What is Husserlian Phenomenology?

Discussion in 'Religion & Philosophy' started by Kyklos, Jul 22, 2018.

  1. Kyklos

    Kyklos Well-Known Member Donor

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    Index of # Posts and Topic:
    - 1, Introduction to Phenomenology
    - 2, Phenomenological Tools
    - 5, Dasein Analytic and Critique of Culture
    - 7, 8 Neo-Kantians and Eidetic Analysis
    - 9, Mystic A priori
    - 10, 11, 12, Phenomenological Reduction of the Aesthetic Life
    - 15, 16, 17, The Lifeworld
    - 23, Husserl: Empiricism, Psychologism, Circularity, and Reification
    - 24, 25, Absolute Consciousness, Sartre
    -26, 27, Theological Phenomenology, Paul Tillich

    We now know of the Theological Circle, the Logical Tautology Circle, and now the Phenomenological Circle. I think I see a pattern here! All deductive non-contradictory axiomatic ideological systems are tautological. The essentialist/non-essentialist debate concerning the ultimate foundation of logical necessary is a debate about of the limits of the categories of finitude. Wittgenstein’s famous advice here is, “7. Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent.”

    In addition, the Kantian block has always stood as the limit of Reason long before phenomenology, or Wittgenstein appeared in history. For Kant, the understanding supplies categorical forms (Space and Time) that structure our experience of the sensible world, the thing-as-it-appears, to which human knowledge is limited, while the intelligible thing-in-itself (or noumenal) world is strictly unknowable (epistemologically blocked) to us. Remember Heidegger’s other word for appearance, “Erscheinung,” which means the way in which the thing appears, but is also a mark, or sign of what a thing is. These problems of logical circularity are a mark, or symptom of our finitude running up against the infinite.

    Theological Phenomenology:
    • “The denial of reason in the classical sense is antihuman because it is antidivine.” --Paul Tillich*
    • · “...every epistemology contains an implicit ontology.”- Paul Tillich
    • ·“Every creative philosopher is a hidden theologian (sometimes even a declared theologian).” – Paul Tillich
    • “A system is a totality made up of consistent, but not of deduced, assertions.” – Paul Tillich
    *(Quotes found in Paul Tillich, Systematic Theology Vol. I, Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1951, 1957 & 1963.).

    Theologian Paul Tillich idealistically explains that, “Phenomenology is a way of pointing to phenomena as they “give themselves,” without the interference of negative or positive prejudices and explanations.” (Paul Tillich, Systematic Theology Vol. I, Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1951, 1957 & 1963, p. 106. Here after referred to as “ST1.”).

    However, unlike the positivistic empiricist that creates distance between the object and himself, the theological phenomenologist must have religious intuition that close the distance between himself and the object in focus—this is because the “object” really is not an object at all, but conscious human beings.
    Tillich perceptively noted that, “Cognitive distance is the presupposition of cognitive union.” (ST1, p. 94.). Yet, he also warned, “The detachment required in honest theological work can destroy the necessary involvement of faith. (ST1, p. 26.). Tillich sees other problems with the phenomenological method. How is it to deal with conflicting interpretations of phenomena? How is the criterion for ‘choosing criterion’ even possible without being circular?
    The only way for Tillich to answer this question about the choice of a phenomenological example is,...only if a critical element is introduced into “pure” phenomenology...This is “critical phenomenology,” uniting an intuitive-descriptive element with an existential-critical element. (ST1, p.107.). The biblical theologian’s exegesis is primarily “pneumatic” (Spiritual) or, what we would today call, “existential.”(ST1, p.35.).

    There is also the problem of epistemological certainty. Certainty is easier in the technical sciences, but theological phenomenology is interested in the existential, or spiritual realm. In this realm our knowledge is incomplete,“...the infinite horizons of thinking cannot supply the basis for any concrete decision with certainty. Except in the technical realm where an existential decision is not involved, one must make decisions on the basis of limited or distorted or incomplete insights.” (ST1, p.35.). Tillich believes all empirical theology will fail because 1.) The object of theology (our ultimate concern as human beings) is not an object of empirical-positivistic science. 2. Empirical theology cannot be tested by scientific standards of verification, but only by embracing a lifetime of participation in a concrete religious reality.

    Tillich is speaking of a different kind of knowledge other than technical knowledge, means-ends knowledge, or controlling knowledge. He is instead speaking of, “ knowledge [which] is more than a fulfilling: it also transforms and heals: this would be impossible if the knowing subject were only a mirror of the object, remaining in unconquered distance from it.” (ST1, p. 95.). The problem with controlling knowledge is that it,“ ‘objectifies’ not only logically (which is unavoidable) but also ontologically and ethically.” (ST1, p. 97.).

    Since 1800 there have been extremist efforts to reduce all of philosophy to scientific logic. Ludwig Wittgenstein’s first philosophical work, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus (1921) (free pdf) was written on the assumption that natural language contained within it a hidden calculus. Romanticism, philosophies of life, and existentialism were antithetical schools of thought that attempted to resist this militant movement for total domination by technical reason, or controlling knowledge.

    Modern science and philosophy use “true” and “false” as “qualities of judgments” and if judgments fail or are successful in describing reality they are assigned values of truth or falsity. “But reality in itself is what it is, and it can neither be true nor false.” (ST1, p. 101.).

    That reality can be neither true, nor false (this is a function of reason and language), is exactly what Philosopher-Logician, Ludwig Wittgenstein said of the world and ethical values. Wittgenstein was the very first Logical Positivist in whose name the Vienna School of Logical Positivism was founded by the leading scientists of his era.
    Tillich often uses the term “paradoxical” which means “against the opinion,” (During 1530–40 A.D., formed from the Greek word, paradoxon, from paradoxos, meaning conflicting with expectation; para-, beyond; see para + doxa, opinion) namely, the opinion of finite reason according to Tillich. However, there is refuge from the tyrannical rule of instrumental reason.
     
