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This paper is devoted to Kazimierz Twardowski's thesis that the unity of a compound object (a whole) can be ensured only by the relations between its parts and the object itself. Twardowski's idea of unity raises many difficulties, especially the threat of petitio principii: the whole is presupposed as furnishing the ground for the unification of its parts, and yet it also seems to be the result of this unification. To avoid these problems, Edmund Husserl sought to refute Twardowski's thesis, and ascribed the role of a principle of unity to the foundational relationships which directly hold between the parts of a whole. Roman Ingarden then seemed to return to Twardowski's concept of unity, but employed it within a different theory of objects, according to which to be an object is to be a subject of properties. I seek to demonstrate that: (1) Twardowski's thesis is sound if a compound object is something over and above its parts; (2) with respect to Husserl's solution, it is not clear as to whether the whole is really something over and above its parts; (3) Ingarden's conception of the subject‐properties structure saves Twardowski's thesis; (4) Ingarden's theory of higher‐order objects is invalid. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Edmund Husserl devoted considerable effort to the development of a phenomenological theory of rationality, as, for instance, part four of Ideas 1 attests. After providing some necessary background, I will spell out the details of Husserl's account. Yet, as I will also argue, Husserl's official doctrine is untenable due to several ambiguities and internal tensions. Hence, my primary aim in this paper is to offer a modified phenomenological theory of rationality that avoids the problems of Husserl's original account. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Phenomenological sociology is one of the most recognized approaches for explaining the constitution of social behaviour and the construction of social reality. To this day, phenomenological sociology usually belongs to the tradition of Edmund Husserl's transcendental phenomenology and to Alfred Schütz's mundane phenomenology, thus generally presenting itself as sociology of lifeworld, sociology of everyday life, and sociology of knowledge. In contrast to this, this paper intends to outline an alternative kind of phenomenological sociology that finds its philosophical foundation in Hermann Schmitz's "New Phenomenology". With regards especially to Schmitz's theory of the felt body ("Leib") and his theory of situation, the basic principles of Neophenomenological Sociology (NPS) will be introduced. Their main components are (1) felt body and affective involvement as the pre‐personal apriori of sociality, (2) felt‐bodily communication as the basic unit of sociality, and (3) joint situations as the socio‐ontological foundation and empirical manifestation of sociality. With these specific key concepts, NPS proves itself to be a socio‐theoretical approach whose foremost strength is that it can identify and properly analyse the pathic dimensions of social behaviour and social situations that social sciences tend to overlook. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Max Scheler was a philosopher of intuition who rarely worked out his ideas systematically. Consequently, his philosophical writings present something of a challenge for the reader. There is little unifying his disparate studies. In this paper, I suggest that a distinction between life and spirit which Scheler formulated early and held onto throughout his career can provide a heuristic principle by which to study his works. This paper is a clarification of this distinction. In the first part of the paper, I show that Scheler's dualistic metaphysics has its roots in Rudolf Eucken's idealistic philosophy. In the second and third parts of this essay, I clarify Scheler's concept of spirit as he develops it in confrontation with Edmund Husserl's phenomenological philosophy. Particularly, in the second part, I show that as he confronts Husserl's conception of philosophy as rigorous science he postulates a radically different idea of the nature of philosophy, an idea that is rooted in this distinction between life and spirit. I explicate in the next section the unique theory of the phenomenological reduction Scheler develops on the basis of this distinction. In the last part, I briefly present how this conception of life and spirit are worked out in Scheler's philosophical anthropology, particularly in his last work, The Human Place in the Cosmos. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

