Phenomenology, Scholasticism, and Idealism: Key Philosophical Movements

Phenomenology

Phenomenology is the philosophical movement founded by Edmund Husserl (1859–1938) and his followers, dedicated to the description of phenomena. It serves as the study of phenomena or a set of phenomena. Phenomenology has proven highly effective as a research method and is intuitive in many fields of human science; it provides a phenomenology of pain, joy, death, passion, and any human behavior, explaining them "from within."

The phenomenological method involves suspending judgment regarding the world—placing it in "brackets"—to reach a pure phenomenal reality that precedes linguistic enunciation. It functions as both a method and a doctrine, drawing from realism, existentialism, and the new metaphysics of Hartmann. Husserl defined the phenomenon as the manifestation of the ideal within the thing, hence the term phenomenology.

Scholasticism

The term Scholasticism originates from the philosophy taught and cultivated between the 9th and 13th centuries in schools created for the training of clergymen in monasteries, cathedrals, and palaces across the Christian world. This philosophical method has persisted to the present day, largely associated with the teaching of philosophy promoted by the Catholic Church.

It is characterized by:

• Auxiliary role: Philosophy serves as an auxiliary discipline to theology, aiming to prepare students for theological study and helping them rationally understand theological dogmas.
• Scholastic method: This consists of commentary and discussion (lectio and disputatio) of philosophical theses from classical authors, analyzing their compatibility with religious dogmas.

While this concept applies primarily to medieval Christian schools between the 11th and 13th centuries, it is also applied to other eras inspired by that period. Outstanding scholastic figures include St. Anselm (11th century) and St. Thomas Aquinas (13th century).

Idealism

Idealism is defined as any philosophical movement that gives priority to thought over being. There are several types:

• Metaphysical: Asserts that there is no extra-mental world corresponding to our ideas, or that the world is the product of the Absolute Idea or Reason.
• Epistemological: Affirms that what we know directly and immediately are our ideas, not things.
• Transcendental: Argues that knowledge is the result of experience (the given) combined with the a priori forms of reason.
• Historical: Argues that ideas are the primary determinants of historical processes.

In modern contexts, idealism refers to the 19th-century philosophical conception that reduces Being to the Idea—defended by Fichte, Schelling, and Hegel (German Idealism) and continued by thinkers such as Schopenhauer. This idealism emerged as a transformation of Kant's thought within the political and cultural context of Romanticism.