    Last edited: Aug 5, 2018
  2. Kyklos

    Kyklos Well-Known Member Donor

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    Index of # Posts and Topic:
    - 1, Introduction to Phenomenology
    - 2, Phenomenological Tools
    - 5, Dasein Analytic and Critique of Culture
    - 7, 8 Neo-Kantians and Eidetic Analysis
    - 9, Mystic A priori
    - 10, 11, 12, Phenomenological Reduction of the Aesthetic Life
    - 15, 16, 17, The Lifeworld
    - 23, Husserl: Empiricism, Psychologism, Circularity, and Reification
    - 24, 25, Absolute Consciousness, Sartre
    -26, 27, Theological Phenomenology, Paul Tillich

    The Methodology of Theological Phenomenology:

    • “Life processes have the character of totality, spontaneity, and individuality. Experiments presuppose isolation, regularity, and generality.”(ST1, p. 103.).
    • “Reason as the structure of mind and reality is actual in the processes of being, existence, and life. Being is finite, existence is self-contradictory, and life is ambiguous.” (ST1, p. 103.).
    The problem of instrumental reason is even more profound in justifying methodology. In the modern age epistemology has divided itself into two types of knowledge: controlling knowledge that is sure, but insignificant and receiving knowledge that is significant but not certain. Receiving knowledge is, “...’non-systematic’[which] does not mean inconsistent; it only means non-deductive. And life is non-deductive in all its creativity and eventfulness.” (Paul Tillich, Systematic Theology Vol. II, Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1951, 1957 & 1963, p. 5. Here after referred to as “ST2.”).

    Ideologically, Reason has been reduced to the capacity for “reasoning,” especially, to calculation. Contradictorily, even means-ends “reasoning” has presuppositions of the nature of things that are not themselves established by technical reason. Tillich ironically noted that, “Karl Marx called every theory which is not based on the will to transform reality an “ideology,” that is, an attempt to preserve existing evils by a theoretical construction which justifies them.”(ST1, p. 76.).

    This dethronement of Reason has an intellectual history that can be traced back to Kant at least. After Hegel’s enormous philosophical legacy and his all encompassing System faded into history, Reason become only to be known as scientific calculation.
    “Ontological reason,” Tillich tells us, “can be defined as the structure of the mind which enables it to grasp and to shape reality.” (ST1, p. 75.).

    Methodology” is an ancient Greek word: méthodos systematic course, equivalent to met- meta- + hodós way, road.
    With the dominance of logical positivism, operant conditioning behaviorist psychology, along with developments in technology, even some philosophers will not acknowledge anything that does not meet the standards of technical reason so questions of existential concerns (Spirituality) are ruled out from contemplation a priori. They are victims of the Materialist tautology: “Everything is material; therefore, everything is material.”

    The theological phenomenologist is emerged in the Life-process and she brings her knowledge to the field of research in the form of intuition just as other researchers in other disciplines do.
    How are we going to formulate any useful, or successful criterion of any experimentation without begging the question of what is useful, or successful? This is not an unusual dilemma faced by hierarchical axiomatic epistemological systems and exact methodologies.
     
    Last edited by a moderator: Aug 7, 2018
  3. Kyklos

    Kyklos Well-Known Member Donor

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    I think this is the best performance of "Joga" by Bjork (Vespertine Live at Royal Opera House – 2002). This is a very uplifting song. And yet, there is hint of sadness. And she beautifully calls spirituality a “state of emergency.”

    "Joga"
    All these accidents that happen
    Follow the dots
    Coincidence makes sense only with you
    You don't have to speak
    I feel

    Emotional landscapes
    They puzzle me
    The riddle gets solved
    And you push me up to
    This state of emergency

    How beautiful to be!
    State of emergency
    Is where I want to be.

    All that no one sees you see
    What's inside of me
    Every nerve that hurts you heal
    Deep inside of me
    You don't have to speak
    I feel

    Emotional landscapes
    They puzzle me
    Confuse
    Can the riddle get solved?
    And you push me up to this...

    State of emergency
    How beautiful to be!
    State of emergency
    Is where I want to be

     
  4. Kyklos

    Kyklos Well-Known Member Donor

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    Index of # Posts and Topic:
    - 1, Introduction to Phenomenology
    - 2, Phenomenological Tools
    - 5, Dasein Analytic and Critique of Culture
    - 7, 8 Neo-Kantians and Eidetic Analysis
    - 9, Mystic A priori
    - 10, 11, 12, Phenomenological Reduction of the Aesthetic Life
    - 15, 16, 17, The Lifeworld
    - 23, Husserl: Empiricism, Psychologism, Circularity, and Reification
    - 24, 25, Absolute Consciousness, Sartre
    -26, 27, Theological Phenomenology, Paul Tillich
    - 29, 30, Ideological Paradigms

    Ideological Paradigms

    Pure description is not possible. To observe is to create. There is no immaculate perception. Our first experience of the world is our very own ideas. One necessity for phenomenological description, according to Heidegger, is distinguishing between Schein (Appearing), meaning, semblance, “outward or surface appearance” and Erscheinung (Appearance) meaning the way in which the thing appears, but is also a mark, or sign of what a thing is. This is only one of at least three critical elements of phenomenological description -- the second being the question of how to select a phenomenological example for analysis. Tillich said,...only if a critical element is introduced into “pure” phenomenology...This is “critical phenomenology,” uniting an intuitive-descriptive element with an existential-critical element. (ST1, p.107.).
    Critical phenomenology is unavoidable.

    “Lens” is a Metaphor, but “Paradigm” is an Explanation.

