What is Philosophy?

Philosophy, particularly Western philosophy, comes from the two Greek words philia, which means
“love” and sophia, “wisdom”. Thus, etymologically speaking, philosophy means the love of wisdom.

As is well known, love in this context is understood as a strong desire for a particular object; while
wisdom is understood as a correct application of knowledge. Thus, philosophy as the love of wisdom, at
least in this context, could refer to the strong desire of the human person to possess knowledge and
apply it correctly. It’s not a coincidence, therefore, that most philosophers in the Ancient World,
particularly in Greece, India and China were sages or wise men. Think for example of Socrates, Gautama
Buddha, Confucius, and Lao Tzu.

Traditionally, however, philosophy is defined as a science that studies beings in their ultimate causes,
reasons, and principles through the aid of human reason alone. And when we speak of “being” or
“beings” in philosophy in this context, we mean all things that exist, material or immaterial. An example
of beings are “stones”, “trees”, “persons”, “cars”, air, water; and the notions of “God”, “soul”, “spirit”.
All of these are beings, and philosophy studies their ultimate causes, reason, and principles through the
aid of reason alone.

In other words, philosophy is concerned with the reason and principles that account for everything that
exists. Thus, some of the basic questions in philosophy are:

What is the origin of the world, of everything that exists?

Why do these things exist, rather than not exist at all?

Is there God? If so, how can we justify the goodness of God in the face of evil?

What is the meaning and purpose of life? Why do we have to suffer?

If one is suffering from an unbearable pain, such as cancer, is it morally right to resort to euthanasia or
assisted suicide?

These are just some of the questions that philosophy attempted to address. And in doing so, philosophy
uses reason as a tool, which can be expressed in many forms, such as the ability to reflect, question,
articulate one’s thought, and analyze certain phenomenon or event. In short, philosophy attempts to
understand things in a critical and logical manner.

It is important to note, however, that philosophers do not agree on a single definition of philosophy. In
fact, philosophers differ in their basic understanding of philosophy. For example, Karl Jaspers, a famous
German existential philosopher, understands philosophy as a discipline in which questions are more
important than answers because answers themselves will in turn become questions.

Major Branches of Philosophy

After addressing the question “what is philosophy,” let us now discuss the major branches of
philosophy. Philosophy is normally divided into four major branches, namely: Metaphysics,
Epistemology, Logic, and Ethics.

Metaphysics comes from the two Greek words meta, which means “beyond” or “after” and physika,
“physical” or “nature”. Hence, etymologically speaking, metaphysics means the study of things beyond
the physical, that is, concepts or things that cannot be experienced, such as the concepts of God,
freedom and soul.

Metaphysics is commonly understood as the foundation of philosophy. In fact, Aristotle calls it the “first
philosophy”. Originally, the Greek word metaphysika, which literally means “after physics”, actually
designated that part of Aristotle’s works, which came after those chapters that dealt with physics.
However, it was misappropriated later by the Medieval commentators on classical texts as that which is
beyond the physical. Thus, over time, metaphysics has been understood as the study of that which exists
beyond the physical.

Metaphysics is subdivided into two, namely, General Metaphysics and Special Metaphysics. General
Metaphysics is also referred to as Ontology. Under Special Metaphysics, we have Cosmology, Psychology
or Anthropology, and Natural Theology or Theodicy.

Ontology is derived from the two Greek words onto, which means “being” or “that which is”, that is,
everything that exists; and logos, which means “knowledge” or “study”. (Note, however, that the term
logos in ancient Greek scholarship have different connotations. For example, Heraclitus, a Greek
philosopher of the late 6th century BCE, understands Logos as reason or the underlying principle of all
that is.) Ontology, therefore, is the specific branch of philosophy that studies beings in their ultimate
causes, reasons, and principles through the aid of reason alone. In other words, Ontology studies the
first principles or the essence of all things.

Some of the basic questions in ontology are:

What is being?

Why do things exist, rather than not exist at all?

What is meaning and nature of reality?

What is the underlying principle of all that exist?

Is there nothing?

Please note that my concern here is just to describe very schematically the four major branches of
philosophy. If you want to know more about the nature and dynamics of Ontology per se, see John
Rickaby, S.J. General Metaphysics. https://www3.nd.edu/~maritain/jmc/etext/gm.htm.

