Introduction to Phenomenology

by Robert Sokolowski

This book presents the major philosophical doctrines of phenomenology in a clear, lively style with an abundance of examples. The book examines such phenomena as perception, pictures, imagination, memory, language, and reference, and shows how human thinking arises from experience. It also studies personal identity as established through time and discusses the nature of philosophy. In addition to providing a new interpretation of the correspondence theory of truth, the author also explains how phenomenology differs from both modern and postmodern forms of thinking.

Genres: Philosophy, Nonfiction, Academic

248 pages, Paperback

First published October 1, 1999

Reviews

[فؤاد · Rating 4 out of 5]

يك روز خوب با ادموند هوسرل

در كنار ادموند هوسرل روى جدول خيابان نشسته اى و توپ بازى كردن كودك دو ساله ات را تماشا مى كنى. خود و حضور خود را به كل فراموش كرده اى و كاملاً در آن صحنه غرق شده اى. بعد به خود مى آيى، و مى بينى حيف است اين صحنه از دست برود و براى خود نگهش ندارى، تلفن همراه هوسرل را قرض مى گيرى و شروع مى كنى به فيلم گرفتن. ديگر در صحنه غرق نيستى، ديگر خود را فراموش نكرده اى. چه اتفاقى افتاد؟ تفاوت اين دو نوع روى آوردن به يك صحنه واحد چيست؟
بيست سال بعد كه با هوسرل خاطرات قديم را يادآورى مى كنى، ياد آن فيلم مى افتی، آن را از آرشيوت مى يابى و تماشا مى كنى و حس اندوهى شيرين در تو پديد مى آيد. همان صحنه است، ولى تو ديگر به آن به عنوان واقعه اى در اينجا و اكنون نگاه نمى كنى، بلكه احساس و معناى آن صحنه برايت تغيير كرده، و به چيزى از دست رفته تبديل شده. به همان صحنه، باز به شكلى جديد روى آورده اى.

دوست ريزبين ولی ساکت و متواضع تو، ادموند هوسرل به عنوان يك پديدارشناس، از حال تو در اين سه موقعيت غافل نبوده. او بى آن كه كلمه اى حرف بزند مبادا از حال طبيعى ات خارج شوى، فيلم زندگى تو را در اين سه برهه پاز كرده (يا به "تعليق" در آورده)، از شرايط دور شده و در مورد حس و حال تو، حس و حال آن صحنه از ديد تو، و حس و حال رابطه تو و آن صحنه انديشيده و به شباهت ها و تفاوت هاى سه شكل روى آورندگى تو فكر كرده است.
و حاصل اين تأملات و بسيارى تأملات مشابه را بى آن كه نامى از تو بياورد، به عنوان دانش پديدارشناسى نوشته و منتشر كرده است.

به عبارت فنى تر، وقتى تو به شكلى طبيعى به جهان روى مى آوردى، او به عنوان يك پديدارشناس، بدون آن كه بكوشد تو را از حال طبيعى ات خارج كند، از تو فاصله مى گيرد و به خود آن "روى آوردن" هاى تو روى مى آورد. از حال ذهنى تو عكس مى گرفت و در مورد آن مى انديشيد.


يك روز نه چندان خوب با رنه دكارت

در كنار رنه دكارت روى جدول خيابان نشسته اى و توپ بازى كردن كودك دو ساله ات را تماشا مى كنى. اما رنه دكارت بر خلاف ادموند هوسرل بى اندازه پر حرف و پر ادّعاست. مدام مشغول موعظه كردن توست كه بايد اين گونه فكر كنى، بايد آن گونه فكر كنى، مدام تو را از حال طبيعى ات خارج مى كند و مى كوشد كه وادارت کند آن گونه به كودك و جهان نگاه كنى که او می خواهد. مدام با امر و نهى هاى وسواس گونه اش در زندگى ات مداخله مى كند. و تا آن جا پيش مى رود كه از تو، موجودى مطلقاً ذهنى مى سازد كه نمى تواند ارتباطى با جهان داشته باشد و وجود كودك را در برابرت نفى مى كند و سعى مى كند با روش عقلی پيچيده و عجيب و غريبی دوباره اثباتش كند. مدام مى خواهد فلسفه را جايگزين همه چيز كند.
دست آخر در حالى كه چشم هايش دو دو مى زند و به شكل جنون آميزى قهقهه مى زند، فرياد مى كشد: "همه بايد آن طور كه من مى گويم فكر كنند، منم كه به شما ثابت كردم وجود داريد، فلسفه ريشه همه چيز است، فلسفه ريشه همه چيز است...!"

طبيعتاً تو نه تنها به صحت حرف هايش فكر هم نمى كنى، بلكه از جنون نظام سازی اش به وحشت مى افتى، دست كودكت را مى گيرى و به بهانه سردرد (كه چندان هم دروغى نيست) به خانه مى روى و ديگر تلفن هايش را جواب نمى دهى.

[Elena · Rating 4 out of 5]

Let's talk about the obvious.

