Blackwell Reference Online

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M odern E uropean philosophy, philosophical method [from Greek phainomenon , to appear + logos , theory, literally, a theory of appearance] The idea of phenomenology can be traced to Aristotle 's “saving the phainomena,” but the word was first used by J. H. Lambert, a follower of Christian Wolff , in his Neues Organon (1764), meaning the study of the forms of appearances and illusions. Kant took over this word, claiming that phenomenology determined the principles of sensibility and understanding that can be applied only to the world of appearance and not to things-in-themselves. Hegel 's Phenomenology of the Spirit brought this word into prominence. However, for Hegel, phenomena are not illusions or appearances. They are stages in the development of knowledge , in the manifestations of which Spirit itself appears, and are the expressions of a self-developing absolute idea. Phenomenology is therefore the study of the evolutionary process of consciousness from its simplest to its most sophisticated forms. The American pragmatist C. S. Peirce developed in his early work a kind of phenomenology, also called “phaneroscopy,” as a system of categories to classify the main types of phenomena that make up the world. Phenomenology in its most popular sense refers to an influential philosophical movement, founded by Edmund Husserl and developed in Germany ... log in or subscribe to read full text