GA19: phenomenology - phenomenon (586-587)

Today phenomenology uses the term "phenomenon" in this sense of φαίνεσθαι, φαινόμενον. Phenomenology signifies nothing else than disclosing in speech, exhibiting beings, exhibiting the beings that show themselves, in their way of showing themselves, in the way they are "there." That is the formal idea of phenomenology, which to be sure includes a richly articulated and intricate methodology. This formal idea of phenomenology — which was emphatically an essential advance over the constructions of the tradition — is usually confused with the methodology of research, with genuine research and the concrete mode of carrying it out. Phenomenology then seems to be an easy science, where one, as it were, lies on a sofa smoking a pipe and intuiting essences. But things are not so simple; on the contrary, it is a question of demonstrating the matters at issue themselves. How the demonstration happens depends on the access, the content, and the ontological constitution of the realm under investigation. Even the Greeks, Plato   and Aristotle  , use φαίνεσθαι in this sense, although, to be sure, it is often detached from this sense and means simply "it seems," "it merely appears to be so." The terms "phenomenon" and "phenomenology" were used with this latter sense for the first time in the rationalism of the school of Wolff. (406)