Husserl: Empiricism, Psychologism, Circularity, and Reification

Husserl: Empiricism, Psychologism, Circularity, and Reification

Phenomenology first emerged as a school of philosophy from German Universities in Gottingen and Munich before World War I. Between 1913 and 1930 a series of articles on phenomenology were published by a group of phenomenologists whose chief editor was mathematician Edmund Husserl. Husserl always referred to himself as a “perpetual beginner.” Phenomenology is a non-empirical science that is descriptive without presuppositions and examines objects as phenomena. In this context the term “intuition” simply means, “seeing.” Essences are the most general, necessary, and invariant characteristics of the object observed. “Bracketing” or “Epoche” (borrowed from skeptics) is the suspending belief in existence.

“Bracketing” has under gone another change in meaning under Husserl. “Bracketing” means the transition from non-reflective thinking to reflective thinking. The purpose of this definitional change is to protect phenomenology from the criticism that its methodology and epistemology is logically circular. Phenomenologists have presented counter arguments claiming non-circularity, but I am unconvinced.

One of the first schools of thought phenomenology had to defeat was Psychologism.

Psychologism was popular at the end of the 1800s. The problem with psychologism is it reduces all knowledge to neuroscience which creates big epistemological problems since necessary truths like "A is not non-A" or "a ÷ b = a × 1⁄b" are not necessarily true at all since these formulas only express the physical structure of our brain which is contingent--that is, our brains could have been organized another way so that these necessary truths could be false! All of mathematics and logic would collapse if their propositions were merely contingently true! Edmund Husserl absolutely destroyed this school of thought in his book, Logical Investigations (1901). Husserl’s arguments against psychologism still stand today. In this famous critique of psychologism, Husserl revealed himself to be a Platonic Realist—numbers exist along with Plato’s Forms. One of Husserl’s phenomenological studies asked, “What is a number?”

Husserl thought of phenomenology as a scientific positivism of essences. Adorno is critical of both phenomenology and positivism because they extract the “immediate data of consciousness” from phenomena in the stream of consciousness. Adorno argues that Husserl and positivistic methodology buy into the idea that thought is Being itself--which is pure idealism. Positivists are actually “subjectivists” except they eliminate the subject from the truth. And yet at the same time positivism is “solipsistic.”

"What Husserlian phenomenology amounts to, therefore, is the ‘transfer of positivism into Platonic realism’" (Adorno: The Recovery of Experience, Roger Foster, Loc. 54-55, p. 132).

The Husserlian phenomenological definition of consciousness is Intentionality, "the distinguishing property of mental phenomena of being necessarily directed upon an object, whether real or imaginary." Consciousness is always directed at an object and has an object before it.  You would think that positivists would be more suspicious of "facts" if consciousness can be directed at objects whether real or imagined. But consciousness can forget its transcendental character (not an object) and view itself only as an constructed “I.”  The subject identifies with objects because they are defined and static. Objectification of the self is the first reduction of the self. This is Sartre’s existentialist theory of consciousness--The Transcendental Ego. In fact, all modern existentialist literature accepts this theory of the Self—that is, consciousness as intentionality.

We also must understand “false consciousness” in which symbolic meaning becomes confused with the thing symbolized. Thought habitually reifies its experiences:

"Reification is the apprehension of human phenomena as if they were things, that is, in non-human or possibly superhuman terms…reification is the apprehension of the products of human activity as if they were something else than human product—such as facts of nature, results of cosmic law, or manifestations of divine will…. The reified world is, by definition, a dehumanized world."(The Social Construction of Reality: A Treatise in the Sociology of Knowledge. By Peter L. Berger and Thomas Luckman, (1966), Double Day, p. 89).

Husserl wrote, "Whereas the philosophy of nature [Science] by contrast, seeks to eliminate the subjective, transcendental philosophy seeks absolutely to elucidate it." This is the, The Crisis of the European Sciences, by Husserl (1911)(Introduction, pdf.). This is our current challenge today--to restore the Subject as Human Being. The elimination of the Subject from science, history, philosophy, logic--and even the science of psychology, of all disciplines--is the hallmark of our historical epoch moving toward greater dehumanization. 

Husserl two major works are Ideas, and Cartesian Meditations.

Ideas, by Edmund Husserl,(1913)(pdf.). This is the best book to start with if you want to read Husserl directly. I would recommend reading secondary material around phenomenology as much as possible before reading Husserl directly.

Cartesian Meditations by Edmund Husserl (1929)(pdf.).

This work is divided into five "Meditations" of varying length, whose contents are as follows:

1. First Meditation: The Way to the Transcendental Ego

2. Second Meditation: The Field of Transcendental Experience

3. Third Meditation: Constitutional Problems

4. Fourth Meditation: Constitutional Problems Pertaining to the Transcendental Ego Itself

5. Fifth Meditation: Transcendental Being as Monadological Intersubjectivity

Schleiermacher and the Christian Pattern

Schleiermacher and the Christian Pattern​

“God is the answer to the question implied in human finitude. This answer cannot be derived from the analysis of existence.”-- Paul Tillich, Systematic Theology Vol. I, p. 64. 

