Phenomenology and Transcendental Philosophy by Husserl, Edmund

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Phenomenology and Transcendental Philosophy by Husserl, Edmund
Main Claims
The author describes the basic approach of phenomenology, describing the natural attitude and its exclusion. He describes this approach to stem from what he experiences in his vicinity through sensuous perception. He also encompasses the things he experiences because they are determinate, or he knows them to be there with certainty. He observes that the indeterminate surroundings are infinite without a ‘determinable horizon’(pg. 60). He describes his views in the ‘natural attitude’ deduced from what is physically present and in his field of perception and the experiences he considers ‘determinate’ because he knows they exist but can only be experienced if he focuses his attention on them. The relationship between phenomenology in natural attitude and determinate reality can be explicated by a user with a flashlight in a dark room. The field of vision visible from the focus of the flashlight represents the natural attitude of what can be seen and experienced through sensual perception. The other dark parts of the room are determinate and can mostly be experienced sensually through the cognitive process of ‘knowing of’ them. In his description of the natural world, the author considers the ‘boundary’ of what can be experienced. He notes, ‘I can send rays of illuminative regard of attention into this horizon with varying results. Determinate presentations, obscure at first and then becoming alive, haul something out for me; a chain of such quasi-memories is linked together; the sphere of determinateness becomes wider and wider’(pg. 61). He considers the indeterminate surroundings as infinite and misty such that they are ‘never fully determi...