Phenomenology
From monstrouspossibility
Phenomenology is most simply and generally defined as the study of consciousness through the first person perspective (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy). Phenomenology was lengthily written about by G.W.F. Hegel in "Phenomenology of Spirit", however Edmund Husserl, a turn of the century German philosopher, is often known as the father of Phenomenology for his interpretation of its universality during Europe's need for a new wave of thought in the early 1900s. Husserl says that in regarding any object one is not simply seeing it but rather regarding it as intended by consciousness. And in order to establish certainty in knowledge one must eliminate or retract from our absorption of knowledge anything beyond our own experience; this is what Hegel refers to as Sense-certainty. Husserl argues that this creates a universal understanding of the essence of things (Literary Theory: an Introduction First Edition Terry Eagleton p.54-55). This is applicable to literary theory by way of Stanley Fish's interpretation of Chomskian linguistics in 'Consequences' from 'Against Theory'. Fish states that Chompsky's theory hopes to bring about understanding of sentences regardless of structure, simply through the "speaker's ability to produce and understand sentences" without the constraints of culture, or education(108). According to Husserl if readers, speakers, and viewers are able to abstract themselves to a way of knowledge gathering through sense-certainty then a level of universal understanding can bring Chompsky's theory into reality. Eagleton, however, argues that, "...the aim of phenomenology is was in fact the precise opposite of abstraction..." (56). Eagleton argues that phenomenology with the act of sense-certainty provides not a universal meaning or intention but rather a form of subjectivity. ScienceDirect Philosophical roots of place research
