The Future of Phenomenology: Applications

Lanei Rodemeyer


We are finally now seeing attempts to bridge the philosophical divide that began somewhat around Husserl’s time. Interestingly, the moves to span the chasm between what are usually called “continental” and “analytic” philosophy often hearken back to the works of Husserl. And this, I think, is neither a mistake nor a matter of happenstance.  Husserl’s phenomenology, by its very nature, is an attempt to bring opposing philosophical positions together, for the very reason that it is meant to be applied. The phenomenological method is an approach that blends both theory and praxis, demanding both highly rigorous abstract thought and an acute awareness of the philosopher’s embedded existence in the lifeworld. For this reason, it makes sense that, as the philosophical world attempts to repair its own internal schism, we would look very carefully at, and employ, Husserl’s philosophy.
    But it is easy for one to claim that Husserl’s work might provide the antidote to philosophy’s current rift. Instead, in the true spirit of Husserl’s phenomenology, I wish briefly to examine his body of work for evidence that it has always already been involved in both maintaining and resolving philosophical tensions. Some of this evidence will clearly be obvious to my colleagues in Husserlian phenomenology, and some may simply be my own, situated interpretations. But I believe that, as we look to the future of Husserl’s phenomenology, a systematic approach that lays out the flow of phenomenology as an active methodology will also highlight for us where this stream is taking us—and where we can take it.

Modernism and Postmodernism

    It is my firm belief that Husserl opened the door to the postmodern movement, although he himself did not step through. Husserl’s work, especially in Ideas I, provides descriptions and arguments that sustain both the groundedness of essential structures and the multiplicity and relativity of appearances.  On the one hand, the object of our perception is always given—and taken—as the same thing. On the other hand, though, Husserl’s very description of the noema gives us the radical philosophical insight that this object is also consistently and necessarily given in varying modes of givenness. Thus we have, in the same object, both a stable core and a necessarily fleeting nature. Likewise, the essential structures of consciousness—Husserl’s primary goal of investigation in Ideas I, the details of which, however, are laid out in his On the Phenomenology of the Consciousness of Internal Time—maintain a similar tension:  The forms of temporalizing consciousness, i.e., the living present with its primordial impression, retention, and protention, are essential structures of consciousness that remain ever constant. Meanwhile, however, the contents of conscious experience (which, in a way, are the conditions of possibility for these structures’ existence—although this could be debated, as Husserl himself made problematic claims in this regard), are by definition continually passing away. Consciousness itself, therefore, is necessarily both a stable force and a flowing away, a standing and streaming. These fundamental definitions for phenomenology, therefore, exhibit both the essentialism of modern philosophy and the relativism of postmodernism. And not only that, but they require that these two philosophical paradigms, which seem anathema to one another, work together to describe our existence phenomenologically.

“Nature” and “Discourse”

    Strains of this debate can be seen not only in the differences between modernism and postmodernism, but also in the attitudes of analytic versus continental philosophers. For the layperson, it appears to be what distinguishes the sciences from the humanities. This discussion plays out in an extremely pertinent way, I believe, in the area of the philosophy of the body. On the one hand, we have a presumption of the body as material, and subsequently, consciousness is only a physiological by-product upon which we humans have laid too much value. On the other hand, the body is seen as constituted by language itself, appearing only through the discourses that make it possible. The body, for example, could only be seen as “sexed” once the discourse of sexuality arose, and it is only through discourse that it is further “raced,” “gendered,” etc. It would seem that these two paradigms are antithetical, to say the least, but Husserl’s phenomenology makes possible their coexistence. In his Ideas II, Husserl argues carefully for two manifestations of the body: The first is the body’s inner sense, which identifies the senses of the body as immanent to my consciousness, and as not perceivable by anyone else. Thus he validates my experiences of pain, pleasure, and all of the senses, identifying them as viable material for phenomenological investigation.  The second manifestation of the body is as a physicalistic thing, an object perceivable not only by myself (at certain, limited angles) but also by others. This second manifestation gives us the object of the sciences and the subject of discourse—and it is this body which finds itself in the philosophical (and scientific) debate. Husserl’s insight, however, of the body as both inner sense and physicalistic thing, mediates this dialogue: The body both is constituted through worldly and social engagement, and it (usually) is associated with a sense of “ownness,” i.e., it is individual to me. And it has a “voice” that arises from its “inner sense,” I believe, that can, to some extent, influence the discourses that surround it.

