The necessity of communicating phenomenological insights – and its difficulties

David R. Koukal

pp. 257-279

in: Filip Mattens (ed), Meaning and language, Berlin, Springer, 2008

Abstract

The communication of insight—be it through a transcription, translation, a seminar or classroom lecture—is a philosophical task as old as Plato. Phenomenological insight, according to Husserl, is to be gained by temporarily "bracketing" the various presuppositions of the different realms of human activity for the purpose of intuiting the essential structures of experience that appear to a consciousness purified by the method of the epoché. And Husserl makes it abundantly clear that an essential part of phenomenology's task is the communication of phenomenology's insights to the various regions of human activity which it claims to ground through its activity. It is through such communication that phenomenology invites humanity to return to "the things themselves" that underlie all of our various preconceptions of these things, so that it may have a deeper understanding of the lived world common to all. This is often forgotten about phenomenology: it is not only about intuition, but also expression.

Cited authors

Husserl Edmund

Plato