Purpose and Methods of Phenomenological Research

Phenomenology

PHENOMENOLOGY

Phenomenology is concerned with the study of experience from the perspective of the individual, bracketing taken-for-granted assumptions and usual ways of perceiving. Epistemologically, phenomenological approaches are based on a paradigm of personal knowledge and subjectivity and emphasize the importance of personal perspective and interpretation. As such they are powerful for understanding subjective experience, gaining insights into people's motivations and actions, and cutting through the clutter of taken-for-granted assumptions and conventional wisdom. phenomenology rejects the empiricist perspective and utilizes a subjectivist approach via interpretive perspectives of theory. community defines self and the self defines community. Understanding of consciousness must acknowledge the objective as well as subjective, both are intrinsic parts of interpretation and contemplation. 

Purpose of Phenomenological Research: 

The purpose of the phenomenological approach is; to illuminate the specific, to identify phenomena through how they are perceived by the actors in a situation. 

In the human sphere, this normally translates into gathering deep information and perceptions through inductive, qualitative methods such as interviews, discussions, and participant observation, and representing it from the perspective of the research participant(s). 

According to Husserl; "Pure phenomenological research seeks essentially to describe rather than explain, and to start from a perspective free from hypotheses or preconceptions"

Methods of Phenomenology: 

Giorgi, more straightforwardly, argues that the phenomenological method encompasses three interlocking steps:

 (1) phenomenological reduction, 

 (2) description 

 (3) search for essences.

Transcendental Phenomenology: 

Edmund Husserl describes this concept of philosophy known as transcendental phenomenology. Edmund Husserl was born in Germany. Edmund Husserl argued that phenomenology necessitated consciousness experiences from personal perspectives and was practiced whenever we considered what we heard, saw, or felt. such considerations involve why we think something and why we undertake certain tasks. experience is attended as we answer in the first person and describe or give meaning to the components of the experience. 

For Edmund Husserl, one of the central questions for philosophy is: what it is for us to know? - in other words, what it is for us to be conscious of anything? From a phenomenological perspective, this is a question we cannot help asking because man is essentially an explorer of a transcendental realm of meaning. Husserl as a mathematician shows a reaction to positivism and develops methods for the study of conscious experience in order to overcome objectivist's limitations in positivism. 

Husserl's transcendental phenomenology is derived from the concept of intentionality. 

McIntyre and Smith defined intentionality from a philosophical perspective: 

" A characteristic feature of our mental states and experiences, especially evident in what we commonly call being conscious or aware." 

Husserl gave importance to the intentionality of consciousness relating to other objects, including ordinary things and imaginary creations. He defined intentionality as; "The unique peculiarity of experiences to be the consciousness of something." 

His definition of intentionality seeks the relationship between subject and object through background, content, act, and horizon and investigates as subjects how we experience objects. He is of the view that human consciousness has the ability to transcend the matter of reality. it has the ability to transcend preconceived notions. He states; 

"Phenomenology entails the essence of consciousness in that all acts of consciousness are experienced by the subject. phenomenology involves first-person descriptors in terms of "I see the farm or I imagine visiting the moon". Such terms are known as phenomenological descriptions. Each description indicates the subject's point of view regarding a particular act of consciousness". 

Hermeneutical Phenomenology: 

Martin Heidegger was born in Germany. Martin Heidegger argues that meaning is linked directly with time. Being is historical or systematic, it is temporal. Heidegger like his tutor Husserl stays in the camp of Phenomenology however, he mainly differentiates his phenomenology from Husserl by rejecting transcendental reduction. he considered that interpretation was necessary while studying social beings. He describes; 

" Every inquiry is seeking. every seeking gets guided beforehand by what is sought..inquiry itself is the behavior of the questioner. the meaning of being is already within us". 

Hermeneutic is derived from the Greek word hermeneutic, which means to "interpret". 

The origin of the word is inspired by the Greek mythological character, Hermes, who was tasked with delivering messages of Greek Gods to the people (Gadamer, 2006). Hermeneutic is about interpretation and focuses on historical and social contexts that surround actions when interpreting a text. 

Caputo states; 

"Hermeneutic phenomenology makes explicit the implicit clues that organize understanding, identifying the horizon of Being that allows entities to appear as they are, and then explicates the implicit clue around which that horizon is organized and by which it is nourished, which is the meaning, of the Being of those entities."

Interpretive phenomenology, in contrast, has emerged from the work of hermeneutic philosophers, including Heidegger, Gadamer, and Ricoeur, who argue for our embeddedness in the world of language and social relationships, and the inescapable historicity of all understanding. 

The meaning of phenomenological description as a method lies in interpretation, Says Heidegger: "Interpretation is not an additional procedure: It constitutes an inevitable and basic structure of our being-in-the-world. We experience a thing as something that has already been interpreted." 

Inalienable Presence of World: 

Merleau-Ponty defines phenomenology as the study of essence which seeks to find out definitions of consciousness or perception. According to him, "The perceiving mind is an incarnated mind. I have tried, first of all, to re-establish the roots of the mind in its body and in its world.... the insertion of mind incorporeality, the ambiguous relation which we entertain with our body and correlatively, with perceived things. 

" He says that man is the product of the environment and consciousness is the result of the environment. the world is directly there. it exists and we are within this before any research, understanding or reflection begins, the world has an inalienable presence. 

Merleau-Ponty infers that the task of phenomenology is to reveal the mystery of the world and the mystery of the reason. 

Conclusion: 

Phenomenology is descriptive in the sense of aiming to describe rather than explain, a number of scholars and researchers distinguish between descriptive phenomenology versus interpretive, or hermeneutic phenomenology. With descriptive phenomenology, researchers aim to reveal essential general meaning structures of a phenomenon. There is the phenomenological reduction in Husserl from facts to essence, and in Heidegger from beings to Being and to the meaning of Being. 

Merleau-Ponty's paradigm of inquiry is more participatory. His epistemology requires critical subjectivity which is formed with experimental, presentational, propositional, and practical knowledge. According to him, practical and theoretical knowledge co-create findings in the coming context. 

These three pillars of phenomenology examine the phenomenon of being from three main perspectives as transcendentalism, dasein, and inalienable presence. In line with their differences and common points, they break strict rules of positivism and bring to social science inquiry an enriched and critical perspective via subjectivity.

Keywords;    Phenomenology,  Hermeneutics, Transcendental phenomenology