“Therefore God wills that Christianity should be preached to all men absolutely, therefore the Apostles are very simple men, and the [Christian] Pattern is in the lowly form of a servant, all this in order to indicate that this extraordinary is the ordinary, is accessible to all — but for all that a Christian is a thing even more rare than a genius.”—Soren Kierkegaard, Attack Upon Christendom (1854), p. 159.

I want to try and stay focused on Schleiermacher’s social theory, but his theology is so integrated that one can easily drift into a labyrinthine of doctrinal issues. For example, the term “experience” can be interpreted as ontological, scientific, or mystical. One does not have to accept every aspect of Schleiermacher’s theology. He lived in a different age, but his fundamental principles can be adapted to the 21st Century. Soren Kierkegaard uses the term “Christian Pattern” in his famous collection of essays entitled, Attack Upon Christendom (1854). The Christian Pattern means imitating the life of Christ. Kierkegaard wrote, “What Christ, what the Apostles, what every witness to the truth desires as the only thing...is imitation—the only thing humanity has no taste for, takes no pleasure in”(Ibid., p. 264). One principle that can be used to test a theological model is whether it mirrors the Christian Pattern.

I do not want to sound like I am complaining, but imitating the life of Christ...of G-d...is an awfully high ethical standard to meet. However, Schleiermacher is not looking for individual perfection, but for openness. He tells us that “...Christian blessedness is not absolutely perfect; it is blessedness in the process of attaining perfection”(Munro, p. 259). The Christian life never really evolves completely, “...but always in the process of becoming manifests itself in us by means of the alternation of pleasure and pain, and the indifference of both”(Ibid., p. 260). Within the oscillating twin poles of pleasure and pain, spiritual being is forged into a shape that reflects its rude material existence. Religious-consciousness is able to gather the unique historical forms of spiritual knowledge accumulated by other world religions. In the following passage theologian Paul Tillich describes neo-orthodox “theologies of experience” similar to Schleiermacher’s and their belief in the adaptability of the Christian Pattern to modern times.

”The encounter with great non-Christian religions, the evolutionary scheme of thought, the openness for the new which characterized the pragmatic method, have had the consequence that experience has become not only the main source of systematic theology but an inexhaustible source out of which new truths can be taken continually. Being open for new experiences which might even pass beyond the confines of Christian experience is now the proper attitude of the theologian. He is not bound to a circle the center of which is the event of Jesus as the Christ. Of course, as a theologian, he also works in a circle but in a circle whose periphery is extendable and whose center is changeable. “Open experience” is the source of systematic theology“ (Paul Tillich, Systematic Theology Vol. I, p. 45).

Schleiermacher is known as the founder of modern theological Ethics according to Munro. He is also known for developing the modern Protestant theology of Christocentrism in which Christ is the center of the one’s religious consciousness. However, this is not the “Magic Jesus” of some biblicistic-evangelical Christian sects.

Tillich has mentioned the “theological circle” before, but in a slightly different sense in that “every understanding of spiritual things is circular”(Ibid., p. 9). Hermeneutics is a Greek word ἑρμηνεύω (hermeneuō) meaning a principle by which to “translate” or “interpret.” For the theologian this hermeneutical circularity is unavoidable. I have used the term “hermeneutics” interchangeably with “paradigm.” Edgar C. Boedeker Jr. has summarized four kinds of hermeneutical circles: 1. Our implicit understanding of being and our ontological interpretations of being seem to align. There is no pure description. 2. Knowing the meaning of ontological terms and the connection made to the phenomenon that appears. For the theologian, he must participate in religious self-consciousness in order to recognize its appearance for observation just as a carpenter must use a tool to understand tool use. 3. The interdependence of construction and deconstruction of a system of concepts. In order to determine if a concept is deconstructed coherently one has to already interpret the phenomenon using constructive concepts. 4. Methodology and result always seem to align since methodology is merely the hermeneutical, or paradigmatic, reconstruction of phenomenon already known. (“Phenomenology,” Edgar C. Boedeker Jr. in “A Companion to Heidegger”/edited by Hubert L. Dreyfus and Mark A. Wrathal, 2005, p.169)[Pdf].

“5.6 The limits of my language mean the limits of my world.”-- Wittgenstein, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus (1921)​

(∀x)(Lx --> Wx)^[1]

We have already discussed logical circularity and its implications for theology, “Mystic a Priori.” Remember that for Heidegger, the mystic a priori is not irrational, nor fully formulated messages given to an oracle, but re-discovery of “always already” understood structures that allow consciousness to encounter entities. Heidegger calls this ontological readiness and un-thematized foreknowledge “a priori perfect”(Boedeker, p. 166). Bertrand Russell wrote in the preface of the “Tractatus” (Not Copyrighted, Pdf) that Wittgenstein attempted to “draw a limit to thinking, or rather—not to thinking, but to the expression of thoughts; for, in order to draw a limit to thinking we should have to be able to think both sides of this limit (we should therefore have to be able to think what cannot be thought). The limit can, therefore, only be drawn in language and what lies on the other side of the limit will be simply nonsense”(Ibid., p. 23). I believe when we encounter logical, ethical, or hermeneutic circularity it is a sign that we have reached the limits of language--and the limit of our world. The Absolute is the real that we cannot know. Our fallenness is our finitude; our debt (guilt) is the unknowability of G-d so that we stand at the mysterious barricades separating us from Her.

