Phenomenology Quotes

• To begin with, we put the proposition: pure phenomenology is the science of pure consciousness.

  Edmund Husserl

  Consciousness, Propositions, Pure

  Edmund Husserl, Peter McCormick, Frederick Elliston (1981). “Husserl, shorter works”, Univ of Notre Dame Pr

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• Thus "phenomenology" means αποφαινεσθαι τα φαινομενα -- to let that which shows itself be seen from itself in the very way in which it shows itself from itself.

  Martin Heidegger

  Mean, Way, Shows

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• The phenomenological world is not the bringing to explicit expression of a pre-existing being, but the laying down of being. Philosophy is not the reflection of a pre-existing truth, but, like art, the act of bringing truth into being.

  Maurice Merleau-Ponty

  Art, Philosophy, Reflection

  Maurice Merleau-Ponty (1962). “Phenomenology of Perception”, p.19, Psychology Press

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• Natural objects, for example, must be experienced before any theorizing about them can occur.

  Edmund Husserl

  Example, Natural, Objects

  Edmund Husserl, Peter McCormick, Frederick Elliston (1981). “Husserl, shorter works”, Univ of Notre Dame Pr

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• Man acts as though he were the shaper and master of language, while in fact language remains the master of man.

  Martin Heidegger

  Writing, Men, Facts

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• The ideal of a pure phenomenology will be perfected only by answering this question; pure phenomenology is to be separated sharply from psychology at large and, specifically, from the descriptive psychology of the phenomena of consciousness.

  Edmund Husserl

  Psychology, Consciousness, Ideals

  Edmund Husserl, Peter McCormick, Frederick Elliston (1981). “Husserl, shorter works”, Univ of Notre Dame Pr

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• Pure phenomenology claims to be the science of pure phenomena. This concept of the phenomenon, which was developed under various names as early as the eighteenth century without being clarified, is what we shall have to deal with first of all.

  Edmund Husserl

  Names, Firsts, Century

  Edmund Husserl, Peter McCormick, Frederick Elliston (1981). “Husserl, shorter works”, Univ of Notre Dame Pr

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• The body is our general medium for having a world.

  Maurice Merleau-Ponty

  World, Body, Mediums

  Maurice Merleau-Ponty (2002). “Phenomenology of Perception”, p.169, Psychology Press

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• The full meaning of a language is never translatable into another. We may speak several languages but one of them always remains the one in which we live. In order completely to assimilate a language it would be necessary to make the world which it expresses one's own and one never does belong to two worlds at once.

  Maurice Merleau-Ponty

  Order, Two, Doe

  Maurice Merleau-Ponty (2002). “Phenomenology of Perception”, p.218, Routledge

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• Language transcends us and yet we speak.

  Maurice Merleau-Ponty

  Language, Speak

  Maurice Merleau-Ponty (2002). “Phenomenology of Perception”, p.456, Routledge

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• Phenomenology is not a philosophy; it is a philosophical method, a tool. It is like an adjustable spanner that can be used for dismantling a refrigerator or a car, or used for hammering in nails, or even for knocking somebody out.

  Colin Wilson

  Philosophy, Philosophical, Car

  "Introduction to the New Existentialism" by Colin Wilson, (p. 92), 1966.

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• We must therefore rediscover, after the natural world, the social world, not as an object or sum of objects, but as a permanent field or dimension of existence.

  Maurice Merleau-Ponty

  World, Fields, Dimensions

  Maurice Merleau-Ponty (2002). “Phenomenology of Perception”, p.421, Psychology Press

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• I am a spectator, so to speak, of the molecular whirlwind which men call individual life; I am conscious of an incessant metamorphosis, an irresistible movement of existence, which is going on within me - and this phenomenology of myself serves as a window opened upon the mystery of the world.

  Henri Frederic Amiel

  Life, Men, World

  "The Journal Intime of Henri-Frédéric Amiel". Book by Henri-Frédéric Amiel, translated by Mary Augusta Ward, 1882.

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• Our view of man will remain superficial so long as we fail to go back to that origin [of silence], so long as we fail to find, beneath the chatter of words, the primordial silence, and as long as we do not describe the action which breaks this silence. the spoken word is a gesture, and its meaning, a world.

