Phenomenology: A Note on the Philosophical School

The history of philosophy is marked by repeated attempts to return to what is most fundamental-what is given before all interpretation, theory, or abstraction. Phenomenology is one of the most ambitious and enduring of these attempts. Born in the early 20th century out of a dissatisfaction with both the dogmatism of traditional metaphysics and the abstraction of scientific positivism, phenomenology proposed a radical new beginning: to return "to the things themselves." This phrase, made fam...