Phenomenology: The Nature of Intentionality

by Simon Renatus

In phenomenology[i], perception is not a passive observation of the world.  It is an intentional act, always directed toward something beyond itself.  The concept of intentionality—where consciousness is always about something—is fundamental to phenomenological thought.  Rather than focusing on internal sensations, phenomenology shows that perception involves our active engagement with the world and objects within it.

At the core of phenomenology is intentionality, meaning our consciousness is always directed toward something—an object, an event, or an idea.  When we perceive, we do more than absorb sensory information; we engage with the object in a meaningful way.  Perception is always about something that exists outside of us.

Zahavi (2019) provides the analogy of a birthday cake: when I perceive a birthday cake, my attention is on the cake itself, not on the act of perceiving.  The cake has physical properties, such as weight and texture, but my perception of it—the experience of seeing or thinking about it—is non-physical, occurring in my consciousness.  This is intentionality: perception is always directed at something external.

This distinguishes perception from internal states like feelings or bodily sensations.  When I feel pain or warmth, those sensations are contained within me.  But when I perceive something, like the birthday cake, my attention is directed outward, toward the object. This is a key difference between perception and other internal experiences.

Perception in phenomenology is also perspectival, meaning we never perceive an object in its entirety but always from a particular angle or viewpoint. For example, the birthday cake can be perceived as a delicious dessert, a symbol of celebration, or a thoughtful gift from a loved one.  These different perspectives reflect how our relationship to the object influences our experience of it.  In contrast to perception, other intentional acts like imagining or remembering engage with the cake differently.  I can imagine its taste or recall a past celebration with a similar cake, but these acts involve a different mode of engaging with the object, further highlighting how intentionality operates differently depending on the type of experience.

The importance of intentionality and perspectival perception lies in how they shape our understanding of the world.  In phenomenology, we don’t perceive objects in a detached way, but through the lens of our lived experience.  Our bodily engagement and the context in which we encounter objects shape how they appear to us. This makes perception central to how we navigate and understand the world. Phenomenology analyses different intentional acts to uncover how perception, imagination, and memory are related and interconnected.

A clear example of intentionality in a safety context is when an operator must manage multiple alarms going off at once.  The operator isn’t ‘inattentive’, but must decide what to attend to first.  Each alarm demands attention, but the operator’s intentionality must focus on one, pushing the others into the background.  This is where phenomenology’s notion of intentionality applies: consciousness is always directed at something, and in complex situations, deciding what to bring into the foreground versus the background is crucial.

This also challenges the common misconception in safety that incidents are caused by workers’ inattention.  From a phenomenological perspective, the operator is always attending to something, but the complexity of the environment—such as multiple alarms—requires prioritisation.  The worker’s intentionality is directed, but the situation shapes what is brought into focus, which can change rapidly based on the evolving conditions.  This emphasises the need for safety protocols to consider the limits of human attention and intentionality, rather than attributing incidents to simple inattention.

Perception in phenomenology is an intentional, perspectival act.  It is never passive or detached but always directed toward an object, shaped by context, bodily engagement, and perspective. This understanding of perception is central to phenomenology’s approach to consciousness and its relationship to the world.

 Sources

Zahavi, D. (2019). Phenomenology: The basics. Routledge.

[i] Phenomenology: As one of the most influential philosophical traditions of the 20th century, phenomenology was founded by Edmund Husserl to examine how we directly experience and perceive the world.  Rather than seeking to explain why things exist, phenomenology focuses on how they appear to us, exploring the structures of consciousness and experience.  Prominent figures such as Martin Heidegger, Jean-Paul Sartre, Emmanuel Levinas, and Maurice Merleau-Ponty expanded on Husserl’s work, furthering our understanding of reality as it’s lived, rather than as an abstract concept.