Shaun Gallagher - Phenomenology

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Before you started to read this line of text you were doing something else. Perhaps you just came back from surfing and are sitting on a beach chair; perhaps you have just found a spot in the shade and you have 2 hours to sit and read and sip your wine before the concert starts in Luxembourg Gardens; perhaps you have just made a cup of tea and are settling into your armchair in front of your warm hearth. Or maybe youre in a jet airliner reading this on the latest electronic text-display gadget. In any and all cases you find yourself already situated, in the middle of something, or having just done somethingpulled up a chair, taken a seatand you are now at a point where you are reading these lines.

Phenomenology begins right here, with one of the oldest problems in philosophy, which is also one of the most contemporary problems in science. It begins with the fact that we, as agents who must act, and as thinkers who try to get a grasp on what we are doing, are always already situated in the world. Its this problem that leads Aristotle to acquiesce in accepting the inevitable, namely, in this life we can only live in the second-best waythe imperfect practical life, since the very best form of life, the life of self-sufficient contemplation is never fully attainable. We are constantly being interrupted by the demands of our physical nature and the distractions of the world. If by enormous effort we turn our attention away from food and sex and survival and attempt to study our rational capacitiesour quest for reasons, our natural inclination to know everything (whether by science or gossip)we are confronted with the very first fact, which is that there is no very first fact, and that every fact is preceded by other facts, that every fact, every reason, every thought, every instance of consciousness is already situated in some contingent circumstance.

With respect to the history of philosophy it is usually thought that phenomenology informed the later development of existentialism (in thinkers like Heidegger , Sartre , Camus , etc.). This is certainly true. But it is also true that the original motivation for phenomenology was itself an existential onethe already being-in-a-situation, the thrownness , the facticity of our existence. This thoughtthis situationis one that phenomenology begins with, and the one it eventually returns to. In between, like all great philosophies, it attempts to clear a space, to find a place from which it can survey this very situation of being situated. In this regard phenomenology both succeeds and fails in interesting ways. It continues to do so, since it is not merely a piece of history or a tradition, but is also something that continues to be practiced.

In this book Ill take a pragmatic approach to phenomenology. The focus will be on phenomenology as a philosophical and interdisciplinary practice. Accordingly, my primary intention is not to rehearse the history of phenomenology as a philosophical movement (although I will not ignore this completely). Rather Ill focus on its methods and what Edmund Husserl (18591938), the founding father of phenomenology, called the things themselvesthe ways in which the world comes to be experienced within the various situations that make up our lifeworld . The lifeworld (Lebenswelt) is one of phenomenologys basic concepts. Its connected to the fact that we are already situated in the world. It is the collection of situations in which we find ourselves involvedit is the world as we live it, not just the world as it opens up in front of us as perceiving subjects, not just the world as we know it, but the world which is at the same time something already there operating as the meaningful background for all of our actions and interactions and attempts to gain knowledge. The lifeworld is the world we take for granted, rather than the world as we study it through science, or represent it through art. The lifeworld , in this sense, is not the world that we take as object, as something distinct from ourselves, but is rather a specification of our existence.

In a world where there is no very first fact, there are several factors that nonetheless seem basic and that constitute our human way of being. Lets call these primary facts and note one of these primary facts about the lifeworld (and therefore about our existence)a primary fact that will clear away at least one serious misconception about phenomenology. The lifeworld is, from the start of our existence, already populated with other people. Before we have a chance to think about thisbefore we have a chance to theorize, philosophize or phenomenologize, before we have a chance to stake out a position of any sortour capabilities for so doing have already been shaped by other humans who have been with us even before our birth, who have been talking to us even before we could respond, and who have been interacting with us even before we could act on our own. This primary fact, and the