    My favorite metaphor for a priori categories is the viewing lens. The lens metaphor explains everything: a limited, but filtered way of looking at phenomena. Another lens could bring to light other characteristics not seen in the previous lens. But the lens metaphor does not really explain anything. *The concept of “paradigm” not only has accidental benefits as a learning tool, but paradigms can actually explain how ideology influences our perception.

    The Neo-Kantian understanding of absolute a priori categories, and relative a priori epistemological categories is important since paradigms function in the same way as a priori categories. How paradigms function like Neo-Kantian relative a priori categories will be shown point by point.

    The absolute category is the original Kantian concept used to describe how consciousness shapes, or organizes sense data from perception to create experience. Consciousness use the transcendental ideals (meaning a priori) of space and time to comprehend the world as experience. In Kant’s “Critique of Pure Reason,” space and time are not named categories, but rather “pure a priori forms of intuition” meaning any object is known in advance of experience, and not because of experience. We cannot even think of an object not in time, or not in space because they are universal forms of sensibility which are the necessary conditions for the possibility of experience. But what the understanding cannot intuit a priori, it judges and synthesizes by logical types and constructs an structure of unifying logical concepts. Kant called these "Analytic of Concepts" which are made up of Judgments and Categories.

    The Kantian school understands these categories as “absolute,” or the necessary conditions for the possible of experience. The Neo-Kantians hold that these necessary a priori concepts are functionally indistinguishable from a priori "relative" categories. Relative categories are unnecessary for experience, but they change the way perception is organized. Relative categories are not just formal static logical concepts, but are changing socio-historical-anthropological concepts by which cultures are organized by constructing a meaningful Lifeworld.

    Conceptualizations can become "symbolized" to represent the relationship between concept and the particular in experience. Symbolization connects a perceptual sign with meaning. So uniting a sign and its meaning allows for distinctions in thought that are not found in fact: for example, thinking can distinguish the color and extension of an object, but the separation in not possible in fact.

    The three elements necessary to critical phenomenological description is to 1.) identify relative a priori categories; 2.) distinguishing semblence and sign; and 3.) selecting a phenomenon for analysis.

    Dr. Thomas Kuhn’s book, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, (The University of Chicago Press, 1962.)(Referred to as “SSR.”), explores the evolution and revolutions of scientific paradigms and provides us with examples of how paradigms organize sense experience. Dr. Kuhn develops the term “paradigm” extensively in his work, and is worth a word study.
    The concept of paradigm is an important concept for demonstrating the principles that meaning is not external to consciousness, but is instead inter-subjective. We examined Immanuel’s Kant’s transcendental analysis of consciousness, or the Subject. Kant’s meaning of “transcendental” is knowledge that is “a priori” to experience and is the necessary logical conditions for the possibility of experience.

    The Functions of Paradigms

    Dr. Thomas Kuhn does not provide a formal definition of paradigms; the concept is given definition by historical examples. He employs the concept of “paradigm” much like the term “hypothesis” is used in the physical sciences. A hypothesis postulates objective, or independently external entities that account for our experience of the world. Atoms, electrons, substance, and the classic laws of physics are hypotheses that give form and significance to phenomena. Kuhn names those commonly shared hypotheses “paradigms.” (SSR, page 10-11).
    The scope of a paradigm can be a single proposition, theory, hypotheses, conceptual model, a picture, or axiomatic postulates—all these terms refer to relative ideological categories which organize and give significance to the otherwise chaotic world of sense impressions. Kuhn explored the characteristics of “paradigms” in his selected historical examples of scientific paradigmatic revolutions: “In its established usage, a paradigm is a accepted model, or pattern, and that aspect of its meaning has enabled me, lacking a better word, to appropriate ‘paradigm here.” (SSR, page 23.).

    Optics

    One of Kuhn’s historical examples of how paradigms function in science and sometime conflict with one another can be found in the history of physical optics. There were primarily two theories, or “paradigms” which seems to account for the phenomenon of light. The way physical sciences are taught often leaves out the history of explanations of light.
    However, a closer look showed that light, or the photon did not act like a material corpuscle. In fact, light spreads out in all directions like a wave, but also light behaves like a particle moving in only one direction.

    From the optics research example, two characteristics of a paradigm can be stated. First, paradigms are models which attempt to explain a range of phenomena. As in the case of light, a sense impression is related to a frame of reference, i.e., light behaves as a wave, to give such sense impressions order and context. Paradigms explain things, or events in experience. Secondly, although paradigms can explain experience, other independently formulated paradigms can account coherently for the same range of experience. More than one paradigm can explain the same set of experiences, even when such paradigms may be incompatible with one another.

    Electricity
    Dr. Kuhn describes the variety of theories of electricity in the seventh and eighteenth century. One group thought of electricity as behaving like a fluid. Other scientists classified electricity according to primary a secondary properties such as attractive and repulsive effects of differently charged bodies. Both schools of thought continued their research of electricity, but with differing paradigms, or models of how electricity behaved.
    Each school of scientists approached the same range of phenomena with a, “body of intertwined theoretical and methodological” beliefs. And each group described and interpreted the same range of phenomena with differing results. For the one group held that electricity behaved as a fluid.

    (continue...)
     
    Last edited: Aug 10, 2018
  5. Kyklos

    Kyklos Well-Known Member Donor

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    # Posts and Topic:
    - 1, Introduction to Phenomenology
    - 2, Phenomenological Tools
    - 5, Dasein Analytic and Critique of Culture
    - 7, 8 Neo-Kantians and Eidetic Analysis
    - 9, Mystic A priori
    - 10, 11, 12, Phenomenological Reduction of the Aesthetic Life
    - 15, 16, 17, The Lifeworld
    - 23, Husserl: Empiricism, Psychologism, Circularity, and Reification
    - 24, 25, Absolute Consciousness, Sartre
    -26, 27, Theological Phenomenology, Paul Tillich
    - 29, 30, Ideological Paradigms


    Electricity Paradigm continued....
    One group of scientists held that electricity behaved as a fluid.
    The fluid paradigm interpreted the behavior of electricity to allow the development of the capacitor. The fluid paradigm determined what phenomena were relevant to research, and so research was more than merely collecting facts, but organizing facts into a certain pattern which fit the fluid paradigm. This organizing, or structuring is basically what paradigms do.

