What is Phenomenology?

Understanding the methodological foundations of phenomenology can help clarify the approach taken in the descriptive posts throughout this blog. 


While the main focus here is on first-person experiences, this brief overview outlines key concepts that shape how these experiences are explored and described. 


To begin with, phenomenology, developed by Edmund Husserl in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, is an investigative approach that seeks to understand the structure of conscious experience. 


A central concept in this approach is epoché, a process by which the phenomenologist suspends all judgments regarding the real existence of things, effectively "putting the world between parentheses." 


This suspension allows the phenomenologist to examine phenomena as they directly present themselves to consciousness, free from the influence of preconceived assumptions or conceptual frameworks.


The goal of phenomenology is to uncover the essences of experiences, identifying the fundamental aspects that define the nature of phenomena.


However, when mentioning that epoché "puts the world between parentheses," it is important to clarify that this does not imply denying the existence of the world. 


Rather, it means suspending the belief in its independent existence.  The epoché aims to return to the experience itself, attempting to perceive reality as it truly appears. 


This suspension is closely linked to another fundamental step: phenomenological reduction, which analyzes the correlations between the given content of experience and the subjective structures that shape it. 


In doing so, phenomenological reduction, as the name itself indicates, reduces the object to the phenomenon.—that is, to what appears to consciousness. Through this reduction, phenomenology seeks to “return to the things themselves,” focusing on the way phenomena appear in lived experience.


Another fundamental methodological tool in phenomenology is eidetic variation, in which the phenomenologist imaginatively seeks to perceive the object of their investigation from different perspectives.


The goal is to identify the invariants of experience—what remains constant regardless of the variations explored—thus reducing it to its essential structures, in a process called eidetic reduction.


This procedure is applied to different acts of consciousness, such as perception and memory. Then, the phenomenologist provides rigorous and detailed descriptions of the phenomenon explored.


Finally, intersubjective corroboration plays a crucial role in phenomenological research, as sharing findings with the broader research community helps distinguish the essential structures of experience from personal idiosyncrasies.


These foundational concepts—epoché, phenomenological reduction, eidetic variation, eidetic reduction, and intersubjective corroboration—guide the process of describing experience in a precise and disciplined way. 


They offer tools to explore what appears to consciousness and to identify the essential features of lived experience. In other posts, these ideas are applied more concretely to specific experiences.

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