Key Arguments

• He formulates a "first rule" that phenomenology "involves describing, and not explaining or analyzing," echoing Husserl’s injunction to be a "‘descriptive psychology’" and to return "‘to the things themselves.’"
• This descriptive stance is "first and foremost the disavowal of science": he denies that he is merely "the result or the intertwining of multiple causalities" and that he can think of himself "as a part of the world, like the simple object of biology, psychology, and sociology."
• He argues that "Everything that I know about the world, even through science, I know from a perspective that is my own or from an experience of the world without which scientific symbols would be meaningless," establishing the priority of lived experience.
• He claims "The entire universe of science is constructed upon the lived world," and that to think science rigorously, we must "first awaken that experience of the world of which science is the second-order expression."
• Hence "Science neither has, nor ever will have the same ontological sense as the perceived world" because it is a "determination or an explanation" of that prior world, and thus ontologically derivative.
• He also insists that this movement is "absolutely distinct from the idealist return to consciousness," meaning that the descriptive turn to things themselves is neither naturalistic nor purely introspective-idealist.

Source Quotes

Thus, let us carefully attempt to tie together the famous phenomenological themes as they are spontaneously tied together in life. Perhaps then we will understand why phenomenology has remained for so long in a nascent state, as a problem and as a promise.10 Phenomenology involves describing, and not explaining or analyzing. This first rule – to be a “descriptive psychology”11 or to return “to the things themselves,” which Husserl set for an emerging phenomenology – is first and foremost the disavowal of science.

Perhaps then we will understand why phenomenology has remained for so long in a nascent state, as a problem and as a promise.10 Phenomenology involves describing, and not explaining or analyzing. This first rule – to be a “descriptive psychology”11 or to return “to the things themselves,” which Husserl set for an emerging phenomenology – is first and foremost the disavowal of science. I am not the result or the intertwining of multiple causalities that determine my body or my “psyche”;12 I cannot think of myself as a part of the world, like the simple object of biology, psychology, and sociology; I cannot enclose myself within the universe of science.

This first rule – to be a “descriptive psychology”11 or to return “to the things themselves,” which Husserl set for an emerging phenomenology – is first and foremost the disavowal of science. I am not the result or the intertwining of multiple causalities that determine my body or my “psyche”;12 I cannot think of myself as a part of the world, like the simple object of biology, psychology, and sociology; I cannot enclose myself within the universe of science. Everything that I know about the world, even through science, I know from a perspective that is my own or from an experience of the world without which scientific symbols would be meaningless.

I am not the result or the intertwining of multiple causalities that determine my body or my “psyche”;12 I cannot think of myself as a part of the world, like the simple object of biology, psychology, and sociology; I cannot enclose myself within the universe of science. Everything that I know about the world, even through science, I know from a perspective that is my own or from an experience of the world without which scientific symbols would be meaningless. The entire universe of science is constructed upon the lived world, and if we wish to think science rigorously, to appreciate precisely its sense and its scope, we must first awaken that experience of the world of which science is the second-order expression.

Everything that I know about the world, even through science, I know from a perspective that is my own or from an experience of the world without which scientific symbols would be meaningless. The entire universe of science is constructed upon the lived world, and if we wish to think science rigorously, to appreciate precisely its sense and its scope, we must first awaken that experience of the world of which science is the second-order expression. Science neither has, nor ever will have the same ontological sense as the perceived world for the simple reason that science is a determination or an explanation of that world.

The entire universe of science is constructed upon the lived world, and if we wish to think science rigorously, to appreciate precisely its sense and its scope, we must first awaken that experience of the world of which science is the second-order expression. Science neither has, nor ever will have the same ontological sense as the perceived world for the simple reason that science is a determination or an explanation of that world. I am not a “living being,” a “man,” nor even a “consciousness,” possessing all of the characteristics that zoology, social anatomy, and inductive psychology acknowledge in these products of nature or history.

To return to the things themselves is to return to this world prior to knowledge, this world of which knowledge always speaks, and this world with regard to which every scientific determination is abstract, signitive,13 and dependent, just like geography with regard to the landscape where we first learned what a forest, a meadow, or a river is. This movement is absolutely distinct from the idealist return to consciousness, and the demand for a pure description excludes the process of reflective analysis just as much as it excludes the process of scientific explanation. Descartes, and above all Kant, freed the subject or consciousness by establishing that I could not grasp anything as existing if I did not first experience myself [m’éprouvais]14 as existing in the act of grasping; they revealed consciousness – the absolute certainty of myself for myself15 – as the condition without which there would be nothing at all and the act of unifying as the foundation of the unified.

Key Concepts

• Phenomenology involves describing, and not explaining or analyzing.
• to be a “descriptive psychology”11 or to return “to the things themselves,” which Husserl set for an emerging phenomenology – is first and foremost the disavowal of science.
• I am not the result or the intertwining of multiple causalities that determine my body or my “psyche”;12 I cannot think of myself as a part of the world, like the simple object of biology, psychology, and sociology; I cannot enclose myself within the universe of science.
• Everything that I know about the world, even through science, I know from a perspective that is my own or from an experience of the world without which scientific symbols would be meaningless.
• The entire universe of science is constructed upon the lived world, and if we wish to think science rigorously, to appreciate precisely its sense and its scope, we must first awaken that experience of the world of which science is the second-order expression.
• Science neither has, nor ever will have the same ontological sense as the perceived world for the simple reason that science is a determination or an explanation of that world.
• This movement is absolutely distinct from the idealist return to consciousness, and the demand for a pure description excludes the process of reflective analysis just as much as it excludes the process of scientific explanation.

Context

Programmatic section of the Preface where Merleau-Ponty clarifies the basic methodological rule of phenomenology and its opposition to both objectivist science and certain forms of idealist reflection.