    From these examples we can list additional characteristics of paradigms.

    1.) Paradigms are in principle not factual, but are interpretations of facts. A range of phenomena will appear differently according to the paradigm through which the world is viewed.

    2.) Paradigms set up, or organize phenomena according to a pattern unique to itself and supply a context to an otherwise chaotic mass of facts. Paradigms form patterns within experience.

    3.) Paradigms are attention directing by emphasizing a certain range, or domain of phenomena while other phenomena are viewed as less relevant, or irrelevant all together.

    Oxygen

    Next, Kuhn directs our attention to three scientists in the 1770s who isolated the gas oxygen, but were not able to give it proper significance within the scientific theories of chemistry in their era (SSR, p. 53-56). J. Priestly isolated and studied the gas in 1774 -1775 only to described it as “dephlogisticared air.” The theory of thermodynamics during Priestly’s time postulated a hypothetical substance (pholgiston: Ancient Greek φλογιστόν phlŏgistón for "burning up") thought to be present in all things and released as flames during the process of combustion. This theory accounted for the phenomenon of mass loss when something such as wood was consumed by fire. However, this explanation could not account for the increase in weight by certain metals after exposure to heat. Only later did this phenomenon have significance for the scientist and rejected the pholgistic theory.

    Lavoisier, the third scientist, questioned the pholgistic theory in 1775. Kuhn points out that Lavoisier’s rejection of this older theory of thermodynamics enabled Lavoisier to recognize its importance. Priestly never really understood the meaning of finding this gas, oxygen. Kuhn writes,
    We can summarize some important characteristics of paradigms in this example:

    1.) What is considered a “fact” is relative to the paradigm from which one operates. A “fact” is paradigmatically defined. Any phenomenon that does not fit coherently in a paradigm is simply overlooked, or not given relevant importance. Paradigms determine facticity. We have already discussed this extensively in other terminology.

    2.) Paradigms are applied a priori to facts by interpreting and structuring information.

    3.) And this is the most important characteristic of paradigms: paradigms are themselves non-factual. The “logical status” of paradigms seems to be non-factual. This non-factual aspect of paradigms makes them enigmatic when a scientist must choose between competing paradigms. The epistemological question of paradigm choice cannot be resolved by appealing to experience alone.
    Any debate about which paradigm should be incorporated into one’s thinking cannot be settled by appealing to facts alone since what is considered a “fact” depend upon the paradigm itself. Paradigms make available a range of “perceptual possibilities” (SSR, p. 120). By the use of paradigms there is a “transformation in the range of vision” in which new objects appear and new phenomena are discovered. Kuhn wrote, “ What a man sees depends both upon what he looks at and also upon what his previous visual-conceptual experiences has taught him to see.” (SSR, p. 113).

    Summary of Paradigm Characteristics:

    ·Universal: Paradigms attempt to form a transcendental (a prior) universal whole to give meaning to the world of singular sensible impressions. Paradigms relate particulars to a universal frame of reference so that a particular sensible impression (using our five senses) is related to a universal frame of reference to give order, unity, structure, and context to experience.

    ·Non-Empirical: Since singular sensible impressions are understood through a conceptual principle, paradigms define the factual by providing a medium, or concept through which experiential datum can be interpreted as fact. A paradigm relates facts to concepts to form a unified picture of the whole experience.

    ·Interpretative: Sensible information is not given without first being filtered through a medium, or concept. This information is organized or structured according to some point of reference. Sensory information is modified by exclusion of experience and inclusion of unconscious meanings. Henri Bergson wrote,
    ·Totalities: Ernst Cassirer speaks of this same process as the mind, “weaving the particulars into a system.” Paradigms attempts to form this totality which we call the “world,” or better yet Husserl’s “Lifeworld.” Cassirer described this activity of consciousness as,
    ·Categorical: Paradigms reduces the world of objects and events to generalized notions of which any individual event, or object can belong. Categories are classes, or types, through which experience is organized and known. “Category” is understood here in a Kantian sense: categories are the fundamental a priori forms through which the phenomenal world is perceived. (The Encyclopedia of Philosophy, 1967 ed., “Categories,” by M. Thompson.).

    ·Ontological: Paradigms are concerned only with the particular object, or entity. Intellectual reflection is directed toward the factors which give the world of particular experience meaning, and context. Reflection in this case seeks to examine those categorical factors which make the empirical possible—to examine those, “invisible threats of thought” that unites the whole. Paradigms provides a foundation for empirical concreteness by going beyond the facts to the “factors which make facts recognizable.” (One-Dimensional Man, Herbert Marcuse,1964, p. 106.).

    ·Paradigms are Circular.

    -------------------------------------------------------------
    *Thinking with Epistemological Paradigms

    A paradigm is a good organizational tool to learn philosophical systems (Hegel, Kant, Kierkegaard) faster, and make impromptu contrasts/comparisons on the fly between different philosophies. Paradigms distances you from philosophies much like the “epoche” was meant to. Thinking in terms of paradigms will also help with your writing style by providing a coherent narrative voice.

    Most importantly, use paradigms as a heuristic device to understand the elements and relational dynamics of a selected topic. There is no need to proclaim eternal faith in paradigms--just use them as an intellectual tool. Also, the Hegelian dialectical method of viewing historical elements as thesis, antithesis, and synthesis is also a useful analytical tool that can be used purely heuristically to construct a powerful philosophical analysis.

