Introduction: The Situation of Phenomenology

Abstract

Before you started to read this line of text you were doing something else. Perhaps you just came back from surfing and are sitting on a beach chair; perhaps you have just found a spot in the shade and you have two hours to sit and read and sip your wine before the concert starts in Luxembourg Gardens; perhaps you have just made a cup of tea and are settling into your armchair in front of your warm hearth. Or maybe you’re in a jet airliner reading this on the latest electronic text-display gadget. In any and all cases you find yourself already situated, in the middle of something, or having just done something — pulled up a chair, taken a seat — and you are now at a point where you are reading these lines.