Lived Experience
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A PubMed search for the phrase "lived experience" finds 11,139 papers within the past year. And an esperr search shows that the relative frequency of this phrase has been increasing rapidly on PubMed:
It's not just in the fields covered by PubMed — the Social Science Research Network finds the phrase in 1,376 papers within the past year, including titles like "Distant Writing: Literary Production in the Age of Artificial Intelligence", "Civil V. Common Law: The Emperor Has No Clothes", and "The implementation of senior high school in the Philippines: An advantage or disadvantage to students' future opportunities".
Wikipedia tells us that
In qualitative phenomenological research, lived experience (German: Erlebnis) refers to the first-hand involvement or direct experiences and choices of a given person, and the knowledge that they gain from it, as opposed to the knowledge a given person gains from second-hand or mediated source. It is a category of qualitative research together with those that focus on society and culture and those that focus on language and communication. While the term has been increasingly used in qualitative research as a form of evidence and source of knowledge, the concept of "lived experience" as something separate from "experience" is rarely defined.
The Oxford Dictionary of Philosophy says that
In post-Romantic German philosophy the term [Erlebnis] took on the connotation of ‘lived’ non-conceptualized, and sometimes ineffable experience, akin to the stream of qualia of some theorists of consciousness. It can be contrasted with Erfahrung, which denotes more ordinary perception of interpreted fact. Elementary experiences form the basis of Carnap's early construction of the world of empirical objects.
Burt Hopkins' 1988 dissertation "Intentionality in Husserl and Heidegger: An interpretative appraisal" tells us that
Husserl’s phenomenological method is at once "reflective" and "eidetic." It is reflective inasmuch as the starting point for all of Husserl's phenomenological analyses is always a reflectively uncovered (enthüllen) field (Feld) of lived-experiences (Erlebnisse). It is eidetic inasmuch as Husserl's phenomenological concern with the appearance (Erscheinung) and manner of appearing (erscheinen) of what is manifested in any field of lived-experiences is always directed towards their invariant characteristics, or essences, and thereby ipso facto unconcerned with the reality (realitët) of the appearance and its manner of appearing.
I'm curious about the cultural history. Phenomenology developed and flourished in the early 20th century — why did (this aspect of) its impact on medicine, education, law, engineering, etc., take a century to develop? Or was it just a terminological rather than conceptual change, and if so, how and why did it happen?
Michael Carasik said,
August 10, 2025 @ 7:51 am
The very next thing I clicked on after reading this post was here , where the third sentence used the phrase "lived experience."
cameron said,
August 10, 2025 @ 9:31 am
das Erlebnis would normally just be rendered as "experience". but when translating Husserl, or Heidegger, or other writers in that tradition, you need to preserve the distinction between das Erlebnis and die Erfahrgung and you'd probably want to use "experience" for the latter.
the decision to use "lived experience" to render das Erlebnis wasn't universal. Dorian Cairns, in his Guide for Translating Husserl recommended "mental process" to render Erlebnis and some translators actually followed this ridiculous suggestion. The translation of Husserl's Ideas Pertaining to a Pure Phenomenology and to a Phenomenological Philosophy: First Book by Fred Kersten is in many ways an improvement over the pioneering 1930s work by W.R. Boyce-Gibson, but is ruined by use of "mental process" in this way throughout.
in French das Erlebnis was translated as le véçu. the latter would also often be Englished as "lived experience".
it's possible that "lived experience" became widespread in English not directly through Husserl, Heidegger, et al., but through literary theory influenced by French writers like Jacques Derrida, which was much in vogue in the English speaking world, especially in the 80s and 90s.
it's interesting that translators into English have been so wary of using a very literal translation like "the lived" or "the lived-through" to render German Erlebnis or French véçu – I suspect they have been concerned as to how awkward the plural forms might get
Charles in Toronto said,
August 10, 2025 @ 12:33 pm
I've been hearing "lived experience" creep into everyday activist and progressive language for years. E.g. https://mediacoop.ca/node/119110
"I think what has been an interesting thing to observe – and I’m speaking as someone who has lived experience as a Black queer person – is that we are noticing that some people who may have been indifferent to calls to look at policing from a critical lens have finally caught up and finally get it, based off what they experienced in not having the police respond to them when they were in a moment of crisis." – Debbie Owusu-Akyeeah in 2022 regarding the police conduct during the extremist convoy occupation in Ottawa.
