existential phenomenology
a philosophical development from the phenomenology of German thinker Edmund Husserl (1859–1938) that can be seen most clearly in the work of German philosopher Martin Heidegger (1889–1976) and French philosopher Maurice Merleau-Ponty (1908–1961). Phenomenology originally sought to achieve immediate and direct apprehension of phenomena at the most fundamental level, the level of that which manifests itself to pure consciousness. Heidegger’s contribution was to turn the phenomenological method toward the existential, or lived experience, rather than toward mere objects of consciousness. Thus, existential phenomenology seeks to get at the meaning of lived experience through the careful and systematic analysis of lived experience itself. In its fundamental project and subject matter, Heidegger’s work of the 1910s and 1920s anticipated the French existentialism of the postwar era. See being-in-the-world;
Dasein.