So what exactly is phenomenology?

It is essentially a method rather than a set of theories, and – at the risk of wildly oversimplifying – its basic approach can be conveyed through a two-word command: DESCRIBE PHENOMENA.

The first part of this is straightforward: a phenomenologist’s job is to describe. This is the activity that Husserl kept reminding his students to do. It meant stripping away distractions, habits, clichés of thought, presumptions and received ideas, in order to return our attention to what he called the ’things themselves’. We must fix our beady gaze on them and capture them exactly as they appear, rather than as we think they are supposed to be. The things that we describe so carefully are called phenomena — the second element in the definition. The word phenomenon has a special meaning to phenomenologists: it denotes any ordinary thing or object or event as it presents itself to my experience, rather than as it may or may not be in reality. As an example, take a cup of coffee. […] What, then, is a cup of coffee? I might define it in terms of its chemistry and the botany of the coffee plant, and add a summary of how its beans are grown and exported, how they are ground, how hot water is pressed through the powder and then poured into a shaped receptacle to be presented to a member of the human species who orally ingests it. I could analyse the effect of caffeine on the body, or discuss the international coffee trade. I could fill an encyclopaedia with these facts, and I would still get no closer to saying what this particular cup of coffee in front of me is. On the other hand, if I went the other way and conjured up a set of purely personal, sentimental associations — as Marcel Proust does when he dunks his madeleine in his tea and goes on to write seven volumes about it— that would not allow me to understand this cup of coffee as an immediately given phenomenon either. Instead, this cup of coffee is a rich aroma, at once earthy and per-fumed; it is the lazy movement of a curlicue of steam rising from its surface. As I lift it to my lips, it is a placidly shifting liquid and a weight in my hand inside its thick-rimmed cup. It is an approaching warmth, then an intense dark flavour on my tongue, starting with a slightly austere jolt and then relaxing into a comforting warmth, which spreads from the cup into my body, bringing the promise of lasting alertness and refreshment. The promise, the anticipated sensations, the smell, the colour and the flavour are all part of the coffee as phenomenon. They all emerge by being experienced. If I treated all these as purely ‘subjective’ elements to be stripped away in order to be ‘objective’ about my coffee, I would find there was nothing left of my cup of coffee as a phenomenon— that is, as it appears in the experience of me, the coffee-drinker. This experiential cup of coffee is the one I can speak about with certainty, while everything else to do with the bean-growing and the chemis-try is hearsay. It may all be interesting hearsay, but it’s irrelevant to a phenomenologist. Husserl therefore says that, to phenomenologically describe a cup of coffee, I should set aside both the abstract suppositions and any intrusive emotional associations. Then I can concentrate on the dark, fragrant, rich phenomenon in front of me now This ‘set-ting aside’ or ‘bracketing out’ of speculative add-ons Husserl called epoche— a term borrowed from the ancient Sceptics, who used it to mean a general suspension of judgement about the world. Husserl sometimes referred to it as a phenomenological ‘reduction’ instead: the process of boiling away extra theorising about what coffee `really’ is, so that we are left only with the intense and immediate flavour— the phenomenon. The result is a great liberation. Phenomenology frees me to talk about my experienced coffee as a serious topic of investigation. It likewise frees me to talk about many areas that come into their own only when discussed phenomenologically.

Sarah Bakewell, “At the existentialist café”, pp. 40-41.