Abstract

In recent debates in qualitative research, it has been emphasized that methods are not merely collections of techniques, but socially stabilized ways of making knowledge claims intelligible. In this paper, I intervene at this meta-methodological level by examining what it means for a qualitative method to claim philosophical grounding. Rather than evaluating empirical results, I ask under what conditions an appeal to a philosophical source can function as a genuine grounding relation. Specifically, the case examined is the phenomenological methodology of Max van Manen's, who presented Edmund Husserl as a point of departure. Through textual analysis of how van Manen portrays Husserl's accounts of the epoché, transcendental reduction, and intentionality, I show that van Manen misrepresented Husserl's own concepts. Because the figure named "HUSSERL" no longer corresponded to Husserl's own project, van Manen could not claim Husserlian grounding and could not serve as a basis for researchers who seek such grounding themselves.