”Of this absolute unity, from which every kind of contrast is excluded, we can know nothing. It transcends the limits of experience. It is timeless and spaceless. It cannot be apprehended either by thought or by will. Even feeling, or the immediate self-consciousness, fails to give adequate expression to this transcendent ground of all. Nevertheless, though it is, from its nature, unknowable, it is the necessary presupposition of knowledge and of action...Without it, matter and mind would be forever incommensurable, lying outside each other's range; and knowledge and certainty would alike be impossible. Without it, in short, there would be, on the one hand, mere chaos; and, on the other, empty abstractions”(Munro, p. 135).

For Schleiermacher to base systematic theology on the ontological experience of religious self-consciousness “is simply a matter of the interpretation, definition, and classification of the facts of consciousness, as we find them in the evolution of man's nature” (Ibid., p. 21 ). This appeal to an ontological pre-thematic understanding of being to formulate theological interpretations is not as original as it first seems. The first modern schools of ethical theory were moral sentiment theories based on human "sympathy" and "empathy." The study of ethics during the 17th and 18th century was called "Moral Sense Theory" and describes the views of 3rd Earl of Shaftesbury (1671–1713), proto-Libertarian Ryandian philosopher Bernard Mandeville (1670—1733), Francis Hutcheson (1694–1746), David Hume (1711–1776), and Adam Smith (1723–1790). For British economist Adam Smith, sympathy by one human for another is the foundation of all moral philosophy. Tillich believes that phenomenological analysis of material existence only raises the question of being, but is inadequate for providing a resolution. Also, Tillich rejects that the whole of systematic theology can be derived from religious self-consciousness alone.

Well, I didn’t want to enter that labyrinth of onto-theological issues, but these subjects are irresistible. So I will examine Schleiermacher’s “four ethical relations” of right, sociability, faith, and revelation out of which emerges four moral organisms, or "the perfect ethical forms," which are the State, Society, School, and the Church. 

^{[1] Definitions of categorical proposition symbols:}
x = constant
(∀x)  = Given any x
L = Limits of language
W = Limits of the World
--> = If, then conditional

I want to be thankful for everything we got...

Where you live?

Help me not to tell lies...

Are you watching me?

I want to know what you are... 

I want to see what you see....​

"For an objective reflection the truth becomes an object, something objective, and thought must be pointed away from the subject. For a subjective reflection the truth becomes a matter of appropriation, of inwardness, of subjectivity...."—Soren Kierkegaard, “Concluding Unscientific Postscript,” in Part II: Truth is Subjectivity (1848 ).

I hope you took the time to view that “The Mysterious Barricades” video clip of the film “The Tree of Life” which I only discovered the other day. The movie reviewers were unkind to the film, I think, because of its religious theme. This annoys me.

The little boy in the movie, Jack, gives an amazing prayer. Well, actually he gives two different kinds of intertwined prayers.

Jack’s first prayer is,

“I want to be thankful for everything we got...
Help me not to tell lies...”​

The first prayer is based on the following familiar theological prescriptive proposition:

“Go upstairs and thank the Lord for everything you got, and while you’re at it, ask Him to help you stop lying!”

I name this first prayer the “Doctrinal Prayer.”

However, the second prayer is the authentic prayer because of the spontaneous sincere openness which it is said. Soren Kierkegaard once wrote, “Truth is Subjectivity.” This means that for the Christian it is not just what is believed, but how it is believed that matters. In the Widow’s Mite Parable Jesus said, “Amen, I say to you, this poor widow put in more than all the other contributors to the treasury. For they have all contributed from their surplus wealth, but she, from her poverty, has contributed all she had, her whole livelihood” (NAB Mark 12: 41-44). Objectively, this parable is absurd; however, the “intentionality” of any action within the religious sphere is more important than the act itself. The objective is the “what” of what is said, or done. The subjective is the “how” of what is said or done. This is the essence of Christianity according to Kierkegaard.

Jack’s second prayer is,

Where you live?
Are you watching me?

I want to know what you are...
I want to see what you see....​

The second prayer is the spiritual prayer:

“Where you live?” can be theologically translated as, “Are you omnipresent?”

“Are you watching me?” Jack is asking, “Are you omniscient?

“I want to know what you are...” is saying, “Are you an object, an entity, or a force?”

“I want to see what you see...” means, “I want to know the mind of G-d.”

From giving thanks for “...what I got” to “I want to see what you see” is a very impressive spiritual evolution indeed!

Consequently, be careful teaching your children to be Christian--they might become one.

Thom Hartmann’s book “The Prophet's Way”

Thom Hartmann’s book 
“The Prophet's Way” on Spiritual Experience

“I waited for the extraordinary, but it never came so I gave up and followed my intuitions, then strange things started to happen, but still within the realm of the mundane and ordinary.”--Anonymous 

I came to a definitive conclusion concerning only my understanding of Thom Hartmann’s best book, “The Prophet’s Way.”

For me, this book has defied conventional philosophical categorization. There is something very familiar about its approach to...spiritual experience—and that is the answer. The book, “The Prophet's Way,” is in my very humble opinion, a phenomenological description of a spiritual life. You would think I would of known that immediately. The question that stumped me was “How did the author know how to write this description of a spiritual life without knowing anything about Husserl’s phenomenology or the 'epoche’?” I am somewhat sure he did not know this formally, or explicitly. I now better understand that the Husserlian “epoche” is not, as I assumed, just a pan-mathematical-logico-formalistic methodological tool to suspend belief to achieve a “pure” description of phenomena. With the later Husserl, the “epoche” was given a spiritual connotation.

