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Thomas Cothran

Phenomenology Final Review

1. Phenomenology as Awareness

In the Preface to Phenomenology of Perception Maurice Merleau-Ponty attempts to

provide a description of phenomenology. He finds this necessary not only for readers

who may not be familiar with previous phenomenological works, but because the

nature of phenomenology is still an open question. This fact rightly raises questions

about the rigor of phenomenology, for Merleau-Ponty is writing about 50 years after

Edmund Husserl established phenomenology as a philosophical method. The first

sentence of the preface, "what is phenomenology", does not merely serve as an

introductory question that stands already answered, but as a problem to be worked

out. Is phenomenology a coherent method, or simply the transposition of philosophy

into subjective psychology? Or is phenomenology perhaps an awareness or

disposition that gives rise to various methods of phenomenology? To answer this

question, we will discuss some features of phenomenology.

Phenomenology "puts essences back into existence" (Phenomenology of Perception,

vii). The notion of a thing-in-itself apart from perceptive experience plays no role in

phenomenology. Phenomenology deals with what Kant termed the "phenomenal":

what appears in experience. The phenomenologist must set aside the question of

whether a substructure apart from perception exists, at least temporarily. What

appears is epistemologically prior, and so the phenomenon of appearance must first

be grasped before anything super-phenomenal could be seriously discussed.

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Phenomenology limits itself to the phenomenal, but this does not provide a sufficient

definition. All humans deal with what appears to them no matter what their

discipline, at least in their everyday lives. Phenomenology therefore approaches

phenomena in a distinctive way, it attempts to understand phenomena as

phenomena. An early distinction must be drawn between thinking about things and

engaging with them. Phenomenology gives a certain priority to engagement with

things, and this will come into greater focus later. However, phenomenology is a

philosophical enterprise, and thus by definition it engages in a thoughtful way. This

contradiction can be resolved into a provisional formulation of the project of

phenomenology: the attempt to think about what one engages with in a way proper

to that engagement. All abstract thinking can arise only on the basis of practical

engagement, but one must not assume from this that all kinds of thinking arises in

the same way. Different types of thinking arise in different ways, and in some cases

thinking can be at odds with engagement. One obvious example: radical skepticism.

One who professes the belief that nothing truly exists and that reality is merely an

illusion still professes this belief to others as if they existed and the engagement

were meaningful to him. And indeed his active engagement betrays at least a tacit

belief in the reality of himself, others, and his engagement with others. The skeptic

would object that his actions may betray that sort of belief, nevertheless there is no
proof of the reality of the world and therefore he is justified in finding reality suspect.

Phenomenology proceeds much differently than the skeptic. The skeptic assumes

there must be logical proof of the reality of things in order to accept them. He gives

logic the most basic role in determining the certainty of things. In this sense, he does

not differ too much from logical positivism. Bertland Russell, for example, stated that

one could not "prove" this world is real, but no countervailing reason stands out to

reject its reality. In a way, this misses the fundamental nature of reality. One does
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not exist in reality in a basically reflective way; in fact, the reflective or the logical

enterprise is only possible on the basis of a pre-logical existence. Put another way,

logic is not self-sufficient, it has prior dependencies that logic itself cannot examine.

Only two possibilities arise from this: either philosophy is groundless, or there is

another way of grounding philosophy which has a different sort of proof.

Phenomenology purports to be the latter way, and this is what Husserl meant by

phenomenology being the grounding for philosophy. By examining the pre-logical

being-in-the-world, phenomenology justifies logic and provides a more fundamental

way of doing philosophy.

Phenomenology is liberated from the constrictions a purely logical form of proof

labors under, but where does phenomenology begin? Logic directs itself to the

objective world, the world which for everyone is the same. A basic structure of the

objective world is logic. The entanglement between the two deserves more attention,

but here one must only note that if the phenomenologist is to examine the

foundations of logic, he is examining the foundation of the objective world.

