Phenomenology and Existentialism

Book excerpt: “Existentialism has long been considered an isolated philosophy whose antecedents and origins extend no farther back in time than it own creation. It has been said of existentialism that its main proponents – Sartre, Kierkegaard, and Nietzsche – agreed in only one thing – namely, that they were not existentialists.The existentialist believes himself uniquely individual – an autonomous agent independent of his environment and able to arrive at his own private realization of the truth.As the movement grew and gained adherents – existentialism has been called the philosophy of the modern man – it became apparent that some basic assumptions did in fact have a grounding in earlier and more tightly structured philosophical systems – in particular, phenomenology, which, as the name implies, is the investigation of experience.In fact, phenomenology and existentialism are intrinsically related. But undergraduate and popular presentations portray them as distinctly separate movements while hinting at their relationship. Richard Zaner and Don Ihde have set out to correct this distortion in terms of carefully selected readings and enlightening introductory essays. They demonstrate just why phenomenology took the existential turn; they outline the main directions of development and then focus on the ways in which phenomenological description dominates existential writing. In their introductory essays they also seek to establish the continuity of phenomenology and existentialism with the history of Western philosophy and the ways in which Husserl drew upon Augustine, Aquinas, Descartes, Locke, Hume, and Kant.”- Publisher