ABSTRACT
Pure Phenomenology, to which we are here seeking the way, whose unique position in regard to all other sciences we wish to make clear, and to set forth as the most fundamental region of philosophy, is an essentially new science, which in virtue of its own governing peculiarity lies far removed from our ordinary thinking, and has not until our own day therefore shown an impulse to develop. It calls itself a science of “phenomena”. Other sciences, long known to us, also treat of phenomena. Thus one hears psychology referred to as a science of psychical, and natural science as a science of physical “appearances” or phenomena. So in history we hear speak occasionally of historical, and in the cultural sciences of cultural phenomena, and similarly for all sciences that deal with realities. Now differently as the word “phenomenon” may be used in such contexts, and diverse as may be the meanings which it bears, it is certain that phenomenology also deals with all these “phenomena” and in all their meanings, but from a quite different point of view, the effect of which is to modify in a determinate way all the meanings which the term bears in the old-established sciences. Only as thus modified do these meanings enter the phenomenological sphere. To understand these modifications, or, to speak more accurately, to reach the phenomenological standpoint, and through reflexion to fix its distinctive character, and that also of the natural viewpoints, in a scientific way, this is the first and by no means easy task which we must carry out in full, if we would gain the ground of phenomenology and grasp its distinctive nature scientifically.
