Our exmination of evidence in Chapter 11 interpreted reason as being ordered toward the truth of things. Reason is the disclosure and the confirmation of what things are. Even in the natural attitude, the mind finds its completion in truth. Phenomenology, working from the transcendental viewpoint, is also an exercise of reason and shares in the teleology of thinking. It too is ordered toward manifestation, but in a way different from the science and experience that occur in the natural attitude. The language we have called “mundanese” serves to disclose truth; “transcendentalese” does so as well, but in a different way.

In our natural achievements of evidence, in our ordinary experience and in science, we let things appear to ourselves and to the community within which we converse. We let plants and animals, stars and atoms, heroes and villains manifest themselves. In phenomenological reflection, however, we turn our focus toward these disclosures themselves, toward the evidences that we have accomplished, and we think about what it is to be datives of manifestation and what it is for beings to be manifest. Phenomenology is the science that studies truth. It stands back from our rational involvement with things and marvels at the fact that there is disclosure, that things do appear, that the world can be understood, and that we in our life of thinking serve as datives for the manifestation of things. Philosophy is the art and science of evidencing evidence.