Macquarie University

Existential Questions - PHL238

At the beginning of the twentieth century, a new philosophical method emerged, devised by Edmund Husserl, which had a profound impact on the discipline and continues to thrive to this day. The aim of phenomenology is "to return to the things themselves", to describe the multiple ways in which the world is accessed by humans in different forms of experience. Phenomenology thus studies the forms of experience making possible, for example, the perception of objects in space, the consciousness of time, the relationship of the self to its own body and to other bodies. The unit begins with an examination of Husserl's initial characterisation of phenomenology. We then study the thoughts of his most influential heirs: Heidegger's turn towards everyday experience and the fundamental question of Being; Sartre's 'existentialist' modification of phenomenology, emphasising its implications for human freedom; and Merleau-Ponty's focus on the body, as the origin of meaningful interactions with the world. We consider phenomenological and existentialist approaches to ethics and aesthetics, as well as the growing interest in phenomenology's contribution to cognitive science.

Timetable Information

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