Phenomenology: The existentialist method for paying attention

Back in the 1900s, the existentialists had a fancy way of speaking about the practice of paying attention. They called it, describing phenomena.

And they took it as their imperative to stay alert, to carefully describe what’s appearing in their conscious awareness. AKA, the phenomena.

Now I know the practical meaning of this still might be a little confusing, so here’s a real life example that might help to understand the concept:

It’s when a wife/girlfriend/partner gets together with their guy after a long time a part and she asks one of the following questions:

How was your day?

How was your trip?

How was the event?

To which he replies: Good…It was good.

(Queue woman rolling eyes, shaking head, and saying nice insincerely).

What’s missing here should be obvious. What the lady wants is a little something called, detail.

Or, to use our technical term, she wants a description of phenomena.

So for instance, instead of saying your coffee is good the next time she asks how it is. Fellas, you can knock her sox off, by telling her something like this: