Phenomenological Tools, Methodologies, and Meta-Theology.

Phenomenologist Dr. Shields has asked, “Where does theological phenomenology stand on the important question of what is the ontological foundation of logical necessity?”

“But what does this mean [to theological phenomenology] with respect to a non-essentialist conception of truth? There can be no question of a certain predilection towards the mystical. But what does this mean with respect to a non-essentialist conception of truth? There can be no question of a certain predilection towards the mystical.”(The Art of Phenomenology and its Implications for the Study of Religion, by James Mark Shields)[Referred to as “J.M. Shields” here on] pdf.

Wittgenstein would qualify as a non-essentialist for his disbelief of an actual objective reality existing along side Plato’s Essences. It means we brush up on Wittgenstein and Kierkegaard!  ^[1]

^[1] Footnote: Writers Janik and Toulmin give an interesting peek into Margarete Wittgenstein and her relationship with her brother Ludwig Wittgenstein: 

”Margarete, the youngest of the three daughters, was the rebel of the family and its brightest intellectual light....It was very likely Margarete who put the writings of her favorite philosopher, Schopenhauer, as well as those of Weininger and Kierkegaard, into the hands of her younger brother [Ludwig Wittgenstein] for she kept her finger always on the pulse of intellectual and cultural life”(Wittgenstein’s Vienna, by Allan Janik & Stephen Toulmin, 1973, A Touchstone Book, p.172).

There are two kinds of logicians. No! I don’t mean bad logicians, and good logicians, nor do I mean male and female logicians. I mean “essentialist” and “non-essentialist” logicians. The two schools of thought are also known as “idealist essentialism” and “non-essential nominal realism.” 

“Plato was one of the first essentialists, postulating the concept of ideal forms—an abstract entity of which individual objects are mere facsimiles. To give an example: the ideal form of a circle is a perfect circle, something that is physically impossible to make manifest; yet the circles we draw and observe clearly have some idea in common—the ideal form. Plato proposed that these ideas are eternal and vastly superior to their manifestations, and that we understand these manifestations in the material world by comparing and relating them to their respective ideal form. Plato's forms are regarded as patriarchs to essentialist dogma simply because they are a case of what is intrinsic and a-contextual of objects—the abstract properties that makes them what they are (For more on forms, read Plato's parable of the cave)” Wikipedia: essentialism.

The essentialist logicians believe that the essential “laws” of logic and mathematics are eternal, and objectively exist in some kind of heaven along with Plato’s Forms. Most mathematicians are essentialist including philosophers like Edmund Husserl, and Bertrand Russell who actually believed in essentialism. Wittgenstein is a nominalist: the laws of logic are rules of language and merely “abstract terms and predicates,” not objects.

However, “essence” can have many different meanings.

”Essence can mean the nature of a thing without any valuation of it, it can mean the universals which characterized a thing, it can mean the ideas in which existing things participate, in can mean the norm by which a thing must be judged, it can mean the original goodness of everything created, and it could mean the patterns of all things in the divine mind” (Paul Tillich, Systematic Theology, Vol. I, 1951, pp. 202).

The ontological status of logical necessity is a serious issue otherwise one could be caught in a contradiction later on. The essentialist logico-mathematical philosopher must defend his position not unlike in the theism vs. anti-theism debate concerning eternal entities. Wittgenstein--a nominalist--would be by analogy on the “atheist” side of this essentialist debate.

There is another difference between idealist essentialism and the non-essentialist nominalist: when an essentialist formulates a new mathematical law she views it as a “discovery” in mathematics just as in the positivistic empirical sciences. On the other hand, a nominalist would understand a new formula as a conceptual “invention” that has no independent objective reality from us.

The rule of non-contradiction—“A is not, non-A,” is very useful for organization of thought and language. However, its necessity must ontologically stand on something! But Wittgenstein says, “Give it up! it’s just a convention of language and organization.” So this is why I am in agreement with Wittgenstein--as a nominalist. One can hold the position of  an “a-gnostic” (“a,” Alpha privative, meaning “none” and “gnosis” meaning, “knowledge”) about this question of logical necessity. Don’t be afraid to change your mind on this issue, however. 

“The phenomenological essence is always in relation to human experience, it has no reality outside of the experience of the experiencer.” (J.M Shields).  

I can still remain a theological phenomenologist without any nasty contradictions. A nominalist only admits the very least--with the least risk theoretically speaking.

In regard to the phenomenological tool called the “Epoche,” or the “bracketing” of questions about existents, we may have been too hard on Husserl claiming his definition was too strict. Husserl and religious phenomenologists may have been closer in agreement than first thought. Ultimately, we can trace back in the history of philosophy the concept of the “Epoche” to a German philosopher named Max Scheler (1874-1928) was known in 1920 as the father of the “Sociology of knowledge” (Wissenssoziologie).

“The crucial step, what must take place before the scientific study of the Umwelt [the world as perceived.)(i.e., the world in which most of us inhabit in our waking experience; what might be called “the unexamined life”) can be begun, is what Husserl calls the epoche. Not a denial of existence, or doubt in the Cartesian sense, it is often explained as a bracketing, or a suspension of the pre-given world; a bracketing that does not negate the world but refuses to take a stand either in favor or against any of the presuppositions arising in the Lebenswelten (the total horizon within which all experience takes place). This is no small matter for Husserl—it is in some sense is the essence of his phenomenology, as it implies (and necessitates?) “a complete personal transformation, comparable in the beginning to a religious conversion, which… bears within itself the significance of the greatest existential transformation which is assigned as a task to mankind as such”(J.M. Shields).

The theological phenomenological project of critically seeing the world still remains intact regardless of the essentialist and non-essentialist debate. 

”Blakean premise that once the doors of perception (in the broadest sense) are cleansed (through phenomenological conversion, the epoche), all things will appear as they “truly are”—“infinite and holy. In order to see the world and grasp the essence of phenomena (which may still be paradoxical and mysterious), we must break completely with our familiar uncritical acceptance of it. Yet it is in the relation that the truth emerges—the “laying down of being” through our interaction with such. Merleau-Ponty echoes both James and Husserl by proclaiming that “true philosophy” consists in relearning to look at the world: “philosophy is not the reflection of a preexisting truth, but, like art, the act of bringing truth into being”(J.M. Shields)

And then we can step “back to watch the forms of transcendence fly up like sparks from a fire.”