Phenomenology

Phenomenology is a concept in philosophy that refers to both a property of a specific mental state and a philosophical movement that began in the twentieth century. As it refers to a mental state, phenomenology looks at an event through a lens of how that event is viewed by a person, not how the event actually took place. In other words, the person's perception and interpretation of the event is given priority in understanding how the event unfolded.

The concept grew out of a movement that was initiated by philosopher Edmund Husserl at the start of the twentieth century, although both the name and the concept had been considered by earlier philosophers. The applications of phenomenology have implications in education, especially among those who use the Waldorf system, and in health care and psychiatric care, in which patients' perceptions can be important to diagnosis and treatment.

Background

Husserl was an Austrian educated in Vienna and later in Germany, where he studied mathematics followed by advanced courses in psychology. By 1901, he had written three books on philosophy and mathematics; he also became a member of the faculty at Göttingen University, a famed institution in northern central Germany. During the sixteen years he taught there, Husserl developed and refined the principles of phenomenology.

The origin of phenomenology is generally linked to Husserl's book Logical Investigations. Published in two volumes between 1900 and 1901, the book presents the concept as a form of transcendental idealism, an idea promoted by German philosopher Immanuel Kant more than a century earlier. Kant defined transcendental idealism as the viewpoint that differences or distinctions exist between how humans perceive objects and how those objects are in reality.

Trained in both the science of mathematics and the concepts of psychology, Husserl was opposed to naturalism, or the belief that science could be used to understand everything about nature, including the workings of the human mind. He believed that only by separating scientific concepts from the study of psychology and the mind—a practice he called bracketing—could the human consciousness be studied and understood.

Other philosophers would adopt and adapt Husserl's concept as the twentieth century went on, including Jean-Paul Sartre, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, and Husserl's assistant, Martin Heidegger. Later political and professional differences caused a parting of the ways between the two, and Heidegger established his own viewpoint on phenomenology as a means of understanding why individual beings exist. Sartre applied concepts of phenomenology in developing his approach to existentialism, while Merleau-Ponty took an approach that strengthened the connection between phenomenology and psychology. Taken together, the approaches of these philosophers and others in the twentieth century who utilized some form of Husserl's method developed into the movement known as phenomenology.

Overview

Those who apply a phenomenological approach seek to separate the event as an individual experienced it from any other ways of looking at that event. These other ways can include conventional understanding of an event, assumptions about that event, and any other measure of the event that occurs outside an individual's experience. For instance, if a student baker reported baking an item that did not turn out as expected, someone using the principles of phenomenology to investigate the problem would ask the baker to describe what they saw, heard, smelled, and felt while baking, and would investigate the physical conditions during the baking session. While a more traditional approach to problem-solving might decide that something must be wrong with the recipe, this investigation into the experiences of the student baker might uncover a different cause, such as an oven that was too hot or ingredients that were not right in some way. This approach helps to increase the overall understanding of the process and leads to greater insight and learning, phenomenologists have argued.

This ability to bracket or strip away preconceived notions and expectations is important to generating inspirations and innovative approaches, according to the phenomenological viewpoint. Instead of simply looking at what a situation appears to be, researchers use interviews, observation of participants immersed in the situation, focus groups who discuss their experiences, and notes and diaries from participants to help gain new insight into events or problems. This is something many companies do when they seek customer input for new products or services and when they test market new items. In these cases, the reality of the product, event, attraction, etc., itself is less important than how people perceive and experience it.

Phenomenology became a key factor in the educational process in the Waldorf-style schools. Founded in post-World War I Germany by Austrian philosopher Rudolf Steiner, the schools take their name from the German Waldorf Astoria cigarette factory, where the first school was opened for the factory workers' children in 1919. Among other things, the school's educational approach encourages immersion in experiences in a way that allows children to make observations about what they are experiencing. They use those observations as the basis of their learning. This applies the phenomenology premise that what a person experiences about an event is as important to understanding it as the event itself.

Researchers have explored how to apply principles of phenomenology to health care, both in the medical and psychological fields. Physicians can begin to better customize care plans when they understand how patients perceive their conditions or situations; for instance, in dosing pain medication, the physician can listen to how the patient describes their level of discomfort and prescribe an appropriate pain reliever, rather than using a one-dose-fits-all approach. In psychology, this can be especially important in helping to determine how the individual feels about the situation instead of assuming that each patient perceives the same loss or emotional trigger in the same way.

The drawback to using the phenomenological approach is that it produces a great deal of information in the form of transcripts of interviews, written descriptions, diaries, etc. This information must be reviewed. It can be subjective and difficult to quantify and categorize, since it is all individualized. However, phenomenological techniques can be very useful in unearthing deeper concerns and issues and in providing a new viewpoint that can lead to innovation.

Bibliography

Cypress, Brigitte. "Through the Lens of Merleau-Ponty: Using Existential Phenomenology in Understanding the Lived Experiences of Patients, Family Members, and Nurses during Critical Illness in the Intensive Care Unit." Phenomenology & Practice, vol. 19, no. 1, 2024, pp. 4–23, journals.library.ualberta.ca/pandpr/index.php/pandpr/article/view/29548/21517. Accessed 16 Oct. 2024.

D'Aleo, Michael J. "What is Phenomenology?" The Online Waldorf Library, Waldorf Science Newsletter, Fall 2003, www.waldorflibrary.org/articles/887-what-is-phenomenology. Accessed 1 Apr. 2017.

De Santis, Daniele, et al., editors. The Routledge Handbook of Phenomenology and Phenomenological Philosophy. Routledge, 2021.

Kiverstein, Julian, and Christian Skirke. "The Significance of Phenomenology." Amsterdam School for Cultural Analysis, asca.uva.nl/content/research-groups/significance-of-phenomenology/significance-of-phenomenology.html. Accessed 16 Oct. 2024.

Lester, Stan. "An Introduction to Phenomenological Research." Royal Geographical Society, 1999, www.rgs.org/media/tx1a3gji/seaweedfarminglesson2phenomenologicalresearchdocument.pdf. Accessed 15 Apr. 2017.

"Our History." Rudolf Steiner School, www.steiner.edu/history/. Accessed 16 Oct. 2024.

"Phenomenology." Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, 16 Dec. 2013, plato.stanford.edu/entries/phenomenology/. Accessed 15 Apr. 2017.

Ramsey, Sarah M., et al. "Voiceless and Vulnerable: An Existential Phenomenology of the Patient Experience in 21st Century British Hospitals." Nursing Inquiry, vol. 30, no. 4, 2023, doi:10.1111/nin.12588. Accessed 16 Oct. 2024.

Sawicki, Marianne. "Edmund Husserl (1859—1938)." Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy, University of Tennessee-Martin, www.iep.utm.edu/husserl/. Accessed 16 Oct. 2024.

Smith, Joel. "Phenomenology." Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy, University of Tennessee-Martin, www.iep.utm.edu/phenom/. Accessed 16 Oct. 2024.