Japanese and Western Phenomenology
Chapters (28)
This essay is an attempt to elucidate a dynamic-dialectical connection between Husserl’s time-analysis and the phenomenological method. In the first section, a close relationship between his early time-analyses and the first establishment of the method will be discussed and the paradoxical fact that the developed method cannot reach time-consciousness revealed by the early time-analyses will be clarified in section II. The subsequent processes of time-analyses and method will be briefly sketched in section III, and, finally in section IV, an open dynamic-dialectical way of thinking, which results from the gaps between the analysis and the method and which may dominate Husserl’s entire phenomenology as well as his time-analyses, will be attained.
Unity-in-perception is due to the passive synthesis that is prior to any kind of active and conscious achievement. It is an “ur-unity,” an “ur-synthesis.” The relation of ur-unity to aspectslphases is structural. The passive synthesis is a kind of fusing of various, manifold phases and aspects. This fusing is the pre-conscious continuity which is the transition. This transition is the fusion of both aspects, i.e., the synthesis of coincidence which goes through aspects. This going-through, or running-through of streaming is the presubjective time-stream.
This essay opposes the naturalistic point of view, e.g., Quine’s, with regard to meaning in general. To show my own point of view, I examine Husserl’s transcendentalism as revealed in his theory of meaning. Questions about objectivity and phenomenological methodology are mentioned, but in subsidiary concern. Quine’s denial of meaning may be shown to undermine the basis of his claim of a firm core of empricism. Whenever he talks about “perceptual similarity” he can not help relying upon the subjective standpoint of unifying meaning that he rejects.
Two kinds of subjectivity, pure ego and noesis, which are contained in the theory of intentionality of Husserl’s Ideas, develop into the paradox of human subjectivity between transcendental ego and psychological ego in Crisis. Husserl tried to solve this paradox by way of self-objectification of the former ego into the latter. This essay seeks a more complete solution.
This chapter investigates the thematics of the “I” and various modes of reflection in accord with the phenomenological methodology of Husserl. Through a phenomenological critique of reflection the phenomenal conditions of the possibility of transcendental phenomenology are uncovered. In this disscussion of phenomenological cognition, two leading questions are specifically thematic: One, how do we elucidate through reflection the consitution of the “individuality” of the “I” who performs the transcendental epoché? The other concerns the essential structure of phenomenological reflection as it relates phenomenally to the individual and ultimately the transcendental ego.
Husserl’s phenomenology demands that it be the ultimately founded science based on the radical self-responsibility of doing philosophy. It means for phenomenology to be the critique of transcendental-phenomenlogical cognition and the critique of this critique. But the critique in the second sense remained latent in Husserl. Fink tried to deepen his reflection on the meaning of the being of doing philosophy and on the self-criticism of phenomenology. The question turned out for him to radicalize the dualism of transcendental life. For Husserl transcendental analysis was explication of the implications of the double temporalization.
Arguing that phenomenological analysis of the world, both in treatments Husserl himself published and in subsequent studies about it, have only been on a preliminary level, the article first explains the systematic exigency for a more self-critical second look It then lays out one such critical second-look at and reinterpretation of the world as was in fact done in Husserl’s own last years by Eugen Fink The centerpiece of this reinterpretation is the displacement of a subject-object orientation to one that views the structure of horizonality in its own terms, rather than as a function of thematic act-intentionality. What results is a more radical understanding both of the world and of the “subject” conscious of it, thus providing a more critically legitimate base for establishing the proper sense of the transcendental.
The incompatibility of humanism and transcendental phenomenology seems to be a given if one accepts the views that phenomenology is only a descriptive epistemology with no aspirations towards an ethics. In this essay I endeavor to show that an epistemological description of the foundation for the possibility of objectivity requires a humanism. I use analyses of Jean-Paul Sartre and Edmund Husserl to develop an account of objectivity and responsibility that I believe is faithful to both their writings and the spirit of their theories. This analysis develops the need for recognizing the level of transcendental intersubjectivity as founding the possibility and necessity of a community of individuals each respecting the other’s perspectives, choice and responsibilities.
The trans-temporal, noumenal character of being of the self cannot be preserved in so far as it is essentially time. From the viewpoint of phenomenology, which takes consciousness for its proper field of philosophical investigation, the self cannot finally be anything but time, it seems to me. However, do matters really stand so? The self is not a substance categorically; nevertheless, we cannot help thinking that it exists par excellence, because all things—qua factual appearances—exist empirically only in relation to it.
