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Phenomenology

Part of The MIT Press Essential Knowledge series

Author Chad Engelland
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The MIT Press
On sale Aug 04, 2020 | 264 Pages | 9780262359542
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A concise and accessible introduction to phenomenology, which investigates the experience of experience.

This volume in the MIT Press Essential Knowledge series offers a concise and accessible introduction to phenomenology, a philosophical movement that investigates the experience of experience. Founded by Edmund Husserl (1859–1938) and expounded by Max Scheler, Martin Heidegger, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, and others, phenomenology ventures forth into the field of experience so that truth might be met in the flesh. It investigates everything as experienced. It does not study mere appearance but the true appearances of things, holding that the unfolding of experience allows us to sort true appearances from mere appearance.

The book unpacks a series of terms—world, flesh, speech, life, truth, love, and wonder—all of which are bound up with each other in experience. For example, world is where experience takes place; flesh names the way our experiential exploration is inscribed into the bearings of our bodily being; speech is instituted in bodily presence; truth concerns the way our claims about things are confirmed by our experience. A chapter on the phenomenological method describes it as a means of clarifying the modality of experience that is written into its very fabric; and a chapter on the phenomenological movement bridges its divisions while responding to criticisms from analytic philosophy and postmodernism.
Beware: the book in your hands has a peculiar subject matter. It is not about this topic or that one but about everything at all, and that might seem to be too ambitious, especially for such a small book. But it is not about everything full stop but about everything as experienced. If biology is the study of life (bios), phenomenology would seem to be the study of appearance (phenomenon). What’s misleading about this analogy is that the study of appearance suggests that we are dealing with mere appearance as opposed to reality, with a mental image instead of the existent thing. But it is just this misunderstanding of appearance that makes phenomenology so urgently necessary. Phenomenology is the study of experience, of the way things appear to us together in their truth. Sometimes there can be mere appearance; it looks like the turtle is dead but it turns out it was just playing dead, or it looks like a turtle but really it’s just a curiously shaped stone. But we are able to have mere appearance because experience is fundamentally reliable; we know the turtle is in fact alive, because we now see it swimming away, or we pick up what we think is a turtle only to discover the lifeless solidity of rock. The unfolding of experience allows us to sort true appearances from mere appearances. Phenomenology does not study mere appearance; it studies the true appearance of things.
Copyright © 2020 by Chad Engelland. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Chad Engelland is Associate Professor of Philosophy at the University of Dallas. He is the author of Ostension: Word Learning and the Embodied Mind (MIT Press).
Chad Engelland View titles by Chad Engelland
Series Foreword ix
Preface xi
Acknowledgments xiii
1 To the Things Themselves 1
2 World 19
3 Flesh 43
4 Speech 59
5 Truth 77
6 Life 99
7 Love 119
8 Wonder 139
9 The Method 163
10 The Movement 183
Glossary 213
Notes 219
Bibliography 229
Further Reading 235
Index 237

About

A concise and accessible introduction to phenomenology, which investigates the experience of experience.

This volume in the MIT Press Essential Knowledge series offers a concise and accessible introduction to phenomenology, a philosophical movement that investigates the experience of experience. Founded by Edmund Husserl (1859–1938) and expounded by Max Scheler, Martin Heidegger, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, and others, phenomenology ventures forth into the field of experience so that truth might be met in the flesh. It investigates everything as experienced. It does not study mere appearance but the true appearances of things, holding that the unfolding of experience allows us to sort true appearances from mere appearance.

The book unpacks a series of terms—world, flesh, speech, life, truth, love, and wonder—all of which are bound up with each other in experience. For example, world is where experience takes place; flesh names the way our experiential exploration is inscribed into the bearings of our bodily being; speech is instituted in bodily presence; truth concerns the way our claims about things are confirmed by our experience. A chapter on the phenomenological method describes it as a means of clarifying the modality of experience that is written into its very fabric; and a chapter on the phenomenological movement bridges its divisions while responding to criticisms from analytic philosophy and postmodernism.

Excerpt

Beware: the book in your hands has a peculiar subject matter. It is not about this topic or that one but about everything at all, and that might seem to be too ambitious, especially for such a small book. But it is not about everything full stop but about everything as experienced. If biology is the study of life (bios), phenomenology would seem to be the study of appearance (phenomenon). What’s misleading about this analogy is that the study of appearance suggests that we are dealing with mere appearance as opposed to reality, with a mental image instead of the existent thing. But it is just this misunderstanding of appearance that makes phenomenology so urgently necessary. Phenomenology is the study of experience, of the way things appear to us together in their truth. Sometimes there can be mere appearance; it looks like the turtle is dead but it turns out it was just playing dead, or it looks like a turtle but really it’s just a curiously shaped stone. But we are able to have mere appearance because experience is fundamentally reliable; we know the turtle is in fact alive, because we now see it swimming away, or we pick up what we think is a turtle only to discover the lifeless solidity of rock. The unfolding of experience allows us to sort true appearances from mere appearances. Phenomenology does not study mere appearance; it studies the true appearance of things.
Copyright © 2020 by Chad Engelland. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.

Author

Chad Engelland is Associate Professor of Philosophy at the University of Dallas. He is the author of Ostension: Word Learning and the Embodied Mind (MIT Press).
Chad Engelland View titles by Chad Engelland

Table of Contents

Series Foreword ix
Preface xi
Acknowledgments xiii
1 To the Things Themselves 1
2 World 19
3 Flesh 43
4 Speech 59
5 Truth 77
6 Life 99
7 Love 119
8 Wonder 139
9 The Method 163
10 The Movement 183
Glossary 213
Notes 219
Bibliography 229
Further Reading 235
Index 237

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