Should we characterize Husserl’s phenomenology as a philosophy of experience – transcendental empiricism? Could a title of “phenomenology of experience” be applied correctly? What is a concept of experience in the phenomenological theory, as well as in philosophy? This polemic paper is an attempt to cover raised issues taking a book “The Phenomenology of Experience” written by Ukrainian philosopher V. Kebuladze as a criticizing benchmark of the polemics. First, the paper highlights a reason of understanding phenomenology as a philosophy beyond empiricism, naturalism and Kantianism. Second, the paper’s author shows why transcendental approach developed by Husserl makes a decisive step to overcome epistemological view on experience, although is not successful to complete that. Third, the article highlights key constituents of any experience: its synthetic function, as well as a related function of transcendence of its factuality. Fourth, the author reconstructs a role of the phenomenological concept of experience as a gained experience of the impossibility of expanding an ideal of completed rationalistic approach. An actual phenomenology of experience is being developed by post-phenomenological thinkers who proceed with understanding transcendental argumentation in a sense of “being-in-the-World” (Heidegger, Gadamer) or takes it as the “embodied agent” (Ch. Taylor). It opens new horizons for both examining and using the notion of experience in contemporary philosophy, including the very phenomenology.
