The theory of phenomenological description

Abstract

1. The first issue to be decided is why we need a theory of phenomenological description. Why do we not simply carry out our descriptions? I think there are three reasons. First, without a theory the descriptions might seem rather pointless. If we observe, for example, that all perceived material objects have an other side that is not being perceived while one side is being perceived, or if we say that any statement can be repeated by someone else, sometimes with belief and sometimes without belief, the point of making such comments about things may not be easy to see. We appear to be belaboring the obvious. Thus a theory of transcendental description is needed in order to just ify the descriptions we actually carry out. Secondly, a theory of transcendental descriptions helps us understand the status and the stance of ourselves as transcendental describers. This is a more positive reason than the first one, which is somewhat exculpatory. We are able to describe our own being in the world, we are able to describe our most fundamental at t i tude in the world (the world-belief that underlies all our particular convictions), and we are able to take a distance to all the forms of appearing through which things are manifest to us. This means that we are quite extraordinary while we are carrying on such descriptions. What are we like when we do this, and what are things and being like in order to allow such an analysis o f them and of us to take place? A theory of transcendental description thus tells us about ourselves, about being, and about the world. The third reason why we need a theory of phenomenological description is that we must overcome a systematic bias that has been implanted in our philosophy and our culture during the past five or six hundred years.