Consequently, if logic is to be set aside in order to find what makes logic possible,

the objective world must be set aside at the same time. This "setting aside" Husserl

calls the "epoche". Husserl pointed out that in order to lay out the ground of the
objective world, he had to take it out of play through suspending it without making

any judgments as to its truth or falsity. The starting point for phenomenology must

then be the subject. This is no arbitrary method; a man must start with the himself

because he can do nothing else. When I think about philosophy, I do this always as

myself, whether I recognize it or not; I cannot do philosophy as another would.

Phenomenology requires a presuppositionless analysis of the subject, as far as

possible. Therefore, the "subject" is not automatically considered as an isolated

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substance, but as the subject already is. Merleau-Ponty proposes that careful

descriptive analysis reveals the subject as already in a world. The subject, by

definition, experiences the world; and phenomenology intends to explicate this basic

interaction as it actually happens.

A concrete example which distinguishes phenemenology's subjectivity from

positivistic objectivity will be useful. Merleau-Ponty points out that phenomenology at

its early stages is descriptive. The scientific way of conceiving of myself involves my

chemical makeup, my evolutionary history, and so on. However, this characterization

is foreign to me as I experience myself, and indeed it is questionable whether

anyone can completely conceive of themselves in such a way. Merleau-Ponty points

out:

"I cannot shut myself up within the realm of science. All my knowledge of the

world, even my scientific knowledge, is gained from my own particular point of

view, or from some experience of the world without which the symbols of

science would be meaningless. The whole universe of science is built upon the

universe as directly experienced, and if we want to subject science to rigorous

scrutiny and arrive at a precise assessment of its meaning and scope, we must
begin by awakening the basic experience of the world of which science is the

second-order expression." (Phenomenology of Perception, ix)

But what is this basic experience of the world that must be awoken? First we should

ask: who has this basic experience? We have already said the subject experiences,

but this alone is a tautology: the subject by definition experiences. Who is the

subject? The idealists believed the subject stands detached from the world. "They
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presented consciousness, the absolute certainty of my existence for myself, as the

condition of there being anything at all..." The idealists identify the pure subject as

the condition of possibility of the world, and in doing this offer not an account, but a

"reconstruction" (Phenomenology of Perception, x). The detached subject who brings

the world into being through an act of synthesis arises from analytical reflection

which "installs itself in an impregnable subjectivity, untouched by being and time."

(Phenomenology of Perception, xi) Merleu-Ponty maintains that the kind of reflective

experience which presupposes a detached subject depends upon a prior unreflective

experience. Reality does not wait for an act of judgment on the part of a subject to

constitute itself; rather, judgment works on phenomena which have already arrived.

The error of the idealists: in detaching the subject from the world the idealists

introduce something alien to experience which violates the nature of experience. The

relation of subject to world is not determined through an act of the intellect; the

subject is already in a world. The very notion of a "detached subject" is possible only

because the subject is already in a world.

Insofar as I am a consciousness, that is, insofar as something has meaning for

me, I am neither here nor there, neither Peter nor Paul; I am in no way

distinguishable from an 'other' consciousness, since we are immediately in

touch with the world and since the world is, by definition, unique, being the

system in which all truths cohere. (Phenomenology of Perception, xiii)

The idealist conception conceals the phenomenal relation between subject and world

by foisting philosophical presuppositions upon that relation and passing over its

original nature. Other pernicious effects follow as well: the detached subject has no

individuality, for he exists apart from a world and thus has no distinguishing
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characteristics. The detached subject exists apart from accidental properties such as

birthplace and parentage, his historical situation and his attempts to define himself.

Merleu-Ponty points out that for this reason, idealism knows nothing of the problem

of the "Other", because there can exist no other. One detached subject cannot be

distinguished from another, and all individuality is lost.

From this problem arises the question: in our usual way of experiencing the world,

can we encounter anything like this detached subject? Indeed, if experience required

this detached subject for there to be a sensible world, wouldn't this detached subject

be accessible in some sense by experience? To put it more precisely, what evidence

shows that I experience as a detached subject? These questions cannot be answered

abstractly, we must find -- phenomenologically -- whether I am a detached subject

or a concrete historical subject.

