A philosophy of the intentional being of consciousness (see intentionality), founded by German philosopher Husserl, Edmund in the latter part of the nineteenth century. Until the advent of structuralism in the 1950s it was the dominant mode of philosophy in Europe: its most notable adherents include Husserlâs student Heidegger, Martin (they did not see eye to eye---Husserl thought Heidegger had misunderstood phenomenology, while Heidegger thought Husserlâs version of it was flawed), as well as Merleau-Ponty, Maurice and Levinas, Emmanuel. The object of phenomenology, namely intentionality, bears a superficial resemblance to what is sometimes known as âinner experienceâ. This is because it is only available via reflection, i.e. after the fact. Husserlâs research countered this problem with two reductions: first, he excluded all appeals to transcendent objects (i.e. objects whose meaning is intrinsic) to ground cognition; second, he separated the incidental instances of intentionality from the universal, which he termed eidetic. Consciousness, Husserl famously insisted, is always consciousness of something. Consciousness thus has two dimensions: (i) there is consciousness directed at an object, which Husserl refers to as noesis, and (ii) the object that consciousness is directed at, which Husserl refers to as noema. These, in turn, vary according to modality and temporality. Heideggerâs critique of phenomenology centres on the priority Husserl gives to intentionality; in Heideggerâs view, human existence itself is necessarily prior (for this reason Heidegger is sometimes referred to as an existentialism philosopher, although he himself did not subscribe to that view). Merleau-Pontyâs more sympathetic critique of Husserl also took issue with the priority of intentionality, but did so by foregrounding the precognitive capacities of the body itself. It is for this reason---his emphasis on the body---that Merleau-Pontyâs work continues to be read, even though phenomenology as a whole has declined considerably in importance. Further Reading: D. Cerbone Understanding Phenomenology (2006). D. Moran Introduction to Phenomenology (1999).