A Search for Essence: Phenomenology as a Study of the Essential Structures of Subjectivity

What is the essence of subjectivity and how do we go about finding it? How can we talk about the essential structures of our subjective experience of the world from within that very subjectivity? Is there such an essence? And if there is, why is it important? Edmund Husserl considered his phenomenology to be a way to uncover and study these essential structures, and Maurice Merleau-Ponty continued and extrapolated on that work. Their goal was to analyze the world from the individual, first-person perspective, to philosophize from the basis of experience. This thesis will explore the role of essence in their philosophy, why it is such an important concept to them, how it connects with other key concepts, and, most of all, how it should be understood in the context of their philosophy. It will consider whether there is an essentialism inherent in phenomenology, and if so, to what degree. Ultimately, this is an analysis of Husserl’s and Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenology with essence as its starting point. I will introduce the reader to phenomenology, where it is coming from, where it is going, and how it should be understood. This analysis will lead the reader to what I consider to be the goal of phenomenology: to construct a conceptual framework that allows us to accurately understand the world as experienced by us and to mediate that understanding