66 Phenomenology Quotes
Following is our list of the most famous phenomenology quotations and slogans. We've compiled this selection of inspirational phenomenology quotes. Hopefully, these phenomenology quotes will keep you motivated not only during hard times but to expand your phenomenology knowledge!
Famous Phenomenology Quotes
Thus "phenomenology" means αποφαινεσθαι τα φαινομενα -- to let that which shows itself be seen from itself in the very way in which it shows itself from itself. — Martin Heidegger
To begin with, we put the proposition: pure phenomenology is the science of pure consciousness. — Edmund Husserl
Natural objects, for example, must be experienced before any theorizing about them can occur. — Edmund Husserl
...separation of the observer from the phenomenon to be observed is no longer possible. — Werner Heisenberg
Philosophy is transcendental homelessness; it is the urge to be at home everywhere — Gyorgy Lukacs
The world is a construct of our sensations, perceptions, memories. It is convenient to regard it as existing objectively on its own. But it certainly does not become manifest by its mere existence. — Erwin Schrodinger
Philosophy, art, and science are not the mental objects of an objectified brain but the three aspects under which the brain becomes subject. — Gilles Deleuze
There is no philosophy which is not founded upon knowledge of the phenomena, but to get any profit from this knowledge it is absolutely necessary to be a mathematician. — Daniel Bernoulli
This sense of wonder is the mark of the philosopher. Philosophy indeed has no other origin. — Socrates
If there were a science of human beings it would be anthropology that aims at understanding the totality of experience through structural context. — Wilhelm Dilthey
To put it boldly, it is the attempt at a posterior reconstruction of existence by the process of conceptualization. — Albert Einstein
All perceiving is also thinking, all reasoning is also intuition, all observation is also invention. — Rudolf Arnheim
All genuine knowledge originates in direct experience. — Mao Zedong
What we observe is not nature itself, but nature exposed to our method of questioning. — Werner Heisenberg
Philosophy begins in wonder. — Plato
Short Phenomenology Quotes
- The body is our general medium for having a world. — Maurice Merleau-Ponty
- Ordinary speciation remains fully adequate to explain the causes and phenomenology of punctuation. — Stephen Jay Gould
- The child lives in a world which he unhesitatingly believes accessible to all around him. — Maurice Merleau-Ponty
- Language transcends us and yet we speak. — Maurice Merleau-Ponty
- Phenomenology is dialectic in ear-mode - a massive and decentralized quest for roots, for ground. — Marshall McLuhan
- It is the essence of certainty to be established only with reservations. — Maurice Merleau-Ponty
People Writing About Phenomenology
| Name | Quotes | Likes |
|---|---|---|
 Maurice Merleau-Ponty |
50 | 686 |
 Edmund Husserl |
27 | 200 |
 Werner Heisenberg |
69 | 1450 |
 Martin Heidegger |
91 | 965 |
 Erwin Schrodinger |
60 | 604 |
 Gilles Deleuze |
69 | 1244 |
More Phenomenology Quotes
We must therefore rediscover, after the natural world, the social world, not as an object or sum of objects, but as a permanent field or dimension of existence. — Maurice Merleau-Ponty
Because we are in the world, we are condemned to meaning, and we cannot do or say anything without its acquiring a name in history. — Maurice Merleau-Ponty
Like the weaver, the writer works on the wrong side of his material. He has only to do with the language, and it is thus that he suddenly finds himself surrounded by sense. — Maurice Merleau-Ponty
Our view of man will remain superficial so long as we fail to go back to that origin [of silence], so long as we fail to find, beneath the chatter of words, the primordial silence, and as long as we do not describe the action which breaks this silence. the spoken word is a gesture, and its meaning, a world. — Maurice Merleau-Ponty
The phenomenological world is not the bringing to explicit expression of a pre-existing being, but the laying down of being. Philosophy is not the reflection of a pre-existing truth, but, like art, the act of bringing truth into being. — Maurice Merleau-Ponty
Contrary to what phenomenology- which is always phenomenology of perception- has tried to make us believe, contrary to what our desire cannot fail to be tempted into believing, the thing itself always escapes. — Jacques Derrida
The ideal of a pure phenomenology will be perfected only by answering this question; pure phenomenology is to be separated sharply from psychology at large and, specifically, from the descriptive psychology of the phenomena of consciousness. — Edmund Husserl
For me, making a photograph is mostly an intellectual process of understanding people or cities and their historical and phenomenological connections. At that point the photo is almost made, and all that remains is the mechanical process. — Thomas Struth
The full meaning of a language is never translatable into another. We may speak several languages but one of them always remains the one in which we live. In order completely to assimilate a language it would be necessary to make the world which it expresses one's own and one never does belong to two worlds at once. — Maurice Merleau-Ponty
Pure phenomenology claims to be the science of pure phenomena. This concept of the phenomenon, which was developed under various names as early as the eighteenth century without being clarified, is what we shall have to deal with first of all. — Edmund Husserl
When the number of factors coming into play in a phenomenological complex is too large scientific method in most cases fails. One need only think of the weather, in which case the prediction even for a few days ahead is impossible. — Albert Einstein
The use of neuroscientific data to help resolve phenomenological questions is proving a common theme in much contemporary thinking about the mind. How rich are the contents of visual perception? Does vision only tell us about shapes and colours, or does it also represent higher categories like lemon or umbrella? — David Papineau
Phenomenology is not a philosophy; it is a philosophical method, a tool. It is like an adjustable spanner that can be used for dismantling a refrigerator or a car, or used for hammering in nails, or even for knocking somebody out. — Colin Wilson
On the methodological issue, I think that would be hopeless to try to adjudicate between my view and orthodoxy by appeal to phenomenological introspection. We need to know about brain mechanisms. — David Papineau
