Epistemological Issues as Ontological Quandaries. Why Phenomenology Has the Edge over Analytic Philosophy

Abstract

In this article I will try to show how phenomenological philosophy may come to terms with the predominant epistemological paradigm of our time in ways that analytic philosophy cannot do, especially by focusing on certain disciplines of natural science, primarily foundational mathematics (permitting this classification) and quantum physics. I note that logic, mathematics and physics may be considered as fundamental sciences in the Husserlian sense of being rational and explanatory enterprises that help clarify the sense of being-in-the-world. In putting up my arguments in this respect I have considered both the Husserlian transcendental phenomenology as a key component of my argumentation but also in a kind of juxtaposition Heidegger’s existential version, even as Husserl denounced it upon the appearance of Sein und Zeit as a kind of ‘anthropology’, to the extent that they both have as an ultimate line of convergence the reduction to a sort of transcendence of the self irreducible to objectivist, mundane terms. In this approach I take up the task to show that phenomenology in a more inclusive global sense is better qualified to accede to the ideal of a rigorous science insofar as it can set up a more reliable theoretical philosophical context to interpret ontological issues raised by modern epistemology.