What is phenomenology? It may seem strange that this question has still to be asked
half a century after the first works of Husserl. The fact remains that it has by no means
been answered. Phenomenology is the study of essences; and according to it, all problems
amount to finding definitions of essences: the essence of perception, or the
essence of consciousness, for example. But phenomenology is also a philosophy which
puts essences back into existence, and does not expect to arrive at an understanding of
man and the world from any starting point other than that of their 'facticity.' It is a transcendental
philosophy which places in abeyance the assertions arising out of the natural
attitude, the better to understand them; but it is also a philosophy for which the
world is 'already there* before reflection begins—as an inalienable presence; and all
its efforts are concentrated upon re-achieving a direct and primitive contact with the
world, and endowing that contact with a philosophical status.