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In the decades since World War II there has been a blending or intermingling of problems of existence and traditional phenomenology to form a new existential phenomenology. In America, it has been this version of phenomenology which has been dominant up to now. The doctrine of the Lebenswelt, a conception which emerged in the later works of Husserl, has contributed in large measure to this direction. From this common area of concern philosophers have proceeded in radically different directions and have interpreted phenomenology in strikingly different ways. The older phenomenology, often characterized as the phenomenology of the essences, tried to delineate the invariant and universal structures of human consciousness especially at higher levels. The reduction was the gateway to this phenomenology, for in order to get at data without distortion, it was necessary to “put into brackets” or to disengage the ego from its natural concerns. This was in no way to cut it off from the world; but, unfortunately, critics have taken the reduction to involve an ontological separation, despite Husserl’s lifelong denials. Hence traditional phenomenology was criticized as idealistic and as a mere study of consciousness. Some of those who disagreed with this view of phenomenology “tried to bring it down into the world of concrete life and to incarnate it in individual and social human existence.”

DOI: 10.1007/978-94-010-3326-8_11

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