Phenomenology is the study of how we experience reality. By studying this branch of philosophy, we learn more about how we go through events in life, how we see objects, how we feel emotions, and how we make decisions.

I recently finished reading the Stanford Encyclopedia article on this subject, which did a great job explaining its history. This, along with the first five pages of Being and Nothingness by Jean‑Paul Sartre and the first thirty‑five pages of At the Existentialist Café by Sarah Bakewell, gives me a better understanding of the topic.

In general, phenomenology focuses on the first‑person perspective, which is our direct, lived experience. How we perceive things, how we imagine, our emotions, our actions, and even our social life are all part of the whole idea.

So, when studying phenomenology, we are really studying how we connect ourselves to the external world.

Some key figures in this branch of philosophy throughout its history have been:

Edmund Husserl (1859-1938)

Martin Heidegger (1889-1976)

Jean-Paul Sartre (1905-1980)

Maurice Merleau-Ponty (1908-1961)

But these are just the Western intellectuals and philosophers that, as Westerners, we might normally study when we start picking up this branch of philosophy. Phenomenology has been practiced in some form or another for many centuries. Hinduism and Buddhism engage in this type of philosophy through thinking processes and written philosophies, alongside their practices of meditation and concentration.

According to the Encyclopedia of Phenomenology (Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1997, Dordrecht and Boston), there are seven types of phenomenology. These are:

(1) Transcendental constitutive phenomenology studies how objects are constituted in pure or transcendental consciousness, setting aside questions of any relation to the natural world around us.

(2) Naturalistic constitutive phenomenology studies how consciousness constitutes or takes things in the world of nature, assuming with the natural attitude that consciousness is part of nature.

(3) Existential phenomenology studies concrete human existence, including our experience of free choice or action in concrete situations.

(4) Generative historicist phenomenology studies how meaning, as found in our experience, is generated in historical processes of collective experience over time.

(5) Genetic phenomenology studies the genesis of meanings of things within one’s own stream of experience.

(6) Hermeneutical phenomenology studies interpretive structures of experience, how we understand and engage things around us in our human world, including ourselves and others.

(7) Realistic phenomenology studies the structure of consciousness and intentionality, assuming it occurs in a real world that is largely external to consciousness and not somehow brought into being by consciousness.

I took that straight from the encyclopedia and posted it here. But I'm interested in studying (3), which is the existential type of phenomenology, mainly because of Sartre's perspective on the "I" or self, which he stated is nothing, and what we think is "I" or self is just really a series of acts of consciousness, including free choices.

This is something I want to further study because I believe understanding Sartre's philosophy will make a massive impact on my own personal growth.