It turns out that critical theorist and sociologist Max Scheler (1874-1928) understood phenomenological observation to be akin to a “spiritual posture.” The later Husserl likely adopted Scheler’s interpretation of the phenomenological method of the Epoche. Scheler viewed Husserl’s phenomenological method as “an attitude of spiritual seeing...something which otherwise remains hidden....”[2] :

“Rather, that which is given in phenomenology 'is given only in the seeing and experiencing act itself.' The essences are never given to an 'outside' observer with no direct contact with the thing itself. Phenomenology is an engagement of phenomena, while simultaneously a waiting for its self-givenness; it is not a methodical procedure of observation as if its object is stationary. Thus, the particular attitude (Geisteshaltung, lit. 'disposition of the spirit' or 'spiritual posture') of the philosopher is crucial for the disclosure, or seeing, of phenomenological facts. This attitude is fundamentally a moral one, where the strength of philosophical inquiry rests upon the basis of love”(Wiki: Max Scheler).

So what hermeneutical principles of interpretation did the author use in writing “The Prophet’s Way?”

The answer is truthfulness, and faith.

Truthfulness as a principle for the description of experience is enough. He made no absolute commitment to the naturalistic scientific status of his experience presented as description. But as we all know no pure phenomenological description is possible according to the four modes of circularity as Boedeker defined them.

Not only that, but he had encountered the always present problem of methodological circularity of description and conceptual deconstruction. This is also an epistemological problem that no rational philosopher can escape. In order to describe the spiritual life, one has to participate in the spiritual life just as one has to participate using a saw to experience cutting wood--with a saw! In scientific experience the subject is abstractly negated in the name of objectivity and scientific truth. For the religious phenomenologist, the subject must participate in the spiritual life to gain access to the phenomena she seeks to un-conceal.

The reader who at first approaches the book will most likely by default have the passive “naturalistic attitude,” but one has to analytically suspend that cognitive stance to gain insight and this happens slowly after reading this phenomenological description of a spiritual life. So in a paradoxical way, like the epoche, this book in effect adopts Cartesian methodological skepticism—not absolute skepticism--to un-conceal the spiritual dimension of human existence.

Adorno’s Critique of Heideggerian Fundamental Ontology

Adorno’s Critique of Heideggerian Fundamental Ontology

“From the time of Parmenides it has been a common assumption of all philosophers that the logos, the word which grasps and shapes reality, can do so only because reality itself has a logos character." --Tillich, Paul. Systematic Theology Vol. I. p. 75.

Adorno is Heidegger’s fiercest critic of the phenomenological method that Heidegger adopts in establishing a fundamental ontology by giving a systematic description of human existence. Adorno wrote, Jargon of Authenticity, as a critique of Heideggerian language. A central concept of existentialism is human authenticity. Heidegger rejects the label of “existentialist” and instead refers to himself as a phenomenologist. Heidegger is actually an existential phenomenologist since he examines the existence of Dasein. Adorno was opposed to the entire philosophical movement of existentialism for the contradictions he claimed rendered it as pure idealism run wild. Adorno approaches the philosophy of experience as an epistemologist. “Experience” here means a relation of subjects to nonconceptual objects. Heidegger, on the other hand, approaches experience as an ontologist. Heidegger's analysis is of "being" (ὄν,) Greek for 'being' (often written as “Being”) as opposed to (ὄντα) that means "things that are." Fundamental ontology examines the “ontological (ontos) structuring to the world of entities.”

For this reason I argue Adorno’s epistemological argument against Husserl’s phenomenological description of essences as a failed breakout and “escape into a mirror” does not apply to Heidegger’s fundamental ontology. Heidegger rejects Adorno’s most important tool of Negative Dialectics which is the Subject-Object model of epistemology.

For Adorno the Subject-Object model--borrowed and refined from Hegel--shows the relation and structure of both experience and understanding. The “subject” is the observer, and the “object” is the thing observed. The object is “prior” for it existed before the observing subject, and the object historically has contradicted conventional concepts of what the object is causing scientific revolutions to re-interpret, or re-adjust the concept of the object. In this model, the subject is not a passive observer, but rather is a “constituting” subject (Kant) by its construction of an object as a concept then adjusting the concept to capture the object for classification. For example, the subject must necessarily constitute the object in the categories of space and time for it to become an object for classification. There is a dialectical relationship between the subject and object. The object is true (Hegel). The subject is conceptually constructing the object, but never fully capturing it: subject and object can never be identical for this would mean the subject has absolute knowledge of the object. Objects are irreducible to concepts and so they are nonidentical to its concept. Also, there is subject-object reciprocity and mediation in which the subject relates to a particular object. When too much emphasis is placed on the constituting subject, the epistemological relationship is Subjective Idealism. When too much emphasis is put on the object thereby making the subject passive, the relationship is Empirical Positivism, which is another kind of distortion of experience and understanding.

