Professional Practice and ‘Doing Phenomenology’

Abstract

In 1975 Herbert Spiegelberg seized a title for a text on phenomenology that still speaks to the pragmatic sensibilities of many of my colleagues and graduate students. A visitor glances at my bookshelves and notices Spiegelberg’s title Doing Phenomenology; the book is pulled and perused. Some of the section headings make attractive promises: “A new way into phenomenology: the workshop approach,” “Existential uses of phenomenology,” “Toward a phenomenology of experience,” etc. But after a bit more browsing the book is returned to the shelf, without comment. Never has anyone asked to borrow it. And yet, Doing Phenomenology seems to be a text with commendable ambitions. In it Spiegelberg (1975, p. 25) decries “the relative sterility in phenomenological philosophy … especially in comparison with what happened in such countries as France and the Netherlands.”¹ Presenting essays both on and in phenomenology, he suggests that what is needed is “a revival of the spirit of doing phenomenology directly on the phenomena.” And he asks: “What can be done to reawaken [this spirit] in a very different setting?” (1975, p. 25). Spiegelberg (1975, p. 26) sketches an example of the workshop approach consisting of “a small number of graduate students who would select limited, ‘bitesize’ topics for phenomenological exploration.” It is difficult not to feel the hope that speaks in the pages of this book.