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ETYMOLOGY AND DEFINITION OF PHENOMENOLOGY Ayaw lang sa ni iinclude sa

PPT ha. Ngita pa kog nindot
nga ibutang
ETIMOLOGY AND DEFINITION OF EXISTENTIALISM

HEADING 1 – PHENOMENOLOGY AND EXISTENTIALISM IN PHILOSOPHY OF

EDUCATION
 Spanish and American Colonization
o Two Philo. dominated in Philippines Education System
1. Thomistic Aristotelian Scholastic Realism (expound)
2. Deweyan Pragmatism
 There are some inadequacies in both. (expound)
 Existentialist – Phenomenological approach as applied to education is rooted in the
ordinary life, in what is immediately apparent.
 It attempts to make a connection between:
o the lecture room and the market place
o the lecture hall and the world of the phenomenon (expound-book)
o which was done by Socrates of the West, Confucius of the East, and Jesus Christ,
the greatest teacher of all times (expound-book)
 Phenomenology and Existentialism as contemporary philosophies
HEADING 2 – HISTORICAL ROOTS OF PHENOMENOLOGY AND EXISTENTIALISM
 Phenomenological movement
o state of constant transition
o it has a remarkable impact upon the neorealism of Moore and his followers
(expound)
o it influenced the Existential views of Heideger , Satre, and Merleau-Ponty
o its genesis may be traced back to a number of great thinkers and their works
1. Franz Brentano (1838-1917)
2. Carl Stumpf (1848-1936)
o its major development can be attributed to:
1. EDMUND HUSSERL (1859-1938) with
a. Morit Geiger (1880-1937)
b. Alexander Pfander (1870-1941)
c. Adolf Reinach ( 1883-1917)
 d. Max Scheler (1874-1928)
- they formulated the basic principles of Phenomenology
 Phenomenology had been applied to number of disciplines:
o Lipps – aesthetics
o Nicolai Hartman (1882-1951) – ethics
o Max Scheler – anthropology, axiology, and the philosophy of religion
o Rudolf Otto (1869-1937) – philosophy of religion
o Karl Mannheim (1893-1947) – sociology
o Ludwig Binswanger (1881-1966) – psychology and psychiatry
o Viktor E. Frankl (1905-) – psychiatry and psycho-therapy
o Carl Rogers (1902-) – psychology of personality
 Phenomenological method focuses on the finding of essences from which three
techniques are identified, namely:
o Epoche or Phenomenological reduction which means, “bracketing”
o eidetic reduction or abstraction
o the analysis of the correlation between the phenomena of cognition and the object
of cognition also known as Phenomenological Transcendental Reduction
 Phenomenology and Existentialism have a close ideological relationship between them.
The only fundamental distinction between them is found on the emphasis given to either
existence or essence.
 Phenomenologist give priority to essence or the quiddity or whatness of man or of an
object.
 Existentialist give precedence to the existence (the thatness) of man or of the object;
“essence preceded essence”, taking into account the facts and modes of existence.
(Proceed with what the book said)
 Existentialism came into being as outgrowth of phenomenology rooted in the ideas of the
Danish philosopher Soren Kierkegaard (1813-1855), “Father of Existentialism”
o There are three stages of life experience:
1. aesthetic – the individual may just be interested in pleasure or romance or in
intellectual pursuits that are none-committal. (Expound)
2. ethical – man makes for himself a decision coupled with resolute injunction
“know thyself” must be changed to “choose thyself”
3. Religious – obedience and commitment to God
 The great interest in his Existentialism may be attributed to his student, the atheist Jean-
Paul Sartre (1905-).
o Jean Wahl (1988-)coined the term existentialism and founded the French school
of Existentialist philosophy.
o Notable contemporary adherents of Existentialism are:
1. German atheist Karl Jaspers (1883-)
2. French-Algerian atheist Albert Camus (1913-1960)
3. French Roman Catholic theist Gabriel Marcel (1889-)
  A group of Theologians who called themselves adherents of Neo-orthodoxy, were
attracted to the religious interpretation of Kierkegaardian Existentialism:
o Karl Barth (1886-)
o Paul Tillich (1886-1965)
o Rudolf Bultmann ( (1884-) “demythologising”
o Heinrich Emil Brunner (1889-1966)
o George Buttrick (1892-)
o Reinhold Nieburh (1892-)
o Martin Buber (1878-1965) Jewish Theologian “I and Thou”

