The problem of method

Angela Ales Bello

pp. 69-95

in: Gustav Špet, Appearance and sense, Deventer, Kluwer, 1991

Abstract

After all the reductions are carried out phenomenology turns out to be a discipline rigorously shut up in its own shell — this thanks to the rigor and purity of its absolute object. It is free not only from all theoretical and practical presuppositions, but it also operates only with material that it is able to establish by itself. Being the foundation of all philosophical as well as special knowledge, phenomenology "accepts" nothing. It "has" only itself. In this regard we mentioned above that phenomenology can always use the Object of another attitude for its own purposes. But of course as to the content it "converts" everything in accordance with its own spirit and for its own purposes. All of this holds not only for the Objects of phenomenology but also for its means and methods. They, too, cannot be "borrowed" and cannot be founded on other attitudes and sciences. If phenomenology has to use certain formal principles, e.g. the laws of logic, it must even in those cases provide its own justification for them.

Cited authors

Husserl Edmund