Introducing the subject matter of phenomenology is a notoriously difficult affair to pull off. Perhaps no other domain of inquiry, aside from philosophy itself, finds it so difficult to introduce itself and to carve out its subject matter in a definite way. This can be seen from the way that Husserl spent his whole career introducing readers - and himself - to phenomenology over and over again. The unshakable sense of dissatisfaction that Husserl felt with each completed introduction, which led him to seek ever new angles into this domain of inquiry, is quite instructive. It reveals something about how phenomenology, as a subject, is distinct from others. I think Sokolowski's work here does a good job of bringing out the meaning of phenomenology as a distinct field of inquiry into things so obvious that they are generally deemed theoretically uninteresting.

He shows the way that phenomenology is hard to talk about not because it deals with something mysterious, remote from our ordinary understanding of our experience, or because its practitioners are inebriated with obscurantism. Rather, he points out again and again that the oftentimes cumbersome conceptual and terminological apparatus is introduced by theorists in their efforts to as precisely as possible make explicit the merely implicit, presupposed, and taken-for-granted structures of our experience. He shows that phenomenologists are that strange breed of human that finds a source of wonder in the obvious. However, talking about the obvious brings them up, again and again, against the limits of discourse. We have grown used to the ways that extraordinary, exotic phenomena - such as those disclosed by contemporary physics - push us towards the limits of representation. We are a bit less familiar with the way that the obvious, no less than the extraordinary and the radically other, involves us in a similar difficulty. It seems to be a definitive tendency of theoretical discourse to increase in complexity the closer it gets to articulating the obvious. The more obvious the datum described, the more opaque the discourse describing it. That is, provided that the discourse does its job and succeeds in clarifying all the distinctions that are there to be had in the original datum. The limits of our ability to discursively articulate the structure of experience being what they are, Sokolowski points out that phenomenology seems obscure only because it asks us to look at and to accurately describe (or thematize) those structures that we are used to just seeing through.

Moreover, phenomenology is strange in another respect: it is the beginner’s philosophy, and as such it starts its questioning further upstream than virtually all other schools of philosophy (even the Kantian) do. Since phenomenology concerns itself with making explicit how any phenomena are constituted, or made present to consciousness, it asks its questions, starts its descriptions and poses its problems a few steps back from where others begin, with phenomena already constituted and distinctions already cemented. Sokolowski's work has the virtue of clearly and economically expressing the philosophical significance of phenomenology as the discipline concerned with articulating the structures that determines our inescapable starting point. Moreover, Sokolowski understands how this feature of phenomenology can alienate people unfamiliar with the practice. An analysis of the obvious is equated by such readers with an analysis of the trivial and the unnecessary. Perhaps this kind of outlook bars people from phenomenology. As Sokolowski suggests, this outlook obscures the key strength of phenomenology, which is its ability to bring any given discipline to a self-reflexive, self-critical understanding of the structures of experience that allow us to disclose and to conceptualize the objective domain that the discipline maps out:

"So long as a science is merely objective, it is lost in positivity. We have truth about things, but we have no truth about our possession of these things. We forget ourselves and lose ourselves even as we are fascinated by the things we know. The scientific truths are left floating and unpossessed. They seem to be nobody’s truth. To round out the science, to be fully scientific, we would need to investigate the subjective structural activities at work in the science, and to do so is not simply to continue doing molecular biology or solid state physics. It is to turn from such sciences and to enter into a new, reflective stance, the phenomenological, which does justice to the intentionalities that we exercise but do not make thematic in our prior scientific endeavours." (53)

Hence, Sokolowski does a great job of showing how phenomenology is intended as a method that can disclose the meaning of the scientific domains that already exist, since it discloses the kinds of intentional activities that constitute those domains but that are not brought to explicit awareness in any of them (since the sciences merely presuppose them, and are, as such, not in a position to explicate them).

Unlike other readers on here, who criticize Sokolowski for his lack of scholarly detail, I rather liked his approach to the problem of introducing phenomenology. He is focused on presenting his own understanding (really, a distillation) of key phenomenological terms such as intentionality. Take for instance this passage describing the essential interrelation of self and world in intentionality:

“The world as a whole and the I as the center are the two singularities between which all other things can be placed. The world and the I are correlated with one another in a way different from the manner in which a particular intentionality is correlated with the thing that it intends. The world and the ego provide an ultimate dual, elliptical context for everything.” (44)

Such passages give an elegant, economical, and a quite accurate characterization of the basic logic of such terms as intentionality. Moreover, Sokolowski clarifies such key terms and doctrines without getting tangled up in the scholarly, interpretive mess of teasing apart and of comparing/contrasting different theorists' understandings of these terms and doctrines. It is, after all, too much to ask of the beginner to negotiate these interpretative thickets when they might not even be familiar with the data that phenomenology purports to describe or with the language that it uses to describe it. Best to leave the whole hacking through the weeds for later. Also, this approach is refreshing because too much phenomenology is bogged down by an almost scholastic, sterile tendency to exegesis. What Sokolowski does instead is just present a skeletal understanding of the key terms that you can then use to orient yourself in the works of Husserl, Heidegger, or Merleau-Ponty. He gives you a pattern to look for and to move out from in your future readings (should you choose to suffer through more, that is). Having just spent the last nine months combing through Husserl's Cartesian Meditations, I really was regreting after reading Sokolowski that I had not read his work first. He offers a highly simplified exposition of some of the key conclusions that are to be found in the thicket of the Cartesian Meditations.