Cosmology, from the Ancient Greek words kosmos, which means the “world” and logos, meaning
“study”, is the specific sub-branch of philosophy that studies the world (or universe), including its origin,
dynamics, and characteristics, as well as the laws that govern its order.

Some of the basic questions in cosmology are:

What is the origin of the world?

What is the basic material of which the world is formed?

How do things arise?

In what consists its (the world) fundamental form or principle of order?

Is the world or universe infinite?

Psychology comes from the two Greek words psyche, which means “soul” (but loosely understood as
mind) and logos, study. Thus, psychology is the specific sub-branch of philosophy that studies the soul or
mind. Broadly construed, though, psychology is the study of the nature and dynamics of the human
person as a whole, with emphasis on the way the person’s mind functions and the way she behaves.

Some of the questions in psychology are:

What is the nature of the human person?

Is there such thing as human nature?

What is the meaning and purpose, if any, of life?

Is there life after death?

How do we account for the existence of sufferings in the world?

Theodicy (Natural theology) is derived from the Greek word theos, which means God. The word
theodicy was coined by the famous 18th century German philosopher Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz in his
1710 work titled Théodicée. Broadly construed, theodicy is the study of God. But specifically, theodicy is
concerned with the justification of the goodness of God in the face of the existence of evil in the world.

Some of the questions in theodicy are:

Is there God?

What and who is God, if He exists at all?

How do we prove the existence of God?

If God exists, how do we justify the existence of evil and suffering in the world?

Does a belief in God really necessary?

For a detailed discussion on special metaphysics, see Louis de Poissy, Special Metaphysics.
https://maritain.nd.edu/jmc/etext/cp27.htm.

The second major branch of philosophy is Epistemology.

Epistemology comes from the two Greek words episteme, which means knowledge, and logos which
means study. It is formally defined as the study of the nature and scope of knowledge and justified
belief. Specifically, it analyzes the nature of knowledge and how it relates to similar notions, such as
truth, belief and justification.

Some of the basic questions in epistemology are:

What is knowledge?

What do we know?

How is knowledge acquired?

What is the structures and limits of knowledge?

What makes justified beliefs justified?

For an in depth discussion of epistemology, see The Basics of Philosophy,

http://www.philosophybasics.com/branch_epistemology.html.

The third major branch of philosophy is Logic. Logic comes from the Greek word logos, which, as I
already mentioned, has different meanings. It is defined as the science of correct thinking, or the study
of the principles and criteria of a valid argument. More specifically, logic attempts to distinguish sound
or good reasoning from unsound or bad reasoning.

Some of the basic questions in logic are:

What is correct reasoning?

What distinguishes a good argument from a bad one?

How can we detect a fallacy in argument?

What are the criteria in determining the validity of an argument?

What are the types of logic?

Now, on the fourth major branch of philosophy, namely, Ethics.

Ethics is derived from the Greek word ethos, which originally means custom or habit. Broadly construed,
ethics is the morality of human actions. Ethics, therefore, is concerned with questions of how human
persons ought to act, and the search for a definition of a right conduct and the good life.

It is important to note that ethics is not the same with morality. This is because ethics denotes the
theory of right action and the greater good, while morality indicates practice, that is, the rightness or
wrongness of a human action.

Some of the questions in ethics are:

What is a right conduct as that which causes the realization of the greatest good?

How do we determine a right conduct? In other words, what makes a right conduct right?

What is a good life and can we attain it?

What is the difference between human act and actions that are based on instinct?

What do people think is right?

 The Origin of Philosophy: A Brief Sketch

In this post, I will discuss very briefly the origin of philosophy, particularly Western philosophy. For some
reason, I will not include here the discussion on the origin and development of Eastern or Asian
philosophy. This will be discussed in my other post.

According to Socrates, as Plato reports, “Wonder is the only beginning of philosophy.” Later, Aristotle, in
response to his predecessors, especially the Ionian philosophers, said that “It is owing to their wonder
that men both now begin and at first began to philosophize.” (See John Llewelyn, “On the saying that
philosophy begins in thaumazein,” Afterall: A Journal of Art, Context and Enquiry, Issu3 4 (2001), pp. 48-
57. https://www.jstor.org/stable/20711438?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents.

This is precisely the context and basis of the now famous claim that philosophy begins in wonder.

