Book Description of Phenomenology as Critique: Why Method Matters

Phenomenology as Critique – Why Method Matters_TOC, 2022

Drawing on classical Husserlian resources as well as existentialist and hermeneutical approaches, this book argues that critique is largely a question of method. It demonstrates that phenomenological discussions of acute social and political problems draw from a rich tradition of radically critical investigations in epistemology, social ontology, political theory, and ethics. The contributions show that contemporary phenomenological investigations of various forms of oppression and domination develop new critical-analytical tools that complement those of competing theoretical approaches, such as analytics of power, critical theory, and liberal philosophy of justice. More specifically, the chapters pay close attention to the following methodological themes: the conditions for the possibility of phenomenology as critique; critique as radical reflection and free thinking; eidetic analysis and reflection of transcendental facticity and contingency of the self, of others, of the world; phenomenology and immanent critique; the self-reflective dimensions of phenomenology; and phenomenological analysis and selftransformation and world transformation. All in all, the book explicates the multiple critical resources phenomenology has to offer, precisely in virtue of its distinctive methods and methodological commitments, and thus shows its power in tackling timely issues of social injustice.

This essay will seek to demonstrate that phenomenological philosophy entails a practice of social and political criticism. 1 T Phenomenological philosophy is understood, not as an affiliation to one or more well-regarded names, but as an orientation to philosophy that came into existence through the work of Edmund Husserl, was continued by Martin Heidegger, and has been developed in more recent times by other thinkers such as Jacques Derridaeven though it can be traced through the history of philosophy before this formulation and, indeed, one may argue that this history is only comprehensible due to its phenomenological component. Through and behind these names, this understanding of phenomenological philosophy characterizes an orientation to the practice of inquiry based in experience that may require a critique of some aspects of the thought of these major practitioners.

Phenomenology and Critique Conference (Loyola-Marquette), 2022

This paper attempts to measure the distance between Phenomenology and Critique. This is not to ask whether Phenomenology and Critique can inform each other – I assume they can and have – but whether a properly Phenomenological project can be Critical. I will consider four major areas of tension between Phenomenology and Critique. My position will be that while some of these tensions are real, it also makes a significant difference how we understand Phenomenology (not to mention Critique). Following many Critical Phenomenologists, I draw on Merleau-Ponty to suggest an articulation of Phenomenology that accentuates some of the affinities between Critique and Phenomenology. I will focus on four areas of tension: the eidetic character of Phenomenology as opposed to the concrete character of Critique; the transcendental character of Phenomenology as opposed to the “quasi-transcendental” character of Critical Phenomenology, in Guenther’s words; the descriptive nature of Phenomenology as opposed to the normative nature of Critique; and the possibly “naïve” character of Phenomenology with respect to the shaping of phenomena by social forces. In each case, I will not try to show that there is no space between Phenomenology and Critique; rather, I suggest that the tension between the two need not be so decisive as it might at first appear.

Studia UBB. Philosophia, 2021

Phenomenological critique attempts to retrieve the lived experience of a human community alienated from its truthful condition and immersed in historical crises brought by processes of objectification and estrangement. This introductory article challenges two methodological assumptions that are largely shared in North American Critical Phenomenology: the definition of phenomenology as a first person approach of experience and the rejection of transcendental eidetics. While reflecting on the importance of otherness and community for phenomenology’s critical orientation, we reconsider the importance of eidetics from the standpoint of Husserl’s genetic phenomenology, highlighting its historical and contingent character. Contrary to the received view of Husserl’s classical phenomenology as an idealistic and rigid undertaking, we show that his genetic phenomenology is interested in the material formation of meaning (Sinnbildung), offering resources for a phenomenological approach to a materialist social theory.

