The methodology of hermeneutic phenomenology is more a carefully cultivated thoughtfulness than a technique. Phenomenology might be called a method without techniques. The “procedures” of this methodology have been recognized as a project of various kinds of questioning, oriented to allow an interrogation of the phenomenon as identified at first and then cast in the reformulation of a question. The methodology of phenomenology requires a dialectical going back and forth among these various levels of questioning. To be able to do justice to the fullness and ambiguity of the experience of the lifeworld, writing may turn into a complex process of rewriting (re-thinking, re-flecting, re-cognizing).
Sartre describes how writing and rewriting aim at creating depth: constructing successive or multiple layers of meaning, thus laying bare certain truths while retaining an essential sense of ambiguity. This kind of writing cannot be accomplished in one straightforward session. Rather, the process of writing and rewriting (including revising or editing) is more reminiscent of the artistic activity of creating an art object that has to be approached again and again, now here and then there, going back and forth between the parts and the whole in order to arrive at a finely crafted piece that often reflects the personal “signature” of the author. Sartre calls this crafted aspect of a text “style” (1977, pp. 5–9). Naturally, he alludes to something more complex than mere artistic idiosyncrasy or stylistic convention.
From a methodological perspective, it is instructive to observe how Sartre makes use of fictional examples at two levels or in two variations: through his novels and through the many fictional anecdotes in his phenomenological and philosophical explications and essays. For example, in his novel Nausea, Sartre describes a moment when the protagonist, Roquentin, is overcome by the unsettling enigma of the thingness of the thing: “I lean my hand on the seat but pull it back hurriedly: it exists. This thing I’m sitting on, leaning my hand on, is called a seat . . . . I murmur: “It’s a seat,” a little like an exorcism. But the word stays on my lips: it refuses to go and put itself on the thing. It stays what it is . . . . Things are divorced from their names. They are there, grotesque, headstrong, gigantic and it seems ridiculous to call them seats or say anything at all about them: I am in the midst of things, nameless things. Alone, without words, defenceless, they surround me, are beneath me. They demand nothing, they don’t impose themselves: they are there” (Sartre, 2007, p. 125).
Selected Readings:
Sartre, J. P. (1948/1976). Black Orpheus. New York: French & European Publications.
Sartre, J. P. (1956). Being and Nothingness. New York: Philosophical Library.
Sartre, J. P. (1963). In Search of a Method. New York: Vintage Books.
Sartre, J. P. (1974). Selected Prose: The Writings of Jean-Paul Sartre. Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press.
Sartre, J. P. (1977). Life/Situations: Essays Written and Spoken. New York: Pantheon Books.
Sartre, J. P. (1978). Sartre by Himself. New York: Urizen Books.
Sartre, J. P. (1991). The Transcendence of the Ego: An Existentialist Theory of Consciousness. New York: Hill and Wang.
Sartre, J. P. (1993). Essays in Existentialism. New York: Citadel Press.
Sartre, J. P. (2007). Nausea. New York: New Directions Books.