Phenomenological philosophy of Husserl. Cheat Sheet: Phenomenology

Vadim Rudnev

Phenomenology - (from the ancient Greek phainomenon - being) - one of the areas of philosophy of the twentieth century, associated primarily with the names of Edmund Husserl and Martin Heidegger.

The specificity of phenomenology as a philosophical doctrine lies in the rejection of any idealization as a starting point and the acceptance of the only prerequisite - the possibility of describing the spontaneous-semantic life of consciousness.

The main idea of ​​phenomenology is the continuity and at the same time mutual irreducibility, irreducibility of consciousness, human existence, personality and the objective world.

The main methodological technique of phenomenology is phenomenological reduction - reflective work with consciousness, aimed at identifying pure consciousness, or the essence of consciousness.

From Husserl’s point of view, any object should be grasped only as a correlate of consciousness (the property of intentionality), that is, perception, memory, fantasy, judgment, doubt, assumptions, etc. The phenomenological attitude is not aimed at the perception of known and identification of yet unknown properties or functions of an object, but on the process of perception itself as a process of formation of a certain spectrum of meanings seen in the object.

“The goal of phenomenological reduction,” writes phenomenology researcher V.I. Molchanov, “is to discover in each individual consciousness pure conceivability as pure impartiality, which calls into question any already given system of mediation between oneself and the world. Impartiality must be maintained in a phenomenological attitude not in relation to objects and processes real world, the existence of which is not questioned - “everything remains as it was” (Husserl) - but in relation to already acquired attitudes of consciousness. Pure consciousness is not consciousness cleared of objects; on the contrary, consciousness here for the first time reveals its essence as a semantic closure with the subject. Pure consciousness is the self-purification of consciousness from the schemes, dogmas, templates of thinking imposed on it, from attempts to find the basis of consciousness in what is not consciousness. The phenomenological method is the identification and description of the field of direct semantic conjugation of consciousness and the subject, the horizons of which do not contain hidden, unmanifested entities as meanings."

From the point of view of phenomenology (cf. individual language in the philosophy of L. Wittgenstein), the experience of meaning is possible outside of communication - in an individual, “lonely” mental life, and therefore, linguistic expression is not identical to meaning, the sign is only one of the possibilities - along with contemplation - implementation of meaning.

Phenomenology developed its original concept of time. Time is considered here not as objective, but as temporality, the temporality of consciousness itself. Husserl proposed the following structure of temporal perception: 1) now-point (initial impression); 2) retention, that is, the primary retention of this now-point; 3) protention, that is, primary expectation or anticipation, constituting “what comes.”

Time in phenomenology is the basis for the coincidence of a phenomenon and its description, a mediator between the spontaneity of consciousness and reflection.

Phenomenology also developed its own concept of truth.

V.I. Molchanov writes about this: “Husserl calls truth, firstly, both the very certainty of being, that is, the unity of meanings that exists regardless of whether anyone sees it or not, and being itself is the “subject” , accomplishing truth." Truth is the identity of an object with itself, "being in the sense of truth": true friend, the true state of affairs, etc. Secondly, truth is the structure of an act of consciousness, which creates the possibility of seeing the state of affairs exactly as it is, that is, the possibility of identity (adequation) of the thought and the contemplated; evidence as a criterion of truth is not a special feeling that accompanies certain judgments, but the experience of this coincidence. For Heidegger, truth is not the result of a comparison of representations and not the correspondence of a representation to a real thing; truth is not the equality of knowledge and object […]. Truth as true being is rooted in the way of human being, which is characterized as openness […]. Human existence can be in truth and not in truth - truth as openness must be torn out, stolen from existence […]. Truth is essentially identical with being; the history of existence is the history of its oblivion; The history of truth is the history of its epistemology."

In recent decades, phenomenology has shown a tendency towards convergence with other philosophical directions, in particular with analytical philosophy. The closeness between them is found where we are talking about meaning, meaning, interpretation.

Bibliography

Molchanov V.I. Phenomenapogy // Modern western philosophy: Dictionary, - M., 1991.

PHENOMENOLOGY

PHENOMENOLOGY is an influential movement in Western philosophy of the 20th century. Although the term F. itself was used by Kant and Hegel, it became widespread thanks to Husserl, who created a large-scale project of phenomenological philosophy. This project played an important role for both German and French philosophy of the first half - mid-20th century. Such philosophical works, like “Formalism in Ethics and the Material Ethics of Value” by Scheler (1913/1916), “Being and Time” by Heidegger (1927), “Being and Nothingness” by Sartre (1943), “Phenomenology of Perception” by Merleau-Ponty (1945) are programmatic phenomenological studies. Phenomenological motives are also effective within the framework of non-phenomenologically oriented philosophy, as well as in a number of sciences, for example, literary criticism, social sciences and, above all, psychology and psychiatry. This is evidenced by phenomenological studies of both Husserl’s contemporaries and students, and living philosophers. The most interesting phenomenologists or phenomenologically oriented philosophers include: Heidegger, a student of Husserl, who used the phenomenological method as “a way of approaching something and a way of showing the definition of what is intended to become the topic of ontology,” i.e. human Dasein, for the description and understanding of which phenomenology must turn to hermeneutics (“Being and Time”); The “Göttingen School of Phenomenology,” initially focused on phenomenological ontology (A. Reinach, Scheler), whose representatives, together with the “Munich School” (M. Geiger, A. Pfender) and under the leadership of Husserl, founded the “Yearbook of Phenomenology” in 1913 and phenomenological research”, opened with Husserl’s programmatic work “Ideas towards pure phenomenology and phenomenological philosophy”, in which the already mentioned works of Scheler and Heidegger were published; E. Stein, L. Landgrebe and E. Fink - Husserl's assistants; as well as the Polish phenomenologist of aesthetics R. Ingarden, the Czech phenomenologist, human rights activist J. Patochka, the American sociologically oriented phenomenologists Gurvich and Schutz; Russian philosophers Shpet and Losev. The situation in Germany before and during World War II excluded Husserl, who was Jewish, from philosophical discussions until the mid-1950s. Its first readers were the Franciscan monk and philosopher Van Brede - the founder of the first Husserl Archive in Leuven (1939), as well as Merleau-Ponty, Sartre, Ricoeur, Levinas, Derrida. The listed philosophers were strongly influenced by F., and certain periods of their work can be called phenomenological. Interest in F. today covers not only Western and Eastern Europe, but also, for example, Latin America and Japan. The first world congress on Phenomenology took place in Spain in 1988. The most interesting modern phenomenologists in Germany include Waldenfels and K. Held. Ph. in Husserl’s understanding is a description of the semantic structures of consciousness and objectivity, which is carried out in the process of “bracketing” both the fact of the existence or existence of an object, and the psychological activity of consciousness directed towards it. As a result of such “bracketing” or the implementation of a phenomenological epoch, the subject of study of the phenomenologist becomes consciousness, considered from the point of view of its intentional nature. The intentionality of consciousness is manifested in the direction of acts of consciousness towards an object. The concept of intentionality, borrowed by Husserl from the philosophy of his teacher Brentano and rethought in the course of the Logical Investigations. Part 2" is one of the key concepts of F.

Phenomenology (philosophy)

