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2.2.7 Phenomenological approaches to the ‘Self’This section commenced with a brief statement of how the phenomenological attitude accountedfor a range of beliefs around the same issue. More will be said about it as a methodologicalframework in chapter 3. Here the focus is specifically on what phenomenology has to say aboutthe self. Why it is useful here is because it enables the drawing together of the range ofphilosophical approaches to knowledge and the self that have been investigated hitherto. If thelast sub-section ended around the 1980s, it could be argued that this sub-section appears inchronological sequence and brings this historical survey up-to-date. This is possible only if it isaccepted that post-modernism precedes phenomenology. In reality, they overlap and insightsemerging in one discourse may inform and enrich the other and vice versa.Bob Jackson argues that his own ‘interpretive approach’ (Jackson, 1997) emerged from hisengagement with the so-called phenomenological method in Religious Studies pioneered byNinian Smart (Smart, 1976). In conversation with Jackson (See RE-Net, 2007), it becameapparent that the interpretive approach evolved out of phenomenology because empathy alonewas not, in Jackson’s mind, sufficient to gain an understanding of the ‘other’. This is animportant critique of phenomenology since one of its central tenets is the way of knowing thatproceeds from the ‘I-other’ relationship (Natanson, 1970 p.33).“I am inter-subjective by taking and working with another’s roles” (Natanson, 1970 p.34) and“… the other is typified by the self through the role played by the defining self” (Natanson, 1970ibid). This is fascinating in the context of the creation and presentation of virtual identities madepossible by web-based social networking utilities such as www.facebook.com,www.secondlife.com, www.bebo.com as seen above and discussed further in section 2.3. Itsrelevance here is to point to another helpful insight of phenomenology and that is of the66Simon Hughes Ph.D. Thesis (October 2012)