Phenomenology brackets reality questions to describe things as they present themselves

Evidence

The phenomenologists’ leading thinker, Edmund Husserl, provided a rallying cry, ‘To the things themselves!’ It meant: don’t waste time on the interpretations that accrue upon things, and especially don’t waste time wondering whether the things are real. Just look at this that’s presenting itself to you, whatever this may be, and describe it as precisely as possible. … Another phenomenologist, Martin Heidegger, added a different spin. Philosophers all through history have wasted their time on secondary questions, he said, while forgetting to ask the one that matters most, the question of Being. What is it for a thing to be? What does it mean to say that you yourself are? Until you ask this, he maintained, you will never get anywhere. — Sarah Bakewell, At the Existentialist Café, 12

Categorization

• DEFINE: Defines the two founding rallying cries of the movement: Husserl’s ‘to the things themselves’ and Heidegger’s question of Being.
• XREF: This is the seed distinction the whole existentialism/phenomenology relationship turns on; connects to Heidegger’s Being and Time and later chapters on Sartre’s formulation. — connects to: Phenomenology rediscovers philosophy by describing lived things rather than questioning reality — Sarah Bakewell, At the Existentialist Café: Freedom,…, 12; Phenomenology investigates direct experience of phenomena rather than questions of reality — Sarah Bakewell, At the Existentialist Café: Freedom,…, 11; Phenomenology studies lived experience rather than reality-versus-appearance puzzles — Sarah Bakewell, At the Existentialist Café: Freedom,…, 11 (+3 more)

Broader Connections

• The epoché brackets reality to focus on lived experience itself #corroborates (0.97) — Sarah Bakewell, At the Existentialist Café, 146
• Phenomenology rediscovers philosophy by describing lived things rather than questioning reality #corroborates (0.95) — Sarah Bakewell, At the Existentialist Café, 12
• Phenomenology investigates direct experience of phenomena rather than questions of reality #corroborates (0.92) — Sarah Bakewell, At the Existentialist Café, 11
• Phenomenology studies lived experience rather than reality-versus-appearance puzzles #corroborates (0.90) — Sarah Bakewell, At the Existentialist Café, 11
• Phenomenology describes the feel of thought rather than its content #qualifies (0.80) — Fredric Jameson, Marxism and Form, 632
• Comprehending the interrelation of experienced facts shatters false realism #qualifies (0.70) — Herbert Marcuse, One-Dimensional Man, 801