Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-dk4vv Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-22T21:06:27.584Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

5 - Husserlian phenomenology: the foundational project

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 September 2010

Get access

Summary

Philosophers, as things now stand, are all too fond of offering criticism from on high instead of studying and understanding things from within. They often behave toward phenomenology as Berkeley – otherwise a brilliant philosopher and psychologist – behaved two centuries ago toward the then newly established infinitesimal calculus. He thought he could prove, by his logically sharp but superficial criticism, this sort of mathematical analysis to be completely groundless extravagance, a vacuous game played with empty abstractions. It is utterly beyond doubt that phenomenology, new and most fertile, will overcome all resistance and stupidity and will enjoy enormous development, just as the infinitesimal mathematics that was so alien to its contemporaries did, and just as exact physics, in opposition to the brilliantly obscure nature philosophy of the Renaissance, has done since the time of Galileo.

(Husserl, 1917, 17)

What is phenomenology?

In juxtaposing ‘geographical phenomenology’ to phenomenology, and in moving from the former to the latter, the claim that the two are not the same is implicit. Thus, we now need to move from what passes for phenomenology in the geographical literature, towards what is actually the case in phenomenology itself. In other words, and with all due respect to those geographers who have gone before us in this area, we need to allow phenomenology to show itself from itself once again.

Type
Chapter
Information
Phenomenology, Science and Geography
Spatiality and the Human Sciences
, pp. 89 - 106
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 1985

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure [email protected] is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×