Publish at March 16 2022 Updated April 29 2022
"We need few words to express the essential we need all the words to make it real."
Paul Eluard 1969
Phenomenology is a philosophical current initiated by Husserl that seeks to apprehend reality as it is given, through phenomena. Husserl's key word is "return to the things themselves". The living heart of phenomenology is composed of the lived phenomena. It strives to understand the thought that thinks itself or even the frameworks in which the thought is exercised.
Phenomenology is a method or even a "science of systematic analysis of lived experience". In the French-speaking world it has been studied and popularized by Merleau Ponty, Paul Ricoeur, Emmanuel Levinas, Bergson or Jean-Paul Sartre. Other authors have seized the approach such as the Japanese philosopher Watsuji or the French geographer Augustin Berque.
Currently, a return to favor of phenomenology is observed, I imagine that this is related to the impoverishment of language to say things. The champions of marketing, politics, management, and media have twisted words and surfed on appearances so much that a wall of doubt is erected before a word is even spoken. 63% of consumers no longer trust brands, less than one in four French people trust the media, only 22% of employees trust their manager and 12% of French people trust politics.
A priori trust has been replaced by a priori distrust. Speech has become deceptive. Whoever speaks is suspected of lying or at best of only evoking the surface of things. From then on, it is a return to oneself and to one's feelings that prevails at the level of individuals and a revival of the debate between realism and idealism for philosophers.
If all forms of authority are seeing their share of influence decrease, then why should trainers, teachers and scientists escape this defiance? Isn't it time to learn from reality? Learning to discern better by oneself and with others?
Our time brings us back to the passage in the Bible in which Thomas believes in the resurrection of Christ only from the moment he can experience it personally, by sliding his hand into the wound of the messiah. I believe not in what I see but in what I touch, in the thing itself with which I interact.
Microphenomenology functions as a psychological microscope that focuses on finely describing the creation of human experience. Microphenomenology combines explanatory interviewing, professional practice analysis, and data analysis and validation.
By means of this microscope, it is possible to disentangle human experience from its context and explain how and why it is learning.
Enactive phenomenology comes to rehabilitate a knowledge of the body, from which researchers have until now sought to stifle all feeling and emotional perspective, in the idea of a silent body derived from the medical gaze.
Enactive phenomenology describes "the emergence of a world and a subject as a result of their 'structural coupling.' There is less a perception of an environment and a consequent creation of representations influencing actions than a co-emergence. Varela evokes in this respect an "embodied cognition". It is a sensory knowledge that is created from the body. The body moves faster than reasoning to know what is good for it.
This sense of the sensible guides behavior more surely and directly than the brain. In an exemplary way the bodies of top athletes demonstrate the intelligence of the body in movement. The fluidity of the gestures, the anticipation of the placements, show capacities to feel his partner. For these athletes, time seems to be dilated.
The interest of phenomenology is less to explain the world, than to help discover from the meaning conferred to experiences how to become more conscious of the totality of the world. Feeling and moving are central to the phenomenological approach.
The attitude of developing skills of being present and approaching others in a given environment participates in this embodied cognition, this bodily knowledge. Presence and approach are central to the creation of social bonds, essential vehicles for learning.
Concretely whenever a pedagogy promotes the presence of participants and their ability to approach each other in their difference, whenever it allows time to feel, whenever it gives the body the opportunity to construct knowledge through immersion in action, then this pedagogy, which could be called enactive, empowers individuals and groups. It allows the experience to make sense to each individual.
Illustration: Geralt - Pixabay
Sources
Mocan, R. (2012). Body awareness and learning. A phenomenological approach to the performer's experience. Staps, 98, 39-48. https://doi.org/10.3917/sta.098.0039
Carnet2pschycho https://carnets2psycho.net/dico/sens-de-phenomenologie.html
Wikipedia. Phenomenology https://fr.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ph%C3%A9nom%C3%A9nologie_(philosophy)
Asap. Mesology of learning new paradigm of training sciences http://observatoire-asap.org/index.php/2020/12/02/mesologie-de-lapprenance-nouveau-paradigme-des-sciences-de-la-formation/
Boursin, F. (1999). Crisis of trust or of political communication? Communication et organisation. Revue scientifique francophone en Communication organisationnelle, (16). https://journals.openedition.org/communicationorganisation/2264
Digital Century. Less than one in four French people trust the media. https://siecledigital.fr/2020/06/24/moins-dun-francais-sur-4-a-confiance-dans-les-medias/#
Staminic Trust a strategic issue for brands. https://www.staminic.com/blog/391-confiance-marques-strategie
Decisional Horizons. The issue of trust in the manager https://www.horizons-decisionnels.fr/La-question-de-la-confiance-chez-le-manager_a47.html
CSI Culture. How much trust is left in politicians? www.csiculture.org/blog/club-jean-moulin/quelle-confiance-reste-t-il-dans-les-politiques.html
Microphenology https://www.microphenomenologie.com/accueil
Leroy-Viémon, B. (2008). The enactive method in clinical psychology: The "savoir faire" of the body-in-motion. Cahiers de psychologie clinique, 30, 91-108. https://doi.org/10.3917/cpc.030.0091
Educsol Explanatory interviewing to express the implicit https://eduscol.education.fr/sti/ressources_techniques/lentretien-dexplicitation-pour-exprimer-limplicite
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