Phenomenology appealed to early adopters as a synthesis of psychology’s method and philosophy’s ambition

Evidence

In 1913, he was working as a researcher at the Heidelberg Clinic of Psychiatry, having chosen psychology over philosophy because he liked its concrete, applied approach. Philosophy seemed to him to have lost its way, whereas psychology produced definite results with its experimental methods. But then he found that psychology was too workmanlike: it lacked philosophy’s grand ambition. Jaspers was not satisfied by either. Then he heard about phenomenology, which offered the best from both: an applied method, combined with the soaring philosophical aim of understanding the whole of life and experience. — Sarah Bakewell, At the Existentialist Café, 149

Categorization

• XREF: Jaspers’ dissatisfaction with both disciplinary poles prefigures later existentialist critiques of reductionist psychology and arid academic philosophy. — connects to: Phenomenology demanded a transformative mode of thinking that also yielded concrete results — Sarah Bakewell, At the Existentialist Café: Freedom,…, 150; Modern embodied cognition research descends from phenomenology’s bodily focus — Sarah Bakewell, At the Existentialist Café: Freedom,…, 1951; Phenomenology’s epoché can neutralize political and ideological dogmas by prioritizing direct experience — Sarah Bakewell, At the Existentialist Café: Freedom,…, 148 (+3 more)

Broader Connections

• Phenomenology demanded a transformative mode of thinking that also yielded concrete results #expands (0.85) — Sarah Bakewell, At the Existentialist Café, 150
• Fanon applied phenomenological method to black lived experience #exemplifies (0.80) — Sarah Bakewell, At the Existentialist Café, 865
• Phenomenology’s epoché can neutralize political and ideological dogmas by prioritizing direct experience #expands (0.78) — Sarah Bakewell, At the Existentialist Café, 148
• Beauvoir pushes embodied consciousness further than Merleau-Ponty into gendered phenomenology #exemplifies (0.75) — Christine Daigle, Jacob Golomb (eds.), Beauvoir and Sartre, 108
• Modern embodied cognition research descends from phenomenology’s bodily focus #exemplifies (0.70) — Sarah Bakewell, At the Existentialist Café, 1951