In order for there to be any real validity to inter-personal relationships I could not be

a detached subject indistinguishable from the other. By definition, a relationship

requires distinct persons; relationships require an "other." On this count, the weight

of experience rules against a detached subject.

However, one might inquire deeper and ask if the very nature of subjective

experience rules out a detached subject. My experience is always limited to my

perspective, and I can never completely take over the perspective of another even in

the most pure empathy. I still experience others with reference to my own being, as

Heidegger pointed out. Empathy, which takes over the perspective of another always

takes it over partially, and does not liberate me from my own perspective. Therefore,

when I understand and act for others, I am able to do this through a constituent of

my being: my potentiality to be-with-others. I am never able to escape myself, my

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unique perspective or my being. The idealist hypothesis of a detached subject freed

from thrown historicity, not limited to an individual perspective, is not consistent with

the very experience it seeks to explain.

Merleu-Ponty contends that Husserl's transcendental reduction does not separate the

transcendental ego from the world; Husserl recognized that the subject and the

world are interwoven. His transcendental reduction differs from Kant's in the sense

that the world is suspended not because is the world and the subject exist

indepentanly, but precisely because they are interwoven. Husserl recognized that this

close relation of subject and world must be unconcealed, and that by taking the

world "out of play" this relation might come more easily to our attention. The

transcendental ego stands above the world not in any real sense, but in a very

artificial sense, for it is still tied to the world. Understanding the transcendental ego

in this way absolves Husserl of any apparent affinities with the idealist conception of

the subject. Thus, the important lesson Husserl's reduction teaches is "the

impossibility of a complete reduction." (Phenomenology of Perception, xv)

It is evident then that the subject is always in a world, that the subject is always

thrown into history. The above consideration of the nature of the subject is therefore
incomplete without a discussion of the "world." The phenomenal world must be

distinguished from the physical universe. The universe as a totality of matter is

possible only because of a world, but is not to be identified with that world. The

phenomenal world only exists in relation to a subject (as it is phenomenal), and so

any world which one considers as existing whether or not a subject experiences it is

not the world of experience. Indeed, it is only in terms of the world of experience

that any super-subjective world could be conceived. Phenomenology calls relation

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between the subject and world "intentional".

Merleu-Ponty distinguishes phenomenological intentionality from Kantian

intentionality. To be sure, all consciousness is consciousness of..., as Kant

recognized. However Kant proposed that consciousness actively gathers up and

shapes sense-perceptions, whereas phenomenology finds the unity of the intentional

relationship already there. One finds the world already constituted with regard to

one's being; no effort is required to form it. Consciousness comes upon the world

already made, yet a world that exists in relation to the perceiving subject.

"It is a question of recognizing consciousness as a project of the world, meant

for a world which it neither embraces nor possesses, but towards which it is

perpetually directed--and the world as this pre-objective individual whose

imperious unity decrees what knowledge shall take as its goal. This is why

Husserl distinguishes between intentionality of act, which is that of our

judgments and of those occasions where we voluntarily take up a position--the

only intentionality discussed in Critique of Pure Reason--and operative

intentionality, or that which produces the natural and anti-predicative unity of

the world and our life, being apparent in our desires, our evaluations and in the
landscape we see... (Phenomenology of Perception, xx)

Thus the constitution of the world is not based in the abstract or intellectual aspect

of the perceiving subject, but in a more fundamental constitutive of the subject's

being (here termed operative intentionality). This field becomes clear only in the

course of phenomenological investigations.

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Here we must return to the original question, "what is phenomenology?" We have

discussed its field, the phenomenal. We have discussed the methodological

independence from positive logic. We have discussed its primary problems of

subject, others, and world. But in defining what these mean, are we guilty of the

same sort of metaphysical dogmatism? The subject, after all, does not present itself

to experience as an object in the world does; neither does the "other", nor even the

"world"? Phenomenology isn't pure empiricism then, but it doesn't seek to go beyond

experience to refer to "higher" beings as does metaphysics. Phenomenology

investigates what makes experience possible, always from the limited perspective of

a concrete subject. As such, phenomenology is not as much a method as it is a kind

of awareness. The phenomenologist attempts to open himself to phenomena in a

way possible for him as a limited perspective. He seeks to become directly aware of

the foundations of experience and world, not to deduce it logically (which would be

an indirect awareness). The particular method differs for different thinkers, in their

aims, and the level of analysis they attempt.

