"phenomenology of knowledge" vishal 09048

A CRITICAL INVESTIGATION TOWARDS "PHENOMENOLOGY OF KNOWLEDGE" Phenomenology points out that prior to all scientific investigations and to all philosophical reflections there is in us a direct original spontaneous knowledge of or contact with reality based ultimately on the fact that each one of us is a being in the world. We know what knowledge is what reality is what the world is even before we start to investigate these problems. This pre reflective uthematic knowledge of reality is always taken for granted, rarely adverted to. It is a fact however that knowledge occurs continually in life and that it is based on a primitive trustful contact with reality. According to phenomenology the knowing activity is intentional. Knowledge is always knowledge about something. Mental states that have content in this fashion are said to be intentional. Knowing intends something which is not the subject. The subject grasps that which is thus intended without explicitly being aware of the act by which the object is known. Yet I am somehow vaguely, implicitly aware of this act. The term phenomenology often is used without a clear understanding of its meaning. Phenomenology has been described as a philosophy, methodology, and method. Furthering confusion, the term phenomenology has been used interchangeably with the term hermeneutics (ie, analyses of the written word).This column will provide a brief overview of phenomenological philosophy, methodology, and method.Phenomenologists believe that knowledge and understanding are embedded in our everyday world. In other words, they do not believe knowledge can be quantified or reduced to numbers or statistics. Phenomonologists believe that truth and understanding of life can emerge from people's life experiences. Although phenomenologists share this belief, they have developed more than one approach to gain understanding of human knowledge.             In 1900 Husserl still thought that the analysis of the subjectivity of consciousness was the task of psychology. But in the first volume of his Ligische Untersuchungen, Husserl already abandoned this relativist subjectivism.             Husserl then makes an attempt to open up a new direction in the analysis of consciousness. It is phenomenological analysis. It begins with asking questions. What so we mean by? What is the meaning f what we have in mind when we judge, affirm, dream, live, etc.? It silences experience provisionally leaves the question of objective reality or of real content outside, in order to turn its attention solely and simply on the reality in consciousness, on the ideal essences. The puts us neither in the plane of subjective representation (psychology) nor of reified essences (metaphysics) but precisely on that of phenomenon.             The phenomenon is not here as for Kant what is opposed to thing in itself. Phenomenology puts reality thing in itself in parenthesis. The phenomenon here is that which manifests itself immediately in absolute consciousness; it is grasped in the intuition that precedes any reflection or any judgment. The phenomenon is that which gives itself in absolute consciousness. The value, the reality or unreality of the phenomena are put in parenthesis. The phenomenological method consists in describing phenomena such as they give themselves, as pure and simple intentions of consciousness, as meanings, to be rendered visible and manifest. In this Wesenchau (essence intuition), the essence is neither ideal reality nor psychological reality, but ideal intention, intentional object consciousness, immanent to consciousness itself.