Abstract

I have not set myself the task of telling you what Phenomenology is. Rather, I would like to try to think with you in the phenomenological manner. To talk about phenomenology is the most useless thing in the world so long as that is lacking which alone can give any talk concrete fullness and intuitiveness: the phenomenological way of seeing and the phenomenological attitude. For the essential point is this, that phenomenology is not a matter of a system of philosophical propositions and truths - a system of propositions in which all who call themselves "Phenomenologists" must believe, and which I could here prove to you - but rather it is a method of philosophizing which is required by the problems of philosophy: one which is very different from the manner of viewing and verifying in life, and which is even more different from the way in which one does and must work in most of the sciences. And so today my aim is to touch upon a series of philosophical problems with you, in the hope that, at this or that point, it will become clear to you what the peculiarity of the phenomenological attitude is. Only then is the basis for further discussions given.