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Introduction Reality that which exists objectively and in fact, the quality of being actual or true, the state of things as they are. The explanation is quite appealing and, we could say, quite genuine. In theory it is supposed to correspond with an individuals perception of the world, an objective perceptual experience. Yet, reality created by individuals as a subjective matter can be seen as a complex existence composed of ones perception of the world, of the self and of their correlation. The world perceived from a subjective point of view consists of all the personal experiences that determine how things appear to us. This being said, we may go further in stating that, in some specific cases, what appears to be true for a particular individual, what he/she comprehends as true, or decides to be true, could actually be true. Phenomenology as a disciplinary study of human consciousness can give us many reasonable explanations to how things appear in our consciousness when we experience different entities that surround us and how we assign meaning to those entities we experience. Basically, phenomenology studies the structure of various types of experience ranging from perception, thought, memory, imagination, emotion, desire, and volition to bodily awareness, embodied action, and social activity, including linguistic activity.1 In other words, phenomenological approach to human cognition takes into account all aspects of human natural life, helping us understand reasons behind specific individuals actions. Bringing on the subject a little further and regarding it in slightly more detail, we will notice that some of these actions directly involve questions of morality and specific value systems. We will see how some specific and perhaps strange and coherent sets of principles and ideals guide a persons thought processes and, consequently, their behaviour. Naturally, there are some common values that most societies accept as part of their domestic code for living so as to dwell in reasonable harmony with other members of that society. However, what happens if that same goal is trying to be achieved by twisting those same common sets of values, twisting them to the point when everything ultimately loses its original sense and meaning? Essentially, when persons basic and fundamental characteristics of being assumptions, convictions, or beliefs express distinctly separate features from the ones known as common to man. By choosing here to mainly focus on phenomenological concepts of comprehension, and further, Kants philosophy of ethics and duty, philosophy of utilitarianism, as well as several other philosophical approaches as means of theoretical explication, we choose to strongly concentrate on the individuals
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Smith, David Woodruff, "Phenomenology", The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Summer 2009 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), URL = http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/sum2009/entries/phenomenology/ August 3, 2010

innermost state of mind and his/hers essential features of the soul. If we regard the universe as the existing background of our whole natural life like Husserl (p.37) suggests, it might be clearer for us to see why the characters from Huxleys Brave New World and Ishiguros The Remains of the Day become so paralysed and powerless to act. Husserl calls it natural life, but it proves to be only a false reality constructed as a crushing mechanism from the outside as shown in Brave New World, or from the inside as seen in The Remains of the Day. Both novels give us the same perspective of the created world, whether it were brought into existence by an individual for others, or by an individual for themselves. The rationale behind ones specific actions may be different but the purpose and results are the same a jeopardized freedom. In Baudrillards terms, we would say that an individuals mind produces representations of actual real life. The structures of thought become almost as floating signifiers (simulations, as Baudrillard calls it) that shape peoples behaviour. In the case of these two novels, the individual is either presented by a simulation or internally driven to create a simulation out of life so that reality becomes utterly obscured by imposed images. These images are so powerful and engaging that the individual is hopelessly incapable of arriving at any judgments of his own, opinions on which he could base his decisions and actions. The thing itself becomes almost irrelevant; it is the value that the individual attaches to the thing that gains recognition. But what becomes of life, nature and divinity when we attach imminent value to it, when it reveals itself in form of icons, created images, when it is multiplied in simulacra2? Baudrillard raises this question and also wonders whether supreme power, the genuine existence, can continue to exist when simulation takes over, or when the visible machinery of icons substitutes the pure idea of God and the world as it is meant to be. Can one live with the idea of distorted truth? Because then, man is only implicitly aware of the wider horizon of things in the world around us3 and this wider horizon is precisely what makes reality genuine. All of the arguments in favour of a reality seen as a constructed mechanism that our characters pose do not exclude the existence of an objective world, a real reality. They simply explain how other realities are formed by ones structures of consciousness and how objective factors become irrelevant. The science of consciousness becomes of great assistance in understanding the behaviours and thought processes of individuals from the two novels. Specifically, Husserl, among other phenomenologists, suggests that ones perceptual experience inevitably shapes reality. The world cannot be
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Baudrillard, Jean, Simulacra and Simulation,. p.4 Smith, David Woodruff, "Phenomenology", The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Summer 2009 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), URL = http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/sum2009/entries/phenomenology/ August 3, 2010
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seen through the eyes of objectivity and existence as such, but through subjective eyes of phenomena, i.e. appearances. Appearances by definition oppose reality. Beyer mentions that even phenomenologists have the task of describing the world from the firstperson point of view, because everything needs to be described exactly as it is experienced4. However, this first-person perspective can be understood, discussed and examined only if one is the objective observer placed outside the living theatre of fiction, if one is not a poor player encased in a constructed mechanism. In his influential work Cartesian Meditations Husserl introduces the notion of phenomenological epoch that explains how we have not simply lost the world for phenomenology; we retain it, after all, qua cogitatum. He goes on saying that this does not apply only to particular realities, For indeed their particularity is particularity within a unitary universe, which, (...) goes on appearing unitarily.5 And our task would be precisely that understanding how individuals manage to lose the world only to regain it at the end.

Beyer, Christian, "Edmund Husserl", The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Fall 2009 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), URL = http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/fall2009/entries/husserl/, August 3, 2010 5 Husserl, Edmund, Cartesian Meditations,. p.36-37