From Descriptive Phenomenology To Life-World Phenomenology

The paper here is divided into four sections, apart from the introduction. The introduction mainly offers a sketch of the origin, nature and significance of phenomenology, while simply surveying the orientation and the approaches employed in the paper. In Section One, we have explained the spirit of the phenomenological philosophy, its influence as well as the reasons why we came to write this paper. It is believed that phenomenology takes the slogan "facing the thing itself as its flag, representing a basic philosophical spirit. Moreover, as a unique approach with its own characteristics, phenomenology offers us a possible way towards the understanding of the western culture and thus contributes to the communication between the East and the West, which bears a far-reaching significance. Section Two is mainly a summary of the gist and methodology of phenomenology and its developmental stages, with the emphasis on the explanation of the three developments of phenomenology: the descriptive phenomenology, the transcendental phenomenology and the life-world phenomenology. The third section, in the comprehensive employment of the phenomenological methods, has offered a tentative analysis of some ancient Chinese Classic texts (from Daoism and Confucianism), i.e. some chapters from the famous Dao De Jing by Lao Tze, and three chapters from Zhuang Zi written by another well-known Daoist philosopher Zhuang Zi (i.e. Zhuang Zhou dreaming of a butterfly; An Argument sitting by the River of Hao; and Pao Ding on Dissecting the Ox); and one section from Confucius's Analects, i.e. Confucius sitting with the four Pupils. In the course of concrete reading of these passages, various phenomenological methods have been employed in an interwoven manner. The last section, Section Four, is a summary and conclusion. It looks back briefly at difficulties we met and the gains we achieved in the course of writing the paper, and offers a prospect for our investigation. Finally, the paper points out that to combine the phenomenological methodology with the study of the traditional Chinese philosophy is believed to be a brand-new effort and a great challenge, which is of great significance to the understanding of the Chinese philosophy by the people in the world, and thus contributes greatly to the communication between China and the world.