Husserl. In the study of intentional consciousness, the emphasis is shifted from what, or the “bracketed” existence of an object, to its how, or the variety of ways in which an object is given. The object from its point of view is not given, but is revealed or reveals itself (erscheint) in consciousness. Husserl calls this kind of phenomenon a phenomenon ( Greek phainomenon - revealing itself). F. then is the science of the phenomena of consciousness. Its slogan becomes the slogan “Back to the things themselves!”, which, as a result of phenomenological work, must directly reveal themselves to consciousness. An intentional act directed at an object must be filled (erfuehllt) with the being of this object. G. calls the filling of intention with existential content truth, and its experience in judgment - evidence. The concept of intentionality and intentional consciousness is associated in F. Husserl initially with the task of substantiating knowledge achievable within the framework of a certain new science or scientific doctrine. Gradually, the place of this science is taken by FT arr. F.'s first model can also be represented as a model of science that seeks to question the habitual position of the existence of objects and the world, designated by Husserl as a “natural attitude”, and in the course of describing the diversity of their givenness - within the framework of a “phenomenological attitude” - to come (or not to come) ) to this existence. The existence of an object is understood as identical in the variety of ways of its givenness. The concept of intentionality is then the condition of possibility of the phenomenological attitude. The ways to achieve it are, along with the phenomenological era, eidetic, transcendental and phenomenological reduction. The first leads to the study of the essences of objects; the second, close to the phenomenological era, opens up for the researcher the realm of pure or transcendental consciousness, i.e. consciousness of the phenomenological attitude; the third transforms this consciousness into transcendental subjectivity and leads to the theory of transcendental constitution. The concept of intentionality played a crucial role in the studies of Heidegger, Merleau-Ponty, Sartre and Levinas. Thus, in Merleau-Ponty’s “Phenomenology of Perception”, this concept acts as a prerequisite for overcoming the traditional gap between mind and body in classical philosophy and psychology and allows us to talk about the “incarnated mind” as the starting point of experience, perception and knowledge. Husserl's work in the field of describing intentional consciousness leads him to such new concepts or models of this consciousness as internal time-consciousness and consciousness-horizon. Inner time-consciousness is a prerequisite for understanding consciousness as a stream of experiences. The starting point in this flow is the “now” point of the present time, around which - in the horizon of consciousness - the just-existent and possible future are collected. Consciousness at the point “now” is constantly related to its time horizon. This correlation allows us to perceive, remember and imagine something that is only possible. The problem of internal time-consciousness has evoked a response in the research of almost all phenomenologists. Thus, in “Being and Time,” Heidegger transforms Husserl’s temporality of consciousness into the temporality of human existence, the starting point in which is no longer the point “now,” but “running ahead,” the future, which is “projected” by Dasein from its possibility of being. In the philosophy of Levinas, temporality is understood “not as the fact of an isolated and lonely subject, but as the relation of the subject to the Other.” The origins of this understanding of temporality are easy to find in the model of consciousness-time and time horizon, within the framework of which Husserl tries to build the relation of me to the Other by analogy with the relation of actual experience to the surrounding time horizon. Within the framework of consciousness or within the framework of its noematic-noetic ( cm. NOESIS and NOEMA) unity as the unity of experiences from the point of view of their content and accomplishment, the constitution of objectivity occurs, the process as a result of which the object acquires its existential significance. The concept of constitution is another most important concept of F. The source of the constitution of the centers of accomplishment of acts of consciousness is the Self. The Being of the Self is the only being, the presence and significance of which I cannot doubt. This being is of a completely different kind than objective being. This motif is an obvious reference to Descartes, whom Husserl considers his immediate predecessor.

Another way of addressing the Self is to understand it as transcendental subjectivity, which connects F. Husserl with the philosophy of Kant. The introduction of the concept of “transcendental subjectivity” once again showed the specificity of philosophy as addressed not to objects and their existence, but to the constitution of this existence in consciousness. Husserl's appeal to the problem of being was taken up by subsequent phenomenologists. The first project of Heidegger's ontology is the project of F., which makes the ways and modes of human existence self-revealing (phenomenal). Sartre in “Being and Nothingness,” actively using Husserl’s concepts such as phenomenon, intentionality, and temporality, connects them with Hegel’s categories and Heidegger’s fundamental ontology. He strictly contrasts being-for-itself as consciousness (nothing) and being-in-itself as a phenomenon (being), which form a dualistic ontological reality. Sartre's phenomenological method is intended to emphasize, in contrast to Hegel's method, the mutual irreducibility of being and nothingness, reality and consciousness. Like Husserl and Heidegger, he turns to a phenomenological description of the interaction between reality and consciousness. The problem of the Self as the core or center of the accomplishments of consciousness leads Husserl to the need to describe this Self. F. acquires the features of a reflexive philosophy. Husserl speaks of a special kind of perception of the Self - internal perception. It, just like the perception of external objects, objectifies what it deals with. However, objectification is never accomplished absolutely and once and for all, since it occurs in the consciousness-horizon and opens up ever new ways of giving objects in it. What remains in the Self after its objectification by consciousness is what Husserl calls “pure Self.” In the philosophy of Husserl's followers, the non-objectified “pure I” became a prerequisite for the possible and incomplete existence of myself. The horizon-consciousness is the consciousness of my fulfillment, a connection of references stretching into infinity. This is an infinity of possibilities for the placement of objects, which I still dispose of not completely arbitrarily. The last and necessary condition for such an appeal to objects in knowledge is peace. The concept of the world, initially in the form of the “natural concept of the world”, and then as the “life world” is a separate and large theme of F. This topic was addressed by Heidegger (being-in-the-world and the concept of the worldliness of the world), Merleau-Ponty (being -to-the world), Gurvich with his project of the world of doxa and episteme, Schutz with his project of a phenomenological-sociological study of construction and structure social world. The concept of the “life world” has come into use today not only in phenomenologically oriented philosophy, but also in the philosophy of communicative action, analytical philosophy of language, and hermeneutics. In F. Husserl, this concept is closely connected with such concepts as intersubjectivity, corporeality, the experience of the Alien and the teleology of the mind. Initially, the world appears as the most general correlate of consciousness or its most extensive objectivity. This, on the one hand, is the world of science and culture, on the other, the basis of any scientific idea of ​​\u200b\u200bthe world. The world is between the subjects of this world, acting as the medium of their life experience and giving this life experience certain forms. Intersubjectivity is a condition for the possibility of the world, as well as a condition for the objectivity of any knowledge, which in the “life world” turns from mine, subjective, into something that belongs to everyone - objective. F. turns into a study and description of the transformation of opinions into knowledge, subjective into objective, mine into universally significant. The reflections of the late Husserl on the “life world” tie together all of his projects F. Within the framework of the “life world” and its genesis, the body of the mind itself unfolds, initially taking the form of scientific teaching. F., describing the dual nature of the “life world” as the basis of all knowledge and the horizon of all its possible modifications, puts at its basis the duality of consciousness itself, which always comes from something Alien to it and necessarily posits it. In the mouth of such a modern phenomenologist as Waldenfels, the duality of consciousness is a statement of the differences between me and the Other and a prerequisite for the existence of a multidimensional and heterogeneous world, in which building an attitude towards what is alien to my self is a prerequisite for ethics. F. in the form of F. ethics is a description of the diverse forms of the relationship between me and the Other, belonging to and alien to my self. Such philosophy is both an aesthetics and a philosophy of everyday and political life in which these forms are embodied.

Source: Latest philosophical dictionary on Gufo.me

E.G. - German philosopher, founder of phenomenology, student of Brento.

PHENOMENOLOGY

developed the basic principles of phenomenology, the only discipline capable, in his opinion, of making philosophy strict and exact science. Phenomenology is the science of phenomena. A phenomenon is something that appears because it appears. The human "I" and all things surrounding it are phenomena. The basis of knowledge - the principle of phenomenological reduction - lies in abstinence (epoch) from belief in the reality of the world around us. Thus, we receive the eidos of the world, its ideal value. From a point of view, reduction is eidetic. Since the phenomenon manifests itself in consciousness and only through an act of consciousness, i.e. subjective consciousness determines the state of things in reality, the reduction is also transcendental.

In the double – eidetic and transcendental – dimensions, a phenomenon, just like its manifestation to consciousness, is something absolute.

This is the essence of a thing, its being. The consciousness that carries out the reduction is self-sufficient.

Thus, according to Husserl, the only absolute being is revealed to us. Consciousness has intention, a focus on an object. G. calls the intention for an object, directly and originally given to consciousness, intuition. Intuition in phenomenology has the following meaning: to see everything that appears as truly manifested and only as manifested. To complete his theory, G. introduces the concept of “constitution.” Consciousness is a constitutive flow. The form of constitution is phenomenological temporality - the unity of the past, future and present in one intentional act of consciousness. Through constitution in the form of temporality of consciousness, the “I” has the surrounding world and itself. According to Husserl, philosophy is the highest attempt of Reason to constitute with genuine evidence the “I” and what the world of this “I” is.

Edmund Husserl(German) Edmund Husserl; April 8, 1859, Prosnitz, Moravia (Austria) - April 26, 1938, Freiburg) - German philosopher, founder of phenomenology. Came from a Jewish family. In 1876 he entered the University of Leipzig, where he began to study astronomy, mathematics, physics and philosophy, in 1878 he moved to the University of Berlin, where he continued to study mathematics with L. Kronecker and K. Weierstrass, as well as philosophy with F. Paulsen. In 1881 he studied mathematics in Vienna. On October 8, 1882, he defended his dissertation “On the Theory of the Calculus of Variations” at the University of Vienna with Leo Königsberger and began studying philosophy with Franz Brentano. In 1886, Husserl and his bride accepted the Protestant religion, in 1887 they formalized the marriage, after which Husserl got a job teaching at the university in Halle.