What I didn't like about Sokolowski's introduction is that this book was thin on argumentation. It is really just a compilation of definitions of phenomenological terms, illustrated by some descriptions. However, to get a sense as to why anyone might want to include these terms into their conceptual toolkit, or why phenomenologists felt compelled to postulate them to begin with, you have to go back to the original arguments of the phenomenologists. None of them were so crude as to beg the question against competing theories and to just dogmatically postulate, say, intentionality as a first principle of inquiry. The way this introduction proceeds, it would seem that intentionality really does have the status of an unargued-for, presupposed first principle. It doesn’t show the way that phenomenologists argue that seeing experience as intentional, or as world-involving, provides explanatory benefits over both the atomistic view of experience that the classical empiricists proposed, and the unsituated view of reason of classical rationalists. This omission on the author’s part paints an unfortunate image of phenomenology as a series of doctrines that one just has to accept as self-evident and to adopt wholesale. To that I say, who the hell should care about it if that is what it is? Moreover, Husserl and Merleau-Ponty provide intricate arguments as to why we should even take the phenomenological attitude at all (in short, it is presupposed not just by the natural attitude and thus by science, but also by a full analysis of the meaning of objective knowledge). You can find some schematic gesturing towards these arguments, but none is really given in full. Too much emphasis is placed by him on phenomenology as description rather than on phenomenology as a technique of transcendental argument. This can make phenomenology seem to be just a collage of pretty pictures, not a rigorously argued discipline. Again, while the pictures are lovely, their significance cannot be fully appreciated without going through the arguments that make it necessary for us to paint these pictures.

Zahavi's works tend to do a better job of introducing not just the key findings of phenomenological method, but also some of the arguments for and against various foundational phenomenological tenets. He also situates phenomenology in relation to contemporary theories in cognitive science and Anglo-American philosophy of mind, and shows some of the explanatory benefits of phenomenology - i.e. some of the concrete research problems that it helps us solve. In particular, I'd recommend Zahavi and Gallagher's The Phenomenological Mind as a tightly argued introduction that clarifies the central concepts, while also engaging with competing contemporary theoretical approaches.

[Geoff · Rating 5 out of 5]

"The ignorant man is not free, because what confronts him is an alien world, something outside him and in the offing, on which he depends, without his having made this foreign world for himself and therefore without being at home in it by himself as in something his own. The impulse of curiosity, the pressure for knowledge, from the lowest level up to the highest rung of philosophical insight arises only from the struggle to cancel this situation of unfreedom and to make the world one's own in one's ideas and thought.” ― Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel

~~

"Phenomenology is the science that studies truth. It stands back from our rational involvement with things and marvels at the fact that there is disclosure, that things do appear, that the world can be understood, and that we in our life of thinking serve as datives for the manifestations of things. Philosophy is the art and science of evidencing evidence.

Phenomenology also examines the limitations of truth: the inescapable 'other sides' that keep things from ever being fully disclosed, the errors and vagueness that accompany evidence, and the sedimentation that makes it necessary for us always to remember again the things we already know. Phenomenology acknowledges these disturbances of truth, but it does not let them drive it to despair. It sees them just as disturbances and not as the substance of our being. It insists that along with these shadows, truth and evidence are achieved, and that reason finds its perfection in letting things come to light."-Robert Sokolowski

~~

[Christina “6 word reviewer” Lake]

Think phenomenology is irrelevant? Read this.

[Quiver · Rating 5 out of 5]

The most accessible introduction to Phenomenology that I know of.

It focuses on the ideas, concepts, and framework rather than delving into historical who-said-what-when. Occasional historical references are included, but they are most welcome and never tedious. Copious examples balance out the theory. Completely, almost unbelievably comprehensible.

Recommended reading for any philosophically minded adult.

[Sam]

still have no clue what phenomenology is

[Lance · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is an excellent and quick introduction to phenomenology. I've been wanting to read some phenomenological works, but found it hard to to just start reading because a deeper context is needed. This book has given me the proper context for understanding phenomenology, at least in a useful practical way. It is true that the author represents monolithically, what is most likely diverse and complex. Nonetheless, a very useful read for anyone who keeps running into phenomenology . . . which is probably not very many of you :-).

[Paul H. · Rating 5 out of 5]

Deceptively simple, and a work of genius at every level -- Sokolowski takes Husserl's insights and subtracts what he always called (in his lectures) "the cold dead hand of Descartes" hanging over much of the latter's work.

[Taleb Jaberi · Rating 2 out of 5]

not so deep. it begins right from the intentionality, without putting forward any questions about the roots and motives and historical context of phenomenology.

