Though there is no clearly defined 'school' or tradition of phenomenology, the term has received elaboration since the late 18th-century with Kant and Hegel. Moreover, while most explicitly and technically expounded by Edmund Husserl, who is thus, along with his followers, often considered the progenitor of phenomenology, phenomenology is properly speaking neither a school nor a trend in contemporary philosophy. It is more accurately described as a movement with a very generally shared outlook or methodology, but which has been propelled in divergent, distinct directions by its proponents. Thus 'phenomenology' means different things to different people depending upon their chosen 'phenomenologist' and his/her programme and assumptions for a phenomenological approach. For the twentieth century, Scheler, N.Hartmann, Heidegger, Sartre and Merleau-Ponty, along with Husserl, may be grouped under divergent currents of phenomenology.

The difficulty in grouping phenomenological thinkers together can be underscored by considering the objectives of various phenomenologists: while a transcendental philosophy in the tradition of Kant, interested in essences of subjectivity left behind after 'phenomenological reduction', it is also appealed to as capable of discerning concrete, sensuous activity and existence - Heidegger's ontology of Being. It simultaneously analyzes and describes consciousness, while also searching for understandings of 'space', 'time' and the world in non-cognitive terms, or as they are lived through embodiment. As Merleau-Ponty remarked, phenomenology is more a 'style of thinking' than a reified system of philosophy. This lack of homogeneity and continuity may either be seen negatively as confusion or a weakness in phenomenology's intentions and propositions, or as a strength enabling the 'style of thought' to continue to flourish by incorporating new ideas and developing sympathetic positions without being limited or forced into a staid 'programme' by disciplinarian constraints.

Notwithstanding such creative heterogeneity, certain insights may be identified which most phenomenologically-oriented thinkers share: a distinction between the 'natural attitude' - or the common-sense attitude of the natural sciences and everyday existence- and the 'philosophical attitude' which clarifies epistemology (Husserl) or existence (Heidegger) through suspending certain fundamental assumptions indoctrinated through social tradition; the Husserlian epoche or radical reduction of inherited 'meanings', understandings and overall 'worldview' to a secondary standing in order to achieve a change of attitude whereby 'essences' of immediate experience of the 'life-world' are prioritized; a concern with the meaning of 'Being', or what the significance of existence fundamentally is - rather than a search or Aristotelian final-causes of life, etc.; the corollary whereby in general 'subjectivity' is esteemed over 'objectivity' as the conduit for ascertaining the meaning of Being; and, related, a valorization of 'intuition' as a valuable faculty for discerning such subjective, immediate relationships to Being.

In archaeology, phenomenology has arguably informed several archaeologists, but has been most explicitly advanced in a Merleau-Pony form by Christopher Tilley. The resonance of phenomenological thinking, especially the de-emphasis upon the 'natural/scientific attitude' and the esteem for subjective, lived understandings, with currents of thought in British post-processualism in the late 1970's and 1980's encouraged its usage for deriving both critical approaches to epistemology and knowledge and new methodologies for the discipline of archaeology. Phenomenological 'influence' may most readily be recognized in conjunction with the study of landscape and other 'lived spaces' which formerly had been described in neutral terms of settlement patterns or inter/intra-site functioning.

References

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Tilley, C., 1994: The phenomenology of landscape, Oxford.
Tilley, C., 2004: The materiality of stone. Explorations in landscape phenomenology, Oxford.

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Theory