    Lastly, understanding and using paradigmatic thinking is also helpful for understanding Martin Heidegger’s theology and philosophy.
     
  6. Kyklos

    Kyklos Well-Known Member Donor

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    # Posts and Topic:
    - 1, Introduction to Phenomenology
    - 2, Phenomenological Tools
    - 5, Dasein Analytic and Critique of Culture
    - 7, 8 Neo-Kantians and Eidetic Analysis
    - 9, Mystic A priori
    - 10, 11, 12, Phenomenological Reduction of the Aesthetic Life
    - 15, 16, 17, The Lifeworld
    - 23, Husserl: Empiricism, Psychologism, Circularity, and Reification
    - 24, 25, Absolute Consciousness, Sartre
    -26, 27, Theological Phenomenology, Paul Tillich
    - 29, 30, Ideological Paradigms
    - 31, Martin Heidegger: The Question of Being.

    After WWII, Heidegger shifted his philosophical lexicon from the phenomenological analysis of Dasein (Human openness) in his work, Being and Time (German: Sein und Zeit, 1927) to “being itself.” Heidegger announced in 1953 that Being and Time would not be completed, but the same themes continued to be discussed in his work using a different vocabulary and style. This change from the extremely systematic and structured writing of Being and Time to the less systematic and more diverse literary writing began about 1931 to 1940 and is called, “the turn” (die Kehre) in Heidegger’s thought. Some say that Heidegger’s style became more obscure, but one could interpret his later writing as illuminations of the abstract phenomenological method and ideas in Being and Time, and a demonstration of a new way of thinking not dominated by an ideological obsession for control. And most importantly, Heidegger was aware of the circularity of ideological systems and is able to express his philosophy using different lexicons, but continue to use the same ontological divisions he defined in the past, “All proof is always only a subsequent undertaking on the basis of presuppositions. Anything can be proved, depending on what presuppositions are made.”( Poetry, Language, Thought, Martin Heidegger, translated by Albert Hofstadter ,1971, p. 222. Harper and Row).

    A new lexicon gives Heidegger a language cleaner of past meanings and now redefines, sometimes just by emphasis, pre-Socratic Greek concepts. There are also the peculiar technical terms constructed out of the German language and look odd in English like “to-be-in-being” or Sein; and “that-which-is-in-being” or das Seiende (entities). Heidegger's analysis is of the word "being" (ὄν,) Greek for 'being' as opposed to (ὄντα) that means "things that are."

    I think another reason for this shift in Heidegger’s style and vocabulary is also partly from the rise of fascism in Germany which took complete political control in 1933 after which Heidegger was under closer scrutiny of the Nazis at The University of Freiburg. Heidegger was writing in a dangerous historical period and place. Heidegger eventually became under attack by “Ernst Krieck, semi-official Nazi philosopher. For some time he [Heidegger] was under the surveillance of the Gestapo. His final humiliation came in 1944, when he was declared the most “expendable” member of the faculty and sent to the Rhine to dig trenches. Following Germany’s defeat in the Second World War, Heidegger was accused of Nazi sympathies. He was forbidden to teach and in 1946 was dismissed from his chair of philosophy. The ban was lifted in 1949.(Martin Heidegger).”
    Gesamtausgabe, the English translations of the complete edition of Heidegger’s written works, still isn’t finished and is estimated to be one hundred volumes. However, we can touch on some key philosophical themes, especially those developed after 1930.

    I want to write a brief secondary analysis of the early Heidegger before 1931, which is his phenomenological stage when he published, Being and Time (1927). Then I want to review the later Heidegger after 1927 which is best summarized in the book,Introduction to Metaphysics, by Martin Heidegger (published in Germany in 1953) of a revised lecture course he gave in the summer of 1935 at the University of Freiburg. This division will not hold fast when explaining some of the issues in Being and Time, since the later Heidegger gives a clearer and more detailed exposition on certain topics.
     
  7. Kyklos

    Kyklos Well-Known Member Donor

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    # Posts and Topic:
    - 1, Introduction to Phenomenology
    - 2, Phenomenological Tools
    - 5, Dasein Analytic and Critique of Culture
    - 7, 8 Neo-Kantians and Eidetic Analysis
    - 9, Mystic A priori
    - 10, 11, 12, Phenomenological Reduction of the Aesthetic Life
    - 15, 16, 17, The Lifeworld
    - 23, Husserl: Empiricism, Psychologism, Circularity, and Reification
    - 24, 25, Absolute Consciousness, Sartre
    -26, 27, Theological Phenomenology, Paul Tillich
    - 29, 30, Ideological Paradigms
    - 31, 32, Martin Heidegger: The Question of Being.

    The Question of Being

    “...there is a law of logic that says: the more comprehensive a concept is--and what could be more comprehensive that the concept of "being"?--the more indeterminate and empty is its content.”- Martin Heidegger

    Human beings can ask the question of the meaning of Being which in turn implies that Being is presented to us. We can answer the question of Being by examining the form of Being that we have the most direct access—“the being which we ourselves are (Being and Time, p. 7).” Da-sein, it is the site, “Da”, for the disclosure of being, “Sein.” Dasein is that being in which any being is constituted. Further, the question of Dasein’s being directs him [Heidegger] to the problem of being in general. The “universal problem of being... “refers to that which constitutes and to that which is constituted.” (IEP Heidegger). Heidegger avoids using the term “consciousness” in his Dasein Analytic.

    Heidegger begins his examination of the question of Being using a revised version of Husserl’s phenomenology. Heidegger was a student of Husserl and took certain concepts of phenomenology and applied them to his interest in the concept of “to be.” Heidegger applied the phenomenological descriptive method which describes and uncovers the essential structure of any examined phenomena.

