HUSSERL (1859-1938)
Edmund Husserl was a German philosopher. He developed a philosophical approach aimed at understanding the foundations of knowledge, experience and the structure of consciousness. According to Husserl, philosophy is the science of sciences, and the duty of establishing the foundations of all sciences, whether they are based on experience or not, belongs to philosophy. Consciousness is what enables us to establish a relationship with matter, and there must be a critique of knowledge that will illuminate the foundations of this relationship. This critique of knowledge is phenomenology. He puts forward his thoughts in his well-known works, ‘Logical Investigations’ and ‘Ideen’.
Husserl criticized the reduction of consciousness to nature (naturalism), the reduction of ideal objects to psychological processes (psychologism) and naturalism, which tried to explain consciousness as a natural object, and developed a theory that grasped consciousness in an intentional way. The mind is bipolar, its own act and the one that is intended, the essence of mental existence is intentionality, every consciousness is the consciousness of something. Phenomenological analysis leads us to the knowledge of essences by analyzing intentionality, and it reveals how the thing directed is established and what its essence is. Husserl rejects the distinction between the thing in itself and the phenomenon, and says that one must go to the things themselves. The transcendental ego can be reached with a transcendental reduction, and all experiences in consciousness are the experiences of this transcendental ego.
Natural knowledge belonging to a particular science or common sense should not be included in phenomenological analyses. Husserl says that we cannot do phenomenology without the phenomenological reduction or epoche method, which suspends and excludes these types of knowledge. Bracketing the phenomenon means suspending all prejudices and assumptions of the mind. With this method, we experience the essence of things, and reach true propositions through intuition regarding the essence.
The noematic analysis method is based on describing the thing as it appears to us, and this analysis takes us to the world of life that we experience as the first person. Science, which tries to explain objects from a third person perspective, detaches objects from their relationship with subjectivity and makes us think of them as static structures.
Husserl says that there are three groups of mental phenomena; doxic (cognitive mental phenomena), affective phenomena (emotions felt in the mind), conative phenomena (desires). We talk about theoretical, normative and practical disciplines related to these. According to Husserl, emotions and emotions include evaluations. Axiology (value knowledge) allows us to determine whether emotions and emotions are right or wrong.
Many thinkers who came after Husserl, such as Heidegger, Sartre, Merleau Ponty, Levinas, Derrida, Ricoeur, Michel Henry, criticized him and advanced on their own paths. These philosophies are called Post-phenomenology.
LEVINAS (1906-1995)
Emmanuel Levinas was a French philosopher. Levinas is known for his work in the field of ethical philosophy and is directed towards rethinking philosophy through ethical relations rather than the comprehension of being. His thoughts focus on being, other people and moral responsibility. Levinas' philosophy is nourished by Husserl's phenomenology and his own Jewish origins, Jewish history, the Bible and the Talmud tradition. Levinas also finds the place of God in philosophy in ethics.
PONTY (1908-1961)
Maurice Merleau-Ponty was a French philosopher. He is one of the important representatives of the phenomenology movement. He focuses on existence, perception and experience. He examines how language transforms thought and perception, how art reveals human experience and how it pushes the boundaries of perception.
HEIDEGGER (1889-1976)
Martin Heidegger was a German philosopher. He focused on philosophical issues such as existence, time and the place of man in the world. He is known for his contributions to phenomenology and existentialism. Heidegger removes phenomenology from being a philosophy of consciousness, and in his book Being and Time, phenomenology is placed on an existential basis. Thus, he claims to have saved phenomenology from its Cartesian assumptions.
In Being and Time, he questions the concept of being and examines the essence of human existence. Dasein is the self experienced by consciousness as a being. He investigates how time and space are related to human existence. In his book Dasein, he opens up the concept of Dasein, which he uses to understand human existence, and expresses how man exists in the world as a conscious being and how he experiences his existence. In his book The Secret of Being, he discusses the relationship between language and being. Heidegger argues that language is not only a means of communication, but also a structure that establishes the connection between being and man. In his book The Origin of the Work of Art, he also presents an analysis of the nature and meaning of art. He states that art enables the disclosure of being.
According to Heidegger, instead of a priori and transcendent essences, we can interpret essences as temporality and understand the existence of something by analyzing its temporal character and structure. Destruction is the elimination of historical burdens that distort experiences.
Dasein is the name Heidegger gives to the being that we are, it is a being that understands its own possibilities and establishes a relationship with being, asks the question of the meaning of being, and understands being. He calls the a priori structures of being in the world existential, and another name for the initiative we call Dasein analytics is Existential Analytics. The fundamental state of Dasein's being is being in the world. Every Dasein finds itself thrown into the world. Understanding is not epistemological, but ontological. What gives the unity of Dasein's being is interest. Understanding being is intertwined with emotions, especially anxiety. Anxiety confronts Dasein with its own mortality.
According to Heidegger, technology is not just mechanization. The essence of technology is a way of revealing and knowing being, the truth of being in the age of technology is Gestell, that is, framing. Despite the danger of instrumentalization of everything and the dominance of instrumental reason, Heidegger thinks that nothing can be completely instrumentalized.
According to Heidegger, Ereignis is the event of being and thought appropriating each other. This takes us outside the history of being and carries us within a pre-understanding that prioritizes the experience of new beings. Ereignis is the name given to the singularity of understanding. He sees time as the origin of being.
According to Heidegger, poetry is the highest art. Poetry creates a new state, a state of unity, between the four he calls earth, sky, divine and mortal humanity. Other arts seek the same unity. Art offers us the opportunity to make a leap beyond our age.
Heidegger says that in philosophy, distinctions such as logic and ethics belong to the metaphysical tradition. A person determines his future with the knowledge of his past, his conscience and his choices, and all responsibility lies with him.