Home 9 Passage 9 Lived Experience

People seem to feel that the term “lived experience” is loaded with special profundity—it seems to hint at certain deeper meanings. But ironically, the phenomenological term “lived experience” simply means lived-through experience. Historically it does not refer to any kind of deep experience, fundamental event, or hidden source of meaning—on the contrary, lived experience (as translated from the German term Erlebnis or the Dutch term belevenis) is just the name for ordinary life experience as it carries us on in its lived everyday stream. That is why Heidegger can suggest that everyday lived experience is meaningful, yet superficial. There is nothing unusually rich, deep, hidden, or mysterious about our everyday living of experience—until we take up a phenomenological questioning—until we ask: “What is the meaning and significance of the phenomenon expressed in this or that lived experience?” Then we are challenged by the phenomenality of the phenomenon. “What is the phenomenal meaning of this lived experience?” “How does the phenomenal meaning of this lived experience give itself to our consciousness, our awareness?”