ABSTRACT This paper focuses on the contents of perception in Kant's first Critique and Husserl's later writings. Both Kant and Husserl are known for their appeal to synthesis in their transcendental accounts of perceptual experience and objective judgment. Especially regarding Kant, the precise nature of perceptual synthesis has recently been the cause of much debate. Whereas some argue that for Kant perception must have nonconceptual content, others believe he is a conceptualist. After offering an alternative solution to this interpretative problem in Kant's philosophy, I turn to Husserl's later theory of perception. My main claims here are that Husserl departs from Kant specifically regarding (i) the sort of synthetic contents that govern affective perception and (ii) the role of conceptual capacities in the contents of attentive perception. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper I present and assess a controversy between Edmund Husserl and Heinrich Rickert on the nature of judgment, in order to bring to light the originality of Husserl's proposal concerning this important issue. In the first section I provide some context for Rickert's theory of judgment by sketching a reconstruction of nineteenth century logical theory and then proceed to introduce Rickert's view. I suggest that nineteenth century logic is characterized by a criticism of the traditional view that sees categorial judgment (S is P) as the essential form of judgment and the uniting and separating of ideas as sufficient for the constitution of a judgment. Hume inaugurates this criticism, but it finds its most mature expression in the work of Lotze, Brentano, and Rickert. Rickert, in particular, sees simple affirmation and negation of the transcendent value of truth as the essence of judgment. In the second section I present Husserl's criticism of Rickert. Husserl's criticism revolves around the distinction between simple judgments and the higher-order affirmative or negative stance we can adopt with respect to previously articulated simple judgments. Simple judgments register the mereological relation holding among something and one of its properties, and they do not entail an affirmative or negative stance. Their function is to constitute states of affairs drawing on concrete perceptual situations. Higher-order affirmation or negation occurs when we set out to revisit a foregoing simple judgment in order to confirm or disconfirm the veridicality of its proposed state of affairs. In the third part I suggest a diagnosis of the origin of the mistake in earlier theories. Simple judgments are easy to conflate with non-simple, higher-order judgmental stances because (1) they have the same logical value and (2) they cannot be seen without the aid of genuinely phenomenological (as opposed to retrospective) reflection. In conclusion, I suggest that Husserl's analysis amounts to a vindication of categorial judgment in its traditional form 'S is P', which continues to maintain a phenomenological legitimacy even in the wake of Frege's canonical dismissal of subject and predicate. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article presents parallel and collaborative research and teaching practices that expand approaches to encountering site through the lenses of observation and performative drawing. These drawing practices record phenomena, whilst in their presence, through a designed temporal framework. This asks the drawer to observe over a duration of time and to record the world in motion. By spending an extended period of time in the presence of the phenomenon of our study, with active receptivity, our capacity to see shifts. Rather than the drawn outcomes of this observation recording a past time, the notion of experiential time – and an expanded present – is embedded in the act of drawing. These processes of observation and performative drawing allude to Edmund Husserl's expression of a 'thickened present'. The outcomes of this drawing practice demonstrate that observational techniques are embodied, relational, temporal and generative and so offer an alternative approach to site analysis. How this approach sits within the larger domain of spatial temporal relationships and forms of drawing are also considered. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In philosophy, perceptual constancy refers to the puzzling phenomenon of the perception of properties of objects despite our changing experience of those properties. Husserl developed a sophisticated description of perceptual constancy. In this paper I sketch Husserl's approach, which focuses on the suggestion that perception is partly constituted by the continuous interplay of intention and fulfilment. Unlike many contemporary theories, this framework gives us a way to understand the relationship between different appearances of the same object. I will show how Husserl's work connects with contemporary theories which emphasize perceptual constancy from particular perspectives. These theories include appeals to perspectival properties and Cohen's counterfactual theory. Also, I show how Husserl's account shares important themes with Kelly's recent interpretation of Merleau-Ponty on perceptual constancy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The biological model has become the touchstone for our thinking on mental disorder. The success of this model has relegated opposing views to the sidelines. Philosophers have been considering the nature of mind for well over 2500 years, and their speculations may provide a useful antidote to the creeping reductionism and materialism inherent in simple biology. The emphasis in philosophical theories is on the nature of the mental and the structuring role of the mind in our construction of reality. This paper focuses on three philosophers, Kant, Heidegger and Husserl, and their contribution to our understanding of the nature of psychopathology. The biological theory is re-examined from the differing perspectives offered, and some of the assumptions on which it is based are subjected to criticism. The emphasis, found in the philosophical theories, on the mental as opposed to the physiological aspects of the mind, is considered to be more germane to the practical and therapeutic concerns of those who must deal with the disease of mental disorder. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses how Edmund Husserl draws on the quasi-religious and theological concepts of "conversion" and "renewal" to describe the phenomenological epokhē, or transcendental reduction. The suspension of the naturalist interpretation of the world allows for a principled and methodic reorientation towards an ideal that is revealed through intuition of essence.

