Phenomenology

Eidetic and Transcendental Phenomenology

Human consciousness is the basis for the attainment of any true understanding, so Husserl devised a sophisticated theory to explain its inner workings. Essentially, all consciousness is intentional in that it possesses an inherent directednesswhen-ever humans are conscious, they are always already conscious of something. Husserl emphasized different aspects of this dynamic throughout his career. Early on, his phenomenology was identified as eidetic, from the Greek essence, and this embodied Husserl's mantra to get back to “the things themselves.” Martin Jay, who specializes in phenomenological experience, asserts that Husserl set an ambitious goal for himself in attempting to find eternal, essential, ideal truths amid the flux of passing encounters between self and world or self and others.

At a subsequent phase, Husserl's phenomenology became transcendental. He shifted his concerns from the functioning of consciousness that enables the knower to derive the essence of an [Page 553]object of his or her consciousness to the structure of the act in which the knower experiences any object. When the human person experiences something, it can be experienced in a variety of waysfor example, a dime can be used for the toll and it can become a makeshift screwdriver. In each case, the same coin is given a different meaning. The key here is the indispensable role of consciousness. Husserl scholar Steven Crowell contends that Husserl would want the knower to attribute these differences in meaning not solely to the thing itself but to the consciousness that experiences them in these ways because only the conscious act explains why at this moment just these aspects of the object are experienced. Human beings cannot fully anticipate the meaning that an object will have when consciously experienced, nor can they fully explain why it takes the meaning it does, so this dynamic retains a transcendental aspect.

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