PhaenEx

This essay seeks to demonstrate that the practice of phenomenological philosophy entails a practice of social and political criticism. The original demand of phenomenology is that theoretical and scientific judgments must be based upon the giving of the ‘things themselves’ in self-evident intuition. The continuous radicalization of this demand is what characterizes phenomenological philosophy and determines a practice of social and political criticism which can be traced through four phases: 1. a critique of institutions through the method of unbuilding (Abbau, Destruktion, déconstruction); 2. presencing, or coming into presence, that directs one’s attention to the social movements of one’s time through which that which is pressed-out of the social form manifests itself; 3. authentic being-with (Mitsein) in which the sociality of human life is brought to the limit-condition of human life in being-toward-death; 4. nothingness, or negation, in which that which withdraws in any manifes...

Phenomenology as Critique – Why Method Matters (Routledge), 2022

Today phenomenological philosophy is employed in tackling several different types of acute problems and sets of problems, philosophical and extra-philosophical. For one thing, phenomenological results serve several forms of social and political critique and figure in many communitarian, neo-pragmatic, and critical-theoretical arguments. Additionally, both psychological and social scientific theorization draws from contemporary phenomenological analyses. Phenomenology is able to evolve and develop in close dialogue with other disciplines and philosophical orientations thanks to its commitment to the study of things themselves. Given these increasing and diversifying exchanges and the rising interest in philosophical phenomenology, the need has arisen to clarify how the transcendental and eidetic methods of classical and existential phenomenology relate to the many critical projects that contemporary phenomenology is called to perform. This is the task of the volume at hand. Drawing on classical Husserlian resources as well as existentialist and hermeneutical approaches, the volume demonstrates that within phenomenological philosophy, critique is largely a methodological matter. What is crucial is not any one selection of themes or topics (knowledge, justice, violence, or embodiment, for example), or any one set of theoretical and practical goals, but the power and range of the methods through which the investigations unfold. Phenomenology does not fall within the limits of any traditional philosophical discipline, such as epistemology or theory of sciences, philosophy of mind or philosophical anthropology; nor does it need to be enriched or strengthened by extra-phenomenological principles, virtue-theoretical or power-analytical. Rather than taking a position among philosophical disciplines or positions, phenomenology aims at renewing them all by its radically critical methods. This insight has both systematic and exegetic-historical dimensions. First, the volume shows that by its very definition, phenomenology is a permanently critical endeavor: its defining tasks-the tasks of explicating the necessary structures of meaning

This essay takes as its point of departure some overlooked implications recognizable in the intersection between phenomenology and political thought, political theory or, simply, the concept of the political, as it is used in this entire intellectual endeavor. In order to do so, it ventures on the realm of dialectic and ontology, before concluding that phenomenology is reciprocated by a universal philosophical quest for liberty and liberty, not matter how it is approached, remains only an isolated, stoic and/or skeptic abstraction if it is pursued exclusively in an individual manner. Consequently, in order to be meaningful and relevant, liberty cannot be separated from communities and societies and, taking this last aspect into account, it follows that is intimately tied to the political. Since the political is deeply imbued with dialectic and ontology, the pretention of phenomenology to accessing only the effective and the immediate, dismissing anything outside, is not valid; even though it has numerous desirable and praiseworthy outcomes.

Puncta, 2023

The Qualitative Report, 2021

I show some problems with recent discussions within qualitative research that centre around the “authenticity” of phenomenological research methods. I argue that attempts to restrict the scope of the term “phenomenology” via reference to the phenomenological philosophy of Husserl are misguided, because the meaning of the term “phenomenology” is only broadly restricted by etymology. My argument has two prongs: first, via a discussion of Husserl, I show that the canonical phenomenological tradition gives rise to many traits of contemporary qualitative phenomenological theory that are purportedly insufficiently genuine (such as characterisations of phenomenology as “what-its-likeness” and presuppositionless description). Second, I argue that it is not adherence to the theories and methods of prior practitioners such as Husserl that justifies the moniker “phenomenology” anyway. Thus, I show that the extent to which qualitative researchers ought to engage with the theory of philosophical phenomenology or adhere to a particular edict of Husserlian methodology ought to be determined by the fit between subject matter and methodology and conclude that qualitative research methods still qualify as phenomenological if they develop their own set of theoretical terms, traditions, and methods instead of importing them from philosophical phenomenology.

Phenomenology, Organisation, and Technology, 2008