But what kind of wonder is this? For sure, wonder includes the feeling of surprise coupled with
admiration, that is, when one is being curious or being in awe. But this is not enough. Wonder as the
beginning of philosophy is precisely “philosophic wonder,” that is, the feeling of being perplexed. For
example, the ancient Greek philosophers were perplexed about the origin and nature of the world. As
Aristotle writes:

“For men were first led to study philosophy, as indeed they are today, by wonder. Now, he who is
perplexed and wonders believes himself to be ignorant…they took to philosophy to escape ignorance…
(Aristotle, Metaphysics 982b, tr. A.E. Taylor).”

In this sense, philosophic wonder seeks clarity by trying to understand the perplexities or vagueness or
confusion that shrouded the inquiring mind. In other words, philosophic wonder seeks answers to or at
least make sense of the mysterious world. Thus, when one begins to make sense of the questions
regarding, for example, the origin of the world, or the meaning and purpose of life, one begins to
philosophize. Thus, in philosophic wonder, one is not merely amazed by the mysteriousness of the world
or of life, but seeks to understand this mystery. In a word: one thinks!
Given the above brief discussion on the origin of philosophy on the conceptual level, it is therefore
reasonable to suppose that Western philosophy originated in Miletus, because Thales, the acclaimed
first philosopher in the Western world, was from Miletus. Miletus during the time of Thales was the
richest and the most powerful of all the Ionian cities, and was the first center of scholarship in ancient
Greece. Ionia was a Greek city-state on the coast of Asia Minor, now Turkey.

It is worth noting that with the decline of Ionia, which began with its conquest by the Persians in 546
BCE, the intellectual life of Greece moved to Croton in southern Italy in 530 BCE. Croton was a splendid
and powerful city-state of Greece to where Pythagoras emigrated from Samos and founded the
Pythagorean Brotherhood [See Arthur Hilang Armstrong, An Introduction to Ancient Philosophy
(London: Little Adams Quality Paperbacks, 1989), p. 5].

However, if philosophy begins in wonder, how do we exactly know that Thales was the first philosopher,
that he was the first one to wonder, that is, the first one to attempt to make sense of the
mysteriousness of the world? In fact, we cannot deny the occurrence of other pre-philosophical
rumblings in Egyptian and Babylonian cultures, as well as in India and China. For sure, there were great
thinkers that existed in each of these cultures, and there are evidence that some of the earliest Greek
philosophers had come in contact with at least some of the products of Egyptian and Babylonia thought.
And, of course, we cannot absolutely determine the first person who wondered or philosophized. But it
is commonly believed that Thales was the first philosopher because he was the first, at least in recorded
history, to put his philosophy into writing. In fact, we find in Thales, and many philosophers after him,
some reasoned arguments for the origin and development of the world. Indeed, this is a unique feature
of ancient Greek philosophy that distinguishes it from the pre-philosophical rumblings of other cultures.

To reiterate, Western philosophy begins in wonder, and that the origin of philosophy in terms of place is
said to be in Miletus, Ionia.
 Doing Philosophy
This article briefly discusses the act of doing philosophy, which is one of the topics in the course
Introduction to Philosophy of the Human Person (IPHP K-12).

In the opening chapter on “Doing Philosophy” in the book titled Introduction to the Philosophy of the
Human Person, Jay and Ryan remind us that the act of doing philosophy necessarily involves the act of
asking questions, contemplating about the mystery of life, and constructing arguments and be able to
rationally evaluate them in the end. For this reason, doing philosophy means to ask questions, to reflect,
and to formulate and evaluate arguments.

In this way, one does not necessarily have to be a graduate of a philosophy degree in order for one to do
philosophy. Anybody can do philosophy as long as she raises valid or intelligent questions, reflects
meditatively, and argues in a logical manner. If we recall the discussion on the origin of philosophy,
Aristotle, following Socrates, argued that philosophy begins in wonder or in the act of being perplexed.
As we already know, when one is perplexed, as Aristotle would have us believe, one begins to think―in
a sense, one begins to philosophize.

Philosophical Reflection as a Way of Doing Philosophy

Jay and Ryan proceeded to articulate the specificity of the approaches to doing philosophy. They
start with the discussion on the nature and dynamics of philosophical reflection.

