Hermeneutical Phenomenology

Hermeneutic Phenomenology
● is focused on on subjective experience of individuals and groups
● an attempt to unveil the world as experienced by the subject through their life world stories
● believes that interpretations are all we have and description itself is an interpretative process
● to generate the best ever interpretation of a phenomenon is to use the hermeneutic cycle
● The phenomenological research tradition requires the researcher to acquire the essence of the
research process as this is opened up in the philosophical literature.
● In the practice of engaging in phenomenological research, the researcher is required to seek
the essence of the tradition belonging to the phenomenological way, while also attuning
his/her being towards the essence of a particular phenomenon.
● Phenomenological research is a lived experience for researchers as they attune themselves
towards the ontological nature of phenomenon while learning to “see” pre-reflective, taken-for-
granted, and essential understandings through the lens of their always already pre-
understandings and prejudices
● ‘hermeneutic phenomenology' is concerned with understanding texts. In this approach the
researcher aims to create rich and deep account of a phenomenon through intuition, while
focusing on uncovering rather than accuracy, and amplification with avoidance of prior
knowledge.
● Hermeneutic phenomenology is concerned with the life world or human experience as it is
lived. The focus is toward illuminating details and seemingly trivial aspects within experience
that may be taken for granted in our lives, with a goal of creating meaning and achieving a
sense of understanding

Hermeneutics
● the study of interpretation

Hermeneutic Circle
● meaning is holistic
○ holistic meaning “the whole is more than the sum of its parts”
○ example: weight is not holistic. weight of the bag is just the weight of the sum of the
bag and its contents itself
○ example: tastiness is holistic. tastiness of a dish is not just the sum of the tastiness
of the individual ingredients.
○ example: meaning is way more holistic. the parts don’t even have meaning if they are
not part of a whole.
■ example: the word can. but it doesn’t really mean anything. but when you put it
in a sentence “I can do this” or “a can of beans” that’s when its meaning is
 determined. the sentence is not the sum of the meaning of the individual
words, because these individual words don’t have a determinate meaning.
● the context which determines something’s meaning is unlimited
● defined as a process of interpretation in which we continually move between smaller and
larger units of meaning in order to determine the meaning of both

Wilhelm Dilthey
● German philosopher
● interested in the method and the aim of the humanities
● the humanities study erlebnis=experience, conscious experience. what humans think, feel, etc.
● but we cannot fully understand and witness one’s experience. so they study expressions of
experiences
● verstehen: a special kind of understanding. for him, it means we can put ourselves in the
shoes​ of the person who made that expression
● verstehen​ is something only you can do in humanities
○ natural scientists are looking for knowledge about laws and regular patterns in the
world
● concludes that in order ot be a good natural scientist, you only have to be smart.
● in order to be a good scholar in humanities, you not only have to be smart, but you also have
to be sensitive, wise, emotionally intelligent, and generally have a lot of life experiences
● for him, humanities not only require well round individuals, but also produce these types of
people
● we only have limited experiences, therefore verstehen then opens us to more experiences
● Thus the inner-directed man can experience many other existences in his imagination.
Limited by circumstances he can yet glimpse alien beauty in the world and areas o life beyond
his reach. Put generally: man, tied and limited by the reality of life, is liberated not only by art,
but also by historical understanding.
● Humanities frees us.

Other sources you might want to read:

● https://iiqm.wordpress.com/2014/10/16/introduction-to-hermeneutic-phenomenology-a-resea
rch-methodology-best-learned-by-doing-it/
● https://phenomenologyintro.weebly.com/hermeneutic-phenomenology.html
● https://phenomenologyintro.weebly.com/criticism-and-tensions-within-the-field.html

Van Manen, educator and phenomenological researcher

● Research focused on the lived experience
“Phenomenology is not a set of fixed procedures, however hermeneutic phenomenological research is
a combination of six activities:
1. Turning to a phenomenon which seriously interests us and commits us to the world;
2. Investigating experience as we live it rather as we conceptualize it;
3. Reflecting on the essential themes which characterize the phenomenon;
4. Describing the phenomenon through the art of writing and rewriting;
5. Manipulating a strong and oriented pedagogical relation to the phenomenon;
6. Balancing the research context by considering parts and whole
 (van Manen, 1990, p.30-31)
In hermeneutical phenomenology, the researcher provides not only a description, but an
interpretation of the lived experience.
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Hermeneutic phenomenology is a subjective research procedure that emerged out of and remains
firmly fixing to phenomenological reasoning, a strand of mainland logic.