His first publications were devoted to problems of the foundation of mathematics (Philosophy of Arithmetic, 1891) and logic (Logical Investigations I, 1900; II, 1901). “Logical Investigations” becomes the first book of a new direction of philosophy opened by Husserl - phenomenology. Beginning in 1901, he met in Göttingen and Munich a friendly atmosphere and his first like-minded people (Reinach, Scheler, Pfänder). It was during this period that he published a programmatic article in Logos - “Philosophy as a Rigorous Science” (1911) and the first volume of “Ideas towards Pure Phenomenology and Phenomenological Philosophy” (1913). In 1916 he received the chair at the University of Freiburg, which had been occupied by Rickert before him. Martin Heidegger, Husserl's most able student, edits his Lectures on the Phenomenology of Internal Time Consciousness (1928). Then, “Formal and transcendental logic” (1929), “Cartesian reflections” (in French, 1931), parts I and II of the work “The Crisis of European Sciences and Transcendental Phenomenology” (1936, the full text of the manuscript was published posthumously) were subsequently published. in 1954). After the Nazis came to power, Husserl was dismissed for a time as a Jew, according to the Baden land law; He was finally relieved of his post only after the adoption of the Nuremberg Laws, which deprived Jews of citizenship. Heidegger was elected rector of the university in the spring of 1933 and soon joined the NSDAP; the question of his personal involvement in the persecution of Husserl and their relationship during this period raises much controversy. Husserl was banned from participating in the 1933 and 1937 philosophical congresses, both officially and privately; his old books were not removed from libraries, but the publication of new ones was impossible. Despite the hostility that surrounded him under the Nazi regime, Husserl did not emigrate (his children went to the United States). He died in Freiburg in 1938 from pleurisy almost completely alone. A Belgian Franciscan monk and graduate student at the Higher Institute of Philosophy, Hermann Leo Van Breda, fearing Hitler's anti-Semitism, transported Husserl's library and unpublished works to Louvain, and also helped the philosopher's widow and students leave Germany. If not for the intervention of Van Breda, Husserl's widow would have faced deportation to a concentration camp, and his archive would have been confiscated and destroyed. Thus, the Husserl-Archive was founded in Louvain, a center for the study of Husserl’s legacy, which still exists today. The disassembled archive of Edmund Husserl in Louvain contains forty thousand unpublished sheets (partially transcripts), which are published in the complete works - Husserliana.

Husserl's philosophical evolution, despite his passionate devotion to one idea (or perhaps precisely because of this), underwent a number of metamorphoses. However, the commitment to the following remained unchanged:

1. The ideal of rigorous science.
2. Liberation of philosophy from random premises.
3. Radical autonomy and responsibility of the philosophizer.
4. The "miracle" of subjectivity.

Husserl appeals to philosophy, which, in his opinion, is capable of restoring the lost connection with the deepest human concerns. He is not satisfied with the rigor of the logical and deductive sciences and sees the main reason for the crisis of science, as well as of European humanity, in the inability and unwillingness of contemporary science to address problems of value and meaning. The radical rigor that is implied here is an attempt to get to the “roots” or “beginnings” of all knowledge, avoiding everything that is doubtful and taken for granted. Those who decided to do this had to have a deep understanding of their responsibility. This responsibility cannot be delegated to anyone. Thus, she demanded the complete scientific and moral autonomy of the researcher.

As Husserl wrote, “a true philosopher cannot help but be free: the essential nature of philosophy consists in its extremely radical autonomy.” Hence the attention to subjectivity, to the irreducible and fundamental world of consciousness, which understands its own existence and the existence of others. Life and scientific activity Husserl fully complied with the strictest requirements of personal autonomy, criticism of thought and responsibility before the era. These strong qualities impressed many students, in whose fruitful collaboration the phenomenological movement took shape. All the students maintained an unwavering respect for the one to whom they owed the beginning of their thinking, although none of them followed Husserl for a long time.

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Phenomenology

consciousness of something

The meaning and significance of an object correlates with how it is grasped by consciousness. Thus, phenomenology is focused not on identifying previously unknown knowledge about the world and bringing it into line with what is already known, but on presenting the very process of perceiving the world - that is, showing the conditions and possibilities of knowledge as a process of forming meanings that are perceived in the properties and functions of an object.

Consciousness, in other words, is indifferent to whether objects really exist or whether they are an illusion or a mirage, because in the reality of consciousness there is an interweaving of experiences, just as streams of water twist and intertwine in a common stream. There is nothing in consciousness except the meanings of real, illusory or imaginary objects.

Phenomenology has undergone significant changes both in the concept of its founder Husserl and in many modifications, so that its history, notes the famous French philosopher Paul Ricoeur, can be presented as the history of Husserl’s “heresies.”

Phenomenology

Husserl begins with the idea of ​​​​creating a science of science - a philosophical science. Philosophy, he writes, “is called upon to be a strict science and, moreover, one that would satisfy the highest theoretical needs, and in an ethical and religious sense would do possible life, governed by the pure norms of reason." The philosopher wants to clearly answer the question of what essentially “things”, “events”, “laws of nature” are, and therefore asks about the essence of the theory and the very possibility of its existence.

At the beginning of its development, phenomenology claimed precisely to build philosophy as a strict science. This is exactly what “Philosophy as a Rigorous Science” is called one of Husserl’s main works of the early period.

The discovery of this obvious truth presupposes a special method of moving towards it. Husserl begins with a position he calls natural installation Natural world

phenomenological reduction

The first stage of phenomenological reduction is identic reduction, in which the phenomenologist “brackets” the entire real world and refrains from any assessments and judgments. Husserl calls this operation « era» « era»

(noema) and aspect of consciousness (noesis)

Consciousness in this case, as it were, opens up to meet the objective world, seeing in it not random features and characteristics, but objective universality.

Moreover, the phenomenon is not an element of the real world - it is created and controlled by the phenomenologist for the most complete penetration into the stream of perceiving consciousness and discovery of its essence.

intersubjectivity

"life world"

Further development of the phenomenological tradition in the works of M. Heidegger (1889-1976), G. Späth (1879-1940), R. Ingarden (1893-1970), M. Scheler (1874-1928), M. Merleau-Ponty (1908- 1961), J. - P. Sartre (1905-1980) is associated, on the one hand, with the assimilation of her method, and on the other hand, with criticism of Husserl’s basic theses. M. Heidegger, developing and transforming the idea of ​​intentionality, defined human existence itself as the inseparability of the world and man, therefore the problem of consciousness, to which Husserl paid so much attention, recedes into the background. In this case, we will not be talking about the variety of phenomena, but about the only fundamental phenomenon - human existence. Truth appears as the correctness of representation revealed to man.

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Phenomenological philosophy of science.

In a broad sense, phenomenology is a branch of philosophy that studies phenomena (gr. - “the study of phenomena”). This concept was used by many philosophers - Goethe, Kant, Hegel, Breptapo. In a narrower sense, this is the name of the philosophical teaching of Edmund Husserl (1859-1938), which was created at the turn of the 19th-20th centuries. and is actively developed by his followers (M. Heidegger, O. Becker, E. Fipk - Germany, M. Merleau-Popty, E. Levipas, M. Dufreppe - France, A. Schutz, M. Nathanson, A. Gurvich - America and etc.).

one of the leading themes in the phenomenological philosophy of E. Husserl and his followers. The task of an irrefutable, unconditionally reliable substantiation of the possibility of scientific knowledge represents an essential stage in Husserl’s program of transforming philosophy into a strict science. It should be noted that science here is understood not on the model of actually existing sciences, but rather as a truly rational type of research in its utmost capabilities. A characteristic feature of Ph.F.S. there is a desire to radically clarify the foundations of scientific knowledge and the very possibility of knowledge on the basis of the phenomenological method of revealing the self-givenness of “the things themselves” in phenomenological experience. Phenomenology considers “objective” knowledge of the positive sciences to be naive, since the very possibility of such knowledge remains unclear, and the connection between the mental process of knowledge and the object of knowledge transcendental to it remains a mystery.