By “mediation” of subject and object Adorno is referring to the 1.) meaning-producing qualities of the reciprocatory and nonidentical dimensions of the subject-object relationship. 2.) the object is more than the concept of the particular subject. 3.) the object is in part determined by the subject in that it is apprehended through consciousness(CR, p. 48).

Adorno accuses Heidegger of uncritically accepting the erroneous epistemological presupposition of “truth as immediacy,” or truth as “Givenness” of the object untouched by an interfering subject that may enquire further into the object. Adorno directs this criticism of “truth as Givenness” at both Husserl and Heidegger wherein the critical thinking subject is replaced by a passive agent mechanically applying “rigidified cognitive structures” subordinating the object under its universalizing classificatory concept:

“Once the commitment to an idea of truth as givenness is accepted, Adorno believes, the elimination of the experiencing subject has already been incorporated into the understanding of cognition. It is because of its commitment to the epistemologically crucial notion of givenness that Husserlian phenomenology finds itself unable to execute the outbreak other than through a reification of the spiritual capacities of the subject...  The subject no longer recognizes itself, its own essence, in the rigidified structures that now wholly determine its interaction with objects. Cognitive structures, then, have now become wholly severed from the experiencing subject”(Adorno: The Recovery of Experience, Roger Foster, p. 96 | Loc. 1492-98: “RE” here after).

As a historical materialist --not the straw man version of crude materialism attributed to Marx-- Adorno believed the subject “can think against the given without reaching for a realm lying outside of the historical-material sphere”(RE, p 101). Adorno criticized Heidegger for “the theologizing of language,” and “simply uses the fragments of everyday language as though that language were sacred”(RE, p.96). With the doctrine of the Logos, Heidegger certainly theologized language.

Heidegger rejects Adorno’s subject-object dialectic as superfluous and instead asserts his own ontological analysis of a pre-rational immediacy of experience. Heidegger explicitly wrote “Subject and object are not the same as Da-sein and world”(Being And Time, p. 60). For Adorno anything beyond the subject-object mediated relation is pure subjective idealism ungrounded in material reality. Adorno’s key critical points are Heidegger’s,

“...privileging a prereflective form of experience that leads him [Heidegger] to irrationalism. Second, fundamental ontology is alleged not to contain the conceptual resources that would enable it to overcome idealism, the key position in the philosophical tradition that Heidegger criticizes so strongly”(Adorno's Negative Dialectic: Philosophy and the Possibility of Critical Rationality, Brian O'Connor, p.156, here after “CR”).

Adorno rejects metaphysics on the basis that such speculation fails the test of subject-object epistemology by 1. Creating a false invariant world of a priori reified essences dualistically existing independent of historical reality.  2. Adorno calls metaphysics “peep-hole metaphysics” where the subject is an invariant abstract metaphysical subject that takes no part in the historical world. 3. Metaphysics offers an “extra-worldly transcendent source of meaning” thereby justifying social conditions and reinforces the status quo. 4. Adorno rejects the teleological view of history for “events cannot be made intelligible simply by placing them within an historical narrative”(Adorno, Brian O’Connor, Routledge, p. 91,here after as “Adorno”). These four criticisms are historically related to the Feuerbachian critique of religion which says all theology is anthropology—“Thus God is nothing else than human: he is, so to speak, the outward projection of a human's inward nature”(Wiki: Feuerbach).

For Adorno the subject is minimized, if not completely erased from any role as an active rational agent in metaphysical ontologies such as Heidegger’s description of existence. A rationality based on sheer Givenness accepts uncritically appearances as truth and fails to grasp the object. If appearances are truth, the critical subject is neutralized:

“The idea here is that the prevalence of certain rationality has, in fact, taken hold of the criterion by which we conceptualize. To put this another way, consciousness is in the grip of a particular model of rationality, one that accepts appearances as truth.' Thus it is limited to accepting society as it is given-its appearances-as the whole of society and does not examine the structures that lie behind those appearances. Hence it cannot achieve the sort of understanding that grasps the contextual position of objects. The role of the subject in this environment-if it operates under this rationality-is simply to affirm reality since this rationality gives the subject no motivation to reflect more deeply....[Adorno describes this as the] neutralization of critical consciousness, critical consciousness being the ability to reject a prevailing paradigm of interpretation when it becomes clear that this paradigm falls short of an adequate grasp of an object....”(CR, p. 74).

According to Adorno an even worst implication of Heidegger’s commitment to the “truth as givenness” assumption is if the object is given immediately (unmediated by the subject-object model) to the subject, the object cannot be nonidentical. In other words, Heidegger is imprisoned in a subjectivist jail without transcendence.

Adorno’s critique of Heidegger as an “escape into the mirror” revealed a circularity in Husserl’s phenomenological description of essences by duplicating conceptual classification. Both Adorno and Heidegger are attempting to get to “concrete nonreified experience.” However, Heidegger’s analysis is not based on epistemology, but rather ontology. And very early Heidegger broke from Husserl by making the distinction between “appearing” and “appearance.” Heidegger’s fundamental ontology is “critical” by distinguishing “semblance” from “sign.” Heidegger knows what the pre-Socratic Greek ontologists knew, “Appearance is not reality.” Phenomenology is the science of φαινόμενον, phenomenon, meaning, (photon), bring to light, and make to appear, to show. Anything that shows or shines is a phenomenon. Heidegger makes the phenomenological distinction between mere appearing and appearance. Schein, means, semblance, “outward or surface appearance,” or misleading appearance—appearing as it is not. On the other hand, Erscheinung means the way in which the thing appears, but is also a mark, or sign of what a thing is. The example used is a “symptom.” Red spots appear on the skin, but they signify something else, a fever. So the spots are Erscheinung of the fever. It is the thing that appears, but not what is meant. Phenomenon is what shows itself as itself. Neither semblance nor sign are possible without something appearing so phenomenon underlies all appearances.

