What is existential phenomenology?

My understanding of existential phenomenology is that it examines the synthesis between and among experience, perception, somatic knowledge, cognition and being. If we say that “experience = being, and being = experience” then what mitigates these equivalences? What role does consciousness or intentionality play? How much of this mitigation is reflexive, reactive or representational, and what might be preestablished, intrinsic or non-semiotic? Is there a way to perceive or conceive of “something -as-it-is” in its a bare, unornamented phenomenological ground? Or is everything always subjective or intersubjective? Is there a way to transcend (or burrow beneath) subject-object relations entirely? How does all of this impact experience and being? And so on. IMO existential phenomenology attempts to explore such questions with an eye towards an emergent gestalt, so it tends to conflict with more analytical traditions. I would even go so far as to say the approach suggests that nondiscursive, noncontextual and ineffable experiences have a useful place in all such questions and relationships; thus, for me at least, it helps provide a meaningful linkage between existentialism and mysticism.

My 2 cents.

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