The actual experience of consciousness, which mediates any objective scientific experience, always turns out to be “reviewed” by positive science. This means that all positive scientific knowledge and its methodology are relative. Guided by the principle of non-presupposition, phenomenology turns directly to the original sources of experience and sees the essence of cognitive connection in the intentionality (direction of consciousness towards an object) of consciousness. Penetrating into the essence of knowledge, phenomenology declares itself as a universally substantiating science, as a scientific doctrine. Husserl puts forward the idea of ​​a unified system of scientific and philosophical knowledge, in which phenomenology, or “first philosophy,” which acts as a universal methodology, is called upon to play a fundamental role. All other scientific disciplines are divided into eidetic (“second philosophy”) and positive in accordance with the fundamental difference between the two sides of the object of study: essential (necessary) and factual (accidental). IN common system scientific knowledge, the eidetic sciences, examples of which include mathematics and “pure” natural science, turn out to be a connecting link between transcendental (going beyond the limits of reason) phenomenology and the positive sciences; they are assigned the role of a theoretical foundation for the rationalization and transcendental understanding of the factual material of the positive sciences. The method of eidetic sciences is ideation within the limits of eidetically reduced experience. Clarifying the essential structures of various kinds of reality, eidetic sciences form ontologies: a formal ontology containing a priori forms of objectivity in general and prescribing a formal structure for particular sciences, as well as regional, or material, ontologies that unfold the concepts of formal ontology on the material of two main regions of existence: nature and spirit. Ontology (science, studying the problems of being) of nature is in turn divided into the ontology of physical nature and the ontology of organic nature. Each regional ontology is considered as an autonomous sphere of a certain objectivity with unique essential structures, comprehended in ideation (contemplation of the essence). Eidetic sciences make it possible to clarify the fundamental concepts of regions, such as “space”, “time”, “causality”, “culture”, “history”, etc., as well as to establish the essential laws of these regions. At the level of research into factual material, each regional ontology corresponds to a group of positive sciences in which the semantic

34. Social epistemology.

Epistemology (from ancient Greek ἐπιστήμη - “scientific knowledge, science”, “reliable knowledge” and λόγος - “word”, “speech”); epistemology (from ancient Greek γνῶσις - “cognition”, “knowledge” and λόγος - “word”, “speech”) - theory of knowledge, section of philosophy. SOCIAL EPISTEMOLOGY (English social epistemology, German soziale Erkenntnistheorie) is one of the modern areas of research at the intersection of philosophy, history and sociology of science, science studies. Over the past 30 years, it has been actively developing, producing new approaches and generating discussions. Proponents of classical epistemology believed that there were three sources of knowledge. This is, firstly, an object that is the focus of cognitive interest; secondly, the subject himself with his inherent cognitive abilities; thirdly, the social conditions of cognition. At the same time, the positive content of knowledge was seen mainly in the object; the subject is a source of interference and illusions, but at the same time ensures the creative and constructive nature of cognition; social conditions are entirely responsible for prejudices and errors. A number of modern epistemologists have taken a significantly different position. They argue that all three sources of knowledge are actually reducible to one thing - to the social conditions of knowledge. Both subject and object are social constructions; only that which is a part is known human world, and as dictated social norms and rules. Thus, both the content and form of knowledge are social from beginning to end - this is the point of view of some (but not all) supporters of social science. Status of the issue. Within the framework of S. e. three main directions can be distinguished, respectively associated with the names of their representatives: D. Bloor (Edinburgh), S. Fuller (Warwick) and E. Goldman (Arizona). Each of them is positioned in its own way in relation to classical epistemology and philosophy in general. So, Bloor in the spirit of the “naturalistic trend” gives the status of a “true theory of knowledge” to cognitive sociology, designed to replace the philosophical analysis of knowledge. G oldman recognizes the importance of many scientific disciplines for the theory of knowledge, but emphasizes that it should not be simply their empirical unification. Epistemology should maintain its distinction from the “positive sciences”; not only the description of the cognitive process, but also its normative assessment in relation to truth and validity constitutes the essence of his “social epistemics” as a variant of the analytical theory of knowledge. Fulle r takes an intermediate position and follows the path of synthesizing the philosophy of K. Popper, J. Habermas and M. Foucault. He considers S. e. not just as one version of modern epistemology, but as its global and integrative perspective, closely related to what is called “science and technology studies”. A thorough (although not without bias, does not mention the work of D. Bloor with the subtitle “Social Theory of Knowledge”) analysis of SE is given by E. Goldman in the article of the same name in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. He defines it as the study of the social dimensions of knowledge or information, but finds significantly different opinions about what the term “knowledge” covers, what is the scope of the “social” and what kind of social-epistemological research and its purpose should be. According to some authors, SE should preserve the basic attitude of classical epistemology, taking into account, however, that the latter was too individualistic. According to other authors, SE should be a more radical departure from the classical one and at the same time generally replace it as a given discipline. Prospects social epistemology Some representatives of social epistemology consider the concepts of rationality, truth, and normativity to be generally alien to the social-epistemological approach. This is the path to minimizing philosophy in epistemology, to turning the latter into a branch of sociology or psychology. But even so, it is difficult to completely abandon some of the basic norms of rational discourse that limit the freedom of permissiveness in theoretical consciousness. They form the basis of the version of social epistemology that the author of these lines and his colleagues are developing. We designate the first fundamental thesis as anthropologism: man has a mind that distinguishes him from other natural phenomena, endows him with special abilities and special responsibility. Anthropologism is opposed to total ecologism and biologism, which assert the equality of all biological species and the primacy of human natural conditioning over sociocultural ones. The second thesis - the thesis of reflexivity - emphasizes the difference between image and object, knowledge and consciousness, method and activity and indicates that the normative approach applies only to the first members of these dichotomies. This thesis is opposed to extreme descriptivism in the style of L. Wittgenstein, which exaggerates the importance of case studies and the practice of participant observation. Criticism is the third thesis of the new social epistemology. It involves radical questioning, the application of Occam's razor to the results of interpretation, intuitive insight and creative imagination. The cutting edge of criticism is aimed at mystical intuitionism as an epistemological practice of connecting to the “stream of world consciousness.” This does not mean limiting epistemological analysis to scientific knowledge. Forms of extra-scientific knowledge should, of course, be studied using objective sources - the results of religious studies, ethnographic, and cultural studies. And finally, the regulatory ideal of truth should be preserved as a condition for theoretical knowledge and its analysis. At the same time, it is necessary to construct a typological definition of truth that would allow operational use in the context of a variety of types of knowledge and activity. This position is opposed to both naive realism and relativism. About the subject S. e. Despite the obviousness of the central question - what is sociality? - it is rarely stated explicitly and just as rarely purposefully addressed in foreign works on S. e. a banal definition of sociality as interests, political forces, spheres of the irrational, interactions, groups and communities. It turns out that S. e. simply borrows an element of the subject area from sociology, cultural studies, history and social psychology, which fits well into the naturalistic orientation of a number of trends in modern philosophy. However, philosophical thinking itself, as a rule, assumes a different position.

Philosophy gives independent definitions of man and the world, based precisely on their correlation and constructing a specific concept of “the world of man.” Therefore, one of the main tasks of S. e. today - to understand what kind of sociality we are talking about in the context of the philosophical analysis of knowledge. Specify general her understanding of relationships the understanding of knowledge to sociality and the relationship of sociality to knowledge - allows, the typology of sociality. The first type of sociality is the permeation of knowledge by forms of activity and communication, the ability to express them in a specific way, by assimilating and displaying their structure. This is the “internal sociality” of cognition, a property that is inherent in a person’s cognitive activity, even if he is excluded from all existing social connections (Robinson Crusoe). The ability of a subject to think, generalizing his practical acts and subjecting to reflection the procedures of thinking itself, is a sociocultural product embedded in a person by education and experience. At the same time, the subject produces ideal schemes and conducts thought experiments, creating conditions for the possibility of activity and communication. The second type of sociality - “external sociality” - appears as the dependence of the spatio-temporal characteristics of knowledge on the state social systems(speed, breadth, depth, openness, hiddenness). Social systems also form the requirements for knowledge and criteria for its acceptability. The cognizing subject uses images and analogies gleaned from his contemporary society. Natural scientific atomism was inspired by individualistic ideology and morality. Within the mechanistic paradigm, God himself received the interpretation of the “supreme watchmaker.” The methodology of empiricism and experimentalism is indebted to travel and adventure in the context of great geographical discoveries. All these are signs that knowledge belongs to the era of the New Time. The third type of sociality is represented by “open sociality.” It expresses the inclusion of knowledge in cultural dynamics, or the fact that the total sphere of culture is the main cognitive resource of a person. A person’s ability to take down a randomly chosen book from a library shelf and become dependent on the thoughts he read is a sign of his belonging to a culture. Culture is the source of creativity, creativity is the openness of knowledge to culture, one can only create by standing on the shoulders of titans. The same circumstance that knowledge exists in many different cultural forms and types is another manifestation of open sociality. A specific study of types of sociality presupposes the involvement of the results and methods of the social sciences and humanities in epistemological circulation.

Hence the importance of the interdisciplinary orientation of S. e. Methods S. e. Among the specific methods of S. e. the leading place is occupied by borrowings from the social sciences and humanities. The practice of case studies and “field” studies of laboratories is adopted from the history and sociology of science. Rhetorical theory is applied as an approach to the analysis of scientific discourse. Another analytical method used in economics is probability theory. For example, it can be used to prescribe rational changes in the degree of conviction of a cognitive subject, in assessing the degree of trust in other subjects and their degree of conviction (see: Lehrer K., Wagner C. Rational Consensus in Science and Society. Dordrecht, 1981) . Some methods of economic analysis and game theory can also be useful for social epistemology. As the most typical method, S. e.

