Now, let’s get into some everyday examples of phenomenology in action: When you listen to music, you feel different emotions. Phenomenology investigates how a particular melody or lyric can sweep us into feelings of joy or nostalgia. It’s not just sound—it’s an emotional journey.

Phenomenology was arguably the most influential ‘movement in the stream’ of philosophical thought on the European Continent during the twentieth century, and the major phenomenological philosophers are also some of the major usual suspects of continental philosophy’: Husserl, Heidegger, Sartre, Merleau-Ponty, Levinas, Arendt, Gadamer, de Beauvoir.