Heidegger changed his phenomenological analysis of being from an analysis of consciousness and meaning to a philosophy of  “appropriation:”

“Heidegger is groping his way out of metaphysics. Appropriation does not designate a 'realm' as does Being, but rather a relation, that of man and Being. What is radically new and non-Metaphysical about Appropriation is not only that it is an 'activity'--a non-static process--Appropriation is non-metaphysical because in the relationship between man and Being as appropriated to each other, the relation is more fundamental than what is related”(On Time and Being , Translated by Joan Stambaugh, New York, Harper & Row,1972).

Heidegger’s method is no longer phenomenological eidetic reductionism, but “hermeneutical induction” which is a “re-seeing” of phenomena. Heidegger makes the distinction between calculative thinking and meditative thinking which is able to “re-see” and reinterpret a distorted world and open its possibilities. Hermeneutics is a Greek word ἑρμηνεύω (hermeneuō) meaning a principle by which to "translate" or "interpret." We discussed this “re-seeing” under the topic of paradigms (Also see Wiki: Paradigms.). Hermeneutical induction is a “shifting,” or re-seeing of phenomena. Re-interpreting the object can also be correctly called, “paradigm induction.”

Heidegger struggled to piece together historical fragments of the pre-Socratic philosopher Heraclitus’ writings to reconstruct a lost hermeneutic of Being. Heidegger is not anti-epistemological, but pre-epistemological:

"...for Heidegger everyday intentionality already understands being, and therefore phenomenological method is simply the thematization of ordinary life....Phenomenological method for Heidegger is not re-duction but in-duction (epagoge: cf. Physics A, 2, 185 b 13), a second-order hermeneutics that explicitates the first-order hermeneutical understanding of being that man already is. By “induction” Heidegger does not mean reasoning from particulars to universal but rather re-seeing (Hinfuhrung zu) the being-dimension one has already seen, bringing it into explicit view, and reading entities in terms of it”(“Heidegger’s Philosophy of Mind” by Thomas Sheehan, p. 296, pdf.).

This is precisely the kind of historical analysis by Heidegger which traces back from a formal concept to its genesis in historical reality that Adorno criticized Husserl for lacking in his epistemology (Logical Absolutism). Adorno referred to this kind of empirical critical analysis as revealing the “suffering of the concept” as an antidote against reification which is a kind of forgetting. This means tracking backwards from the concept to find its historical material origins to gain insight of the object in a historical context. Geometry, for example, had its genesis from surveying land; the US Supreme Court was once known as the “chicken and dogs court” for settling neighbor disputes in its genesis; the Wall Street financial center had its genesis in financing the world slave trade.

Heidegger’s fundamental ontology that begins with the question of Being attempts to ground philosophy in the material world (being-in-the-world) and at the same time avoid the abstract dualisms of subject-object epistemology and reductivist empiricist philosophy. Heidegger does not recreate essences and duplicate concepts, but reinterprets appearance so as to experience the nonreified “nonidentical dimensions of the subject-object relationship.” Heidegger critically distinguished between appearance and sign of phenomena thus avoiding Husserl’s eidetic circularity and escape into the mirror. Heidegger certainly theologized language with his famous statement, “Language is the house of Being.” Heidegger wrote “...the destroyed relation to being as such is the actual reason for the general misrelating to language”(Introduction to Metaphysics, Heidegger, p. 42). Human relationship to Being is more than epistemological, but pre-epistemological and therefore the subject is not merely an abstract metaphysical observer of the world. Heidegger is not positing a transcendent world above the material world, but rather there is transcendence in immanence; it is part of the object that is not under the scope of the concept—the nonidentical. For Heidegger transcendence means “depth,” not irrationalism:

“The Depth of Reason:

The depth of reason is the expression of something that is not reason, but which precedes reason and is manifest through it. Reason in both its objective [grasped-and-shaped world] and its subjective structures [grasping-and-shaping-self] points to something which appears in these structures, but which transcends them in power and meaning. This is not another field of reason, which could progressively be discovered and expressed, but it is that which is expressed through every rational expression”(Tillich, Paul. Systematic Theology Vol. I. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1951, 1957 & 1963. page 79).

Reason as “Logos,” or “Depth of Reason” is a greater understanding of Logic that encompasses the “ability to reason” as well as intuition and spirituality. Language is an important part of that ability, but is only one dimension of the power of reason.

Paul Tillich further said, “...existentialism is a natural ally of Christianity. Immanuel Kant once said that mathematics is the good luck of human reason. In the same way, one could say that existentialism is the good luck of Christian Theology”(Tillich, Paul. Systematic Theology Vol. II. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1951, 1957 & 1963. page, p. 27).