Our species of hominin, Homo sapiens, is an extremely social animal. We are born with social brains. The phenomenology of Edmund Husserl is a methodological approach to social consciousness that offers significant advantages in terms of uncovering and describing the essential structures of our social perceptions and actions. This is especially true in this period of postneuro-turn social science, because the structures described by Husserlian "pure" phenomenology with its emphasis upon "returning to the things," performing reductions, and developing the skills available to the phenomenological attitude are in synch with neuroscientific research on the neural correlates of consciousness. For the anthropology of consciousness, the Husserlian methodology allows us to explore consciousness in cross-cultural settings in greater detail and depth of understanding. This is especially the case with respect to the experience of intersubjectivity, the roots of which are found to be part of the inherent lifeworld that all normal humans depend upon to true their experiences of the environing world, regardless of cultural background. The Husserlian approach to intersubjectivity challenges the discipline of anthropology to move past its kneejerk distinction between nature and nurture, and its erroneous assumption that human experience is somehow "culture all the way down". [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Husserl endorses ideal verificationism, the claim that there is a necessary correlation between truth and the ideal possibility of experience. This puts him in the company of semantic anti‐realists like Dummett, Tennant, and Wright who endorse the knowability thesis that all truths are knowable. Unfortunately, there is a simple, seductive, and troubling argument due to Alonzo Church and Frederic Fitch that the knowability thesis collapses into the omniscience thesis that all truths are known. Phenomenologists should be worried. I assess the damage by surveying responses that may be open to Husserl. In particular, I explore whether Husserl ought to have adopted intuitionistic logic and motivate a restriction of ideal verificationism on phenomenological grounds. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

One key difference between perceptual experience and thought is the distinctly sensory way perception presents things to us. Some philosophers nevertheless suggest this sensory phenomenal character does not exhaust the way things are made manifest to us in perceptual experience. Edmund Husserl maintains that there is also a significant non‐sensory side to perception's phenomenal character. We may experience, for instance, an object's facing surface in a sensory mode and, as part of the same perceptual experience, also that object's out‐of‐view surface in a non‐sensory mode. To the extent that perceptual experience makes things available to us in a non‐sensory mode, Husserl calls it inadequate. Here, I reconstruct four arguments for the conclusion that perceptual experience is inadequately found in various of Husserl's writings and critically evaluated them. My aim is both to showcase the variety and sophistication of Husserl's reasons for thinking perceptual experience is inadequate and to problematize that idea. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This essay clarifies Edmund Husserl's view of "pure" concepts, with a view to its contemporary metaphilosophical significance. It is argued that Husserl's conception of pure concepts is unique in that he allows overlap between pure and empirical concepts. This overlap leads to a potential for confusion between pure and empirical concepts which I label "amphiboly," following Kant's use of the term. The essay begins by clarifying Husserl's view of the divergence in concept formation between empirical and pure concepts, and then articulates the specific properties of pure concepts that allow an empirical overlap. These properties include the modality and range of the extension of the concepts, the ordering of objects under the concept, and the mental faculty required to identify an object under the concept. Once we see the source of amphiboly in Husserl's view, it can be observed that many concepts of interest to philosophy, even outside phenomenology proper, are potentially subject to amphibolous uses. Thus, Husserl's view can be a general hermeneutical resource for clarifying the nature of philosophical concepts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