    The debate between Husserl's phenomenology, his student Heidegger, and the existentialists, is this issue of consciousness. I don’t think Husserl and Heidegger disagree on the structure of consciousness. Heidegger tried to avoid discussing consciousness directly since Husserl was already working on consciousness. Heidegger’s focus was on “Being” and rejected being categorized as an existentialist. That is formally correct. However, Heidegger deals with the Being in human existence and wants to address human being without abstracting only her reasoning ability and reinforce logical prejudice as Western metaphysics has done. Those formal definitions for “appearance” and “mere appearance” go back to Kant and each philosopher uses them a little differently. Here is a good overview of the topic of phenomena. (Looking away: Phenomenality and Dissatisfaction, Kant to Adorno, by Rei Terada, page 19.)

    The phenomenological method seeks to dispense with pre-constituted meanings and reveal the genesis of all meaning structures. The phenomenological conceptual tools provided by Husserl are the Epoché (ἐποχή, epokhē ), and is understood as “the act of suspending judgment about the natural world that precedes phenomenological analysis.” Husserl used the word “intuition” to mean what is immediately present, comprehensible to sense perception, our memories, and our imaginations. Whenever we perceive the world, our first experience is our own ideas. Husserlian phenomenology sought to systematize essences, logical forms, and explicate the intersubjective totality of meanings that members of a culture share. The other tool of analysis Husserl provides is the method of Eidetic reduction to vary the possibilities of appearance of any kind to derive essences and therefore their clear meanings. Eidetic is from Greek, εἶδος, (eidos) that which is seen, form, shape, figure.

    A particular form of Being is “ontic” and these are the everyday objects of experience and scientific investigation. However, any object can be questioned as to its meaning as a form of Being. This aspect of beings is “ontological.” Dasein has the ontic characteristic of being ontological—this means, it is a historical fact of Human beings that they are able to question the meaning of their own existence. An inquiry into entities is “ontic,” but an investigation of Being is “ontological.”
    Heidegger doesn’t just want to catalogue meanings and clarify essences as Husserl sought, but use the phenomenological method to discover the necessary underlying structure of all appearances and work out philosophically the question of the meaning of Being. Stated another way, “What is that ‘gives’ or ‘dispenses’ being within the range of human experience?” Not all phenomena are revealed to intuition and a method is needed to investigate the “regions of ontic phenomena” and discover the ontological principles that the philosopher reveals. Phenomenology is now transformed into ontology. Heidegger disagrees with Husserl that pure description of phenomena is possible because we necessarily interpret experience. Also, Husserl’s phenomenological Epoche isn’t appropriate, or even possible, since Dasein doesn’t merely believe in a world from some abstract theoretical point in thought as a knowing transcendental ego, but actually lives in a mode of existence he calls Being-in-the-World. Heidegger understands participation as essential in struggling with the question of Being, but the epoche establishes disinterested theoretical distance instead. The Subject is more than a theoretical knower and cannot be abstracted, as we have seen with Kant and Descartes, from the world of objects, or the non-self, without severe distortion. Ontic sciences necessarily distort Being. Western metaphysics is not truly ontological because the question of being is ignored and substituted instead with an ontico-theological ontology.
     
    Last edited: Aug 17, 2018
  8. Kyklos

    Kyklos Well-Known Member Donor

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    # Posts and Topic:
    - 1, Introduction to Phenomenology
    - 2, Phenomenological Tools
    - 5, Dasein Analytic and Critique of Culture
    - 7, 8 Neo-Kantians and Eidetic Analysis
    - 9, Mystic A priori
    - 10, 11, 12, Phenomenological Reduction of the Aesthetic Life
    - 15, 16, 17, The Lifeworld
    - 23, Husserl: Empiricism, Psychologism, Circularity, and Reification
    - 24, 25, Absolute Consciousness, Sartre
    -26, 27, Theological Phenomenology, Paul Tillich
    - 29, 30, Ideological Paradigms
    - 31, 32, 33, Martin Heidegger: The Question of Being.

    Reason Eclipsed

    For Heidegger the epoche is an abstraction missing the entire meaning of being-in-the-world for the two senses Heidegger uses the term Being within Dasein and Being itself.
    Heidegger tracks back into history of the early Greek philosopher's sense-of-truth concepts and showing that there are many other ontological categories in Greek thought and language that today's epistemology does not recognize. For example, in our Western system of logic and semantics there is the concept of "bivalence," or the principle that all meaningful sentences are determined to be either true or false. And there are other rules like the law of non-contradiction: A is not non-A. We can only understand meaning under these two truth conditions.

    So Heidegger is trying find in history the origin of this switch in the concepts--or paradigm shift--in the meaning of "being" and "truth."
    In ancient Greeks mythology all those humans that crossed the mythical river Λήθη [ˈlɛːtʰɛː] ) entered the Underworld and lost all memory of their former lives. Lethe means "oblivion", "forgetfulness," or "concealment". This is the river the dead would drink to forget that they were dead. They would be oblivious to their true state of Being. The letter is a negative prefix, or alpha privative. The Greek word for "Truth" is ἀληθείᾳ (alētheia) or the negation of forgetting--remembering the fundamental question of Being and awakening.

    The “modern falsification” is to identify thinking (νοέω) with beings—a logical prejudice. The objectification of Reason itself is the most tragic. Heidegger’s diagnosis of modern industrial society: “The onset of nihilism casts the question of Being into oblivion by objectifying Being as a thing, an object of knowledge as the mere accumulation of information. Such objective information about Being then promises an accumulation and deployment of power for the sake of dominion over nature, both human and otherwise.” (The Scattered Logos: Metaphysics and the Logical Prejudice, by Daniel Dahlstrom.).

    Heidegger goes into a discussion about the Ancient Greek language of Heraclitus and selects some key terms that represent key concepts of the Early Greeks and how those very same concepts changed to mean something else—something that has been forgotten.