2. Phenomenology and Science

Phenomenological insights can be used to refute "scientism", the notion that

scientific facts form the most fundamental reality. Scientism is pervasive even in

those who ostensibly reject it. For moderns, it is difficult to conceive of ourselves as

anything much distinct from a higher order animal on a small planet which orbits a

small sun located in a backwater galaxy in a massive universe. We are equally

minute in regard to time; humans have only existed for a few hundred thousand

years, only a blink of an eye in terms of the age of the universe. In this context,

humanity must be seen as quite small. The notion of a special immortal soul does

not pose a significant threat to this worldview; it is not an alternative in itself, its
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content is in negation, and offers nothing positive. The entire universe is seen as a

conglomeration of mass and energy, atoms and quarks, different forms of substance

with no innate significance. If this truly is the most fundamental reality, Albert

Camus' absurdism seems like the only possibility.

Before we acquiesce to the metaphysical dominion of science, perhaps we should

first ask how such a view is possible. The scientific universe requires a scientific

view; science is a way of looking at the world. If, then, the scientific universe is the

most fundamental way of looking at the world, it stands to reason that the scientific

way of looking at the world is the most basic. Because science requires a scientific

view of things, it needs someone who is capable of having a view in general;

therefore science requires a subject. This insight means that the physico-chemical

universe depends on a particular kind of view from a particular kind of being. The

scientific world is only possible on the basis of the subjective world, as a form of the

subjective world. Before exploring these ramifications, let's back up for a moment

and consider what we mean by science.

Heidegger begins is essay Modern Science, Metaphysics, and Mathematics by considering

the usual account of the difference between modern and ancient science. He
identifies three common elements.

First there is the assertion that "modern science start from facts while the medieval

started from general speculative propositions and concepts." (Modern Science,

Metaphysics, and Mathematics, 271) This is an oversimplification: the scholastics dealt

with facts, and modern scientist deal with concepts. Galileo and Newton started their

systems from general propositions that were not at all obvious facts. Indeed,
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Heidegger asserts that the greatness of the scientists during the seventeenth century

was possible because they were consciously engaging in philosophy. (Modern Science,

Metaphysics, and Mathematics, 272) Newton and Galileo did not purport to be dealing

with bare facts; they conceived of their scientific work as under the philosophical and

theological fields.

Secondly there is the assertion that modern science is experimental while ancient

science eschews empirical proof. This is a reformulation of the first objection, as the
idea is that general principles need no proof, while "facts" do. This not only

contradicts the historical data, but the nature of experiential learning. The ancients

and medieval tested experience and falsified theories based on the evidence of the

senses, for this sort of technique is inherent to using tools. It is true that ancient

science did not have the same sort of formal focus on experimentation, but this

difference belies a more fundamental conceptual difference about the nature of the

world.

Third, modern critics claim that modern science calculates and measure, while

ancient science does not. Heidegger states that this too is misguided historically.

Both engaged in calculation and measurement, but these were of a different kind in

ancient days than in modern days.

The real difference is to be found in "what rules and determines the basic movement

of science itself." (Modern Science, Metaphysics, and Mathematics, 273) Both ancient

and modern science are ruled by mathematics, but mathematics of a different sort.

Heidegger warns the mathematical is not to be identified by numerical calculation.

Numbers are mathematical, but mathematics is not limited to numbers. Numbers are
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the most obvious form of mathematics; when we say there are three pencils on the

table, the number three is not actually there. We know in advance that things will

show up numerically. "The mathemata are the things insofar as we take cognizance of

them a what we know them to be in advance, the body as the bodily, the plant-like

of the plant, the animal-like of the animal, the thingness of the thing, and so on."

Thus learning is never the intake of purely new information, it is delimited according

to certain mathematical features.