Yves Rehbein said,
August 10, 2025 @ 3:49 pm
Interestingly, the prefixes er-, ur- and older ir- are commonly explained as rhotacism from *uz-, from PIE *ud-s-, and thus cognate to aus ("out, ex-").
When you discussed skedaddle last month, and Rick Rubenstein mocked the Indo-European comparison, I followed the surface analysis "'s get outa here" (Wiktionary) to Old High German irgezzan ("abolēre, exolescere, oblitterare, oblivisci, postponere") and Old English á-gitan ("to find, get to know a person", Bosworth-Toller), that would be *uz-get-, next to a-gītan, -geotan ("to pour out", German ausgießen, Latin effundere). The Proto-Indo-European reconstruction of the entire phrase presents problems in view of Greek (s)kedánnūmi ("to scatter", Beekes 2011: 125; *(s)kd-n-eh₂, Beekes 2010; "there is no explanation for the aspirate χ." Beekes 2010 s.v. σχιζω).
Although alive sounds similar, it is probably on, e.g. afoot, on-line, German am Leben ("living"), terminus technicus Sitz-im-Leben (?). Old English ā-līf ("everlasting") might rather belong with á, ǣfre ("ever").
The verb erleben is older (C15, DWDS) than the noun Erlebnis (C19).
I would like to rest my case for now, but there is more.
For example, there is one Old High German irlewan ("berühmt; gregarius", EWAhd, i.e. famous) from PIE *ḱlew-, which is well know from the poetic undying fame formula (Watkins, How to kill a dragon).
Rick Rubenstein said,
August 10, 2025 @ 4:55 pm
The important thing to remember when reading Heidegger is that you've probably made a terrible mistake.
John Swindle said,
August 10, 2025 @ 5:37 pm
In Chinese 经历、历经、经验、and 体验 are among the words that can be translated "experience," with different meanings, but don't ask me.
John Swindle said,
August 10, 2025 @ 5:53 pm
Since the dead themselves can't be shown to have experiences, I suppose "lived experience" could be an exclusion of any possible lessons from ancestors or history, like "within living memory" or "in recent experience."
Jonathan Smith said,
August 10, 2025 @ 6:45 pm
similar "lived reality" is also on the skyrocket in the sorts of contexts mentioned by Charles in Toronto (among others?)
VVOV said,
August 10, 2025 @ 9:39 pm
I definitely associate the expression "lived experience" with "activist and progressive language" as nicely stated by Charles in Toronto, but I thought it had been a stable fixture of such language for a long time, so I was surprised to see the graph in the OP with an inflection point in the early 2010s. Perhaps I've always been exposed to the "woke" speech community that uses "lived experience", so I missed its generalization to the broader culture?
AntC said,
August 10, 2025 @ 11:38 pm
an inflection point in the early 2010s.
Corresponding roughly with the rise of social media and 'rich' audio-visuals on the internet.
Then it's 'lived experience' as opposed to virtual/vicarious experience.
David W said,
August 11, 2025 @ 7:01 am
"Lived experience" seems to me to have strong connotations of "It happened to me; how dare you deny it?"
David L said,
August 11, 2025 @ 9:59 am
As Socrates said, the unlived experience is not worth examining.
Kenny Easwaran said,
August 11, 2025 @ 1:15 pm
While the idea of "Erlebnis" (and the importance of the distinction from "Erfahrung") definitely goes back to the phenomenologists, I think a lot of the contemporary use of the English-language phrase "lived experience" owes more to the 1980s rise of "standpoint epistemology" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standpoint_theory – though I note that the phrase "lived experience" actually only occurs twice in that article!)
Brett said,
August 11, 2025 @ 3:45 pm
While its relevance to phenomenology is clear if you are familiar with the subject,* I doubt that the phrase lived experience arose as a direct of calque of terminology from German phenomenology. The timing does not seem likely, as the post implies; nor did the places where I started encountering the phrase seem to be ones that were likely to be influence by early-twentieth-century phenomenology.
* I do agree with Rick Rubenstein that reading Heidegger is essentially never worth it. Husserl has interesting things to say, and represents an important development in the tradition of Kant. Heidegger mostly says the same things but takes five times as much verbiage to do it, and when he doesn't agree with Husserl, Heidegger is less sophisticated. The best subsequent developments of Husserl's ideas about phenomenology probably come from Wittgenstein.