Page 244 - Contribution To Phenomenology

ETHNIC STUDIES AS MULTI-DISCIPLINE 237

It all depends on the actual approach by which results were produced
and are then to be comprehended, examined, corrected, and extended.
Interestingly, "Phenomenology" can actually be a misleading name.
Husserl sought to establish a primal science in which other sciences and
their applications would find their ultimate transcendental grounding and
chose a name for this essentially philosophical project like the name for
a science. But if we are thinking about an approach that can be used in
a variety of disciplines, including practical ones, such as nursing, as well
as empirical-theoretical ones, such as sociology, then we need a name
more like "Positivism," which I can gloss as the attempt to account for
social and cultural matters as if they are physical things. This name is a
characterization in terms of a research strategy or approach. To re-name
it analogously. Phenomenology seems better called "Reflective Descrip-
tivism."
Phenomenology is emphatically descriptive before it is argumentative
or explanatory (It is a conversation stopper among philosophers of other
schools of thought to mention that Phenomenology basically offers
descriptions, not arguments!). Being descriptive signifies that it attempts
to answer questions first of all about what the matters at issue are. All
disciplines have this descriptive component, but it is often implicit, taken
for granted, and yet the explanatory parts of the effort presuppose and
are affected by the descriptive part. Can you give an example of this? A
concrete one at this point would be difficult, but let me say that if one
has not distinguished between positive willing for and negative willing
against alternatives and between objects willed for their own sakes, i.e.,
as ends, and objects willed for the sakes of other objects, i.e., as means,
then teleological explanations are very difficult to construct. Then again,
it is difficult to account for cases of life if we do not recognize a
difference between feeling or valuing, on the one hand, and willing or
action, on the other hand. Such considerations may be on a more general
level than those of empirical science, but philosophy of course tends
toward such a level.
Descriptions in Phenomenology are typically not factual descriptions
but rather universal claims that we call "eidetic descriptions." The results
include definitions, which are not just semantic conventions postulated for
the sake of an argument but rather descriptions of the kind of matter
referred to. One can err in what one takes to be the defining deter-
mination and discover and correct an error in the same perspective. Such
definitions are presupposed by factual statements of what happened