Philosophy and Psychology

    As has been well established, phenomenology provides a valid critique of a psychology that tries to answer all its questions through a scientific method limited to the physical realm. While we certainly can do tests of our responses to stimuli or the effects of various influences on our cognitive abilities, it is clear that we are driven by more than our mere physiological structures, and a science that includes a discussion of intentionality is able to address those questions that exceed what biology can answer. From this phenomenological perspective, we can talk about the “motivations” of an intending consciousness, and how the meaning of a perceived object is essentially involved in its constitution. Husserl introduced the notion of motivations from a phenomenological perspective in his Ideas II, but he addressed these and several other key notions in his Analyses Concerning Passive and Active Synthesis and even in the Cartesian Meditations. For example, since we cannot intend anything but noemata, i.e., we can only intend meanings, then psychology needs to allow for our activity of constitution in our perceptions, and from there, we can examine how and why we make the “associations” we do. Husserl analyzed associations carefully in his Passive Syntheses, and, interestingly, this led to his introduction of the notion of “affectivity,” which describes how we can be called by an object to bring it into the foreground of our perception. Tied in with these discussions are Husserl’s notions of “habitualization” and “sedimentation,” which also arise in the Cartesian Meditations. Here we can describe how repeated behaviors, both in our thought processes and in our kinesthetic movement, become part of embodied consciousness, even when we are not directly aware of them, or how individual, meaningful events can remain central to consciousness. All of these, of course, tie into Husserl’s understanding of the structures of temporalizing consciousness.  And thus, a psychology that includes a phenomenological model of consciousness, or at least attends to how consciousness constitutes its objects—and its temporal existence—is able to address a broader set of questions while still remaining linked to a physiological science.

Philosophy and the Sciences

    Husserl’s Ideas II offers us a brilliant distinction between the different “attitudes” that the scientist—now understood in the broadest sense possible—can maintain, and he provides us the insight that, depending on the attitude held at the time, we may draw completely conflicting conclusions. These conclusions, however, are usually directed at very different goals, goals identified by their attitude.  Thus the naturalistic (physicalistic) attitude will conclude that the material body is required as the condition of possibility for consciousness, a logical conclusion based on a position that examines the physical and causal interrelations of bodies in the world. On the other hand, the phenomenological attitude identifies consciousness as the condition for the possibility for the world as the whole of meaning for consciousness. The personalistic attitude, similar to the natural attitude we learn about in Ideas I, is our everyday relation with the world that makes possible the above more theoretical and focused attitudes. In this way, Husserl validates both the scientific and phenomenological paradigms and gives them a way to negotiate—not on one turf or the other—but on the ground of our everyday dealings. But Husserl’s claims about the sciences are more popularly known through his analyses in his Crisis of European Sciences. Mathematics can answer a multitude of questions, he admits, but if we try to make the lived world as abstract and calculable as formulas of mathematics, then we miss the most fundamental aspects of experience, and further, we do bad science. His argument, once again, is not to rip mathematics from the sciences, but rather to recognize its value—and its limits. His warnings have slowly crept into the studies of nursing, psychology, even medicine, in spite of Husserl’s honest recognition in the Cartesian Meditations that the sciences weren’t exactly leaping over themselves to heed a phenomenologist’s analysis. Nevertheless, Husserl provides an avenue where philosophy and science can enter into dialogue, where philosophy becomes practical and science is called to be more self-critical.

    I have clearly left out a multitude of references here. Included in these musings are implicit indications to the works of Heidegger, Merleau-Ponty, Sartre, de Beauvoir, Derrida, Foucault, and many others, including my esteemed, contemporary colleagues in Husserlian phenomenology. But my point is not that Husserl created a world of phenomenology that keeps to itself, as these names might indicate; rather, Husserl’s phenomenology opened the door to critiques of psychology, medicine, patriarchy, race and gender, sociology, anthropology, history, criminology, and even of itself. And for this reason, phenomenology has been the perfect choice to enable the beginnings of a dialogue between the analytic and continental “traditions,” for example, by entering into discussions with cognitive psychology and neuroscience. My goal, however, has been to show that, beyond the theoretical squabbles of contemporary philosophy, phenomenology is able to apply itself to any area, bringing not only critique, but also an extreme philosophical rigor as well as a method of conceptualization and application.  Phenomenology can transform those theories it encounters, and not only that, but it also forces them back into the lived world. For this reason, then, I believe that the future of phenomenology lies in its ongoing application to both theoretical and practical realms, and, in doing so, its own, continued, critical reworking of itself.