According to Jay and Ryan, philosophical reflection is one of the important skills that one needs in doing
philosophy. In order to drive their point, Jay and Ryan appropriated Gabriel Marcel’s notion of
philosophical reflection, which is deeply personal and is intimately anchored on day-to-day existence.
For Marcel, as Jay and Ryan argue, philosophical reflection is first and foremost the act of giving time to
think about the meaning and purpose of life.

There are two types of philosophical reflection according to Marcel, namely, primary reflection and
secondary reflection. Primary reflection is a kind of thinking that calculates, analyzes, or recounts past
events. In this way, primary reflection is a fragmented and compartmentalized thinking. Thus, for
Marcel, according to Jay and Ryan, primary reflection cannot be a genuine thinking because it failed to
make sense of the whole, of the mystery of life. In other words, primary reflection is selfish thinking
because it is instrumental thinking. As we already know, instrumental thinking is a “means-end” kind of
thinking. Applied to human relations, instrumental thinking thinks only of what it can practically get in a
relationship. For example, one may establish a relationship or friendship with somebody who is rich so
that she may be able to borrow money in times of need.

Secondary reflection, on the other hand, is characterized by the act recapturing the unity of the original
experience by gathering back together what has been separated by primary reflection. Thus, secondary
reflection allows us to think holistically. In this way, secondary reflection enables us to integrate our
fragmented and compartmentalized experience into a coherent whole. This gives us the impression that
secondary reflection for Marcel is genuine or unselfish thinking. Applied to human relations, secondary
reflection does not think of what it can practically get in a relationship. Here, the human person
establishes a relationship with the other not because of what she can get, but is premised on the idea
that the other is a human person that deserves respect, care and love. According to Jay and Ryan, when
Marcel speaks of “philosophical reflection”, he specifically refers to “secondary reflection”. For more on
the difference between primary and secondary reflection, see Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy,
“Gabriel Marce,” http://www.iep.utm.edu/marcel/

What we can infer from the above discussion is that philosophical reflection provides us with a holistic
picture of reality. Thus, philosophical reflection as a tool in doing philosophy enables us to see the
interconnectedness and interdependence of peoples, actions and events, as well as our direct relation
to them. Indeed, philosophical reflection as a tool in doing philosophy allows as to deepen our
understanding of ourselves, as well as our role and place in the world.

Constructing and Evaluating Arguments

As Jay and Ryan claim, Marcel’s notion of primary reflection can be expressed most visibly in our ability
to think logically, that is, in the ability of the mind to construct and evaluate arguments. For this reason,
although it may appear as a kind of selfish thinking when applied to human relations, primary reflection
can be considered as another important tool in doing philosophy.

One important characteristic of doing philosophy properly, according to Jay and Ryan, is the ability to
express and support one’s claim rationally. Thus, if we are not able to justify our views or claims, then
we are not doing philosophy. For this reason, in doing philosophy, we must learn how to construct and
evaluate arguments properly for it is with the use of arguments that we are able to express our thoughts
in a clear and logical manner. In this way, we do not only promote agreement and harmony, but also
objective thinking.
Let us consider one of the examples of arguments that Jay and Ryan provided in the book and see how
they evaluate them.

Premise 1: All human beings are mortal.

Premise 2: But the President of the Republic of the Philippines is a human being.

Conclusion: Therefore, the President of the Republic of the Philippines is mortal.

In this argument, according to Jay and Ryan, we can see that if the premises are assumed to be true,
then the conclusion must also be true. That is, if all human beings are indeed mortal and that the
President of the Republic of the Philippines is a human being, then we have to accept the conclusion
that the President of the Republic of the Philippines is mortal. If we reject the conclusion, then we are
making a logical error since it is what the premise entails. Since the premises of this argument inevitably
lead us to this particular conclusion, then the argument is valid or a sound argument.

Indeed, both philosophical reflection and the construction and evaluation of arguments are some of the
necessary skills that we need in doing philosophy. To reiterate, philosophical reflection, on the one
hand, enables us to look deeper into our experiences and see the bigger picture of reality. On the other
hand, the construction and evaluation of arguments allows us to express our ideas in a systematic and
logical way. Furthermore, the ability to construct and evaluate arguments allows us to examine the
ideas of other people. In the end, these are some of the benefits of being able to do philosophy in a
meaningful way that Jay and Ryan presented in the opening chapter of the book.

