Reflection of the method: case study of a human education

The article analyzes the method, understood by the author as a “phenomenological approach”, required for research, in particular, the philosophical and anthropological research of education. This is the problem of the research method in general, which has theoretical and also practical significance, to rethink the “known” (as in the case of education in the face of dehumanizing civilizational trends). The study is based on philosophical methodology, primarily phenomenological and dialectical approaches, and proceeds from the materials of the philosophical and anthropological research of education. The results presented are that the “phenomenological approach” is problematized and refined in accordance with the structure of the research process: this is a preliminary phase, proper phenomenological phase, and the post-phenomenological phase of the study. Within the framework of the first phase, the problem of reflection on the thematization of the phenomenon is singled out and, using the example of education, the philosophical and anthropological nature of the study is substantiated and such a phenomenon as “essential education” is thematized. Within the second phase, the concept of “natural phenomenology” is introduced and the essence of the “phenomenological approach” is clarified, which received its formulations from Hegel and Husserl. Using the example of philosophical and anthropological research, this phase demonstrates the discovery of layers of human experience, with their key phenomena (the primordial phenomenon of “order”, the basic phenomenon of “agency ”, etc.), which makes it possible to understand the phenomenon of education as the growth of agency. In the analysis of the post-phenomenological phase, the problem of the impossibility of phenomenological purism was raised, and therefore, as its solution, the use of scientific conceptuality as a modern system of interpretive relevancies for the formation of the required language and conceptual series was proposed.