I argue for the following claims: (1) A core Husserlian account of perceptual constancy needs to be given in terms of indicative future‐oriented conditionals but can be complemented by a counterfactual account; (2) thus conceived, constancy is a necessary aspect of content. I speak about a "core Husserlian" account so as to capture certain ideas that Michael Madary has presented as the core of Edmund Husserl's approach to perceptual constancy, viz., that "perception is partly constituted by the continuous interplay of intention and fulfilment" and that this "gives us a way to understand the relationship between different appearances of the same object" (See Madary, M. (2012) "Husserl on Perceptual Constancy." European Journal of Philosophy 20(1): 145–165.). I take myself to be developing, and perhaps correcting, Madary's view as I discuss the role of the core Husserlian ideas, and counterfactuals, in accounting for shape and color constancy, respectively. I bridge constancy and fulfilment‐conditional content by appealing to the Husserlian notion of constitution, which captures the process in which objectivity and, correlatively, intentional experience, are built up in the experiential flow. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In several of his works Husserl pays considerable attention to such topics as history, historicism, the role of the historian, and the history of philosophy. Commentators interested in this aspect of his thought have spoken of his "philosophy of history," although there is disagreement about just how it should be characterized and about its importance in his philosophy as a whole. In this paper I shall examine those of Husserl's views which may be said to constitute a philosophy of history, and consider the way and the extent to which they do so. Particular attention will be paid to the issue of historicism, and to the question of whether Husserl, who is a critic of historicism, is fully able to escape its clutches.
As an aid in our inquiry I shall employ the distinction, often made by contemporary philosophers, between a "critical" philosophy of history and one which is "speculative." The former deals with the nature of the historian's inquiry, that is, with the proper role and methodology for the historian. Of major concern here is the relationship between history and the natural and social sciences. The latter, "speculative," approach discerns certain patterns or meanings in the course of history which transcend the understanding achieved by ordinary historical work. The theories of Comte, Hegel, Spengler, and Toynbee may be cited as examples here.[1] It must be remembered, of course, that philosophers of history are not limited merely to one of these approaches, and may very well address themselves to both "critical" and "speculative" issues. Such is the case, as we will see, with Husserl. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Phenomenologists have no taste for desert landscapes. The early phenomenologists—Edmund Husserl, Max Scheler, and Roman Ingarden—adopt stratified views of reality on which spiritual objects like artifacts and persons are distinct from their underlying matter. Call this view "pluralism." After describing Scheler, Ingarden, and Husserl's pluralism about goods, literary artworks, and images, respectively, I reconstruct a phenomenological case for pluralism from Husserl's work and defend it against an objection. The phenomenological method reveals a special subset of objects' essential properties: modes of givenness. On Husserl's view, there are necessary correlations between types of objects and the types of intentional acts through which they are given. Spiritual objects, unlike their matter, can only be given in acts belonging to the "personalistic attitude," which has a motivational and expressive structure. My broader claim is that Husserl's phenomenology is a sophisticated metametaphysical view about the methodology of first‐order metaphysical inquiry. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article talks about the notion of intentionality by philosopher Edmund Husserl and why it is required in Artificial General Intelligence (AGI). Topics discussed include the requirement of intentionality by intelligence; the Non-Axiomatic Reasoning System by Pei Wang; and the metaphilosophical observations in it.

The article talks about the theory of naturalism by philosopher Wilfrid Sellars, his criticism of the myth of the Given, and the transcendental phenomenology of Husserl. Topics discussed include the use of scientific nominalism in Sellars' naturalism; Sellars' arguments against the epistemic Given; and the philosophical method of phenomenological reduction.