    Why is language the starting point? Human Language is part of the Logos that collects and brings together all beings. I am thinking here of how a paradigm collects particulars and unifies them into a world (κόσμος, or cosmos). Heidegger wrote that “language is the house of Being.” Language is meaning itself and empowers us to ask what it means, “to be,” but language is objectifying and has been itself objectified. Language is viewed by modern philosophy as an object itself—a tool for calculation—another object of scientific investigation. Language is connected intimately to our understanding of Being. Words change our experience of the world by focusing on objects, things, and entities.

    The Frankfurt School Philosopher Max Horkheimer wrote Eclipse of Reason (1947) in which he discussed how the Nazis were able to appear as reasonable because of the dominance of instrumental reason. “...the sole criterion of instrumental reason is its operational value or purposefulness, and with this, the idea of truth becomes contingent on mere subjective preference.”( Wikipedia, Eclipse of Reason, by Horkheimer.).
     
    Last edited: Aug 20, 2018
  9. Kyklos

    Kyklos Well-Known Member Donor

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    # Posts and Topic:
    - 1, Introduction to Phenomenology
    - 2, Phenomenological Tools
    - 5, Dasein Analytic and Critique of Culture
    - 7, 8 Neo-Kantians and Eidetic Analysis
    - 9, Mystic A priori
    - 10, 11, 12, Phenomenological Reduction of the Aesthetic Life
    - 15, 16, 17, The Lifeworld
    - 23, Husserl: Empiricism, Psychologism, Circularity, and Reification
    - 24, 25, Absolute Consciousness, Sartre
    -26, 27, Theological Phenomenology, Paul Tillich
    - 29, 30, Ideological Paradigms
    - 31, 32, 33, 34, Martin Heidegger: The Question of Being.


    Dasein Analytic


    Dasein “being-there” is human reality. Heidegger examines the ontological structure of human existence. “Existentiel” (existenziel) refers to ontic objects. However, “Existential” (existenzial) refers exclusively to human existence. So the Dasein analytic is also an “existential analytic.” “Existence” (Existenz) is a particular kind of Being of Dasein. Dasein always “relates itself” and has a “capacity for self-relationship.” and it is able to call itself into question—to examine its own existence. Dasein is not a substance and possesses no objective qualities, but rather is “possibility” that “projects itself,” and “choosing itself.”

    Heidegger categorizes these three essential aspects of Dasein as the following: facticity, existentiality, and forfeiture (Verfallen). (“Martin Heidegger,” Encyclopedia of Philosophy, 1972 ed., Macmillan, vol. 3 & 4, p. 459.).

    Facticity of Dasein (Being-in-the-world) means being thrown (Geworfen) into the world. This “world” is where all concern is grounded so it is not merely space, or an aggregate of all things. Other existentials are “Das Vorhandensein” (impersonal objects just being present), and with “Das Zuhandensein” (objects ‘to hand’ such as tools) one can see the beginnings of a theoretical socio-economic foundation. Dasein could not exist without the “not-self,” or the world, but there is interdependence between the two in that Dasein gives meaning to the world.

    Dasein’s second aspect is existentiality. Heidegger is speaking of the authentic Dasein in Part I of “Being and Time,” that seeks to actualize its full possibilities by always becoming and fulfilling projects (Entwerf) meaningful to itself. Dasein is characterized as “mineness” along with others, “Das Mitsein” (“Being-with” other Daseins). Also, Dasein’s interaction with others shows “care,” or “concern,” (Fursorge) for other human beings—the beginnings of an ethical theory. “Care” is the last concept of the Dasein analysis.

    As a point of similarity and interest, theologian Paul Tillich followed Heidegger’s writings closely and adopts “concern” as religious concern. He defined “ultimate concern,” as “The religious concern is ultimate; it excludes all other concerns from ultimate significance; it makes them preliminary...The word “concern points to the existential” character of religious experience (Paul Tillich, Systematic Theology Vol. I, Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1951, 1957 & 1963, p. 11-12.).

    The third aspect of Dasein is “Forfeiture” meaning the question of Being is forgotten because our focus is on everyday entities and cares.
    The Fallen (Verfallen)

    What does it mean to be “Fallen,” and how is it different from “unfallen?” The same question can be asked about authentic Dasein and inauthentic Dasein--or making any kind of valuation at all for that matter. This question of valuations can be clarified by understanding the difference between “essence” and “existence.” This is an old saw of philosophy, but this distinction can bring to light how value judgments are made. Although the word “essence” my not be used explicitly in making value judgments, this concept can have various meanings which are often confused. Paul Tillich was a great philosophy teacher and has clearly explained relationship between essence and existence with Martin Heidegger’s phenomenological theology in mind.
    These various meanings make discussion about ethics difficult, as they are sometimes confused one with another as in the case of a logically derived universal essence--or undistorted true essence:
    Essence as the logically derived universal of Dasein appears in time as flawed and standing in judgment by the law which judges by the standard of Dasein’s undistorted essence.
    I think of the “law stands against all things” as the Old Testament law, but Tillich means here all laws.

    The word “existence” can also have various meanings, but Heidegger is concerned with the existing Dasein that is less than its essential nature.
    We can view Part I of Being and Time as Heidegger applying a phenomenological reduction of the undistorted essential being of Dasein. In Part II of Being and Time the same phenomenological analysis is applied to the finite existence of Dasein as distorted being—as das Man, or Fallen (Verfallen).