[Daniel]

For a long time I've been winging it whenever I see phenomenology mentioned in other philosophical texts I read. Yeah, I've read Sarah Bakewell's "Existentialist Café," I had a general notion of it being the "science of phenomena as they are presented to us" and "something something consciousness is always consciousness of something." Then I read stuff about philosophy of cinema or some post-structuralist philosophy and some articles from phenomenological philosophers, and I'd get a general idea of what they were talking about, but a stronger sensation that my knowledge was lacking.
For that purpose, to fill those knowledge gaps, this book was great. It gave me a good introduction of phenomenological reduction, bracketing, categorial intentions, the transcendental ego. It served its purpose of giving me a solid grasp of these concepts, although its goal of being an introductory text akin to those textbooks of hard sciences makes it harder to track what are ideas coming from Husserl, Heidegger, or Sokolowski himself. I mostly assumed that it was Husserl filtered through Sokolowski. This is an issue now that I am curious to delve deeper into this field, I am unsure where to go, as I don't know if I should read Husserl himself and try to remove the Sokolowskian filter, or if that is good enough to just move on to something more interesting.
Now, my biggest complain is precisely that Sokolowskian filter. Whenever I feel his own ideas creeping in the text, they always made my roll my eyes. It was very apparent when he discussed the phenomenology of self and identity and he sneaked in something about selfhood extending back to a fetus. Of course the f*ing priest will sneak in a pro-life argument. Whatever. His political opinions have a couple of interesting points but were mainly a milquetoast rehash of the most basic arguments for American exceptionalism.
But where it bothered me the most was his hand-waving of "post-modernism." While I read about phenomenology, a handful of concepts seemed to be simply presumed when I felt that deep and interesting philosophical questions arise precisely from challenging them. The movement towards a transcendent phenomenological attitude during reduction, for example. It seemed obvious to me that there should be an intention in the normal attitude that corresponds to the experience of philosophizing in the phenomenological attitude. And you could possibly extend an infinite regress of such intentions, showing that this seemingly transcendent attitude is still immanently embedded in our day-to-day thinking. Or how Sokolowski just lauds that "reason is geared towards truth" and how beautiful that is, without questioning reason or truth, assuming that reduction leads to the pleasures of said truth. The author at some point does address the fact that some of the eidetic intuitions reached through imagination might at one point seem evident and essential and true, and further investigation show that they were wrong. But there was no depth in the discussion of said errors or the actual possibility of reaching capital-T Truth from phenomenological reduction. All of that might sound like post-modernist (or, more precisely, post-structuralist) critique to phenomenology, something that Derrida would do. But, in the end, Sokolowski dismisses Derrida as "an embarrassing uncle of the amazing phenomenological family," while my reason leads me to the truth that this embarrassment is less due to Derrida being a weirdo than to failing to address his critiques.
I am curious to read Husserl and Merleau-Ponty, now. But even more so to read Derrida. Not so much Heidegger because him being a Nazi really bums me out. And I also don't feel curious to read anything else by Sokolowski. Not because of something as awful as being a nazi, but for evidencing that he cannot provide much of interest beyond an introduction.

[Karlie Keller · Rating 4 out of 5]

If this books job was convincing me that Phenomenology is the thing, then it did a fantastic job. However, I do think the author ordered the book weird and kind of hid a lot of his base claims in the last few chapters, which made the early content more confusing than necessary.

[Tylor Lovins · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book was really an exercise of translating American neopragmatic philosophical concepts into phenomenological concepts. The language relies heavily--by heavily I mean entirely--on neopragmatic conceptions of the world, language, and experience. On this point I found it somewhat useful, if only as a translation into the 'real' conceptions of reality that phenomenology offers.
I would recommend this book as a Wikipedia-like resource: use it while reading introductions to phenomenology (that are by philosophers who are actually within that tradition) to get a general grasp on unfamiliar concepts. Sokolowski is good at giving examples, but his language is nearly oversimplified to the point of being unhelpful. I found a prominent way the author explains a concept is by making a declaration about such concept (usually in a tautological way so as to give a definition--a definition that can be understood by a pragmatist or anglophones in general) and then he explores different aspects of everyday experience to which the concept belongs.
I think that I have wasted my time focusing on this book in particular--in terms of reading it all the way through. Sometimes entire pages are dedicated to saying the same thing over in the same way. I didn't appreciate that particular use of page-space. If one uses it as a reference as opposed to a primary source, I think that would be the most useful way to read this book. In that sense I'd recommend buying this thing as an ebook so as to utilize the "search" feature and be able to jump around the text and read about relevant concepts in stead of a search and rescue mission that would inevitably waste quite a bit of time if one bought the paper version.
The book can be read in sections. The sections do not really need to be read in order.

[Rob Wilson · Rating 3 out of 5]

A clear and somewhat useful introduction to phenomenology. Sokolowski explains central concepts like intention, reduction, noema, noesis very well; in fact, he provides the clearest explanation of the concepts I've read.

Readers should not expect a particularly in depth look into phenomenology. It does not give tons of references, an extensive survey of the state of the art (obviously, given when this was written), or much depth. It is a short book and one which progresses through each of its topics at a rapid pace. Readers should also have some familiarity with key philosophical issues in epistemology before reading.

Contrary to what some reviewers (on Amazon, notably) have said, you won't be able to 'do' phenomenology after reading this book. In fact, it's unlikely that after reading this you'll be able to grasp much of what is going on in the often dense and confusing work of some of the key phenomenological thinkers (Husserl, Heidegger, Merlaeu-Ponty, for example). What you will have is a general sense of what phenomenology is trying to do, a sense for why it is such an interesting and exciting approach to philosophy, and a solid basis from which to engage with more phenomenological work.

The book is at times be confusing and a little self-indulgent. Particularly irksome are Sokolowski's occasional critical references to Hobbes and Marx of whom, judging by his remarks, he has a fairly poor grasp. The book loses a star for that. In addition, towards the end, Sokolowski engages in a rather bizarre series of assertions (because he presents no evidence or argument for any of his points, going totally against much of what he says in the book) about the nature of modern politics, citizenship, his preference for republicanism, and how phenomenology is somehow related to all that. It loses a star for that too.