Orlando

Great Professors on the Internet

Appendix B 

B1

Husserlian Phenomenology: The Possibility of the Science of Essences

For an in-depth and technical explanation of Edumond’s Husserl’s phenomenological methodology, see Dr. Mark Thorsby’s lectures. Thorsby goes through Husserl's introduction to phenomenology in "Ideas" (pdf) section by section. In "Ideas " (section, 19, or pdf., p. 29) Husserl gives a powerful critique of naturalistic empirical positivistic methodology and its assumptions (Naturalistic Misinterpretations video @ 11 min. 43). He presents a good summary to the different types of phenomenologies. 

I have attended course lectures by Phenomenologist, Dr. Jitendra Mohanty, on Husserl’s critique of psychologism and the epistemological problems of naturalistic scientific empiricism. Dr. Thorsby gives an excellent lecture on this fundamental issue underlying all cognitive science, logic, and mathematics (Part II). Also, he teaches a complete symbolic logic course in another series of free videos on his channel. 

Phenomenology is the most radical form of empiricism for it describes the living stream of experience in meaning-reality; however, no pure phenomenological description is possible.

Mark Thorsby: Part I on Phenomenology: Types of phenomenology.
The Encyclopedia of Phenomenology (Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1997) features separate articles on the following seven types of phenomenology.

1. Transcendental Constitutive Phenomenology: studies how objects are constituted in pure or transcendental consciousness.

2. Naturalistic Constitutive Phenomenology: how consciousness takes in the world of nature.

3. Existential Phenomenology: studies concrete human existence.

4. Generative Historicist Phenomenology: studies how meaning is generated in historical processes of collective experience over time.

5. Genetic Phenomenology: studies the genesis of meanings of things.

6. Hermeneutic Phenomenology: studies interpretive structures of experience.

7. Realistic Phenomenology: studies the structure of consciousness, assuming a real world.

Appendix B2

Don’t forget about the Good Professor, Dr. John Vervaeke! I watch all of his videos. His monthly Question and Answer session for April, 17, 2020 is particularly good because it succinctly contains much of the content of his lectures and discussions during the last few months.

Each video lecture gets clearer and more concise on the themes of idolatrous objectification, self -deception, consciousness, paradigm entropy, the Logos, phenomenological existentialism, Kairos, Wisdom, dialectical meaning epistemology, Being Modes, and Mythic-Poetic thinking. 

I go crazy with excitement whenever he mentions Paul Tillich because his systematic theology unifies all those philosophical methodologies that we have been studying. Dr. Vervaeke incorporates the methodologies of Dialectics (Heteronomy vs. Autonomy), Critical Science (Kantian Criticism), and phenomenology (Heidegger, Tillich) in his scientific studies that require clear expression and terms. The professor's working vocabulary reminds me of the careful use of language by Husserl in his 1913 book introducing phenomenology, Ideas (pdf).

Appendix B3

Dr. Cornel West On Being A Revolutionary Christian 
April 23, 2020

Appendix B4

The Philosopher’s Stone

Dr. John Vervaeke discusses Carl Jung with cognitive scientists and practicing psychotherapist Anderson Todd who also teaches courses at the University of Toronto.

Speaking of synchronicity….

Todd demonstrates the use of all three methodologies of dialectical reasoning, critical philosophy, and phenomenology while discussing Jung and other philosophers. In addition, he integrates historical empirical research of past proto-cognitive science and classic philosophy. In other words, Anderson Todd is way ahead working on rich philosophical grounds.

I first encountered this concept of synchronicity in Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s novel Crime and Punishment as ‘coincidence,’ and never seriously researched the concept further. Todd has an insightful and plausible interpretation of synchronicity. Synchronicity could also be understood as an experience of paradigmatic induction: the formation, or re-enforcing, or a weakening re-interpretation (thus inducted) of an ontological paradigm. Reason always demands coherence and completeness. A ‘coincidence’ is remembered and highly selective, but not meaningless. Coincidence can be a metaphor for transcendence. Is this a paradigmatic circularity any rational person can escape?

Also, I wondered why Isaac Newton spent many years experimenting with alchemy: he was not a gold speculator, but searching for something more valuable—the philosopher’s stone and the elixir of life. Rarely, is this side of Newton discussed. The alchemist is experimentally applying the categories of reason (Spirit) to matter, and attempting the reverse.

I am still holding on to the concept of telos, as “ethical telos,” or the “telos for the divine double,” seeking relevance realization, and transformative experience, which is compatible with historical telos, but not the Cold War trope of deterministic historical teleology.  

Appendix B5

The Book People

That ending scene from Fahrenheit 451 is so frightening, and so beautiful.

Eventually, I will link up each appendix to a specific topic in this strange collection of essays. And I wrote them: you can see all the spelling errors as evidence!

Contemporary books on phenomenology are expensive, and so most of my studies focus on primary sources, free online libraries, and my own small book collection. I have found YouTube’s online lecture series freely contributed by scholars, universities (St. John’s College Nottingham, NYC Union Theological Seminary, Goethe-Institute), and philosophers to be very good quality.

There are online lectures on Husserl, and Heidegger given by some of the scholar mentioned already in the other appendixes: Dr. John Veraeke, Dr. Gregory B. Sadler (I finally made it to Lordship and Bondage in Phenomenology of Spirit), Dr. Mark Thorsby (also goes to primary texts of Husserl and Heidegger with expert commentary), and Dr. Johannes A. Niederhauser.

