Von Hermann's Hermeneutics and Reflection, translated here from the original German, represents the most fundamental and critical reflection in any language of the concept of phenomenology as it was used by Heidegger and by Husserl.

Hermeneutic phenomenology is a combination of theory, reflection and practice that interweaves vivid descriptions of lived experience (phenomenology) together with reflective interpretations of their meanings (hermeneutics). This method is popular among researchers in education, nursing and other caring and nurturing practices and professions. Practical and adaptable, it can be at the same time poetic and evocative. As this collection shows, hermeneutic phenomenology gives voice to everyday aspects of educational practice –particularly emotional, embodied and empathic moments– that may be all too easily overlooked in other research approaches. By explicating, illustrating and demonstrating hermeneutic phenomenology as a method for research in education specifically, this book offers an excellent resource for beginning as well as more advanced researchers.

The spirit of this book is explorative. It meets the contemporary challenge posed by experience and truth with a critical openness that allows for the full complexity of these concepts to be investigated.The distinction between experience and truth has become subject to finitude; how then can these words and concepts be defined? What might be understood by experience and truth, when the distinction between them is not transformed once and for all (eternally), but once and again (historically)?The contributors to the book investigate a wide range of questions revolving around this challenge to the contemporary understanding of experience and truth. They do so through the perspectives of phenomenology and hermeneutics, while also shedding new light on phenomenological and hermeneutic thought as such – on the distinction between phenomenology and hermeneutics, as well as on the interrelation between such philosophical thought and other fields of thought and culture.

Hermeneutics and Phenomenology in Paul Ricoeur: Between Text and Phenomenon calls attention to the dynamic interaction that takes place between hermeneutics and phenomenology in Ricoeur’s thought. It could be said that Ricoeur’s thought is placed under a twofold demand: between the rigor of the text and the requirements of the phenomenon. The rigor of the text calls for fidelity to what the text actually says, while the requirement of the phenomenon is established by the Husserlian call to return “to the things themselves.” These two demands are interwoven insofar as there is a hermeneutic component of the phenomenological attempt to go beyond the surface of things to their deeper meaning, just as there is a phenomenological component of the hermeneutic attempt to establish a critical distance toward the world to which we belong. For this reason, Ricoeur’s thought involves a back and forth movement between the text and the phenomenon. Although this double movement was a theme of many of Ricoeur’s essays in the middle of his career, the essays in this book suggest that hermeneutic phenomenology remains implicit throughout his work. The chapters aim to highlight, in much greater detail, how this back and forth movement between phenomenology and hermeneutics takes place with respect to many important philosophical themes, including the experience of the body, history, language, memory, personal identity, and intersubjectivity.

Of all the qualitative research methods, none has provoked more interest among nurses than phenomenological research. As part of Pam Brink′s nuts and bolts series on research methods for nurses, this volume will provide a much-needed introduction to this methodology, including discussions on site-access, preparation, proposal-writing, ethical issues, data collections, bias reduction, data analysis, and research publication.

This practical guide offers an approachable introduction to doing hermeneutic phenomenological research across the health and social sciences. Grounded in real world research, it integrates philosophy, methodology and method in accessible ways, helping you realize the potential of using phenomenology to guide research. The book maps the complete research process and shows how to apply key philosophical tenets to your project, demonstrating the close relationship between philosophy and research practice. It: Shows step-by-step how to translate philosophy into research methodology and turn methodology into robust research design Focuses on applied practice, illustrating theoretical discussions with examples and case studies Promotes advanced thinking about hermeneutic phenomenology in an easy to understand way Highlights the need for researchers to engage reflexively with the whole research process.

Fredrik Svenaeus' book is a delight to read. Not only does he exhibit keen understanding of a wide range of topics and figures in both medicine and philosophy, but he manages to bring them together in an innovative manner that convincingly demonstrates how deeply these two significant fields can be and, in the end, must be mutually enlightening. Medicine, Svenaeus suggests, reveals deep but rarely explicit themes whose proper comprehension invites a careful phenomenological and hermeneutical explication. Certain philosophical approaches, on the other hand - specifically, Heidegger's phenomenology and Gadamer's hermeneutics - are shown to have a hitherto unrealized potential for making sense of those themes long buried within Western medicine. Richard M. Zaner, Ann Geddes Stahlman Professor of Medical Ethics, Vanderbilt University