Hermeneutical Phenomenology

HERMENEUTICAL
PHENOMENOLOGY
Reflect on a Lived Experience
Take a moment and reflect on a personal
experience that had a profound emotional
or intellectual impact on you. It could be a
simple, everyday moment or a significant
life event, such as:
• A conversation that changed your
perspective.
• A moment when you felt deeply
connected to someone or something.
• An instance where you encountered a
challenge or breakthrough
• Any life experiences that are
unforgettable.
Hermeneutical Phenomenology
as the study of lived experience
and the process of interpreting
the meaning of those
experiences.
Hermeneutical phenomenology is a
qualitative research methodology
that arose out of and remains closely
tied to phenomenological philosophy,
a strand of continental philosophy (as
opposed to analytical and Eastern
philosophy).
Phenomenology refers to a person’s
perception of the meaning of object or event,
as opposed to the event as existing externally
(outside of) and independently of perception.
Phenomenologists, like its founder Edmund
Husserl, believe that all that can be
legitimately known of reality is within
perception.
DESCRIPTIVE PHENOMENOLOGY was developed by
Edmund Husserl and INTERPRETIVE OR
HERMENEUTIC PHENOMENOLOGY by Martin
Heidegger. What difference between the two camps is
that hermeneutic phenomenology is used to interpret
the meaning of live experiences and communicate the
interpretation textually or symbolically while
transcendental or descriptive phenomenology is
based on discovering the objective universal the sense
of life experiences and communicating them through
pure description.
DESCRIPTIVE PHENOMENOLOGY was developed by
Edmund Husserl and INTERPRETIVE OR
HERMENEUTIC PHENOMENOLOGY by Martin
Heidegger. What difference between the two camps is
that hermeneutic phenomenology is used to interpret
the meaning of live experiences and communicate the
interpretation textually or symbolically while
transcendental phenomenology is based on
discovering the objective universal the sense of life
experiences and communicating them through pure
description.
Hermeneutics is the study of literary texts. Scholars
often adhere to an established set of rules or
system on which they base their interpretation.
Similarly, interpretation of non-literary texts like art
and philosophy may also involve adherence to such
a system. The set of rules used to interpret and
understand the text is called hermeneutics.
Conversely, hermeneutical analysis is a set of
various methods of analysis based on subjective
interpretation. This method allows for a wide range
of research techniques which are otherwise
unavailable under an objective framework. You can
combine hermeneutical analysis with different
modes of research that intend to interpret and
understand meanings.
Phenomenological analysis is based on discussions
and reflections of direct sense perception and
experiences of the researched phenomenon. A
starting point of this method is your ability to
approach a project without pre-given assumptions,
definitions, or theoretical frameworks. The key
aspect of this method is phenomenological
reduction (i.e. suspension of judgment about the
natural world to instead focus on the nature of
experience; it is also called bracketing).
Phenomenological research enables you to
explore experience and sensory (as opposed to
abstract) perception of researched
phenomenon in order to form an
understanding based on these experiences and
sense perceptions. If used properly,
phenomenological research produces an
impressively in-depth knowledge about the
project.
Hermeneutical Phenomenology is a
philosophy of and method for interpreting human
experiences as a means to understand the
question of what is to be human. “People
understand new things through the prism of what
they know” summarizes hermeneutic
phenomenology. Hermeneutics phenomenology
highlights the value of experience in the making
of meaning and concepts.
Hermeneutics refers to the
art of understanding and the
theory of interpretation. It is
the process of making the
incomprehensible
understandable.
Phenomenology means the
science of phenomena.
•Hermeneutic
Phenomenology aims to
reveal the life world of human
experience as it is lived.
•It is also concerns itself with
understanding and
interpreting human
experience as it is lived.
It is an effort to “get beneath” the subjective
experience and find the genuine, objective
nature of things. Focuses on the relationship
between the event and the person, and how
meaning is formed in that relationship. Studies
interpretive structures of experience, how we
understand and engage things around us in our
human world, including ourselves and others.
Key concepts in Hermeneutic Phenomenology:
A. Historicality – individual’s background that
includes what one receives from culture since birth
and passed on from generation to generation. One’s
background cannot be made completely specific.
People and the world are connected in cultural, social
and historical contexts.
Key concepts in Hermeneutic Phenomenology:
B. Preunderstanding – refers to a meaning or

organization of a culture that are already there before
we understand. This organization of culture becomes
part of our historicality of background. A person
cannot set aside this for it is understood as already
part of us in the world. Nothing can be encountered
without referring to a person’s background
understanding.

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HERMENEUTICAL

B. Preunderstanding – refers to a meaning or

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