Abstract: This essay explores Edmund Husserl's significance for contemporary truth theory. Focusing on his Logical Investigations (1900/1901), it argues that early Husserl's conception of truth unsettles a common polarity between epistemic and nonepistemic approaches. Unlike contemporary epistemic conceptions of truth, he gives full weight to “truth makers” that have their own being: objective identity, perceptible objects, and states of affairs. Yet, unlike contemporary nonepistemic conceptions, he also insists on the intentional givenness of such truth makers and on the complexity of the experiences within which propositional truth claims arise. To develop this argument, the essay explains how early Husserl's conception of truth builds on his phenomenology of intentional experience and knowledge. By emphasizing an objective identity between what is signitively meant and intuitively given, Husserl's approach provides a way to resituate propositional truth within a broader and more dynamic conception of truth. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A literary criticism of the book "Logical Investigations" by Edmund Husserl is presented. Topics discussed include role of the fundamental mode, meaning of fulfilment in the form of perception and mentions the practical understanding of of fulfilment. And also discusses the a prethematic experience of identity.

Phenomenology has been widely misunderstood since it transitioned from philosophy into counseling. Phenomenology is the study of consciousness to achieve knowledge and insight using Edmund Husserl's phenomenological reduction. Transcendental aspects of this method are better understood by comparisons to Asian mindfulness practices. The phenomenological reduction should become a distinct counseling research methodology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article explores the views of theological cosmologist Louis Bouyer on liturgical reduction, highlighting the la nouvelle théologie movement and Bouyer's monograph "Cosmos: The World and the Glory of God." Topics include the phenomeological recovery of modern science's origin based on Christian theology, the theological underpinnings of modern scientific cosmology, and the book "Crisis of the European Sciences" by Edmund Husserl. Also discussed is Bouyer's liturgical phenomenology.

The author discusses the teaching of phenomenology and defines phenomenology as a Western contemplative method rooted in Western tradition and a scientific method. He points out that the phenomenological method starts with its intellectual founder, philosopher and mathematician Edmund Husserl who pointed that phenomenology's greatest challenge lies in mentally designing and maintaining what he called epoche. He notes how students learn to think critically and acquire interviewing skills.

In formulating his understanding of Islamic history, thought and politics, the Turkish Muslim thinker Ahmet Davutoğlu approves and adopts the German philosopher Edmund Husserl's formulation of phenomenology - or, philosophy of consciousness. Both Husserl and Davutoğlu perceive a crisis in humanity and identify its causes in scientism and logical positivism, against which they develop their respective phenomenological alternatives. This article places in parallel Husserl's stylised history of Western thought and Weltanschauung method with that of Davutoğlu's Muslim worldview, in order to illuminate the latter's putatively comprehensive interpretation of Islam, diagnosis of the ills of secularism, modernisation, and crisis of values he finds in Muslim societies; and his prescribed treatment for those ills: the privileging of ontology over epistemology, and the full unfolding of core theological concepts of revelation, monotheism, and prophecy. Davutoğlu seeks to reconcile tensions and disputes within Islamic intellectual traditions concerning the nature of God and God's attributes, and the tension between mysticism and rationalism, and the historical and the atemporal. In summary, Davutoğlu's intervention in Islamic traditions is interesting in the effort it makes to appropriate elements of both Husserl and GWF Hegel for the purpose of reconciling a phenomenological reading of Islam with established Islamic authorities and commitments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents the author's views on the complexity of Edmund Husserl's phenomenological analysis of internal time consciousness. He remarks on two existing versions of the emergence of the idea of the absolute flow in Husserl's writings. He also comments on the uncomplicated way of understanding the notion of the absolute flow and Husserl's intentionalist approach to temporal experience.

The article discusses the concept of auto-affectivity in the work of French philosopher Michel Henry, particularly in his book "Material Phenomenology." Such feeling is said to be related to Henry's concepts of Life and pathos. The author notes that Henry's phenomenology was influenced by German philosopher Edmund Husserl, that Henry's account of auto-affectivity is debatable, and that it should be of interest beyond the theological discussions in which Henry is usually invoked.