Since contemporary books on Heidegger are so expensive, and I don’t read the German language, my knowledge of the later Heidegger is relatively weak. Dr. Johannes A. Niederhauser insightfully speaks in the language of the later Heidegger and is particularly helpful explaining his further philosophical development. Heidegger’s complete writings are massive in volume.

Lecturer Eric Sean Nelson, formerly at University of Massachusetts Lowell before locating to China, gives a lecture on the later Heidegger and his studies of non-Western religions. Paul Tillich also was doing the same type of exploration of other religions during the 1950s meeting with Daisetz Suzuki and Shin’ichi Hisamatsu to discuss Japanese Buddhism in New York and Kyoto, Japan at various times (Cambridge Companion to Paul Tillich, p. 254)(pdf).

The later Heidegger thought philosophy should be replaced by discourse. The Ancient Greeks had no word for language, but instead used the term "διάλογ-ος “ meaning “dialogue,” “conversation,” “debate,” or “argument.”

Philosopher Hannah Arendt was alive when phenomenology became a philosophical school of thought, and commented that it was “a time when talking became alive.” I think I know what she meant. 

This lecture by Eric S. Nelson ends at 54 minutes, but the question answer period is excellent also.

Husserl and Heidegger: Phenomenology, Eurocentrism, and Buddhism

Appendix B6

The Swimmer (1968)

 (Full movie)

"The smallest thing could give you away. A nervous tic, an unconscious look of anxiety, a habit of muttering to yourself -- anything that carried with it the suggestion of abnormality, of having something to hide. In any case, to wear an improper expression on your face (to look incredulous when a victory was announced, for example) was itself a punishable offence. There was even a word for it in Newspeak: facecrime, it was called."—George Orwell, Nineteen Eighty Four, Chap. 5

The moral of the film is complete self-deception destroys the concept of Truth itself.

This very literary story was first written by John Cheever as a short story appearing in the The New Yorker magazine in 1964.

“The Swimmer” is about self-deception in American society during the heyday of capitalist growth and the extreme optimism that characterized the American mind. This frame of mind, or the shape of consciousness, in this era of suburban expansion and post-War II domination of the world economy was the Neo-liberal free market ideology beginning to emerge as unquestioned conventional knowledge.

We can see today’s corporate culture, which I have experienced, as motivational positive thinking pop psychology to manipulate people into conformity and to enforce ideological harmony masked by a cheerful fake veneer. This unrealistic optimism is strongly pointed out in the film. However, this consciousness is complete self-deception and delusion. Corporate positive psychology instills a false enthusiasm and happy conformity that denies truth itself not unlike Chinese Maoist revolutionary joyful extremists. Notice the excessive smiling of the characters which we see in North Korea. Excessive smiling has even become a syndrome for some Japanese businessmen. Face crimes are serious in authoritarian environments. Ned Merrill, the movie’s protagonist, is a wealthy, middle-aged advertising man trying to “swim” to his home in suburban Connecticut by skipping to his wealthy neighbors’ swimming pools along the way while ignoring the truth exposing his delusions and unconscious lies with his socialite friends, and ultimately with the film viewers. Ned lives a life of complete contradiction. Listen carefully to the dialogue as the truth will sometimes slip out. 

The dead in the Underworld would drink from the mythological river Lethe in order to forget they were dead.

In ancient Greek, λήθη (Lethe) means “forgetfulness,” or “oblivion.” Those that drank from the river Lethe would become oblivious to their true state of Being. The letter ἀ is a negative prefix, or alpha privative. The Greek word for "Truth" is ἀληθείᾳ (alethea) meaning the negation of forgetting, or knowledge is remembrance (early Plato). 

Most people have heard of Hegel’s famous “Thesis, Antithesis, Synthesis” dialectical tirade of thought and historical change, but what is often not mentioned is that the suffering of self-delusion, or illusion of consciousness struggling with itself. This agony and spiritual internal violence is a central concept of Hegel’s historical account of the evolution of consciousness in time. Because of these internal contradictions Ned is unconsciously forced to seek unity in his fragmented life by swimming in each of his neighbor’s pools until reaching home. His journey isn’t a river as he images for rivers are a unified whole. The swimming pool is the human conception of nature’s Walden pond except that 99.99 percent of impurities are filtered away. Self-deception is easy to embrace because of our desires, but a difficult state of mind to escape. Both Ned, and the film viewers will reach what is known in Hegel’s thought as emerging self-consciousness at the end of Ned’s journey of untruth to truth.

Ned first appears in the film walking alone in a forest nearly naked, only wearing a bathing suit. Is he Adam exiting the Garden alone as post-lapsarian man?  Or is Ned the free Rousseauan “state of nature” good human being that transforms into an impostor by life’s shaping internal and external forces? This analysis could be developed further.

This is not a true story, but as myth it is the truest story.

I chose “The Swimmer” for review because of the current pandemic, but also this film as been interpreted by some as a critique of “postmodernism” which it clearly is not, but rather about the individualist social paradigm in American capitalist society.  Some of the postmodern interpretations make many of the same conceptual errors and fallacies identified in my last polemical essay titled, “The Ayn Randian Propagandistic Trope Concerning Postmodernism.”