Husserl’s Phenomenology: Methods of

Philosophizing (Part 2)

In Part 1 of this series of posts, I have presented a review of Gerry and Rhiza’s Chapter on the Methods
of Philosophizing in the book titled Introduction to the Philosophy of the Human Person. The review,
however, focused only on the section Socratic Method. In this post, I will focus on Husserl’s
phenomenology, that is, the phenomenological method of philosophizing the Husserlian tradition.
Gerry and Rhiza begins their discussion on the phenomenological method of philosophizing with a brief
historical background of the topic. According to Gerry and Rhiza, phenomenology was originally a form
of critique on the Cartesian Methodic Doubt. As we know, Rene Descartes, the acclaimed Father of
Modern Philosophy, initiated the philosophical revolution in modernity by offering a method of
philosophizing that seeks to ground knowledge on the most universal and self-evident truth: “that I exist
and that the I that exists is essentially a thinking I ― the cogito.” This is a variation of the famous
Cartesian dictum: Cogito Ergo Sum (I think; therefore, I am). The idea here is that Descartes employed
the Methodic Doubt in his search for certainty by systematically doubting everything at first. But in the
process of doubting everything, there is one thing that Descartes cannot doubt, that he is doubting.
Now, if he is doubting, then he must be thinking. Therefore, if he is thinking, then he must be existing
because the act of thinking presupposes the existence of the one that thinks. Thus, with the discovery of
the self, of the I that thinks, Descartes concluded that certainty can be attained.

Unlike Descartes who systematically doubted the certitude of the world outside of the self (ego) as his
starting point in attaining certainty, Edmund Husserl affirmed the existence of a world outside of the
self. And for Husserl (the forerunner of modern phenomenology), the thinking I is always conscious of
this world. It is for this reason that Husserl accuses Descartes of failing to properly understand the
nature of “consciousness,” which is always a consciousness of something other than itself. According to
Gerry and Rhiza, this is the starting point of Husserl’s phenomenological investigation.

In order for us to fully understand phenomenology as a method of philosophizing, we need to define

phenomenology first. And so, what is phenomenology?

Husserl’s Phenomenology

Phenomenology comes from the two Greek words phainomenon, which means “appearance,”
and logos, which means “reason” or “study.” Hence, etymologically speaking, phenomenology
means “study of phenomenon.” The term phenomenon means anything that exists of which the mind
is conscious. A “book” is a concrete example of a phenomenon. A book is there existing materially,
and the mind is conscious of it. However, phenomenology is formally defined as the investigation of
the essence or the nature of material things or things that appear to us.

It is important to note that Husserl did not invent phenomenology out of a vacuum.

The context here is that realism and idealism had reached an impasse toward the end of the nineteenth
century regarding that status of the knower and the thing known. As is well known, the realists argue for
the independence of the “object” of knowledge, while the idealists argue for the primary of the
“subject,” that is, the knower. It is in view of this impasse that Husserl offered his phenomenology as a
way out. But instead of making a philosophical speculation of the nature of reality, Husserl argued for
the need for philosophy to turn to a pure description of the “what is,” of the thing as it appears to us.
Thus the famous Husserlian motto: “back to the things themselves.” In Irrational Man: A Study in
Existential Philosophy, William Barrett writes: “For Husserl, phenomenology was a discipline that
attempts to describe what is given to us in experience without obscuring preconceptions or hypothetical
speculations.”

With this note, let me now briefly sketch Husserl’s notion of phenomenology as a method of
philosophizing. Please note that I will not discuss in great detail Husserl’s model of phenomenology as
our concern here is just to know the nature and dynamics of phenomenology as a method of
philosophizing. For a detailed discussion on the nature and dynamics of Husserl’s model of
phenomenology, see Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy, “The Phenomenological Reduction,”
http://www.iep.utm.edu/phen-red/#SSH5a.i

Again, phenomenology for Husserl is a discipline that attempts to describe (or understand) what is given
to us in experience. In other words, phenomenology for Husserl provides an account of how things
(phenomena) appear to our awareness or, ultimately, how the world appears to us in terms of our
subjective experience of it. That is why, according to Gerry and Rhiza, phenomenology deals primarily
with the determination of the nature and structure of human conscious experience. Indeed,
phenomenology is about reflecting upon our everyday immediate or lived experiences in order to gain
some understanding of its underlying order, coherence, and structure.