31. Phenomenology as a direction of modern philosophy

case studies. The idea of ​​case studies is the most complete and theoretically unloaded description of a specific cognitive episode in order to demonstrate (“show”) the sociality of cognition. The goal is to show how social factors determine the fundamental decisions of the cognizing subject (formation, promotion, justification, choice of idea or concept).

Phenomenology

Phenomenology is one of the leading and most influential trends in philosophy and culture of the twentieth century. The ideas of the founder of phenomenology, Edmund Husserl (1859-1938), had a huge impact on all major movements in philosophy, as well as on law and sociology, political science, ethics, aesthetics, psychology and psychiatry. The spread of phenomenology is not limited by the boundaries of European philosophizing: having emerged in Germany, it developed and continues to actively develop in other countries, including Russia.

The main idea of ​​phenomenology is intentionality (from the Latin intentio - striving), which presupposes the inseparability and at the same time irreducibility of consciousness and being - human existence and the objective world. Intentionality expresses Husserl’s original thesis “Back to the objects themselves,” which means the reconstruction of directly experienced life meanings arising between consciousness and the object.

From the point of view of phenomenology, posing the question of the world itself is completely incorrect - objects must be understood as correlated with consciousness. The objectivity of the world is correlative - objects are always correlated with memory, fantasy, judgment, that is, objectivity is always experienced. Consciousness is always consciousness of something Therefore, phenomenological analysis is an analysis of the consciousness itself, in which the world is represented.

The meaning and significance of an object correlates with how it is grasped by consciousness. Thus, phenomenology is focused not on identifying previously unknown knowledge about the world and bringing it into line with what is already known, but on presenting the very process of perceiving the world - that is, showing the conditions and possibilities of knowledge as a process of forming meanings that are perceived in the properties and functions of an object. Consciousness, in other words, is indifferent to whether objects really exist or whether they are an illusion or a mirage, because in the reality of consciousness there is an interweaving of experiences, just as streams of water twist and intertwine in a common stream. There is nothing in consciousness except the meanings of real, illusory or imaginary objects.

Phenomenology has undergone significant changes both in the concept of its founder Husserl and in many modifications, so that its history, notes the famous French philosopher Paul Ricoeur, can be presented as the history of Husserl’s “heresies.” Husserl begins with the idea of ​​​​creating a science of science - a philosophical science. Philosophy, he writes, “is called upon to be a rigorous science and, moreover, one that would satisfy the highest theoretical needs, and in an ethical and religious sense would make possible a life governed by the pure norms of reason.” The philosopher wants to clearly answer the question of what essentially “things”, “events”, “laws of nature” are, and therefore asks about the essence of the theory and the very possibility of its existence. At the beginning of its development, phenomenology claimed precisely to build philosophy as a strict science. This is exactly what “Philosophy as a Rigorous Science” is called one of Husserl’s main works of the early period.

In his early works, Husserl was especially active in opposing psychologism, which grew out of experimental psychology that pretended to be accurate. Psychologism developed such an idea of ​​logic and logical thinking, in which it was based on the forms of people’s life behavior - the truth in this case turned out to be relative and subjectivized, since it acted as a result of a person’s “feeling” of his experiences in the world of objects.

Rightly pointing out the closeness of psychologism with the idea of ​​Protagoras, according to which man is the measure of all things , Husserl will develop his scientific doctrine as a doctrine of a single truth that overcomes all temporality. And this ideal truth must undoubtedly have universal bindingness and the property of self-evidence.

The discovery of this obvious truth presupposes a special method of moving towards it.

The meaning of the word PHENOMENOLOGY in the Newest Philosophical Dictionary

Husserl begins with a position he calls natural installation, in which the philosopher, like every person, is turned to the fullness of human life - its natural course, in the process of which humanity purposefully transforms the world in acts of will and action. Natural world is understood in this case as the entire totality of things, living beings, social institutions and forms of cultural life. The natural attitude is nothing more than a form of implementation of the total life of humanity, which proceeds naturally and practically. But the true philosophical position, which Husserl calls transcendental, is carried out in opposition to the natural attitude - what is significant for everyday life must be eliminated from philosophical knowledge. The philosopher should not turn the natural attitude into the starting point of his analysis; he should only preserve the idea of ​​the givenness of the world in which a person lives.

It is necessary, therefore, to identify the generic essence of thinking and cognition, and for this to carry out a special cognitive action, which is called phenomenological reduction . The natural attitude must be overcome by the transcendental understanding of consciousness.

The first stage of phenomenological reduction is identic reduction, in which the phenomenologist “brackets” the entire real world and refrains from any assessments and judgments.

Husserl calls this operation « era» . All statements that arise in the process of natural installation are the result « era» overcome. Freeing himself at the first stage from using any judgments concerning the spatio-temporal existence of the world, the phenomenologist at the second stage of phenomenological reduction brackets all the judgments and thoughts of an ordinary person about consciousness and spiritual processes.

Only after the purification operation is consciousness able to engage in the consideration of phenomena - integral elements of the perception of the world, grasped in intuitive acts. This stream of consciousness cannot be observed from the outside, it can only be experienced - and in this experience, each person establishes for himself the undoubted truth of the essences of the world. The meaning of life is, as it were, directly grasped by the experiencing consciousness of the phenomenologist.

In phenomenological intentional analysis, a holistic sequence of perceptions is built, the main positions of which are acts of the objective aspect (noema) and aspect of consciousness (noesis) . The unity of the noematic and noetic aspects of conscious activity ensures, according to Husserl, the synthesis of consciousness: the integrity of the object is reproduced by the integral consciousness. The representative of the philosophy of existentialism, J. P. Sartre, who was strongly influenced by Husserl’s ideas, writes that “Husserl again introduced charm into things themselves. He returned to us the world of artists and prophets: frightening, hostile, dangerous, with refuges of the grace of love.” In other words, phenomenology restores trust in the things themselves without dissolving them in the perceiving consciousness. There are grounds for such a statement: the phenomenological method is interpreted as a way of intuitively contemplative “perception of essence” through phenomena. That is, the givens of consciousness through which this or that reality or semantic content represents itself.

Husserl denotes the phenomenon with the following words: “itself-through-itself-revealing, revealing.” The peculiarity of the phenomenon is that it is multi-layered and includes both direct evidence and experience, as well as meanings and meanings that are posited through the object. It is in meanings that the relationship to an object is constructed: it turns out that using statements in accordance with the meaning and, with the help of a statement, entering into a relationship with an object mean one and the same thing.

Consciousness in this case, as it were, opens up to meet the objective world, seeing in it not random features and characteristics, but objective universality. Moreover, the phenomenon is not an element of the real world - it is created and controlled by the phenomenologist for the most complete penetration into the stream of perceiving consciousness and discovery of its essence.

Phenomenological reflection means nothing more than an appeal to the analysis of the essential principles of individual consciousness, in which introspection, introspection, and self-reflection are very important. A phenomenologist must learn to imagine - to discern essences in the world and to freely navigate the world of “self-revealing essences” he creates. In this case, the structure of perception is temporal or temporal: now the point is connected with retention (remembering) and protention (expectation). Let us note that in this case Husserl develops the understanding of time that had already developed in medieval philosophy with Augustine: we are not talking about objective time, but about the time of experience. Ultimately, the phenomenological understanding of consciousness and time turns out to be oriented toward extreme attention to the world and is expressed in the imperative: “Look!”

Subsequently, phenomenology evolved from an empirical or descriptive orientation towards transcendentalism, seeking to correlate the idea of ​​intentionality and phenomenon with the structure of the real world as a universe of life connections. In the works 20-30 years. Husserl addresses problems intersubjectivity, which raises the question of the socio-historical prerequisites for the development of consciousness. In other words, the problem of interaction and understanding of phenomenological subjects is solved, because the procedure of “bracketing” in a certain sense led to the loss of the possibilities of understanding and communication.

Justifying this sphere of interaction, Husserl introduces the concept "life world" , which is understood as the sphere and totality of “primary evidence” and is the basis of all knowledge. A person carries out a certain perception of himself as immersed in the world and preserves this perception in its constant significance and further development. The life world is pre-scientific in the sense that it was given before science and continues to exist in this originality. The life world is primordial and primary to all possible experience. The task of phenomenology in this case is to give value to the original primordial right of vital evidence and to recognize the life world as an undoubted priority compared to the values ​​of objective-logical evidence.

Further development of the phenomenological tradition in the works of M. Heidegger (1889-1976), G. Späth (1879-1940), R. Ingarden (1893-1970), M. Scheler (1874-1928), M. Merleau-Ponty (1908- 1961), J. - P. Sartre (1905-1980) is associated, on the one hand, with the assimilation of her method, and on the other hand, with criticism of Husserl’s basic theses. M. Heidegger, developing and transforming the idea of ​​intentionality, defined human existence itself as the inseparability of the world and man, therefore the problem of consciousness, to which Husserl paid so much attention, recedes into the background. In this case, we will not be talking about the variety of phenomena, but about the only fundamental phenomenon - human existence.