[Gab Nug · Rating 5 out of 5]

Read for the capstone paper for my master's program.

Msgr. Robert Sokolowski offers a fantastic introductory text into the method and application of phenomenology as a science. I began this text with next to no knowledge of the field, and this work provided me with precisely the insight into the terminology and method of phenomenology. The overall structure of the work follows very well. With each chapter and section, Sokolowski builds upon the concepts he just presented, in ways that enriches the reader's knowledge both of the concept at hand and that on which it is founded. The writing is very easy to understand without oversimplifying any of the philosophical concepts therein. The book is full of examples and applications that solidify the meaning of the unique terminology of phenomenology and also highlights how they may be used in practice. You know a book is well written and structured as a pedagogical work when I, as the reader, was able to arrive at conclusions and make connections just before the book itself highlighted those same conclusions and connections.

[Arjun Ravichandran · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is exactly what it's title says it is ; an introduction to phenomenology. In other words, it is structured like a textbook and treats its subject-matter drily, even though phenomenology is the conceptual underpinning for most of the really exciting philosophy of the 20th century. That said, it does its job well, going over basic terms and their significance in the phenomenological tradition, such as intentionality, temporality, categorial intentions and so on. Since the subject matter is inherently interesting (how does reality 'appear' to us? what IS time, really?) the occasional dry treatment of the subject matter doesn't detract.

[Marcela · Rating 5 out of 5]

Perfect introduction. It doesn't simply tell you what phenomenology does, but it actually leads the reader into thinking in the particular way phenomenology thinks about things. In a very clear and straightforward style, the author shows that the outlook of phenomenology is a perfect response for many mistakes in modern philosophy, especially the skepticism about our ability to know truth and grasp reality as such, restoring the convictions that animated ancient and medieval philosophy and yet improving the classical understanding of knowledge as a specifically human act.

[0 · Rating 3 out of 5]

Five stars for this absolutely brutal evisceration of Jacques Derrida: "Deconstruction should also be mentioned in a survey of the phenomenological movement, albeit with some embarrassment, the way a family might be forced to speak about an eccentric uncle whose antics are known to everyone but whom one tries to avoid mentioning in polite society."

[Laura Fabrycky · Rating 4 out of 5]

Helpful introduction to the basics of this philosophy and method. Really appreciated the author's approach, less about the (sometimes ponderous and arcane) genealogies and fights among the signature figures, and more of an overview of a philosophical method put to work. One I'll definitely return to. Vivid, careful, engaging. I enjoyed it!

[Ethan Zimmerman · Rating 3 out of 5]

Very solid intro to the phenomenological method in philosophy. It could have yielded greater clarity on certain points and responded more thoroughly to objections. Occasionally, it was a big too hand-wavy.

I went into this book having lots of questions about phenomenology. I probably have even more now. But I'm curious about the phenomenological method, in contrast to the analytic method in philosophy. In particular, I'm intrigued by the concept of approaching philosophy first through conscious experience instead of first through abstract theories.

[Jess Dull · Rating 4 out of 5]

We live in a society

[Philip · Rating 4 out of 5]

I guess there is no issue with Sokolowskis writing or explanations, I just don’t like Phenomenology as a practice much as I had anticipated.

[Jan · Rating 4 out of 5]

I'm having difficulties with this one. Not because the language is difficult (it is not, at least not Sokolowski's), but because it's an unfamiliar approach (the name's not helping: phenomenology suggests obscurity). It's taking me unusuallly long to try to get to the concepts behind the words.

I do appreciate the thematic structure rather than one based on authors' names. His step by step approach takes you through multiple, ever-more precise discussions of what phenomenology is (can be a bit slow, but it's a price I'm willing to pay for clarity). The appendix on the history of phenomenology is one of authors and schools and how they relate to each other (theoretically and personal contact). Very helpful that is, but it's one of the first things I read.

Sokolowski repeatedly moves our attention to the implication of not (merely) being isolated, interpretive and alienated individuals ("bad Descartes!") but as beings strongly connected to their surroundings. Connectedness is associated with care for others (care for yourself actually, since it assumes you first need to feel connected), but this is not a necessary conclusion: it's a metaphor and phenomenologists describe and (thus) don't prescribe political programmes. Furthermore, as the concept of intentionality can be understood, there's an active component to it all: you can mentally bring out parts of your surroundings, emphasize the beauty. This both reminds me of drugs and deep ecology (Arne Naess): "There lives the dearest freshness deep down things" (Gerard Manley Hopkins). Actually, I think none of these are mutually exclusive. Very trippy.

This is what's best about phenomenology: the celebration of the world, of the body: the joy of living. It perhaps is not said, but I gladly draw my own conclusion

[Rebecca · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a good introductory book. It actually got me excited about the ins and outs of phenomenology. But it was written from an introductory point of view in Solokowski's own voice. He didn't cite earlier work or really tell us much about other schools of thought that he counters with the phenomenological point of view.

