Key ideas

In the next section I will look at some key ideas in phenomenology. These are intentionality, temporality, epoché, essence and lifeworld.

Intentionality

Husserl‟s notion of intentionality provides the cornerstone to phenomenology‟s understanding of the nature of consciousness. Moran (2005:6) documents Husserl‟s meaning of intentionality as “„directedness‟ or „aboutness‟ of conscious experience”

and highlights the influence that his tutor Brentano had in the development of this concept. This cornerstone is seen in the phenomenologists‟ belief that consciousness is always a consciousness of something and that an object is always an object for someone. We see a particular object, we feel an emotion towards a particular situation or person. In other words, the object cannot be described adequately if it is apart from the subject, likewise the subject cannot be adequately described from the object. This means that as humans we cannot be described apart from our world, similarly our world, which is always a human world, cannot be described apart from us (Crotty, 1998).

The process by which the mind is said to reach out into the world in order to make sense of what it experiences, is known as intentionality. The basic interpretive act is to experience the world in terms of objects or things and whatever sense we make of the world is intentionally derived by actively reaching out to those objects. The very

process of intentionality makes clear that, as humans, we can never have direct access to or knowledge of the real world as it is. However, what can be said is that at a most basic level of consciousness an interpretive act has occurred:

Through intentionality, the sensory data at our disposal, which respond to the unknown stimuli emanating from the physical world, undergo a basic, unavoidable „translation‟ or interpretation that leads us to respond to the stimuli as if they were objects.

(Spinelli, 2005: 15).

Intentionality is the central assumption of phenomenology (Spinelli, 2005; Langridge, 2007).

Husserl introduced the terms noema and noesis to refer to two different aspects of experience. Noema refers to what is experienced (the object) and noesis refers to the way it is experienced (by the subject). I am looking out of my window and notice the appearance of green stems out of the ground and I begin to think about longer brighter days, the warmth of the sun and I feel more cheerful that spring is here. The green stems would be the initial focus of my experience. The noematic focus of my experience is the green stems, whereas the noetic focus of my experience are my feelings, thoughts and associations that I bring to the experience and the thought of spring makes me feel more cheerful. Whilst these terms can be defined in isolation, they are inevitably related:

Every experiencing has its reference or direction towards what is experienced, and contrarily, every experienced phenomenon refers to or reflects a mode of experiencing to which it is present.

(Ihde, 1986: 42).

Intentionality then is the relationship between the noema and noesis. Husserl

relationship between noema and noesis and view intentionality from the outside. This is often referred to as taking a „God‟s eye view‟ (Merleau-Ponty, [1945] 1962) of the experience.

Temporality

Temporality, which means our experience of time, was a key feature for Heidegger‟s book Being and Time. Whilst our experience of time is always of the here and now or the present, it also involves our past and a projection of the future. Time is also measured by the clock and can be broken down into units such as minutes, hours and weeks. This way of seeing time gives it a linear dimension often described as past, present and future (Becker, 1992) and this way of looking at time helps us to give a structure or routine to our activities. Our experience of time can be quite different to clock time. What is like two minutes on a clock when we are doing something enjoyable can flash by. At other times, when we are doing something we do not want to do, two minutes can seem like hours or if we have been given bad news time can seem to stand still.

Epoché

Epoché is the term used to describe the step taken when we attempt to recognise and set aside our own preconceived ideas about the phenomenon we are considering.

Husserl maintained that human existence was characterised by the natural attitude.

This means our everyday way of experiencing the world with all our taken for granted assumptions. The practice of epoché is also known as bracketing. The process involves suspending, or setting to one side, scientific knowledge and our own personal preconceptions. Langdridge (2007: 17) said „the core of epoché is doubt‟. By

this, he meant that we doubt the „natural attitude or biases of everyday knowledge‟.

This is our ordinary way of seeing things, where taken-for-granted assumptions and stereotypes influence our responses. The natural attitude characterises the fabric of human existence. The aim of epoché is to enable the researcher to describe the „things them-selves‟ and attempt to set aside „all those assumptions we have about the world around us‟ (Langdridge, 2007: 18). Husserl believed that whilst this might be difficult to achieve it was possible to completely step outside of our own preconceptions. The later existentialist philosophers, in particular Merlea-Ponty, a philosopher and psychologist, criticised what he termed „the God‟s eye view‟. Merleau-Ponty did not believe that it was possible to completely step out of our own experience and produce

„incontrovertible truths about our experience of phenomena‟ as „people are essentially connected to the world through embodied consciousness‟ (Langdridge, 2007:37). This relational aspect means that our own experience can never truly be fully suspended but what we can do is strive to be aware of our own personal prejudices and the interaction between our pre-understanding or old way and contemporary or current way of understanding the phenomenon. By doing this, a new or renewed construction of meaning can emerge (Van Manen, 1990).

Essence

Essence is the term Husserl used to describe that element which makes a particular phenomenon what it is. The essence is that which is left when we have taken away personal and societal preconceptions about the phenomenon. The essence is also known as a universal structure of the particular phenomenon. However, this is different from the way essence is used within essentialism where it refers to the belief

with essence is more strongly associated with Husserl‟s descriptive phenomenology and that interpretive phenomenologists on the whole are less interested in it. Van Manen (1990) talks about essential themes but in a different way to the Husserlian view, which is that which makes a thing what it is. Van Manen characterises this as themes which are essential to this particular interpretation.

Lifeworld

Husserl used the term lifeworld to refer to the world of concrete experiences as it is lived by people (Langdridge, 2007). Phenomenology emphasises the understanding of lived experience of the lifeworld. Merleau-Ponty (1962) in Phenomenology of Perception draws attention to the embodied aspects of human nature. He used the term

„body-subject‟ for „the mind-body unity‟. The notion of embodiment is a central feature of his work that has enabled the reclamation of the „body-subject‟ as „the rich original ground of human existence‟ (Becker, 1992: 17).