Truth appears as the correctness of representation revealed to man.

Russian phenomenologist G. Shpet turned to the study of problems of ethnic psychology as an irreducible given of ideological integrity and experience. J. - P. Sartre presents a description of the existential structures of consciousness, deprived of the possibility of understanding and identification. Polish phenomenologist R. Ingarden studied the problems of life, cultural (cognitive, aesthetic and social) and moral values ​​and customs, understanding by values ​​cultural entities that mediate between man and the world. For the French phenomenologist Merleau-Ponty, the source of the meaning of existence is in the human animate body, which acts as an intermediary between consciousness and the world.

Having developed ideas about the existence of consciousness, phenomenology has had and continues to influence most philosophical and cultural movements of the twentieth century. The problems of meaning, significance, interpretation, interpretation and understanding are actualized precisely by the phenomenological tradition, the advantage of which is that in the phenomenological doctrine of consciousness the extreme possibilities of diverse methods of meaning-making are revealed.

Phenomenology(from Greek phainomenon – which is) – one of the main trends in philosophy of the 20th century. The founder of this trend is the German philosopher Edmund Husserl (1859-1938).

Phenomenology is not closed philosophical school, but a broad philosophical movement in which already in early period tendencies arise that are not reducible to Husserl’s philosophy. This is a drill Max Scheler(1874–1928) and M. Heidegger, realistic phenomenology, revealing a tendency close to analytical philosophy (R. Chisom, J. Findlay, etc.) The evolution of phenomenology was accompanied by attempts to apply the phenomenological method in psychology and psychiatry, ethics, aesthetics, law, sociology, philosophy of religion, etc.

The starting point and the only premise of phenomenology is the possibility of detecting and describing the intentional, object-oriented life of consciousness (Husserl), the existence of the individual (Scheler) and the fundamental structures of human existence (Heidegger). The rejection of any unclear premises is an essential feature of the phenomenological method. The main idea of ​​phenomenology is the continuity and at the same time mutual irreducibility of consciousness, human existence, personality and the objective world, psychophysical nature, society, spiritual culture.

Husserl's slogan "To the things themselves!" focuses on detachment from causal and functional connections between consciousness and the objective world, as well as from their mystical mutual transformation. Thus, consciousness as meaning formation is disconnected from the mythological, scientific, ideological and everyday attitudes and schemes based on these connections. Movement towards objects is the recreation of an immediate semantic field, a field of meaning between consciousness and objects.

The discovery and identification of pure consciousness, or the essence of consciousness, involves phenomenological reduction - a special kind of reflexive work with consciousness. Any object should be understood only as a correlate of consciousness, i.e. correlate of perception, memory, fantasy, judgment, doubt, assumption, etc. In this case, the object does not turn into consciousness, but its meaning, or meaning, is grasped exactly as it is seen in accordance with the properties of a certain mode of consciousness.

Consciousness is not something “purely internal” (the concepts of internal and external cannot be fundamental in the doctrine of consciousness). There is nothing in consciousness except a semantic focus on real, ideal, imaginary or illusory objects. One of the main causes of delusions is confusion of states of consciousness, i.e. discrepancy between the state of consciousness and the subject. As the Polish phenomenologist R. Ingarden says, you cannot smell the content of the Pythagorean theorem or hear the colors, but, nevertheless, it is not always easy to distinguish between doubt and assumption, judgment and evaluation, for example, in political, economic and other types of information.

Pure consciousness is not consciousness cleared of objects. On the contrary, consciousness reveals its essence as a semantic closure with an object due to self-purification from imposed schemes, dogmas, stereotyped ways of thinking, attempts to find the basis of consciousness in what is not consciousness.

Phenomenology unites the traditionally opposed “truths in themselves” (ideal, timeless objects) and the absolute temporal stream of consciousness, reflection and time, time and being. The stream of consciousness and the ideal object are two types of non-psychological connections of consciousness, two poles of the phenomenological sphere.

Time is considered by phenomenology not as objective time (the existence of which is not denied, just like objective space), but as temporality, the temporality of consciousness itself, and above all its primary modes - perception, memory, fantasy (Husserl), human existence (Heidegger), human reality (Sartre), subjectivity (Merleau-Ponty).

Intuition. A special role in phenomenology is played by intuition - the direct perception of truth without any idea of ​​the path that led to it.

Husserl, a mathematician by training, considered weak any philosophical concept that based knowledge on intuition or on the immediacy of individual perception. If the foundations of any knowledge are beyond reason and science, then how can you determine the truth of knowledge that is not based on your personal intuition? It follows that any mathematical and scientific knowledge is relative. Then provisions like “2 + 2 = 4” are not immutable: they are just the results of someone’s intuitive knowledge of the world. But another’s intuition works differently, which means there is no reason to reject other hypotheses.

Husserl tried to lead philosophy out of this predicament, which threatened to destroy any possibility of objective knowledge. He took geometry as a model for all mathematical and scientific knowledge as its most accurate form. If we can find out that our knowledge of geometry is not relative, then we can say with confidence that any similar knowledge is true.

According to Husserl, geometry must have historical origin. It arose as the initial intuitive impulse of some really existing person. One day in prehistoric times, some individual intuitively came to understand the existence of a straight line, a distance, and perhaps even a point. These initial concepts had to have a clear, irrefutable, initially understood intuitive meaning. And the rest of the geometry is simply deduced on the basis of logical conclusions from these intuitively realized premises. Even Euclid showed how geometry is built on the basis of a limited number of basic ideas. Geometry already existed “somewhere out there” in anticipation of that historical moment when it would finally be discovered. The initial concepts were understood intuitively, and everything else can no longer be disputed. As a result, nothing relative and no relativism.

Other types of scientific and even philosophical knowledge arose, Husserl believes, in the same way. He even claimed that he intended to build a philosophy more rigorous than mathematics itself. His phenomenology was supposed to be such a philosophy.

According to phenomenology, from the point of view of origin, the basis of knowledge is intuition. But knowledge is by no means relative, because based on intuitively realized premises, a structure is logically revealed that somehow already existed, awaiting its discovery by man.

The French philosopher J. Derrida showed, however, that Husserl's understanding of knowledge contains a logical contradiction. According to Husserl, perfect geometric knowledge has always existed in the realm of eternal truth. It was indisputable regardless of human perception or intuition. According to Derrida, no act of intuition that supposedly took place in prehistoric times has anything to do with real geometry and with science in general. If some truths have always existed “somewhere out there” waiting for a person to discover them, then they are in no way based on a person’s life experience. They were not intuited by consciousness, and yet, according to phenomenology, it is the act of intuition that is a necessary condition for all knowledge. Either our knowledge is based on intuition or it is not, and both are impossible at the same time. But how do we know that geometry was “out there” waiting to be discovered by man? And why do we perceive knowledge about geometry as true? Because, says Derrida, we apply logical operations to it, and not because we are aware of geometric knowledge intuitively. Perhaps geometry is a logically internally consistent system, but how can we intuitively gain this knowledge? Our consciousness is the source of all our knowledge, but what in it gives us the opportunity to understand geometric truths?

There is no answer to all these questions in phenomenology. Intuition cannot be the source of mathematics, much less all human knowledge.

Interpretation of truth. Phenomenology attempts to develop a special, ontological understanding of truth. Husserl calls truth as the certainty of being, i.e. the unity of meaning that exists regardless of whether someone sees it or not, and existence itself is “an object that brings about truth.” Truth is the identity of an object with itself, “being in the sense of truth”: a true friend, a true state of affairs, etc. Truth is also the structure of an act of consciousness, which creates the possibility of seeing the state of affairs exactly as it is, i.e. the possibility of identity between the thought and the contemplated. Obviousness as a criterion of truth is not a special feeling that accompanies certain judgments, but the experience of this coincidence.

It can be noted that Husserl's first understanding of truth repeats an old philosophical mistake: identifying truth with a positive assessment. A "true friend" is the kind of friend he should be according to social standard"true friend" It is clear that this is a positive assessment of a person, and not a description of him. The concept of truth applies only to descriptions (statements with the connective “is”), but does not apply to evaluations (statements with the connective “ought to be”). The second understanding of truth coincides with the so-called classical definition of truth as the correspondence of a statement and the fragment of reality it describes. This definition was first formulated by Plato, and Aristotle analyzed it in detail.