To begin with, within Husserl’s model of phenomenology (which is called pure phenomenology, in
contradistinction to the existential phenomenology of his followers, such as Martin Heidegger, Maurice
Merleau-Ponty, and Jean-Paul Sartre) is the idea that we normally view reality from the vantage point of
what Husserl calls “The Natural Attitude.” For Husserl, this natural attitude toward things suggests that
people conduct their life with the common natural belief that the reality that they inhabit is
fundamentally separable from their subjective experience of it. In other words, for those people with a
natural attitude, the world is out there relative to their experience of it.

In contrast to this natural attitude, Husserl claims that it is possible for people to adopt a
phenomenological attitude, wherein they suspend or “bracket” their belief and natural attitude, and
eventually recognize that it is just a natural attitude―that the knowledge that they gained from this
attitude is not real or true knowledge. This act of bracketing, which is also called epoche, allows people
to turn their attention on the ongoing activity of their consciousness to which their experience of reality
or things is ultimately constituted.

According to Husserl, the overall act of employing epoche, that is, suspending or bracketing all
preconceived notions and prejudices about a particular phenomenon under study―and then record,
identify, and then put to one side―in order for us to gain an understanding of the true nature of reality,
is called phenomenological reduction. According to Richard Schmitt, it is called “phenomenological”
because it transforms the world into a phenomenon, and it is called “reduction” because it leads us back
to the source of the meaning and existence of the experienced world.

According to Frogstuff (see Bracketing and Phenomenological Reduction), “The concept [of epoche or
bracketing] can be better understood in terms of the phenomenological activity it is supposed to make
possible: the ‘unpacking’ of phenomena, or, in other words, systematically peeling away their symbolic
meanings like layers of an onion until only the thing itself as meant and experienced remains. Thus,
one’s subjective perception of the bracketed phenomenon is examined and analyzed in its purity.”

It must be noted, however, that in phenomenological reduction, the mind does not make up features of
reality that everything must conform to. On the contrary, objects in the world (phenomena) already
have some kind of structure or unity, and these objective meaningful features of the things
(phenomena) are disclosed to us in our experience by means of the interpretations we can give to them.
In this way, our mind can be viewed as active because it can create interpretations of our experience in
meaningful ways. However, it must be remembered that there is already something meaningful in the
objects (phenomena) themselves which can provide confirmation of or contradiction to that
interpretation.

Now, with phenomenological reduction, people are able to have a shift in perspective. And it is
important to note that this basic shift in perspective as a result of the employment of phenomenological
reduction enables us to assume a phenomenological attitude toward our experience. According to some
scholars, this can produce some surprising insights into the fundamental nature of things. In other
words, with phenomenological reduction, one is able to get at the pure phenomena from a user’s point
of view. Put differently, through phenomenological reduction, we are able to know and understand the
essence or meaning of things as they appear to us.
Let us take “man” as a phenomenon and apply a phenomenological reduction to it in order for us to
know the essence of man.

The Natural Attitude may say: “Man is a rational animal.” Here, man is simply perceived as an animal
that thinks.

But from the standpoint of a Phenomenological Attitude, the nature of man or the understanding of
man depends on how one experiences man. Thus, with a phenomenological attitude, man can be
viewed as a being that possesses freedom or a being that escapes definition. Here, man is more than a
thinking animal. This means that the meaning of man can vary considerably depending on the way in
which we view man, whether from the vantage point of a natural attitude or from a phenomenological
attitude.

There are some techniques of doing phenomenology, of the way to go about exploring our
consciousness of reality. One way of doing this is to undertake what Husserl calls Eidetic Reduction. By
the way, for Husserl, eidetic reduction is a second reduction, which follows the moment we have turned
our reflective awareness toward experience by employing the phenomenological reduction. In fact,
eidetic reduction is a way of understanding the essence of some experience. This precisely what Husserl
calls the movement from fact to essence.