When I went to my philosophy group discussion of this book, the hard core philosopher types ripped this book to shreds (as well as many of the concepts of phenomenology). Up until that point, I was happy to have sunk my teeth into an intro book and to ponder basic phenomenological concepts and premises. But these critics were partly right: There isn't enough in this book to ask deep questions about phenomenology, compare and contrast it with others schools of philosophical thought...and to really understand deeply what the \controversial ideas of phenomenology are. So if you are looking for a basic understanding of phenomenology with little historical context, this is an OK book.

I asked others where I should go next to discover more about phenomenology and didn't get good answers (except to go back to the original sources). Sigh. Books about schools of thought that cloak original words instead of shed light on them only take you so far.

[RodCR · Rating 3 out of 5]

Great in what’s correct, but also very misleading on what’s incorrect…

I have mixed feelings about this book. In a way, it’s one of the smartest introductory books I’ve read on Phenomenology.
On the other hand, it is deeply wrong about one of the most basic and fundamental husserlian’s concepts, the “intuition”.
“Intuition” is confused, on the book, with “presence”, therefore, one could only intuit by having simple perceptions of the thing.
This is wrong. Even remembering or fantasizing are forms of intuition, although they could never bring the same evidence as a simple perception of a “flesh and blood” presence.
So, it’s wrong to say that when you remember, you have an “empty intentionality”. It’s not empty, it only lacks the same level of evidence than a simple perception.

So, I suggest you read the book, because there are some brilliant and original passages there.
But not as your first introductory book, and not before reading what Levinas wrote on his book of intuition, and what Husserl says about intuition on Logical Investigations (he, himself, says that even an image, or a fantasy, can be a mode of intuition - but, again, capable of producing less evidence than a simple perception of a presence).

[Chris Comis · Rating 3 out of 5]

If you are unfamiliar with this branch of philosophy, then this is a great book for anyone wanting to know the basics of Phenomenology. This is a very obscure and almost impenetrable branch of philosophy, especially if you don't have much background in philosophical studies. But Sokolowski does a great job of interpreting it through a more analytical grid. The most beneficial thing about the book is the keen insights that can be gleaned from the study of phenomenology for the burgeoning studies being done in the areas of biblical symbolism and typology. Phenomenology tends to view knowledge in more symbolic and poetic terms, than in the traditional Enlightenment/Rationalist terms of the last 500 years.

[James · Rating 3 out of 5]

I do not hesitate to say that phenomenology represents the basic philosophy behind all of modern science. Sokolowski's intro to phenomenology does a very good job of explaining a very difficult philosophy in easy terms that can be understood. My only criticism is that he does not discuss the relationship between phenomenology and existentialism, which adopted the phenomenological method but not the philosophy behind it. This book is a decent, short read.

[SenZhang · Rating 5 out of 5]

If one wants to understand Chinese philosophy from the perspective of Western philosophy, then phenomenology is a very good way. To a certain extent, Chinese philosophy started out on the path of phenomenology, logically and methodically. This book is a very clear introduction of the basic logic of phenomenology.

[Katja · Rating 2 out of 5]

I think it is an ok introduction: easy to follow, clearly written, not too verbose or cryptic. The reason why I stopped in the middle of it is that I missed a motivation for why this is an important branch of philosophy.

[Eric · Rating 4 out of 5]

Besides the short shrift Sokolowski gives to the moderns, this book is a great starting point for Husserlian philosophical reflection.

[Moderated · Rating 5 out of 5]

"The phenomenological movement fits very neatly, almost exactly, into the twentieth century. The work that is generally considered to be the first true phenomenological work, Edmund Husserl's Logical Investigations, appeared in two parts in the years 1900 and 1901, so the new movement began precisely with the dawning of the century. Moreover, this date was literally a new beginning, because Husserl was so truly an original philosopher. He cannot be considered as continuing a tradition that had taken shape before him; even Martin Heidegger, as strong a philosopher as he was, can be understood only in the tradition opened up by Husserl, but Husserl did not have any such overshadowing predecessors."

"Another important singularity in our spontaneous experience is the self, the ego, the l. If the world is the widest whole and the most encompassing context, the I is the center around which this widest whole, with all the things in it, is arranged. Paradoxically, the I is a thing in the world, but it is a thing like no other: it is a thing in the world that also cognitively has the world, the thing to whom the world as a whole, with all the things in it, manifests itself. The I is the dative of manifestation. It is the entity to whom the world and all the things in it can be given, the one who can receive the world in knowledge. Of course, there are many I's, many egos, many selves, but even among all of them one stands out as the preeminent center, namely me (that is, you, as you read these words and think them through for yourself). These strange facts about the self or the ego are not just tricks of language, not just peculiarities of the first and second person singular; they belong to the kind of being a rational creature is, a creature that can think, that can say "I," and that can have the world even while being a part of the world. The rational soul, as Aristotle says, is somehow all things. The world as a whole and the I as the center are the two singularities between which all other things can be placed. The world and the I are correlated with one another in a way different from the manner in which a particular intentionality is correlated with the thing that it intends. The world and the ego provide an ultimate dual, elliptical context for everything."

"The meaning seems to be a strange intermediate entity between the word and the object, an entity that seems to spring into being in response to the signifying act. It seems to be a mentalistic being of some sort, an "intension," as it has been called. Where is this meaning, and what kind of thing is it? Is it in the mind or in the word? Does it exist at all? The status of the verbal meaning is a philosophical perplexity."