Phenomenology is one of the most profound and influential thought movements of the twentieth century. The founder of phenomenology is the German philosopher Edmund Husserl; such major thinkers as M. Scheler, M. Heidegger, N. Hartmann, G.G. are most directly related to it. Shpet, M.K. Mamardashvili. Phenomenology is characterized by a number of seemingly difficult to connect features: an almost banal idea to finally turn to the essence of things, discarding the superficial opinion about them, an idea that is somewhat akin to Eastern meditative techniques, the goal of which is also immersion in the world of pure essences; a purely European noble desire to follow strictly established criteria of accuracy and the associated desire to turn philosophy into science, with a latent and obvious criticism of positivism.

So, the basis for the emergence of phenomenology is, on the one hand, criticism of positivism with its almost religious faith in science, and on the other hand, distrust of idealistic speculation, which also implied the acceptance of some fundamental provisions on faith. All this contributed to the formation of a gravitation towards the concrete, towards the immediate data of contemplation. The motto of phenomenology is back to things! It is necessary to return to things, discarding “structures suspended in the air and random finds, superficially posed problems passed on from generation to generation as true problems” (M. Heidegger), it is necessary to discard the verbal accumulations that hide the true essence of things. Only “stable evidence” can be laid as the foundation of philosophical knowledge. To do this, it is necessary to look for something so self-certifying that it cannot be denied (which, we note, was already what Descartes was striving for). This phenomenological plan must be realized through the description of “phenomena” that appear to our consciousness after the complex procedure of implementing the “epoch,” that is, after bracketing our philosophical as well as everyday views and beliefs that impose this or that vision of the world on us. It is necessary to see the totality of essences from which the world is built, and this is accessible only to carefully prepared, purified contemplation.

In phenomenology, two branches can be distinguished: idealistic and realistic. The first is represented by Husserl, who, returning to things, ultimately found the only reality - consciousness. Realistic phenomenology is represented by M. Scheler, who “stopped” at the stage of recognizing the objectivity of hierarchically ordered things given by intuition. Let us briefly consider the two named branches.

Phenomenology, according to Edmund Husserl (1859-1938), should be the science of essences, which, as you can see, contradicts its name. Essence in phenomenology is considered as a description of a phenomenon that appears to consciousness when we are abstracted from its empirical, that is, external, changeable, unstable aspects. Entities are invariant, that is, they are invariably characteristic of a certain set of homogeneous things. To reveal the essence, you need to take an example of a concept and change it, i.e. vary its characteristics until invariant properties that remain unchanged are discovered. Entities, according to Husserl, are found not only in the sensory world, but also in the world of our hopes, desires, and memories. The spheres of existence of entities are nature, society, morality, religion, and their study, Husserl believes, must necessarily be preceded by an analysis of the entities that shape natural, social, moral and religious phenomena.

The fundamental concepts of phenomenology, which studies how phenomena appear to consciousness, are intention and intentionality, which mean approximately the same thing. These concepts denote the focus of consciousness on something. Consciousness is always consciousness about something. It is something that I think about, remember, dream about, something that I feel. Husserl draws attention to the fact that an object is not the perception of an object. For a phenomenologist, it is perceptions, appearances, phenomena that are important. The subject of his study thus becomes the intentionality of consciousness, that is, not the objects themselves, but the consciousness’s appeal to them, its focus on them and the products of this focus-direction.

Another important concept-principle of phenomenology is “epoch” (Greek: abstention from judgment), which should form the foundation for a new, scientific philosophy. This principle works as follows. A person’s natural worldview is woven from various beliefs that are necessary for simply “dwelling” in the world. The first of these beliefs is that we are surrounded by a world of real things. However, in the ultimate sense, the fact of the existence of the world outside consciousness is far from certain, and mere conviction is not enough to justify it. Philosophy needs stronger foundations. Applying the method of epoche, that is, abstaining from judgments about what is not given with absolute certainty, the phenomenologist moves along the steps of the so-called phenomenological reduction, making his way to the absolutely certain. The result of this movement, reminiscent of following the paths of Cartesian radical doubt, is similar to that obtained by Descartes, except that it is more subtle and less unambiguous. The only thing that manages to withstand the pressure of the era, Husserl believes, is consciousness, subjectivity. Consciousness is not just the most obvious reality, but also the absolute reality, the basis of all reality. The world, the philosopher emphasizes, is “constituted” by consciousness, that is, “presented” by consciousness to itself. However, the question remains open: if consciousness gives meaning to the world, then does it create the sought-after meaning or reveal it as given?

It is clear that consciousness in this case is identical to the I, ego. Husserl says: “It is the I who realizes the epoch, this I who interrogates the world as a phenomenon, that world that is significant for me as well as for others who accept it in all its certainty. Consequently, I rise above every natural being that reveals itself to me. I am the subjective flight of transcendental life... And I, in the fullness of my concreteness, absorb all this into myself.” It can be noted that here Husserl comes as close as possible to the idealistic speculations of a subjectivist kind, which he rejected and from which he initially started.

In his last, very important work, “The Crisis of European Sciences and Transcendental Phenomenology,” Husserl reveals the dangerous deviation in philosophy that it takes after Galileo and Descartes, when the physical and mathematical dimension isolated from the world becomes the main one and replaces the world in its entirety. This entails an unsafe tendency for man to gain complete scientific and technological domination over the world. Phenomenology is salutary in this situation precisely because it leads to the purposeful methodological removal of historical layers over the true essence of things.

As already noted, Husserlian phenomenology ultimately negates some of the merits of the original intention. This determines its openness to further interpretations and attempts at implementation in a slightly different way. In this regard, the activity of the German thinker Max Scheler (1857-1828) deserves attention.

Scheler transfers the phenomenological method into the sphere of ethics, philosophy of culture and religion. The “formal reason” for the formation of Scheler’s philosophical concept is a fundamental disagreement with Kant’s ethical system, which is based on the concept of duty. Kant's moral imperative, which can be formulated “You must because you must,” appears to Scheler to be arbitrary and unfounded. Scheler finds a different basis for ethics: not duty, but value. The concept of value in Scheler acquires a broad ontological meaning and is partly identified with the concept of essence - the main thing sought by phenomenology.

A person, according to Scheler, is surrounded on all sides by values ​​that should not be invented, but discovered as a result of a person’s emotional and intuitive activity. Values ​​are both a priori and material, they are accessible to perception, which places them in a hierarchical order:

Sensual (joy-punishment)

Civil (useful-harmful)

Life (noble-vulgar)

Cultural

a) aesthetic (beautiful-ugly)

b) ethical (righteous-unrighteous)

c) speculative (true-false)

Religious (sacred-secular).

The idea of ​​God is considered by Scheler as the highest value, and love of God is considered the highest form of love and a fundamental phenomenal act. The experience of values ​​is not a mental, but a cosmic act.

Scheler, like Husserl, considers philosophy the highest, broadest science of essence. It can be noted that Scheler’s realistic phenomenology also reveals semi-mystical moods, which, apparently, is the fatal inevitability of any powerful mental movement. Let us add that Scheler is the founder of philosophical anthropology and the sociology of knowledge - two very significant and fruitful philosophical and sociological directions of the twentieth century.

Phenomenology is one of the most influential philosophical movements 20th century. The founder of phenomenology is the German philosophical idealist, mathematician Edmund Husserl (1859-1938), who sought to turn philosophy into a “rigorous science” through the phenomenological method. His students Max Scheler, Gerhard Husserl, Martin Heidegger, Ingarden introduced phenomenological principles into ethics, sociology, jurisprudence, psychology , aesthetics, literary criticism. Phenomenology is close to existentialism, which, having become the most influential movement in Western European culture after the Second World War, was based to the same extent on Husserl’s phenomenology as on the philosophy of S. Kierkegaard. According to Husserl's definition, phenomenology refers to a descriptive philosophical method that, at the end of the last century, established an a priori psychological discipline that was capable of creating the basis for the construction of all empirical psychology. In addition, he considered phenomenology to be a universal philosophy, on the basis of which a methodological revision of all sciences can be carried out. Husserl believed that his method was the key to understanding the essence of things. He did not divide the world into appearance and essence. Analyzing consciousness, he examined subjective cognition and its object at the same time. The object is the activity of consciousness itself; the form of this activity is an intentional act, intentionality. Intentionality—the constitution of an object by consciousness—is a key concept in phenomenology. The first attempt to apply phenomenology to the philosophy of art and literary criticism was made by V. Conrad in 1908. Conrad considered the subject of phenomenological research to be the “aesthetic object” and distinguished it from objects of the physical world.

