Why phenomenology?

When we talk, we are always talking about something, and when we reason, we are always reasoning about something. But it is possible to take ourselves to be talking or reasoning about something when in fact we are talking or reasoning about something else. In fact, I think this happens all the time in philosophy.

In order to reason about something, it is necessary to take the object of our reasoning as being something or other, e.g. as being an X. We can only reason about a thing by giving it some content in our minds by taking it as being of some sort or other. But we can also reason about this thing as if it were an X when in fact it isn't. And our discourse or reasoning can be as lucid and as convincing as we please, yet we have not proven anything unless the thing in question is in fact an X. What can happen (and what I think does happen quite often) is that we convince ourselves that we have come to some kind of rational knowledge about a thing, when really what we have done is merely to have discovered a relation of ideas about Xs, i.e. a proper way of speaking about Xs. It is another matter altogether whether we have discovered anything about the thing we took as the object of our reasoning.

In order to know a thing, we have to begin, as much as we can, from the thing itself, and not from a prior assumption about what the thing might be. And in order to begin from the thing itself, the thing itself must show itself to us and make itself known. This means we must attend to the way the thing discloses itself to us in experience. There is no other possible source of knowledge for us except experience of some kind or other. Phenomenology is precisely the study of experience and of the way things disclose themselves to us in an through experience. This is why phenomenology is necessary if there is to be genuine, rigorous, properly scientific knowledge.