The anthropology of consciousness is a field of enormous and demanding scope. In this article, there is no attempt to address all of the current trends in thinking and research; rather, the aim was to draw a line through the field that extends from the 19th century and European philosophies to some contemporary expressions of those philosophies in social science research. In particular, taking the original project of Edmund Husserl, an approach to the phenomenological investigation of the nature of consciousness and, in addition, states of consciousness is proposed in the form of 'existential grammars.' The treatment is propaedeutic: The ideas presented here are part of an on-going, long-term project tied to cross-cultural and experimental research on consciousness. However, the short-term outcomes are promising in elucidating the foundational questions not only about consciousness but also about specific areas of interest such as healing and the nature of scientific investigation itself. One important direction in this work is to illuminate, where possible, the pre-reflective rationalities of human experience, of consciousness itself, in such a way that we might generate codes of consciousness ultimately not as the equivalent of genetic models, but as descriptors of the core matrix of consciousness out of which alterations of consciousness might be better understood. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on foundationalism and epistemology. It states that epistemology was singled out as the foundationalist attitude's chief embodiment. It mentions that the issues which surround the claims of foundationalism and epistemology have got through the scholarship of both minor and major figures in the history of philosophy. It also notes the critiques of Theodore Adorno on the theory of logical absolutism of Edmund Husserl. It adds that the achievements of the critique of Adorno indicate the way to refinement of techniques, reconstruction of arguments, and subject matter expansion.

This article discusses Jaakko Hintikka's interpretation of the aims and method of Husserl's phenomenology. I argue that Hintikka misrepresents Husserl's phenomenology on certain crucial points. More specifically, Hintikka misconstrues Husserl's notion of “immediate experience” and consequently fails to grasp the functions of the central methodological tools known as the “epoché” and the “phenomenological reduction.” The result is that the conception of phenomenology he attributes to Husserl is very far from realizing the philosophical potential of Husserl's position. Hence if we want a fruitful rapprochement between analytical philosophy and Continental phenomenology of the kind that is Hintikka's ultimate aim, then Hintikka's account of Husserl needs correcting on a number of crucial points. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Approaches to Studying Inventory (ASI) was based on qualitative research by Marton and Säljö, which established 'surface' and 'deep' approaches to study. This article attempts a new qualitative explication of the meanings of study. A heuristic due to Husserl is employed which distinguishes between the 'noema', the subjective object of awareness, and the 'noesis', the manner of mental activity in which the object is grasped. It is argued that previous work on approaches to learning focused exclusively on the noesis. In-depth interviews with university students show that approaches to studying, in their full meaning within the student lifeworld, are much richer than can be encapsulated by noetic descriptions of 'depth' or 'superficiality', even when elaborated as in later versions of the ASI or in phenomenography. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

‘Propositionalism’ is the widely held view that all intentional mental relations—all intentional attitudes—are relations to propositions or something proposition-like. Paradigmatically, to think about the mountain is ipso facto to think that it is F, for some predicate ‘ F’. It seems, however, many intentional attitudes are not relations to propositions at all: Mary contemplates Jonah, adores New York, misses Athens, mourns her brother. I argue, following Brentano, Husserl, Church and Montague among others, that the way things seem is the way they are, and that propositionalism must be abandoned. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article examines Edmund Husserl's "Kaizo" articles calling for an ethical and cultural renewal through the reorientation of humanity according to a single unified world. Husserl also wrote articles describing the notion of the best possible in terms of the shared experiences in acts of sympathy. The author argues that a genetic phenomenological approach is a better approach for humanity.