Any form of inquiry such as science has certain mathematical features, certain a

prioris in terms of which the answers will show up. Heidegger locates the

fundamental difference in the differing accounts of motion. For Aristotle, the

definition of nature is motion and rest. By motion he meant change, which includes

movement, but is not limited to it. All bodies engage in motion according to their

nature. Fire moves up because that is its proper place, and for the same reason

earth moves down. The earth forms the stratum against which motion is possible.

For Newton, on the other hand, the first law of motion applies to all bodies

uniformly. Bodies do not move according to their natures, but according to the

nature of spatial location and force. The internal impetus for motion, Aristotle's
natural principle, ceased to be used to explain things. Instead space became a

uniform field much like the Cartesian co-ordinates in which any body may exist in

any spatial location. The notion of proper place disappeared. One cannot appeal to

experience to justify Newton's first law:

How about this law? It speaks of a body, corpus quod a viribus impressis non

cogitur, a body which is left to itself. Where do we find it? There is no such
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body. There is also no experiment which could ever bring such a body to direct

perception. But modern science, in contrast to the mere dialectical, poetic

conception of medieval Scholasticism and science, is supposed to be based on

experience. Instead, it has such a law at its apex. This law speaks of a thing

that does not exist. It demands a fundamental representation of things that

contradict the ordinary. (Modern Science, Metaphysics, and Mathematics, 289)

Thus the insights of Newtonian physics, despite their utility, do not provide an

accurate view of reality if they strip bodies of qualities such as place. All things we

perceive show up initially with a particular significance for us, and it takes a very

artificial attitude to see things that as substances devoid of significance. Science is a

particular mode of objective presence; that is, science is a particular way of looking

at the world objectively. It is only one of many such ways (most philosophy falls into

this category as well). Having briefly discussed the shortcomings of modern science

as an accurate way of looking at the world, we will discuss the way such a view can

arise.

To put the question as concretely as possible: if we do not experience anything like a

scientific universe, what type of everyday experience do we have that gives rise to
this scientific viewpoint? Even the scientist must adopt a peculiar attitude to things to

be scientific. When he gets up and eats his breakfast, he does not treat his cereal as

bits of matter without inherent significance. Without reflecting at all, he simply eats

it. Even when the scientist enters the lab, he engages with in the lab in a

pre-reflective way according to their use. When using the microscope, if all goes well,

he observes not the microscopes but the microbes which the microscope reveals.

Only when the microscope does not work properly does it stand out starkly as a
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thing to be examined without significance. And only because it before had a

significance was it able to do so. This "standing out" which comes about the

breakdown of ones purposeful engagement with the world Heidegger calls "objective

presence."

Being-in-the-world, as taking care of things, is taken in by the world which it

takes care of. In order for knowing to be possible as determining by

observation what is objectively present, there must first be a deficiency of

having to do with the world and taking care of it. In refraining from all

production, manipulation, and so on, taking care of things places itself in the

only mode of being-in which is left over, in the mode of simply lingering with...

On the basis of this kind of being toward the world which lets us encounter

beings within the world solely in their mere outward appearance (eidos), and as a

mode of this kind of being, looking explicitly at something thus encountered is

possible. (Being and Time, 57)

Thus the scientific universe is possible only on the basis of a practical , purposeful

universe which related back to Dasein. The notion of matter without significance

stretched out over space without place is possible only on the ground of a basic
purposeful engagement with things. The physico-chemical world is not to be

confuted with the basic world in which we live, significance and meaning inhere in

the world-structure and make objective views such as science possible. This is the

basic truth of the world: we and the world are interwoven in such a way that neither

us nor the world is possible without one another, and that things in the world -- with

or without significance -- becomes possible only in the interaction between subject

and world.
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Bibliography:

Martin Heidegger, Being and Time, trans. Joan Stambaugh. State University of New York Press: (c)

1953.

Martin Heidegger, "Modern Science, Metaphysics, and Mathematics" in Basic Writings: Revised and

Expanded Edition. HarperSanFransisco: (c) 1993.

Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Phenomenology of Perception, trans. Colon Smith. Routledge Classics: (c)

1958