phenomenology keeps being submitted to the critique of hermeneutics.

5          Edmund Husserl’s transcendental phenomenology different from Heidegger’s and Merleau-ponty hermeneutical and existential phenomenology

Transcendental phenomenology: Transcendental phenomenology is the original form of phenomenological philosophy as conceptualized by Edmund Husserl. The basic premise of this school of phenomenology is its adherence to the notion that experience is to be transcended to discover reality. Husserlian phenomenology is built up round the idea of reduction that refers to suspending the personal prejudices and attempting to reach to the core or essence through a state of pure consciousness. Therefore, transcendental phenomenology advocates for applying the phenomenological attitude over natural attitude. Husserl's phenomenology is labeled as "transcendental" because it takes as its object the fundamental structures of consciousness and experience which are presumed to exist outside of both objects and knowers. The essence which structured knowledge and perception lies behind them both, and makes both possible. According to which perception is not a science of the world, it is not even an act, a deliberate taking up of a position; it is the background from which all acts stand out, and is presupposed by them. The world is not an object such that I have in my possession the law of its making; it is the natural setting of, and field for, all my thoughts and all my explicit perceptions. The basic interest of this school of phenomenology is to discover and describe 'lived world'. The research pattern based on this school of thought believes that it is possible to suspend personal opinion; it is possible to arrive to a single, essential and descriptive presentation of a phenomenon. Quite similar to that of the positivist tradition, the advocates of this branch of phenomenology think that there is more than one reality that leaves doubt and lack of clarity. However there are debates on how to practice reduction. Bracketing and epoche are the terminologies that are associated with this process but about the integration of personal opinion during description are different from scholars to scholars.

On closer inspection, however, Husserl actually draws upon two different versions of the epoché, which versions he does not separate as clearly as one might have hoped: the “universal epoché” on the one hand, and a weaker “local epoché” on the other. The former version (as described in Ideas) seems to require the phenomenologist to put all his existence assumptions regarding the external world into brackets at once, at any point, whereas the weaker version merely requires him to bracket particular existence assumptions, depending on the respective “transcendental guide i.e., on the issue to be clarified phenomenologically. This is supposed to enable the phenomenologist to make explicit his reasons for the bracketed existence assumptions, or for assumptions based upon them.

Hermeneutic phenomenology: A sharp departure can be observed in the ideas floated by another school of phenomenology termed as hermeneutic phenomenology. It comes off the writings of Martin Heidegger, a disciple of Husserl. This departure is primarily because of the rejection of the idea of suspending personal opinions and the turn for the interpretive narration to the description. Based on the premises that reduction is impossible and acceptance of endless interpretations, this school of phenomenology puts an effort to get beneath the subjective experience and find the genuine objective nature of the things as realized by an individual. Hermeneutic phenomenology is focused on subjective experience of individuals and groups. It is an attempt to unveil the world as experienced by the subject through their life world stories. This school believes that interpretations are all we have and description itself is an interpretive process. To generate the best ever interpretation of a phenomenon it proposes to use the hermeneutic cycle.

Merleau-Ponty corrects the early Husserl’s tendency toward idealism by insisting on the primacy of perceptual experience and the ambiguities of the lived world. In his most important work, Phenomenology of Perception, Merleau-Ponty situates consciousness in the body. His notion of perception as the situated, embodied, un-reflected knowledge of the world rejects splitting the mind off from the body or treating the body mechanistically as a mere object. Consciousness is always incarnate, he argues, or else it would lack a situation through which to engage the world, and Merleau-Ponty’s awareness of the necessary situatedness of existence makes him emphasize the inescapability of social and political entanglements in the constitution of subjects. The experience of embodied consciousness is also inherently obscure and ambiguous, he finds, and he consequently rejects the philosopher’s dream of fully transparent understanding. Reflection cannot hope for a complete, certain knowledge that transcends the confusion and indeterminacy of unreflective experience. The activity of reflecting on the ambiguities of lived experience is always outstripped by and can never ultimately catch up with the fund of preexisting life it seeks to understand.

