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Title: Introduction to Phenomenology by Robert Sokolowski ISBN: 0-521-66792-5 Publisher: Cambridge University Press Pub. Date: 28 October, 1999 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $23.00 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.1 (10 reviews)
Rating: 5
Summary: The Meat-n-Potatoes of Phenomenology
Comment: Perhaps the most important philosophical movement in the 20th century, phenomenology is also one of the more abstruse and varied disciplines in philosophy. Indeed, it would be quite difficult to give a definitive description of what phenomenology is, as defined by the multifarious practitioners, and an onerous task of sifting through the thousands of pages of primary texts. Moreoever, as I can attest, encountering a phenomenological text for the first time is a daunting experience, like trying to navigate through a large city without a map or guide. While there are several good introductory texts on phenomenology in general (Moran's for example), and many texts discussing the many phenomenologists, Sokolowski has graciously and generously given us a very general and useful introduction to the basic structures of phenomenology as a method. To this extent, Sokolowski's book is strongly Husserlian and, in some aspects, echoes in simplistic terms his very good 1974 book, Husserlian Meditations. This, however, is not to be taken as a deficit. To the contrary, Husserl is the recognized father of phenomenology, and also a writer of terse and often impenetrable verse. Thus, it behooves anyone wishing to begin to study phenomenology to get the gist first before delving into the more difficult texts.
What Sokolowski has done for us is to simply explain phenomenology in much the same way one would explain their hobby or a good book they have read. That is to say that it is casual and clear, and very helpful and informative, without an excess of jargon or unnecessary info. However, Sokolowski does go through pains to clarify and define the terminology implcit in phenomenology, e.g., terms such as noetic, noema, parts, wholes, eidetic intuition, etc.
I cannot agree with one of the reviewers below, who claims that an introduction to phenomenology ought to be historical. For as much as phenomenology evolved since Husserl, it is indeed important to see it in such an historical context, however, when considering phenomenology simply as a method one does not need to know how it was transformed by Heidegger or Sartre. Further, I cannot help but feel comparison to Dermot Moran's sweeping and powerful Introduction to Phenomenology to be misguided; in either case the intentions are different. Besides, Sokolowski does mention the variations of phenomenology over the past century. All the same, the province of Sokolowski's book is an attempt to help us understand HOW TO DO PHENOMENOLOGY, as opposed to other aspects of phenomenolgy such as its history and context.
Rating: 5
Summary: Robert Sokolowski, Introduction to Phenomenology
Comment: Sokolowski's Introduction to Phenomenology admirable performs the work of an introduction. On the one hand, it strives to dispel misconceptions; this is necessary, since where misconceptions exist it is unlikely that an acquaintance will follow an introduction; or, that where it does, it will get off on the right foot. The misconceptions have chiefy to do with Phenomenology's lexicon-the terms it has developed for itself so as to make possible its particular way of looking at the world and the self. These include: intentionality, parts and wholes, identities in manifolds, presence and absence; transcendental reduction, transcendental ego, internal time consciousness, life world, and eidetic intuition.
In addition to being rather forbidding, this list (which corresponds to the way Sokolowski introduces the topics on it in his Introduction) of itself suggests why misconceptions exist, both about the words themselves and about Phenomenology as a philosophy. All the words on it have a stain of romanticism in them, no doubt because in reacting against rationalism and empiricism, Phenomenology incorporated the romanticism that is lodged at their core into itself. But as that romanticism-the romanticism of the solitary figure who knows and judges in terms of feeling-is unrecognized by them, so it incidental to Phenomenology.
Moving from the one hand to the other, and from the negative to the positive, Sokolowski makes it clear that, as a modern philosophy-but a modern philosophy with a difference-Phenomenology seeks to recover the world and the self that modern philosophy, in its rationalist and empericist versions, lost. It seeks to recover the world or the cosmos as a thing that is able to disclose the truth about itself and the self as the agent of truth.
This recovery has the effect of giving dignity back to human beings. (There is poignant and compelling-indeed, even a passionate-description of this dignity, and of what is lost when it is lost on pp. 120-21, though, unfortunately, it is too long to quote here.) The recovery opens, or reopens, the door to the pleasures of philosophy: the pleasures of grasping essential truth, and of sharing thought and speech about it. Conversely, it relieves one of the two main burdens imposed by much modern philosophy: first, the burden of trying to say everything, and second, the burden of trying to unsay everything.
Finally, Sokolowski observes that, in his judgment, Phenomenology is the first philosophy to introduce and work with the formal structures of presence and absence; and he attributes their introduction to the fact that Phenomenology sought to overcome the epistemological dead-end reached in modern thought (i. e. that "in here" and "out there" are forever separate and silent toward one another). Perhaps the reason Phenomenology did this is that modern philosophy, with its view that the foundation and limit of thought is perception, forced so many things into absence that the notion of absence needed to be introduced to get them back.
Rating: 1
Summary: a-historical
Comment: In its opening Sokolowski relates by anecdote that this book will take an approach to phenomenology analogous to that which mathematicians take to their field. That is, build upon the work of past practioners and contribute to the wealth of the field itself. Although this approach has its merits, phenomenology is an extremely diverse strain of philosophy--consider the difference between that of Sartre and Husserl--and Sokolowski's approach to it in this introduction is not all that revealing. You may learn quite alot about his thoughts on phenomenology, but not the phenomenological tradition. Phenomenology is not a consistent method with consistent subject matter and consistent results, as is math. Different phenomenologists conceived of phenomenology differently and applied it differently, and this cannot be ignored. I would recommend the Dermot Moran Intro. to Phenomenology. It is historically based and very thorough. Philosophy is NOT math, and it is best studied in its historical context and through the philosophers from which it came.
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Title: Introduction to Phenomenology by Dermot Moran ISBN: 0415183731 Publisher: Routledge Pub. Date: February, 2000 List Price(USD): $26.95 |
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Title: Phenomenology of Perception (Routledge Classics) by Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Colin Smith ISBN: 0415278414 Publisher: Routledge Pub. Date: 03 May, 2002 List Price(USD): $14.95 |
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Title: Phenomenological Research Methods by Clark Moustakas ISBN: 0803957998 Publisher: Sage Publications Pub. Date: 27 July, 1994 List Price(USD): $46.95 |
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Title: Researching Lived Experience: Human Science for an Action Sensitive Pedagogy (Suny Series in the Philosophy of Education) by Max Van Manen ISBN: 0791404269 Publisher: State Univ of New York Pr Pub. Date: September, 1990 List Price(USD): $23.95 |
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Title: Phenomenology and Psychological Research by Amedeo Giorgi ISBN: 0820701742 Publisher: Duquesne Univ Pr Pub. Date: March, 1985 List Price(USD): $23.00 |
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