The strength of Phenomenology accommodates the inside and out comprehension of individual
phenomena and furthermore, it gives the rich information from the records which have been collected
by other people.

The weakness of Phenomenology is the subjectivity of the information prompts troubles in building
up consistent quality and legitimacy of methodologies and data. It is hard to distinguish or to
anticipate analyst initiated predisposition.

There can be trouble in guaranteeing pure sectioning - this can prompt impedance in the illustration
of the information

Read more on Brainly.in - ​https://brainly.in/question/1579047#readmore

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When a decision to engage in research of a particular experience from a hermeneutic or

phenomenological perspective is made, the researcher begins a process of self-reflection. For the
phenomenologist, this is typically part of the preparatory phase of research and might include the
writing down of these reflections for reference during the analysis process (​Colazzi, 1978​;
Polkinghorne, 1989​). The purpose of this reflection is to become aware of one's biases and
assumptions in order to bracket them, or set them aside, in order to engage the experience without
preconceived notions about what will be found in the investigation. This awareness is seen as a
protection from imposing the assumptions or biases of the researcher on the study.

In contrast, a hermeneutical approach asks the researcher to engage in a process of self-reflection to

quite a different end than that of phenomenology. Specifically, the biases and assumptions of the
researcher are not bracketed or set aside, but rather are embedded and essential to interpretive
process. The researcher is called, on an ongoing basis, to give considerable thought to their own
experience and to explicitly claim the ways in which their position or experience relates to the issues
being researched. The final document may include the personal assumptions of the researcher and
the philosophical bases from which interpretation has occurred (​Allen, 1996​; ​Cotterill & Letherby,
1993​). Researchers keep a reflective journal that will assist them in the process of reflection and
interpretation. ​Hertz (1997) outlines examples of the different selves or roles one might bring or
represent with them to the research endeavor that are likely to influence the process. The overt
naming of assumptions and influences as key contributors to the research process in hermeneutic
phenomenology is one striking difference from the naming and then bracketing of bias or
assumptions in phenomenology. Both of these positions, however, can be traced to the philosophical
beliefs of Husserl and Heidegger.
In both phenomenology and hermeneutic phenomenology, data can include the researcher's personal
reflections on the topic, information gathered from research participants, and depictions of the
experience from outside the context of the research project itself, including the arts, such as poetry
and painting (​Polkinghorne, 1989​). Participants for research projects are generally selected based on
different criteria than those used to meet statistical requirements. The aim in participant selection in
phenomenological and hermeneutic phenomenological research is to select participants who have
lived experience that is the focus of the study, who are willing to talk about their experience, and who
are diverse enough from one another to enhance possibilities of rich and unique stories of the
particular experience (Polkinghorne; ​van Manen, 1997​). The number of participants necessary for
studies of this type will vary depending on the nature of the study and the data collected along the
way. Researchers may continue, for example, to engage in interviews with participants until they
believe they have reached a point of saturation, in which a clearer understanding of the experience
will not be found through further discussion with participants (​Sandelowski, 1986​).

In contrast, hermeneutic phenomenology might take a somewhat different approach to data analysis.
This process involved one of co-construction of the data with the participant as they engage in a
hermeneutic circle of understanding. The researcher and participant worked together to bring life to
the experience being explored, through the use of imagination, the hermeneutic circle and attention
to language and writing. ​Koch (1995) stated ”Hermeneutics invites participants into an ongoing
conversation, but does not provide a set methodology. Understanding occurs through a fusion of
horizons, which is a dialectic between the pre-understandings of the research process, the
interpretive framework and the sources of information.“ (p. 835)

Key aspects of the process are the use of imagination, the hermeneutic circle and attention to
language and writing processes. ​Smith (1991) described hermeneutic imagination as asking for what
is at work in particular ways of speaking or acting to help facilitate an ever-deepening appreciation of
the world or lived experience. This requires an attentiveness to ways in which language is used, an
awareness of life as an interpretive experience, and an interest in human meaning and how we make
sense of our lives. To see something in a new imaginative way is to see it other than it has been seen
before and to integrate it into a new semantic context (​Madison, 1988​).