The origin of phenomenology

As we can see, Husserl resolutely goes beyond the limits of classical approaches to perception and thus goes beyond the alternative of empiricism and intellectualism. Speaking of sketches, he abandons the idea of closed sensitive contents from which the object would be constructed. The sketch is not a component of the object, it is its manifestation; the content is itself only in so far as it embodies a form. However, this recognition of the function of manifestation or apprehension inherent in perception does not lead Husserl to take up intellectualist analyses, which only manage to account for access to something by sacrificing its sensible dimension. It is true that perception is access to the thing itself and not reception of content, but there is precisely access to the thing itself only in sensitive sketches; to perceive the thing itself is to grasp it "in the flesh". Renaud Barbaras, Ledésir et la distance. Introduction to a phenomenology of perception.