"We never show up to ourselves in the world as just one more thing; we stand out, each of us, as central, as the agents of our intentional life, as the one who has the world and the things in it given to him. Our power of disclosure, our being the dative of manifestation for things that appear, introduces us into the life of reason and the human way of being."

"There is a marvelous ambiguity to the ego: on the one hand, it is an ordinary part of the world, one of the many things that inhabit it. It occupies space, endures through time, has physical and psychic features, and interacts causally with other things in the world: if it falls, it falls like any other body; if it is pushed, it topples over like any other thing; if it is treated with chemicals, it reacts like any living organism; if light rays hit its visual organs, it reacts electronically, chemically, and psychologically. "I" am a material, organic, and psychological thing. If we were to take the self simply as one of the things in the world, we would be treating it as what can be called the empirical ego. On the other hand, this very same self can also be played off against the world: it is the center of disclosure to whom the world and everything in it manifest themselves. It is the agent of truth, the one responsible for judgments and verifications, the perceptual and cognitive "owner" of the world. When considered in this manner, it is no longer simply a part of the world; it is what is called the transcendental ego."

"There is a strong tendency to reduce the transcendental ego to the empirical. When we deal with human cognition, we tend to want to treat it as merely one more item in the causal exchanges that go on in the world, on a par with things simply engaged in mechanical, chemical, and biological causation. Thus, the generation of knowledge in the mind is often taken to be just like the generation of chemical changes in the body. We think we can give an exhaustive explanation of what knowledge is by giving an account of what happens, say, in the brain and nervous system when we come to know things. Many writers in cognitive science, for example, try to reduce knowledge and other rational achievements to merely physical brain states. To try to handle knowledge in this way could be called biologism or biological reductionism. Another kind of reductionism, a more sophisticated kind, is the psychological; it is called psychologism. From its beginning in the early twentieth century, phenomenology attacked the psychologistic interpretation of truth, reason, and the ego; psychologism was the foil against which phenomenology originally defined itself. Nevertheless, paradoxically enough, many people mistakenly regard phenomenology itself as a form of psychologism.
What is meant by "psychologism"? Psychologism is the claim that things like logic, truth, verification, evidence, and reasoning are simply empirical activities of our psyche. In psychologism, reason and truth are naturalized. Laws of truth and logic are taken to be high-level empirical laws that describe how our minds function; they are not seen as constituents of the very meaning of truth and reason. For example, in psychologism, the principle of noncontradiction would be taken simply as a statement of how our minds work; it would state how we happen to arrange our ideas; it would not be seen as governing how things have to reveal themselves. It would tell us about the habits, whether innate or acquired, of our mind, not about how things have to be and how they have to disclose themselves. Also, the fact that human languages require syntax would be presented as simply a historical fact about human beings and their psychological development. Psychologism, along with biologism, treats meaning and truth as a matter of empirical fact, not as a dimension that underlies and hence transcends the empirical, not as a dimension that belongs to the being of things.
Psychologism is the most common and the most insidious form of reductionism. Biologism follows closely behind it. Once we reduce laws of meaning, truth, and logic to psychological laws, we will be inclined to reduce them one step farther to the biological structures that underlie our psychology. Thus, in biologism the fact that human language essentially involves syntax would be taken as caused simply by the way the brain is wired and the way it has evolved. It would not be based on the fact that things must be articulated when they are disclosed. The entire explanation for syntax would be brain based, with no regard paid to the way things exist and present themselves.
A phenomenological approach, on the other hand, would obviously agree that the wiring of the brain is one of the causes for syntax in language, as well as for perception, categorial intentions, and knowledge and science, but it would then claim that one must also provide an explanation of another kind based on the things that appear. Besides looking to the wiring in the brain, we must also look to the fact that things can be distinguished into wholes and parts, that they can be perceived and pictured, that essentials and accidentals can be distinguished in them when they present themselves to us. This second kind of explanation is different, obviously, from the kind of explanation that studies the wiring in the brain and our psychic dispositions; it may be hard to get clear on what kind of explanation this second kind is, but it cannot be dispensed with.
Phenomenology has waged a heroic struggle against psychologism from the beginning. It tries to show that the activity of achieving meaning, truth, and logical reasoning is not just a feature of our psychological or biological makeup, but that it enters into a new domain, a domain of rationality, a domain that goes beyond the psychological. It is not easy to make this distinction. The ego is indeed both empirical and transcendental, and one can limit one's consideration to the empirical side of things. Meaning and truth also have their empirical dimensions, but they are more than just empirical things. To treat them as simply psychological is to leave out something important. However, it is not easy to show what that extra something is."

"The paradoxical relationship of the self as both a part of the world and the one who has a world comes to the fore again in regard to temporality: the internal flow of consciousness is nested within the processes going on in the world, but it also stands over against the world and provides the noetic structures that allow the world to appear. We find ourselves living in both objective and subjective time. The dative of manifestation, the transcendental ego, is not a single and static point; it involves a process that goes on in time, but in its own internal temporality, not in the objective temporality of clock and calendar. Now, if internal time is a condition for the appearance of objective time, the third level of temporality, the consciousness of internal time, is in its turn a condition for the appearance of internal time."

