Spirit and generativity

The role and contribution of the phenomenologist in Hegel and Husserl

Anthony Steinbock

Southern Illinois University

pp. 163-203

in: Natalie Depraz, Dan Zahavi (eds), Alterity and facticity, Deventer, Kluwer, 1998

Abstract

In this article I treat the role and contribution of the phenomenologist, and the phenomenologist’s relation to history. This may seem to be a straightforward enough topic. After all, isn’t the role of the phenomenologist to describe the phenomena, whatever they may be? Isn’t his or her contribution the uninterested articulation of what he or she sees ? As many know the situation is actually much more complex than this, for just what the phenomena are depends, at least in the case of Husserlian phenomenology, upon the methodological strategy or strategies employed: whether one investigates the phenomena within an ontological or constitutive framework, or from static, genetic, or generative research perspectives. In fact, it is precisely this last mentioned dimension — the generative dimension — that motivates the question concerning the role and contribution of the phenomenologist.

Cited authors

Husserl Edmund

Hegel Georg Wilhelm Friedrich