  Maurice Merleau-Ponty

  Men, Views, Long

  Maurice Merleau-Ponty (2002). “Phenomenology of Perception”, p.214, Psychology Press

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• I belong to that generation who, as students, had before their eyes, and were limited by, a horizon consisting of Marxism, phenomenology and existentialism. For me the break was first Beckett's Waiting for Godot, a breathtaking performance.

  Michel Foucault

  Eye, Waiting, Generations

  Michel Foucault (2000). “Death and the Labyrinth: The World of Raymond Roussel”, p.176, A&C Black

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• In ordinary life, the phenomenology of embodied emotions is an excellent example for dynamic changes between transparency and opacity: You can "directly perceive" that your wife is cheating you, or you can become aware of the possibility that maybe it is you who has a problem, that your "immediate" emotional representation of social reality might actually be a misrepresentation.

  Thomas Metzinger

  Cheating, Reality, Emotional

  Source: www.3ammagazine.com

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• Shamanism is about shape shifting. Shamanism is about doing phenomenology with a tool kit that works.

  Terence McKenna

  Tools, Shapes, Shifting

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• It is the essence of certainty to be established only with reservations.

  Maurice Merleau-Ponty

  Essence, Reservations, Certainty

  Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Thomas Baldwin (2004). “Maurice Merleau-Ponty: Basic Writings”, p.195, Psychology Press

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• Ordinary speciation remains fully adequate to explain the causes and phenomenology of punctuation.

  Stephen Jay Gould

  Ordinary, Adequate, Causes

  Stephen Jay Gould (2002). “The Structure of Evolutionary Theory”, p.1001, Harvard University Press

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• The writing I have in mind and sometimes indulge in myself is concerned, not with plants, mountains or birds as items of scientific description, but with experiences of nature that impinge upon our moods and emotions, enrich our imagination and reveries, and shape our sense of how we stand in relation to the environing world. In a broad sense of the term, this kind of writing is an exercise in phenomenology, an attempt to render the significance that birds, plants or whatever have for us.

  David E. Cooper

  Writing, Exercise, Indulge In

  Source: www.3ammagazine.com

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• Here we are at the very core of the thesis we wish to defend in the present essay: reverie is under the sign of the anima. When the reverie is truly profound, the being who comes to dream within us is our anima. For a philosopher who takes his inspiration from phenomenology, a reverie on reverie is very exactly a phenomenology of the anima, and it is by coordinating reveries on reverie that he hopes to constitute a "Poetics of reverie". In other words, the poetics of reverie is a poetics of the anima.

  Gaston Bachelard

  Dream, Inspiration, Profound

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• I believe we should really take our own phenomenology more seriously. What a good theory of conscious must explain is the variance in this subjective sense of realness: There clearly is a phenomenology of "hyperrealness", for example during religious experiences or under the influence of certain psychoactive substances.

  Thomas Metzinger

  Religious, Believe, Substance

  Source: www.3ammagazine.com

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• I hate intellectual discussion. When I hear the words 'phenomenology' or 'structuralism', I reach for my buck knife.

  Edward Abbey

  Hate, Philosophy, School

  Edward Abbey (2015). “A Voice Crying in the Wilderness”, p.10, RosettaBooks

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• The immaterial told me that I was indeed an occidental, a right-thinking Christian who believes in the 'Resurrection of the flesh'. A whole phenomenology then appeared, but a phenomenology without ideas, or rather without any of the systems of official conventions. What appeared was distinct from form and became Immediacy. 'The mark of the immediate' - that was what I needed.

  Yves Klein

  Christian, Believe, Thinking

  "Yves Klein, 1928 - 1962, Selected Writings". ed. J & J, the Tate Gallery, London 1974, p.53, 1960.

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• There's a phenomenology of being sick, one that depends on temperament, personal history, and the culture which we live in.

  Siri Hustvedt

  Sick, Culture, Personal History

  Siri Hustvedt (2010). “The Shaking Woman or A History of My Nerves”, p.39, Macmillan

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