Central and East European
Society for Phenomenology

Conference | Paper

Phenomenological psychology qua proto-sociology: the problems of demarcation

Dmitri Reznikov

Tuesday 13 September 2022

15:00 - 15:45

Palazzo del Capitanio-Aula 5

This paper reviews the set of problems facing phenomenological psychology as an autonomous discipline. First, in Husserl's system of sciences, phenomenological psychology is not concordant with the general track of the human sciences. Although Husserl believes that the human sciences do not need a special abstraction of the natural attitude, phenomenological psychology as their regional ontology is guided by psychological reduction. This creates the problem of the relation of attitudes between them. Secondly, it is well known that a genuinely conducted phenomenological psychology must culminate in transcendental phenomenology, which makes an independent regional ontology only a propaedeutic on the way to transcendental sphere. Thirdly, many phenomenologically oriented social scientists identify phenomenological psychology and ontology of the life-world. But such an identification contradicts other interpretations of the life-world ontology, which consider it either as a transcendental aesthetic, or as the foundation of any regional ontology. As a way out of the problems posed, a consideration of phenomenological psychology and the human sciences from the perspective of radical constructivism will be offered.