0014 Why are Catholic philosophers interested in phenomenology?

In Comments on Richard Colledge’s Essay (2021) “Thomism and Contemporary Phenomenology”, a third incentive is proposed.

0015 Colledge reads a 2006 book by German phenomenologist, Gunter Figal, entitled Objectivity, The Hermeneutical and the Philosophical. 

Colledge wonders, “Is this a phenomenological realist open to Christian anti-reductionism?”

Can we talk?

0016 Figal admits that the thing itself_1a should be mind-independent.  If this is the case, then metaphysics should be allowed.  Aren’t the mathematical and mechanical models of the empirio-schematic judgment mind-dependent beings?  Don’t mind-dependent beings transcend (while entangling) physics?  Doesn’t that fit the definition of metaphysics.

Well, yes, this becomes apparent when phenomenology reveals what the thing itself_1a must be_1b and then a novel empirical science_2a arises to investigate its_1a(1b) phenomena_1a.