Abstract

Existential phenomenology is the name given to a philosophical method which seeks to overcome the traditional dichotomy between subject and object by a return to experience considered as a primitive presence. Whether or not this philosophical method is adequate to experience in a way in which the traditional dichotomy is not, is problematic. Calvin Schrag, however, has no such reservations in this book. Philosophy is an elucidation about how experience means, where experience is considered from the inquiry stand-point of "lived-through" experience. Our "lived-through" experience occurs within a definite structure. "World-experience" is a dynamic field and not granular. World-experience has its horizon forms, space and time, but not as representations. In addition, world-experience is intentional, that is, we find ourselves thrown into a context which already has vectors that are "bearers of meaning," and are not categorical relations that have been abstracted and derived.