Metaphysics and the practice of phenomenology

Main idea: Metaphysics provides a nuanced understanding of beingness and a vocabulary for naming essences and relations, supplying phenomenology with a robust toolbox.


I dipped my toe in the phenomenology pool in my dissertation and, despite the difficulties of that process and the hurdles in understanding and carrying out phenomenological research, I discovered that I rather liked it. I had no idea this enjoyment would be stimulated once again by my initial reading of Metaphysics by Aristotle. But it was.

So far in my reading, metaphysics is about naming and understanding the beingness of things, both their essences and accidents. The practice of phenomenology is concerned with describing the whatness and howness of things or experiences. From what I can gather, whatness is essence and howness is at least related to accidents (I'm a bit fuzzier here).

I am beginning to see that a deepening understanding of metaphysics will supply a deepening capacity for phenomenology by developing a better naming toolbox.

The learning continues.

---
Twitter
(C) Laura Springer

Musings of a peripatetic wannabe-sage by Laura Springer is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License..