MARTIN HEIDEGGER AND PHENOMENOLOGY
Phenomenology - a branch of ontology, the study of existence or being - has had a major influence upon French thinking in this century and provides the background to the major debates now occurring in new French theory. Derrida and Foucault, in particular, stand out as two major theorists whose thinking owes a lot to their awareness of phenomenology - even though they are mainly concerned with criticising it.
Phenomenology was developed by Edmund Husserl (1859-1938) in the early part of this century and was elaborated further by his pupil Martin Heidegger (1889-1976). The study of existence or being has occupied philosophy for centuries but a major breakthrough occurred in the eighteenth century when Kant argued that humans can never see a thing in itself, as perception is essentially a mental construct. According to Kant all that is available to human perception is phenomena, which are sense data structured by the workings of the mind.
Phenomenology advocates a close examination of objects in order to actually experience the fact that objects do not exist in themselves but rather exist for consciousness.
Husserl developed the basic method of phenomenology, phenomenological seeing, called variously bracketing or the phenomenological epoche (epoche means a suspension of judgement, an attitude of endless questioning); but Heidegger took this method further, and it is upon Heidegger that we shall concentrate here.
Heidegger's approach to phenomenological seeing has great relevance to art because, for Heidegger, it became essentially an aesthetic way of seeing which he opposed to the socially dominant perspective–rational, scientific observation. In Heidegger's eyes science dehumanises the world by treating things as dead facts examined by a detached, rational observer.
In phenomenological seeing, on... The rest of this article is available to subscribers of Eyeline