I discover vision, not as a 'thinking about seeing,' to use Descartes expression, but as a gaze at grips with a visible world, and that is why for me there can be another's gaze. — Maurice Merleau-Ponty
I hate intellectual discussion. When I hear the words 'phenomenology' or 'structuralism', I reach for my buck knife. — Edward Abbey
It can be really weird to say, 'Hey man, let's make a record and start with this horrible zither sound.' But I was obsessed with the idea of taking a sound and completely phenomenologically thrashing it." — Daniel Lopatin
Our knowledge and our ability to handle our problems progress through the open conflict of ideas, through the tests of phenomenological adequacy, inner consistency, and practical-moral consequences. Reason may err, but it can be moral. If we must err, let it be on the side of our creativity, our freedom, our betterment. — Rudolph Rummel
Consciousness is phenomenologically subjective whenever there is a stable, consciously experienced first-person perspective. — Thomas Metzinger
I believe we should really take our own phenomenology more seriously. What a good theory of conscious must explain is the variance in this subjective sense of realness: There clearly is a phenomenology of "hyperrealness", for example during religious experiences or under the influence of certain psychoactive substances. — Thomas Metzinger
I am a spectator, so to speak, of the molecular whirlwind which men call individual life; I am conscious of an incessant metamorphosis, an irresistible movement of existence, which is going on within me - and this phenomenology of myself serves as a window opened upon the mystery of the world. — Henri Frederic Amiel
By following "the path of reverie"-a constantly downhill path-consciousness relaxes and wanders-and consequently becomes clouded. So it is never the right time, when one is dreaming, to "do phenomenology." — Gaston Bachelard
For me Henry Corbin, the way that he writes about certain esoteric matters, is in a phenomenological way that refuses a New Age lens. But at the same time he's very much responsible for a lot of New Age thought, because he was a very syncretic thinker. — Ben Chasny
We have no proper understanding of the relationship between conscious thought and conscious sensation. The various forms of thought and sensation are underpinned by very different neural mechanisms; so how can the neural correlate of their conscious natures be the same? I don't think we are yet in a position to make such speculations. To make progress, we have to have a good conception of the phenomenology of consciousness, among other things. — Tim Crane
I was trying to develop a notion of "non-dialectical negativity" as part of a concept of extinction that would transform the understanding of death and time elaborated in phenomenology. — Ray Brassier
But if I did read, say, [Maurice] Merleau-Ponty, for instance, it always seemed to me that the parts that I understood in what he was talking about - and I read him because - well, he wrote a book, well, the Phenomenology of Perception [New York: Humanities Press, 1962]. And it seemed to me that perception had a lot do with how we take in art. — Robert Barry
In ordinary life, the phenomenology of embodied emotions is an excellent example for dynamic changes between transparency and opacity: You can "directly perceive" that your wife is cheating you, or you can become aware of the possibility that maybe it is you who has a problem, that your "immediate" emotional representation of social reality might actually be a misrepresentation. — Thomas Metzinger
I don't think that we can figure out what is going on in conscious colour perception just by phenomenological introspection. We need to know about brain mechanisms as well. We need to figure out what information is present in the mechanisms that constitute conscious colour perception. — David Papineau
Sartre is one example of someone who does just this. Every text is, after all, a human document and whatever Kierkegaard thought about God was clearly a matter of human thought that can, in principle, be retrieved and interpreted by other human beings. A phenomenological approach to religion must, it seems to me, adopt the old adage: nothing human is alien to me. — George Pattison
The act of photography is that of phenomenological doubt to the extent that it attempts to approach phenomena from any number of viewpoints. — Douglas Huebler
Shamanism is about shape shifting. Shamanism is about doing phenomenology with a tool kit that works. — Terence McKenna
We [Americans] have secularized the public life of our country in such a way to say something is religious is something negative. Religion has now turned into a way to discredit people. It is futile and dishonest to argue about religion. Religion is a phenomenological umbrella; there are all kinds of religions. It makes a difference when your religion is telling you something true or something false. — Francis George
The immaterial told me that I was indeed an occidental, a right-thinking Christian who believes in the 'Resurrection of the flesh'. A whole phenomenology then appeared, but a phenomenology without ideas, or rather without any of the systems of official conventions. What appeared was distinct from form and became Immediacy. 'The mark of the immediate' - that was what I needed. — Yves Klein
Classification is now a pejorative statement. You know, these classifiers look like "dumb fools." I'm a classifier. But I'd like to use a word that includes more than what people consider is encompassed by classification. It is more than that, and it's something which can be called phenomenology. — William Wilson Morgan
There's a phenomenology of being sick, one that depends on temperament, personal history, and the culture which we live in. — Siri Hustvedt
True reflection presents me to myself not as idle and inaccessible subjectivity, but as identical with my presence in the world and to others, as I am now realizing it: I am all that I see, I am an intersubjective field, not despite my body and historical situation, but, on the contrary, by being this body and this situation, and through them, all the rest. — Maurice Merleau-Ponty
Historically and phenomenologically viewed, dance is the original art. All arts are found within it, in its undivided unity. The image, made dynamic through movement and countermovement, sings and speaks simultaneously. — Gerard van der Leeuw
In Conclusion
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