Supposed homework

To call something ‘Existentialist Phenomenology’ is almost something of a misnomer. The two, although similar in concept, are ultimately very different ways of thinking. Any mode of thought that I could refer to as existentialist phenomenology would more simply be described simply as existentialism.
Edmund Husserl was more or less the father of Phenomenology. The term ‘phenomenology’ is a throw-back to Descartes (?) distinction between phenomena (objective things) and noumena (the real things behind the perceived things). Phenomenology describes a way of thinking that claims there are no “real” things behind that world we experience; it is a “return to the things themselves.” There is nothing more to a chair than what we experience of the chair, and we are foolish to think that there otherwise.
Martin Heidegger would probably have shunned the title, but he was in fact an existentialist. He was Husserl’s apprentice, and Husserl expected him to continue the line of thought on which he was working and eventually take his position at the university where he taught. Heidegger however (much to Husserl’s surprise and disappointment), took phenomenology on a completely different path that wound up being more existentialist than phenomenological.
Existentialism is almost a phenomenology of people; It’s the assertion that there is no specific reason for existence; only the reasons we create for ourselves. There is no divine plan that we should follow; no moral law that should dictate our every move. We are 100% free to do that which we want to do. (There are religious existentialists who basically amp-up the concept of free will to compensate for the existence of God.) The meaning to it all is that there is no meaning.
Existentialism is both a depressing and liberating concept. To truly believe that there is no ultimate motive behind human existence, one must accept that we are no different from any other animal on this planet; no more special than a deer or a dog or a dolphin. On the reverse side, once we realize this, we are able to move freely through our lives, doing that which we please, because there isn’t any other set path that we’re supposed to follow.
For Heidegger, death is what gives meaning to our lives, as well as being the only thing that is truly our own. No one else can die our death for us. But the fact that we’re going to die, that we have a finite amount of time in which to live, means that our choices then become important; they become defining characteristics of who we are. Were we immortal, we could ultimately choose to do anything and everything. The fact that we aren’t means that in choosing something, we choose to not do something else, and what we choose reflects upon who we are. To be a truly authentic individual, to live one’s own life rather than the life of the ‘they,’ one must make every choice with the mindfulness that we’re going to die and the awareness that this choice won’t come around again.
This is why the thoughts or advice of my friends carries only so much weight. It is not their life that I am living. It is not their deaths that limit me.