In addressing the question at issue, I consider (1) Scheler’s distinction between Kant’s “ethics of duty” and his own “ethics of insight”; (2) Kant’s weakened conceptions of moral virtue and vice, which are roughly equivalent to Aristotle’s encratês and akratês, disqualify his ethic as a classical ethic of virtue; (3) Scheler’s phenomenological articulation of moral virtue as a moral disposition (Gesinnung); and (4) whether Scheler develops his theory so as to provide anything like a view of “man-as-he-could-be-if-he-realized-his-telos,” which Alasdair Maclntyre finds in classical virtue-ethics. I conclude that Scheler’s ethic has some of the basic features of classical ethics of virtue, but also some of the basic difficulties of “post-aretaic” ethics.
The image I have of the other is of a being that can determine my being. He reminds me of my facticity and being-with and brings me to self-consciousness in the world. He cannot be reduced to a product of my ego.
In this essay, I argue that Paul Ricoeur’s theories of mimesis and metaphor provide important resources with which one can talk sensibly about the truth of a dramatic work These theories give one grounds for claiming that the truth of a dramatic work is positively correlated with its importance. Conversely, the trivial work is one which lacks truth.
This chapter explores the phenomenological appropriation of the feminine which it characterizes in terms of the “tragic.” This theme is traced by means of a meandering of thoughts that find their way from Derrida’s reading of “woman” in Nietzsche’s text, back into Nietzsche and finally, further back into what is identified, with the assistance of Karl Kerénhyi’s philological work, as the tragic voice of the feminine. This voice, manifest in the tragic heroine Medea, announces the withdrawal of transcending desire and with it the death of the souL The issue of the degree to which Derrida, Nietzsche and phenomenology in general account for the conditions of this withdrawal and death comprises the focus of the discussion.
In the late 1890’s, there was a famous controvery between Hilbert and Frege concerning the “foundations of geometry,” especially the status and meaning of non-Euclidean geometry. Husserl was a colleague of Hibert in Göttigen and an opponent of Frege and left a short manuscript that included an excerpt of their correspondence and critical comments on it. Husserl clearly understood the point of their crucial differences and sympathized with Hilbert’s axiomatic method. But he could not rest content with Hilbert’s formalistic position later and moved to the transcendental grounding of the sciences.
Although there is a spectrum of human-technology relations amenable to phenomenological analysis, there is a particular set of such relations that are of interest to a phenomenological hermeneutic. This is the set which I shall examine on this occasion with particular reference to cross-cultural examples.
Edmund Husserl’s later phenomenology focuses on how meaning is manifested (endowed and fulfilled) semiotically. J. N. Mohanty’s philosophy of communicatioon draws a complementary relation between Husserl’s semiotic phenomenology and the Indian Nyaya model of communication. This essay shows how Mohanty’s critical assessment of these orientations is pertinent for the interpretation of verbal and nonverbal messages and codes among people from diverse cultures. Extending Mohanty’s suggestions I argue that the Husserlian transcendent, though useful as a common ground of provisional understanding, should be made problematic in communication where persons’ expression and perception are challanged by cultural differences.
This article comprises the first attempt to investigate “international image” phenomenologically. First a review and critique of current social scientific measurement of public opinion is demonstrated to be an essentially different phenomenon from “international image,” despite the popular confusion of the two. Then using Husserl’s analysis of “certitude,” international image is demonstrated to be essentially an expression of the natural attitude towards the “actual.” The logocentric aspect of television is explored as a major contributor to the blind faith in international images. Doxic sedimentation consisting in large part of a world consituted of video images is addressed as the source of international images and also of perspectival nationalism.
Husserlian phenomenology traces experience to its roots in the living present. The latter is constituted byu two mutually exclusive and mutually referring structures: permanence and flux. This essay extricates these structures and their correlations at the level of their mutual constitution as they appear in Zen and its practice. Within the latter context, these structures open what for Zen is emptiness, pointing to a level of experience for whose designation we lack words. For phenomenology this level is prior to active or passive constitution and thematization.
We intend to disclose the original intention of Husserl’s phenomenology as the radicalizing of the act of “seeing.” Why Husserl failed to further radicalize this philosophical knowing is precisely because this radicalization requires to elucidate the nature of and go beyond reflection as philosophical cognition. This reflection is none but the self introspection presupposing the traditional subject-object dichotomy. To overcome limits of the subjectivistic notion of reflection we must achieve phenomenological epoché on the theoretical domain and even on the practical sphere. A parallel is discovered between this radicalized phenomenological approach and that of Zen philosophy for our future philosophical method.
In Asia, illusion is tolerated and sometimes praised as a component of experience and reality. In contrast, the Western idealist tradition has attempted to expunge illusion through thinking in accordance with first principles. However, with Kant’s Critical philosophy, we now know that transcendental illusion is a necessary feature of experience generated by principled thinking itself With thinkers such as Nietzsche and Heidegger, tranditional ideals such as clarity and light are suffused with the indigo tones of minesis and epoche. Only by embracing the transitory shadow-world of time can one come to a decision (Lichtung) about the origin and authority of metaphysical principles.
