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What distinguishes phenomenological philosophizing from other avenues of approach is the central challenge it extends to the knower to hold himself back from, aside from, the "accepted" world of common sense: to hold in abeyance the judgments and decisions and attitudes that are characteristic of thought which begins with the "obvious" facts and existents of reality. If philosophy has a radical and unique core, it is that philosophizing at its finest is unwilling to go along with traditional presuppositions; it seeks the heart of the knowing of things. Philosophy is thus Kantian and Husserlian in so far as it examines the grounds of knowledge and distinguishes between the experienced world and our experience of the world. In the greatest sense philosophy brackets the natural attitude in order to penetrate to that order of knowledge in which distinctions between ground and object are possible. That consciousness, the ego, the cogito should then prove to be central to the entire inquiry is understandable and to be expected, for it is only through bringing our own awareness into the field of analysis that the pre-conditions of knowing can be explored.

DOI: 10.1007/978-94-011-9278-1_7

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