On Phenomenology and its Practices

Abstract

A concrete philosophy is not a happy philosophy.It must hold close to experience, and yet not limit itself to the empirical but re store in each experience the ontological cipher that marks it in ternally.(Merleau-Po nty, 1964a) It was the practice of a former colleague, a nostalgic admirer of J.S. Mill, 2 to begin the segment of her course in the philosophy of the social sciences to which she referred, rather tellingly, as "The Non-Scientif ic Approaches" with the following strate'.She would announce to her students that, instead of studying methodologi cal treatises on the subject, they were to learn about phenomenolo in a direct and practical way.To that end, she would say, each one was to choose some aspect of his or her everyday experience, something simple and straightforwa rd, and, setting aside all interpretation s and causal accounts, write a description of that experience, telling what it was like, per sonally, as an event of his or her own consciousnes s.Happy for any respite from the demands of conceptual analysis, the stu dents would typically warm to the task.Unbeknowns t to them, however, their fledgling efforts were never read, though each one would be promptly returned bearing the same terse com ment: "too abstract, interpretive and theoretical, not concrete nor descriptive enough."Less enthusiastica lly, the students would set about rewriting; yet with each revision my colleague would take the same tack.This cycle would continue until, at last, some exasperated student would inevitably blurt out: "This is hopeless!""Yes it is," my colleague would concede."So much for phenomenolo ,." Phenomenolo gists are apt to find the plot of this drama more galling than challenging.After all, it hinges on taking one aspect of a phenomenolo gical procedure, abstracting it from the broader context and purposes in terms of which alone it could make sense and be defended, and uses this on unwitting stu dents to dismiss phenomenolo tout court.Even my erstwhile colleague would have had to grant the dubiousness of the strate,r.For, with equally scant explanation or guidance, one might just as well (or as badly) have asked the class to garner statistical data randomly from their observations of classroom Phenomenology + Pedagogy Volume 7 1989

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