In the following essay, I set out to rethink the concept of the empirical by following the phenomenological train of thought that the empirical is always tied to a mode of living and can therefore not be thought of as existing independently from subjective modes of engagement. This does not mean that every experience is henceforth to be understood as a subjective experience because the subject is just as much constituted by the object as vice versa. This dialectical interpretation of lived experience is best exemplified in Heidegger's interpretation of experience as a strife between earth and world. This concept is developed further and used to reanchor experience in a thirdness between subject and object. Finally, suggestions are made of what it will mean to adopt the concept of strife as the basis of a new kind of empirical psychology.