Existential phenomenology: Existentialism was self-consciously adopted as a label for a movement only in the twentieth century. But existentialist writers see themselves as carrying on a tradition that was first anticipated by Blaise Pascal’s rejection of Cartesian rationalism, which tried to define human being in terms of our rational capacities. Pascal saw human being as an essential paradox and a contradiction between mind and body. Soren Kierkegaard, usually acknowledged as the founder of modern existentialism, shared Pascal’s sense for the inherent contradiction built into the human condition. Existential phenomenologists all share the view that philosophy should not be conducted from a detached, objective, disinterested and disengaged standpoint. This is because, certain phenomena only show themselves to one who is engaged with the world in the right kind of way. Existential phenomenologists have included descriptions of the meaning of being and the role of the lived-body in perception.  

The ground that keeps it distinct to other schools of phenomenology is its rejection of Husserl's belief of possibility of complete reduction and its firm belief on the attempt to concentrate upon re-achieving a direct and primitive contact with the world. For this, existential phenomenology stresses on the description of everyday experience as it is perceived by the consciousness of the individuals.

6          Jean Paul Sartre’s Being and Nothingness, Ontological Analysis of Human Existence, and Existentialism is a Humanism

Sartre’s existentialism which brackets his “being and nothingness” is an attempt to reply four major criticisms against existentialism. 1. That existentialism is a form of “desperate quietism” which allows no room for solutions to the problems of human existence. 2. Existentialism is a form of pessimism (a philosophy of despair), preoccupied with the dark and negative aspects of human existence. 3. Existentialism propagates a doctrine of atomistic individualism and extreme subjectivism while ignoring the communal aspects of human existence. 4. The atheism of existentialism leads to value-nihilism, the doctrine that “anything goes” in the moral sphere.

Being; the origin of Human existence: Jean-Paul Sartre in this work asserts that individual existence is prior to the individual essence (existence precedes essence) and seeks to demonstrate that free will exists. The doctrine of existentialism holds that “existence precedes essence or that subjectivity rather than objectivity must be the starting point in the project of understanding human existence”. For the human individual is a subject rather than an object, a person rather than a thing. Human existence is prior to human essence because the individual is a being-in-the-world before becoming a being-for-the-world; defining himself, defined by others and before taking up an essence. Another way of saying this is that a person’s objectivity (character, identity, profession, social role,) is a product of, and is solely dependent on his subjectivity.

Sartre also notes that being-in-itself is the principle of objectivity (essence), which refers to the being of things, while being-for-itself is the principle of subjectivity (consciousness), which refers to the being of persons (existence). Hence, human existence is rooted in these modes of being, for man is both a thing and a conscious subject.

The origin of Nothingness: From Sartre's phenomenological point of view, nothingness is an experienced reality and cannot be a merely subjective mistake. The absence of immediate wants hint at a being of nothingness. It is part of reality. Sartre first develops a theory of nothingness which is central to the nausea, especially to his account for bad faith and freedom. For him, nothingness is not just a mental concept that sums up negative judgements such as he is not here" and "I don’t have what I need". Though, it is evident that non-being always appears within the limits of a human expectation", the concrete nothingness differs from mere abstract inexistence, such as the square circle. A concrete nothingness, e.g. not being able to see, is part of a totality: the life of the blind man in this world. This totality is modified by the nothingness which is part of it.

In the totality of consciousness and phenomenon (Heidegger's being-in-the-world), both can be considered separately, but exist only as a whole (intentionality of consciousness). The human attitude of inquiry, of asking questions, puts consciousness at distance from the world. Every question brings up the possibility of a negative answer of non-being; this Sartre holds is how nothingness came to exist. Non-being can neither be part of the being-in-itself nor can it be as a complement of it. Hence, Being-for-itself is the origin of negation. The relation between being-for-itself and being-in-itself is one of questioning the latter. By bringing nothingness into the world, consciousness does not annihilate the being of things, but changes its relation to it.

