Phenomenology treats all knowledge as contents and structures of consciousness

Evidence

Schutz was a “phenomenologist” who left his native Vienna to work as an assistant to the great phenomenologist Edmund Husserl. Schutz accepted the argument of phenomenology that all that could properly be “known” consisted of the contents and structures of consciousness . Whereas Marxism tended to treat consciousness as a realm of “false appearances” (Marx, of course, added necessary false appearances), phenomenology took the opposite position. Everything outside of consciousness had to be “bracketed out.” Meaning was the product of intention, and consciousness was the domain, par excellence , of intentionality. What could be studied was the intentionality of individual consciousnesses—and the interaction between consciousnesses, the realm of inter-subjectivity . In its pure form, certainly, phenomenology was a radical retreat into mentalism. Even that “drama” in the world of social action which Weber had tentatively grasped was transposed entirely into consciousness and the interchanges between consciousnesses. — Hall, Stuart, Essential Essays, Volume 1, 344

Categorization

• XREF: The Marxism-vs-phenomenology contrast over consciousness (false appearances vs. intentional contents) resonates with the Frankfurt School’s critique of mentalism and the Althusserian reading of ideology in earlier chapters. — connects to: Phenomenology is fundamentally a descriptive method, not a theory — Sarah Bakewell, At the Existentialist Café: Freedom,…, 136