Phenomenological Methodology

Abstract

In the discussion of phenomenology to this point the focus has been on the concept of crisis as a central contemporary concern and on the analysis of social context as the phenomenological equivalent or counterpart to more specific approaches to science and technology in other contemporary philosophic movements. But, phenomenological study of the concepts of crisis or social context are motivated by, proceed from, and are justified in terms of an underlying perspective. This latter can be broadly designated as the “phenomenological conception of methodology” — a term which will here be used to include a related series of broadly phenomenological views, principally as related to epistemology, but also in such conceptually contiguous areas as logic, language and the relation of method to social context. Accordingly, it is the purpose of the present chapter to outline the nature and relation of the principal currents of the various phenomenological discussions of these topics in relation to the origins of the modern phenomenological movement in Husserl’s thought.