The next important step in the history of phenomenology is the activity of the Polish scientist Ingarden. Ingarden chose as an object of study fiction, the intentional character of which he considered obvious, trying to show that the structure of a literary work is simultaneously the way of its existence and its essence. The existentialist version of the phenomenological approach to literature is characterized by a shift in emphasis from “transcendental subjectivity” to “human existence.” Phenomenology in its Husserlian version sought to be a science. Existentialists, and above all M. Heidegger, often replaced the tradition of logical methodological research intuitive calculations. Heidegger's book Being and Time (1927) had a significant influence on French existentialism. If Husserl’s phenomenological reduction led him to pure consciousness, the essence of which was the constitutive act, intentionality, then Heidegger turned pure consciousness into a type of existential “primitive consciousness.” E. Steiger most fully used the phenomenological-existential orientation in the study of literary creativity in the book “Time as the Poet’s Imagination” (1939). W. Kaiser's monograph “A Work of Verbal Art” (1938) continued literary research in this direction. J. Pfeiffer, a popularizer of the works of Heidegger, Jaspers and M. Geiger, in his 1931 dissertation defined the phenomenological semantic method of research. The main principle of the phenomenological-existentialist approach to literature is the consideration work of art as a self-contained and “perfect” expression by a person of his ideas. According to this concept, a work of art fulfills its purpose by the very fact of its existence; it reveals the foundations of human existence. It is indicated that a work of art should not and cannot have a purpose other than ontological and aesthetic. A distinctive feature of French philosophers of art is that they adhere to a more scientifically rigorous methodology and are much more rational in their approach to a work of art (M. Dufrenne, J.P. Sartre, M. Merleau-Ponty).

The methodological principles of phenomenological analysis of a literary work are based on the statement that phenomenology is a descriptive scientific method that considers a phenomenon out of context, based on itself. Complex phenomena are dissected into individual components, levels, layers, thereby revealing the structure of the phenomenon. Phenomenological description and disclosure of the structure constitute the first methodological step in the study of a literary work. Descriptive and structural analysis lead phenomenologists to an ontological study of a phenomenon. The application of ontology to literary studies constitutes the second most important aspect of the phenomenological approach to literature. The third significant issue of the phenomenological approach is related to identifying the relationship of a work of art to reality, i.e. identifying the role of causality in the phenomenological concept of a work of art.

Phenomenological method

The method of identifying layers in a phenomenological description was first used by Husserl, who built a “model” of the layer-by-layer structure of an object perceived by consciousness, the essence of which is that its layers, each individually representing an independent unit, together create an integral structure. Ingarden applied this principle to literary work. It was phenomenologists who were the first to approach the study of the structure of a work of art, i.e. applied the methodology later used by structuralism. Some Eastern European scientists (Z. Konstantinovich, G. Vaida) believe phenomenological method of research by the German equivalent of Russian formalism(see Formal School) and the Anglo-American New Criticism. The most widely accepted idea is that the phenomenological method considers a work of art as a whole. Everything that can be found out about a work is contained in it itself; it carries its own independent value, has an autonomous existence and is built according to its own laws. The existentialist version of the phenomenological method, based on the same principles, differs only in that it highlights the internal experience of the work of the interpreter of the work, emphasizes its “parallel flow” with the work, its creative abilities necessary for analyzing a work of art. The phenomenological method considers the work outside the process of reality, disconnects it from the sphere of reality and “puts in brackets” not only the reality that exists outside consciousness, but also the subjective psychological reality of the artist’s consciousness in order to approach “pure” (transcendental) consciousness and pure phenomenon (essence) ).

In the United States, since the early 1970s, there has been a gradual but clearly noticeable change in orientation from the neopositivist model of cognition to phenomenological. The appeal to phenomenological methodology, which postulates the inseparability of subject and object in the act of cognition, was explained by the desire to offer something new in comparison with the traditional methods of “new criticism.” Consideration of a work of art as an object that exists independently of its creator and the subject who perceives it, under the influence of the revision of subject-object relations in philosophy, was replaced by the development of a set of problems associated with the “author-work-reader” relationship. European-in-origin varieties of receptive aesthetics, which analyzes the “work-reader” relationship, and the Geneva school, which identifies the “author-work” relationship, are becoming newly relevant for American criticism. In the USA, within the framework of phenomenological methodology, there are three schools: receptive criticism, or the school of reader response; criticism of consciousness; Buffalo School of Critics. The subject of research in these literary critical schools is the phenomena of consciousness.

There are, however, significant differences between these schools, primarily in terms of the basic concept - the “reader-text” relationship. Critics of consciousness view the text as the embodiment of the author's consciousness, which is mystically shared by the receptive reader. Critics of the Buffalo School argue that the reader unconsciously shapes and determines the text in accordance with his personality. Receptionists view the text as a kind of “controller” of the reader’s response process. The unprincipled nature of the discrepancies is removed by the conviction that any characteristics of the work should be derived from the activity of the cognizing subject. All varieties of phenomenological criticism emphasize the active role of the reader as a subject of aesthetic perception.

The word phenomenology comes from English phenomenology, German Phanomenologie, French phenomenologie.

Vadim Rudnev

Phenomenology - (from the ancient Greek phainomenon - being) - one of the areas of philosophy of the twentieth century, associated primarily with the names of Edmund Husserl and Martin Heidegger.

The specificity of phenomenology as a philosophical doctrine lies in the rejection of any idealization as a starting point and the acceptance of the only prerequisite - the possibility of describing the spontaneous-semantic life of consciousness.

The main idea of ​​phenomenology is the continuity and at the same time mutual irreducibility, irreducibility of consciousness, human existence, personality and the objective world.

The main methodological technique of phenomenology is phenomenological reduction - reflective work with consciousness, aimed at identifying pure consciousness, or the essence of consciousness.

From Husserl’s point of view, any object should be grasped only as a correlate of consciousness (the property of intentionality), that is, perception, memory, fantasy, judgment, doubt, assumptions, etc. The phenomenological attitude is not aimed at the perception of known and identification of yet unknown properties or functions of an object, but on the process of perception itself as a process of formation of a certain spectrum of meanings seen in the object.

“The goal of phenomenological reduction,” writes phenomenology researcher V.I. Molchanov, “is to discover in each individual consciousness pure conceivability as pure impartiality, which calls into question any already given system of mediation between oneself and the world. Impartiality must be maintained in a phenomenological attitude not in relation to objects and processes of the real world, the existence of which is not questioned - “everything remains as it was” (Husserl), - but in relation to already acquired attitudes of consciousness. Pure consciousness is not consciousness, purified from objects, on the contrary, consciousness here for the first time reveals its essence as a semantic closure with an object. Pure consciousness is the self-purification of consciousness from the schemes, dogmas, templates of thinking imposed on it, from attempts to find the basis of consciousness in what is not consciousness. Phenomenological method - this is the identification and description of the field of direct semantic conjugation of consciousness and an object, the horizons of which do not contain hidden, unmanifested entities as meanings.”

From the point of view of phenomenology (cf. individual language in the philosophy of L. Wittgenstein), the experience of meaning is possible outside of communication - in an individual, “lonely” mental life, and therefore, linguistic expression is not identical to meaning, the sign is only one of the possibilities - along with contemplation - implementation of meaning.

Phenomenology developed its original concept of time. Time is considered here not as objective, but as temporality, the temporality of consciousness itself. Husserl proposed the following structure of temporal perception: 1) now-point (initial impression); 2) retention, that is, the primary retention of this now-point; 3) protention, that is, primary expectation or anticipation, constituting “what comes.”

Time in phenomenology is the basis for the coincidence of a phenomenon and its description, a mediator between the spontaneity of consciousness and reflection.

Phenomenology also developed its own concept of truth.

V.I. Molchanov writes about this: “Husserl calls truth, firstly, both the very certainty of being, that is, the unity of meanings that exists regardless of whether anyone sees it or not, and being itself is the “subject” , accomplishing the truth." Truth is the identity of an object with itself, "being in the sense of truth": a true friend, a true state of affairs, etc. Secondly, truth is the structure of an act of consciousness, which creates the possibility of seeing the state of affairs in exactly this way , as it is, that is, the possibility of identity (adequation) of the thought and the contemplated; evidence as a criterion of truth is not a special feeling that accompanies certain judgments, but the experience of this coincidence. For Heidegger, truth is not the result of a comparison of ideas and not the correspondence of the idea to a real thing; truth is not the equality of knowledge and object [...]. Truth as true being is rooted in the way of human existence, which is characterized as openness [...]. Human existence can be in truth and not in truth - truth as openness must be torn out, stolen from existence [...]. Truth is essentially identical with being; the history of existence is the history of its oblivion; The history of truth is the history of its epistemology."

In recent decades, phenomenology has shown a tendency towards convergence with other philosophical directions, in particular with analytical philosophy. The closeness between them is found where we are talking about meaning, meaning, interpretation.

Bibliography

Molchanov V.I. Phenomenapogy // Modern Western Philosophy: Dictionary, - M., 1991.