Bad faith: this is what Sartre used in describing one's self-deception about the human reality. It can take two forms; the first is making oneself falsely believe not to be what one actually is. The second one is conceiving oneself as an object (e.g. being identical to a job) and thereby denying freedom. This essentially means that in being a worker, one must believe that their social role is equivalent to their human existence. Living a life defined by one's occupation, social, racial, or economic class, is the very essence of "bad faith", the condition in which people cannot transcend their situations in order to realize what they must be (human) and what they are not. It is also essential for an existent being to understand that negation allows the self to enter what Sartre calls the "great human stream". The great human stream arises from a singular realization that nothingness is a state of mind in which we can become anything, in reference to our situation that we desire. And so, the difference between existence and identity projection remains at the heart of human subjects who are swept up by their own condition, their "bad faith". Sartre consistently mentions that in order to get out of bad faith, one must realize that their existence and their formal projection of a self are distinctly separate and within the means of human control. This separation is a form of nothingness. Nothingness, in terms of bad faith, is characterized by Sartre as the internal negation which separates pure existence and identity, and thus we are subject to playing our lives out in a similar manner. An example is something that is what it is (existence) and something that is what it is not (occupation).

Sartre’s Phenomenology: in Sartre's opinion, consciousness does not make sense by itself: it arises only as an awareness of objects. Consciousness is therefore always and essentially consciousness of something, whether this “something” is a thing, a person, or an imaginary object. Phenomenologists often refer to this quality of consciousness as “intentionality”. Sartre’s contribution, then, is that in addition to always being consciousness of something, consciousness is always consciousness of itself. In other words, all consciousness is, by definition, self-consciousness. By “self-consciousness”, Sartre does not mean being aware of oneself thought of as an object, but rather, as a phenomenon in the world, consciousness both appears and appears to itself at the same time. By appearing to itself, Sartre argues that consciousness is fully transparent; unlike an ordinary “object” (a house, for instance, of which it is impossible to perceive all of the sides at the same time), consciousness “sees” all aspects of itself at once. This non-positional quality of consciousness is what makes it a unique type of being, a being that exists for itself.

Existentialism is Humanism: The use Sartre makes of the term ‘humanism’ is the concern of the final reproach against his contention that existentialism is a humanism. But, once again, the reproach and the response to it depend upon a question of meaning and of the misunderstandings that arise when meanings are casually transposed from one context to another. Sartre states that humanism has two different meanings. On the one hand, there is the humanism as a theory of the human as an ‘end-in-itself and as the supreme value’. This is a humanism of a generic humankind, the meaning of which is considered fixed, and which is a general concept (essence), of which particular men/women are the derived existences. Again, this is similar to the example of production in which an essence precedes existence. However, as Sartre states, humankind is not an end as he/she him/herself is ceaselessly in a state of re-invention and self-attainment (self-realisation). In this sense, humanism is an ideology that will no longer allow humanity to overcome itself (Nietzsche).

The meaning of an existential humanism, on the other hand, concerns humankind as self-surpassing, self-creating, that humankind of a deeper human subjectivity. Sartre states, echoing both Nietzsche and Heidegger, ‘Man is all the time outside himself: it is in projecting and losing himself beyond himself that he makes man to exist; and, on the other hand, it is by pursuing transcendent aims that he himself is able to exist.’ There is no exit from the condition of the human universe; but nevertheless, that which we are, and that which we can become is not limited.

There is no human nature, for Sartre; there is no essence before our existence. There is nothing before we exist, and our only essence comes from our own commitment, our own acts, our own invention of ourselves – in other words, from our own freedom. And, it is in this sense that Sartre answers the Christian and the Communist with the contention that it is not God or the Revolution that gives us grounds for hope – but simply our own inexorable freedom which simply calls us to awaken to the truth of our abyssal fate.

However, in Existentialism is a Humanism, Jean-Paul Sartre presents an accessible description of existentialism. A key idea of existentialism—and of the human condition— which holds that existence precedes essence. For the essence of something is its meaning, that is, its intended purpose. A paper cutter is made to cut paper; that is its point. Hence, humans, however, do not have an essence. For man exists, turns up, appears on the scene, and, only afterwards, defines himself. We have no greater purpose, no pre-determined plan, no ultimate meaning. We have, in Sartre’s words, no human nature, since there is nothing (e.g. God) outside of us which would conceive of it for us. We are simply here, and it is up to us to define ourselves.