Phenomenon
- A fact or situation that is observed to exist or happen, especially one whose cause is in question;
- The observable aspects of a happening; that is experienced.
Phenomenology
- The study of the structure of the experience (consciousness); distinct from philosophy that examines the ultimate reality – nature and content of being.
- Phenomenology “is the study of “phenomena”: appearances of things, or things as they appear in our experience, or the ways we experience things, thus the meanings things have in our experience. Phenomenology studies conscious experience as experienced from the subjective or first person point of view.” Smith, D. W. (2008). Phenomenology. Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/phenomenology/
- The historical movement of phenomenology was launched since 1900’s by Edmund Husserl, Martin Heidegger, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Jean-Paul Sartre, et al.
- The methods and characterization of the discipline were widely debated.
Phenomenology of Religion:
The phenomenology of religion studies the experiential aspect of religion, describing religious phenomena in terms consistent with the orientation of the worshippers, proceeding from the observable phenomena to the meaning that emerges from patterns of experiences and expressions.
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