HEADING 3 – BASIC TENETS OF PHENOMENOLOGY AND EXISTENTIALISM

 Phenomenology was never founded; rather, it is a product of growth.
 Johann Heinrich Lambert, a German philosopher contemporary of Immanuel Kant, first
spoke of a discipline that he called “phenomenology” in his Neues Organon (Leipzig,
1764). (Expound)
 Phenomenology is defined also a purely descriptive study of any given subject matter and
it can be taken both as an attitude towards existence and as a method of accurate
description of reality.
o contents of physical consciousness are paramount.
o value reference is a self-evident fact of experience and physical values are as real
as any other objects of intentionality.
o Three types of psychical acts of psychological phenomena:
1. ideas, which are images in sense experiences “eidos”
2. judgments
3. emotive acts, i.e., desires and feelings
 Edmund Husserl – Phenomenology a descriptive analysis of subjective processes or as
the intuitive study of essences.
 The task of philosophy is to describe the data of consciousness without bias or prejudice
– all metaphysical and scientific theories must be ignored so that an accurate description
and analysis of the phenomena within consciousness could be experienced and reported.
 Philosophy must begin with the phenomena “to the things themselves”
o All phenomenological statements possess three properties:
1. phenomenological statements are non-empirical
2. phenomenological statements are descriptive
3. phenomenological statements describe phenomena
o Two simplest specifications of phenomenon:
1. Phenomena are essences
2. Phenomena are intuited
 Existentialism is a philosophical doctrine that stresses the freedom of human beings to
make choices in a world where there are no absolute values outside man himself.
(Expound-relate to Filipinos)
  Soren Kierkegaard – His existential theology saw the birth of existentialism as a
philosophy because he wanted to see the individual person as achieving the fullness of his
own human existence or he calls it, dasein.
(expound based on the book) (decide)
HEADING 4 – SYNTHESIS OF PHENOMENOLOGY AND EXISTENTIALISM AND
IMPLICATIONS TO EDUCATION
 Existential Phenomenologists teach that education should enable man to make choices for
his own existence.
o education is viewed as a means of seeing not only with one’s own eyes but also
with one’s own entire being the very nature of human existence.
o Education should serve as the guiding star for man when he makes decision and
engages in making options before the multifarious nature of reality.
o “Teach a student what to think and you make him a slave of knowledge; but,
teach the student how to think, and you make knowledge his slave.”
 Existential-phenomenology, as it affects education is characterized by the following:
o Just like existence, education is continuous, always incomplete.
o While education must always aim at the truth, truth is subjectivity.
o Education has to be anthropocentric or man-centered because Existential-
phenomenologists are, by nature, philosophers of man.
o Existential-phenomenologists emphasize the freedom of man.
o Existential-phenomenologists emphasize authentic existence rather than
inauthentic existence.
o Existential-phenomenologists theorize that man is more of an actor than of a
spectator.
o Existential-phenomenologists maintain the tenet that man is not just simply body
and soul component or unity but as “incarnate spirit,” or embodied
consciousness” or “embodied subjectivity.”
o The Existentialists see the world as one personal subjectivity, where goodness,
truth and reality are individually defined.
o Reality is a world of existence, truth is subjectivity chosen, and goodness is a
matter of freedom.

HEADING 5 – AS APPLIED TO SCHOOLS AND THE CURRICULUM

 EXISTENTIALISTS
o the function of school is to be a place whose main raison d’etre is to assist
students in knowing themselves and in learning of their role in society.
o subject matters have to be a matter of interpretation: arts, ethics, philosophy
o teacher-student relationship would simply resolve around the giving of assistance
to students in their personal learning journeys.
o change in the school environment would be embraced as both a natural and
necessary phenomenon.
o Existentialist curriculum is made of experiences and subjects that lend themselves
to philosophical dialogue and acts that are rooted in choice making.
o Subjects are emotional, aesthetic, and philosophical: Literature, history,
philosophy, arts, drama, film-making.
o The curriculum emphasizes self-expressive activities, experimentation, methods,
and media that illustrate the affective domain like emotions, feelings and insights.
o The classroom is seen as a place for self-expression, dialogue, and discussion
about lives and choices.