In must be noted that for Husserl, epoche has two fundamental moments, namely: 1) the reduction to
the sphere of immanence and 2) the movement from fact to essence. The first moment involves a
suspension of the natural attitude and placing in abeyance all beliefs in the transcendental world. It is
important to note that Husserl did not use the term “transcendental” in the mystical sense, for example,
the way it is used in the phrase “transcendent God.” In order for us to understand Husserl’s use of the
word ‘transcendent” or “transcendental,” let us posit this word vis-à-vis the term “materiality.” In
Husserlian phenomenology, materiality could mean the physical existence of things, such as tables,
chairs, books, trees, cars and the like. On the other hand, transcendental phenomena are those
phenomena that have transcended their materiality, such as feelings, thoughts, experiences, memories,
and the like. It is for this reason that Husserl’s philosophy is “transcendental” because it is concerned
with the conditions of possibility that make an experience possible. Indeed, thoughts, memories,
experiences and feelings serve as the conditions of possibility that make an experience possible. The
second moment, sometimes called eidetic reduction, involves a shift to consider things not as realities
but as instances of idealities, that is, as pure possibilities rather than actualities. In this way, objects are
no longer conceived as material things, but as essences―that is, meanings, categories, ideal types, and
laws.

Let me give an example in order to drive my point clearly.

We may ask the question: “What is a table?”

Here, it is important to remember, according to some scholars on Husserl, that what Husserl is after is a
special moment in the inquirer’s reflective awareness, a special moment which Husserl calls intuition.
Husserl distinguishes between perception and intuition. In perception, a person may perceive and be
conscious of the fact that she perceives an object, but without understanding its meaning and essence.
Intuition, on the other hand, is an insight into the nature and meaning of something through the
experience of that something. Now, according to Husserl, eidetic reduction helps bring about an
intuition into something as essence by employing a method knows as Imaginary Variation.

In imaginary variation, the inquirer varies all the possible attributes of an experience as a way of
exploring what is truly necessary for it to be what it is. Thus, in the question “what is a table,” we may
raise the following points:

A table has four legs;

A table is made up of wood;

A table has a flat surface;

A table is rectangular in shape;

A table is used primarily for dining or putting things on it.

Or we may ask the following, as a way of varying all possible attributes of an experience:

Would it still be a table if it has no legs?

Would it still be a table if it has no flat surface?

Would it still be a table if it is not made up of wood?

Would it still be a table if it is not rectangular in shape?

Would it still be a table if it is not used for dining or putting things on it?

Eventually, according to Husserl, this kind of explanation helps the inquirer reach or attain a special
moment of intuition about her experience of the table. Thus, she may say: “A table is a four-legged
furniture, made up of wood, has a flat surface, rectangular in shape, and is used primarily for dining or
putting things on it.” This is what makes a table “a table.” Indeed, this is the nature of the phenomenon
(table in this case) as it appears to us, that is, as we experienced it. According to some scholars, this is a
kind of “Aha” moment in which the inquirer realizes the overall essential nature of the experience. This
is exactly what is meant by the dictum: “back to the things themselves” as that which characterizes
Husserl’s project. It must be noted, however, that Husserl’s famous dictum “back to the things
themselves” meant “the things as we experienced them rather than take them for granted.”

Finally, some of the implications as a result of doing pure phenomenology is the realization that
consciousness is intentional. For Husserl, consciousness is understood as fundamentally intentional. This
means that consciousness as an act is always a consciousness “of” or “about” something. Thus,
consciousness in Husserlian phenomenology is not directed toward itself, but toward phenomena in the
world. It follows, therefore, that any form of thinking is based ultimately on “phenomena in the world.”
For this reason, consciousness or thinking is just secondary to the lived experience of phenomena as
they show themselves. This explains why for Husserl, the world of immediate or lived experience takes
precedence over the objectified world of natural sciences.

In the phenomenological parlance, intentionality denotes two things. First, the intentionality of
consciousness means that consciousness is always an act of doing something. Thus, consciousness is an
activity. This is what is meant when Husserl said that to be conscious is to experience an act of knowing
(noesis) in which the subject is aware of an object. And second, intentionality of consciousness means
that consciousness is always referential, that is, consciousness is always pointing or referring to
something. That is also what is meant when Husserl said that a conscious act is an act of awareness in
which the subject is presented with an object (noema).

Let’s take, for example, the act of thinking about the definition of a table.
Thinking about the definition of a table involves actual thinking (noises). At the same time, it involves a
referent, that is, a table (noema). At the end of it all, for Husserl, consciousness is not like a box that
contains some perceptions. On the contrary, consciousness is an active ongoing referential process.