Frédéric Vandenberghe, The Nature of Culture. Towards a Realist Phenomenology of Material, Animal and Human Nature, pp. 461–475 In an ironic rejoinder to the postmodern politics of nature, I will adopt an anthropological perspective on culture, which is conspicuous by its absence in the latest wave of science studies, and reformulate the distinction between nature and culture as a reflexive distinction within culture that emerges with modernity. In order to countering the hypertextualism of the (de)constructivists, I will next sketch out a realist theory of nature. Combining the transcendental realism of Roy Bhaskar with the transcendental phenomenology of Edmund Husserl, I will then try to outline the contours of a realist phenomenology of the ontological regions of physical, animal and human nature. Resuming my anthropological considerations on culture, I will finish the article with a progressive account of how the opposition between regional ontologies and regional typologies could be overcome. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

`The article focuses on the philosophical connections between the books of philosphers Edmund Husserl's "Logical Investigations," and Ludwig Wittgenstein's "Tractacus Logico-Philosophicus." It says that both works of the philosophers project thought and language as projections through propositions on states of affairs which Husserl called intentionality while Wittgenstein see it as picturing. It presents a dialogue between Wittgenstein and Husserl discussing the richness of their works.

The article offers the author's insights on the philosophy of negative facts, intentionality, and ideal meanings based on the ideas of philosophers David Smith, Edmund Husserl, and Ludwig Wittgenstein. It discusses whether there is anything in the idea of Wittgenstein that corresponds to the ideal senses of Husserl. It notes that Wittgenstein was right if he waived ideal senses.

Aim. By taking nursing as a human relationships activity, in spite of its strong technical - scientific features, this article reflects on the phenomenological method as one of the ways to develop an investigation and acquire knowledge of the topic. Rationale. Based on Husserl's phenomenology, which is opposed to the way of doing science based on the laws that regulate the physics and mathematics, the article introduces Merleau Ponty's existential phenomenology as the theoretical foundation for the method it proposes. My existential conceptions - people as historic beings inserted in a world over which they act but which, in its turn, determines them; the human perception as reference for our way of being in the world; the space-time structure of perception - these are the key concepts that have led to the elaboration of an approach to phenomenological research. Proposal of a methodology. Steps are proposed for such an approach, namely phenomenological description, reduction and analysis. These lead to the building up of ideographic and nomothetic analyses, thus unveiling and describing general truths about the phenomenon studied. Finally, the possibilities for applying the methodology to nursing research are discussed, illustrated by my research into student nurses' perspectives on working on an isolation ward. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Presents a comparative analysis of the views of Edmund Husserl and A.J. Ayer on contemporary philosophy. Difference between the analytical and phenomenological traditions with regard to common sense; Explanations on the benefits of scientific discoveries; Views on Earth's movement.

Analyzes Edmund Husserl's views on the sense of wonder. Philosophical characterizations of wonder; Background on Husserl's book 'The Crisis of European Sciences'; Role of wonder in ancient Greece; Association with his sense of philosophical history.

In her recent phenomenological study Baillie attempted to describe the essential structure of empathy in surgical nursing. The study is important in that it utilizes a qualitative research method to investigate the phenomena of empathy, in contrast to previous quantitative studies. Although the phenomenological approach is clearly identified and ascribed to Husserl as the founder of the phenomenological movement, as well as utilizing the peculiarly Husserlian notion of bracketing, or epoche, in an attempt to describe the essence (another Husserlian objective) of the phenomenon under investigation (empathy), the research method does not reflect Husserl's philosophy. The results reflect nurses' subjective views on empathy, an exercise consistent with the nurse-phenomenologists quoted, who without exception, all believe Husserlian phenomenology concerns itself with subjective experience. However, in seeking the essence of phenomena unclouded by subjective opinion, Husserl stands in contrast to nursing interpretations of phenomenology's famous catch phrase, 'back to the things themselves' (zu den Sachen selbst). Nurse-phenomenologists have misunderstood the intention of Husserlian phenomenology, and despite their opposition to traditional scientific methods, are still mired in the Kantian notion of science as a reality independent of mind. A theme consistent with the 'things-in-themselves', not the things themselves. As such, nursing's use of the phenomenological method is questionable, and therefore the research findings on the phenomenon of empathy need to be reformulated. Interestingly, the phenomenon of empathy challenges us to question such underlying assumptions on how we view the world. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]