"It is necessary, therefore, to say that in our immediate experience we do not just have frames of presence given to us; right in our most elementary experience, we have a sense of past and future directly given. To use the phrase of William James, our experience of the present is not a knife edge but a saddleback. Whatever is given to us in perception is given as trailing off and also as coming into presence. If our experience of the present were not like this, we never would acquire a sense of past or of the future. To try to insert such senses into our experience "later on," after our initial experience, would be too late. A primary sense of past and future has to be given right from the start."

Furthermore, claiming that we have such a rudimentary sense of past and future is not just a postulation that we are led to by argument; it is not a hypothesis or an inference. Rather, it fits the way we experience things: whatever we experience, whether things and processes in the world or subjective acts and feelings, we experience as "goings-on," as passing as they exist. Only because they trail off now can we remember them later and recognize them as past, and only because they come into view now can we anticipate them at a greater distance. When we reflect on our experience, we find it to be an exposure into the immediate past and future. The initial absences of pastness and futurity are present in all our experience. There are several technical terms that have been introduced in phenomenology to help describe the immediate experience of time. The term the living present signifies the full immediate experience of temporality that we have at any instant. The living present is the temporal whole at any instant. This living present, as the whole, is composed of three moments: primal impression, retention, and protention. These three abstract parts, these three moments, are inseparable. We could never have a retention just by itself, nor could we have a primal impression or a protention just by itself. The living present is a whole made up of these three parts as moments."

"The way we break out of the immediate present into the future and past has been called by Heidegger, somewhat dramatically, the ecstatic character of our experience, and the three forms of opening have been called the ecstases of time. The terms are drawn from the Greek preposition ek, "out," and the noun stasis, which comes from the verb histemi, "to stand," implying that in our most basic temporal experience we are not locked into a solitary presence, but stand out into the future and the past."

"The domain of internal time consciousness underlies both the subjective flow of internal time and the objective flow of world time, transcendent time. It allows both of these flows to manifest themselves, and it is phenomenologically more basic than they are. However, this domain could not exist by itself. Its whole sense is to manifest the temporal objects in the two streams of time, subjective and objective. We could not isolate internal time consciousness and "have" it by itself alone."

"Science has great authority in our culture because people think that it tells us the truth of things. Even human things like consciousness, language, and reasoning will, it is said, be ultimately explained in terms of the brain sciences, which in turn will be reducible, in principle if not in fact, to the physical sciences of physics and chemistry. We have two worlds, then, the world in which we live and the world described by the mathematical sciences, and it is generally thought that the life world is a mere phenomenon, totally subjective, while the world of mathematical science is the truly objective world."

"Developments in physics and mathematics in this century have raised questions about the exactness of the natural sciences. Such discoveries as indeterminacy of measurement and observer relatedness in quantum theory, relativity theory, the incompleteness theorem in mathematics, nonlinear systems, chaos theory, and fuzzy logic have cast doubt on the rather tidy understanding of the world that was present in Newtonian physics and the science and mathematics that prevailed during the early years of phenomenology."

"Any truth that we achieve is always surrounded by absence and hiddenness, by mystery..."

"Phenomenology is the science that studies truth. It stands back from our rational involvement with things and marvels at the fact that there is disclosure, that things do appear, that the world can be understood, and that we in our life of thinking serve as datives for the manifestation of things. Philosophy is the art and science of evidencing evidence."

"Modern philosophy has two major components: political philosophy and epistemology. In both these components, modern philosophy defined itself, in its origins, as a revolution against ancient and medieval thought. Machiavelli, at the beginning of the sixteenth century, prided himself on initiating new modes and orders in poIi tical life, and Francis Bacon and Descartes, in the early seventeenth century, declared that they were introducing new ways of thinking about nature and the human mind, ways which require that we abandon our inherited and commonsense convictions and take up a new method of directing our minds in the search for knowledge."

"Like the political, the epistemological component of modernity has also had its history: it moved through the rationalism of Descartes, Spinoza, and Leibniz, through the empiricism of Locke, Berkeley, and Hume, through the critical philosophy of Kant and his followers, through the idealism of Fichte, Schelling, and Hegel, and through the positivism and pragmatism of nineteenth- and twentieth-century thought. There is a difference, however, in that epistemology has not come to closure as political philosophy has. Despite the great success of the modern sciences, and despite the strenuous efforts of movements like artificial intelligence and cognitive science, there is no epistemological equivalent of the modern state in uncontested possession of the field. As a theory of knowledge and method, modernity is still unfinished, and it is to this branch of modern thought that phenomenology makes its contribution."

"What was it in Husserl that most influenced Heidegger? I would suggest that it was the fact that in Husserl the Cartesian or the modern epistemological problem had been dissolved and overcome. The notion of a solitary, self-enclosed consciousness, aware only of itself and its own sensations and thoughts, was disposed of by Husserl's concept of intentionality. Indeed, the epistemological problem is ridiculed in Being and Time §13. We experience and perceive things, not just the appearances or impacts or impressions that things make on us. Things appear to us through a manifold of presentations. Husserl presented this realism not only by pointing out the self-contradictions of the Cartesian and Lockean position, of the way of ideas, but also by working out detailed descriptive analyses of various forms of intentionality, analyses that proved themselves by virtue of their precision and convincingness. One does not prove realism; how could one do so? One displays it."