History of Philosophy II

The quiz question today was what is Phenomenology? Today what becomes more and more obvious is that each philosopher is actively engaged in discourse with others who are immediate predecessors as well as contemporaries, and those from the past are still part of the engagement. We discussed Romanticism some today referring to Isaiah Berlin's work (one of my favorites) The Roots of Romanticism. What is Romanticism? A tip of the hat to Beethoven who incorporated Schiller's Ode to Joy in his 9th Symphony is in order here. Was this musically the first Romantic piece? That is certainly an impossible answer to get right since it is viewed differently by different critics. But what was Romanticism? An attachment to emotion? But for our main topic Edmund Husserl was the philosopher in the syllabus for today and that introduces phenomenology. Back to the things themselves! My favorite author that used the phenomenological method was Van Der Leeuw