Aspects of the epistemological, methodological, and ontological differences between naturalism, transcendentalism, causal explanation, and eidetic description are touched upon more conclusively than it might seem.
There is a noteworthy parallelism between phenomenology and cognitive psychology in respect of historical origins and in respect of theoretical results. Both opposed behaviouristic methodology in experimental psychology and focused upon investigating human cognitive processes from the mentalistic point of view. Husserl also consistently opposed reductionism and causal thinking in his analyses of consciousness. Phenomenology should contribute to the development of cognitive psychology
Most of the time phenomenologists have not understood what might be basically convergent with their own inspiration in contemporary psychology.
Merleau-Ponty
The role of the phenomenologist in social science is critical to the understanding of the reflexive production of knowledge. When one explores the phenomenologist’s role in social science, one realizes that social science is thoroughly social and cannot be compared or analogued as another instance of the hermeneutics of texts. This position is totally inadequate and phenomenological social science needs a thorough understand of social texts in order to understand its critics as well as its interpretive foundations and methodological shortcomings.
After a brief retrospective on the attitudes of phenomenological sociologists toward “the Transcendental,” the author examines the problem of intersubjectivity in the light of Kinesthesis theory. His contemplations on the structure of definitions and the endless backward retracing reflection clarify that there is no absolute bottom or instance of reduction (epoché). For sociologists to handle multiple social and cultural realities experienced by human beings, there must be multidimensional epochés according to their own ways of experiencing. Examples are given from Schuzean Theory of Multiple Reality, Ichikawa’s Theory of Mi (body), Sensitivity Training, Yamagishikai’s Special Training Meeting, and Zen Satori experience.
Critics of postmodernism claim that this philosophy culminates in the destruction of culture and order, due to the epistemology that is advanced. The argument in this paper is that such a charge is inaccurate. Therefore, the image of knowledge and order promulgated by postmodems is discussed. Additionally, roles are illustrated to be compatible with postmodernism, as long as the traditional version of role theory is significantly altered. The social construction of order can be captured by roles, if these constructs are not portrayed in structural terms.
In the first part of this essay I question the standard distinction between the speculative and the analytic philosophy of history, pointing to certain substantive philosophical views about history that are tacitly assumed by analytic theories of historical knowledge. I then subject the latter to the same sort of critique that has been directed at epistemology generally by the anti-foundationalists. Instead of abondoning the philosophy of history altogether I propose an alternative philosophical reflection which uses the concept of narrative to link historical knowledge, historical existence and the lifeworld.
There exist remarkable parralelisms between the phenomenological time structure of associative remembering and that of narratives proposed by A. C. Danto as explaining our experience of history. Both show themselves as selective, segmentary, multi-dimensional time continua, and we can speak of “backward causality” in both cases. Consequently, contrary to the view that Husserl’s phenomenology lacks the true concept of history, it is maintained that the phenomenological origin of historical consciousness must be discovered in the domain of remembering not in that of innate time-consciousness. The time structure of associative remembering may thus be regarded as a schematic function that provides a structure for time as it is lived.
In this essay I show that Dilthey does not merely supplement the natural sciences as he knew them with a theory of the human sciences. He also criticizes the natural sciences as part of a larger attack on Western metaphysics and the epistemological conception of science it has fostered. Both the natural and human sciences are rooted in a pre-scientific knowledge (Wissen) of life which is then transformed into mediated forms of conceptual knowledge (Erkenntnis). Whereas the natural sciences increasingly abstract from the reflexive awareness involved in Wissen, the human sciences should not. Instead, the human sciences must make what is immediately reflexive available for reflection.
This chapter is an exposition of the relationship between philosophy and architecture in the context of phenomenology. From this relationship, the study moves to discuss what phenomenology is in terms of its concept, scope, purpose, and area of concern. The inquiry begins with a survey and review concerning the status and position of phenomenology in the context of architectural studies and theories. This includes elucidating concepts, domains, conditions, and possibilities of phenomenology that matter for the theory of the built environment. The core of the discussion in this chapter is to unveil and endorse the possible contribution of phenomenology to architectural studies. Phenomenological key concepts and positions will be profoundly divulged and expounded. Exploring the possibility of seeing things becomes crucial in this chapter, especially in dealing with the question of being and the ontological difference between being and beings. This includes the deliberation on the difference between perception and observation, as well as that between actuality and reality. In short, this chapter is about the prospect of phenomenology in architectural scholarship.KeywordsPhenomenological wayPhenomenological issuePhenomenological possibilityPhenomenological exposition
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