Phenomenology demands repeatedly renewed attention and disciplined re-looking at things

Evidence

Husserl’s philosophy became an exhausting but exciting discipline in which concentration and effort must constantly be renewed. To practise it, he wrote, ‘a new way of looking at things is necessary’ — a way that brings us back again and again to our project, so as ‘to see what stands before our eyes, to distinguish, to describe’. This was Husserl’s natural style of working. It was also a perfect definition of phenomenology. — Sarah Bakewell, At the Existentialist Café, 134

Categorization

• SEED: Phenomenology as a practice of perpetual re-beginning — a possible essay angle on attention as ethical discipline, connecting to the current discourse about distraction and re-focusing.
• XREF: connects to: Phenomenology restores the unnoticed richness of everyday experience — Sarah Bakewell, At the Existentialist Café: Freedom,…, 147; 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

Broader Connections

• Phenomenology rediscovers philosophy by describing lived things rather than questioning reality #expands (0.90) — Sarah Bakewell, At the Existentialist Café, 12
• Phenomenology investigates direct experience of phenomena rather than questions of reality #expands (0.90) — Sarah Bakewell, At the Existentialist Café, 11