    Dasein can fall into the existential state of “das Man,” at any time. The inauthentic “das Man,” has no true self, but rather is just the average person of the crowd: anonymous, impersonal, and dehumanized. The unauthentic Dasein rejects freedom and responsibility to escape the burden of being a true self and instead seeks to mimic the stable identity of the world of objects. However, Dasein still has an apprehension of “being there” (Befindlichkeit) which is a basic mood (Stimmung) existential. The sense of “being there” is also the sense of “thrownness,” and “abandonment” (Geworfenheit). “Das Man” is very aware of its own finite being and eventual death. However, this same sense of “thrownness” offers the possibility of “comprehension” (Verstehen) of the purpose of its own existence. “Das Man” has the choice of either “comprehending” its own self-relations and possible projections to become an authentic free being, or make itself into a dehumanized object in a world of objects. “Das Man” chooses non-identity in a world of things, entities, and objects; however, the feeling of abandonment persists. The “fallen” Dasein staunches this anxiety by engaging in meaningless “chatter,”(Gerede), or “curiosity,” (Neugier) jumping from one topic to another always seeking what is new, but only superficially. Another attempted antidote of the “fallenness,” existential is “ambiguity” (Zweideutigkeit) which is the inability to distinguish between authentic and unauthentic, between the genuine and fake. This could be a social group that only talks in hearsay, but is perceived as knowledge while they live in a peer pressure bubble as their reality. Another existential is “dread” (Angst). Fear, or phobias have an object (insects, heights, ect.), but dread has no object--just a general mood of being-in-the-world. Again, “das Man” can choose its real self in a world that it feels homeless.

    Authentic Dasein

    “Conscience” is always speaking to Dasein to choose the real self; conscience is Dasein calling to itself to remain authentic. Although conscience is part of the structure of Dasein, the call to authenticity is often attributed to some entity outside, or beyond itself. Nevertheless, the voice of conscience brings Dasein to face its own possible existence in the mood of dread to accept its state of abandonment. These three existentials compose the existential of care. Dasein comprehends itself as possibility and accepts its “guilt” of being finite and will face eventual certain death (non-being). Within the thrownness of existence, Dasein projects itself into the future in dynamic realization of its own possibilities known to itself and accepts the responsibility that existential freedom brings...while doing all this with Care.
     
    Last edited: Aug 22, 2018
  10. Kyklos

    Kyklos Well-Known Member Donor

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    # Posts and Topic:
    - 1, Introduction to Phenomenology
    - 2, Phenomenological Tools
    - 5, Dasein Analytic and Critique of Culture
    - 7, 8 Neo-Kantians and Eidetic Analysis
    - 9, Mystic A priori
    - 10, 11, 12, Phenomenological Reduction of the Aesthetic Life
    - 15, 16, 17, The Lifeworld
    - 23, Husserl: Empiricism, Psychologism, Circularity, and Reification
    - 24, 25, Absolute Consciousness, Sartre
    -26, 27, Theological Phenomenology, Paul Tillich
    - 29, 30, Ideological Paradigms
    - 31, 32, 33, 34, Martin Heidegger: The Question of Being.

    - 35, Heidegger: The Logos


    The Logos

    “The wise is one only. It is willing and unwilling to be called by the name Zeus.”-Heraclitus of Ephesus, 535-c. 475 BCE”

    “Every essential form of spiritual life is marked by ambiguity.”- Heidegger

    As mentioned earlier, there are two distinct periods in Heidegger’s philosophical work. After WWII, he shifted his philosophical lexicon from the phenomenological analysis of Dasein (Human openness) in his work, Being and Time (German: Sein und Zeit, 1927) to “being itself.” Heidegger announced in 1953 that Being and Time would not be completed, but the same themes continued to be discussed in his work using a different vocabulary and style. This change from the extremely systematic and logically structured writing of Being and Time to the less systematic and more diverse literary writing began about 1931 to 1940 and is called, “the turn” (die Kehre) in Heidegger’s thought. Some say that Heidegger’s style became more obscure, but one could interpret his later writing as illuminations of the abstract phenomenological method and ideas in Being and Time, and a demonstration of a new way of thinking not dominated by an ideological obsession for control.

    After about 1931 Heidegger moved on to another style of writing that still dealt with the same questions as in phenomenological stage of Being and Time (1927). The later Heidegger is best summarized by his book,” Introduction to Metaphysics,” (published in Germany in 1953) of a revised lecture course he gave in the summer of 1935 at the University of Freiburg.

    This later Heidegger begins with the same question of Being (“Why is there something rather than nothing?”), but goes much further in examining the linguistic structure of the question itself; the purpose of the question of Being; and in great detail traces the etymology of words since “...for over a thousand years the works of the Greek and Latin grammarians served as school books in the Western world.” (An Introduction to Metaphysics, by M. Heidegger, Doubleday/Anchor 1961, p. 48.). Why is he focusing on language at such a microscopic level?

    Heidegger is trying to explain why the question of Being is so difficult to understand--or even attempt to answer. Heidegger’s greater point throughout his studies is this: paradigms of Language (grammar) over time become paradigms of Life (action). A language grammar based on the delimiting distinction between noun and verb gives language an object bias resulting in a loss of experience. Heidegger is attempting to recover that lost experience--including spiritual experience. However, for now the object has supreme priority.
    Heidegger starts his critique of modern positivism by critiquing language itself for obscures the question of Being.
    The inflection, or “declining” of the infinitive is a characteristic of language, but the consequences of such extreme abstractions follow the decline of modern civilization into nihilism because this fundamental question of Being is forgotten, obscured by ‘beings.” Both humans and nature are superfluous entities and objects. “Being” is only understood as a thing, or entity, or even as “Supreme Being,” but a mere material entity regardless. Nihilism and solipsism are the two greatest dangers of our advanced industrial society.

    The paradigm concept has been very useful in understanding the meaning bestowing ability and circularity of ideological conceptual systems. The paradigm can also be helpful in understanding the ancient Greek and Hebrew concept of Logos. Heidegger researched the historical and etymological origins of the word Logos while addressing, “the riddle of Being.”

    Heidegger attempts to create a new language free of old metaphysical conflicts (Cartesian realist-idealist dichotomy that puts an “objective” subject as the judge of all truth), but still retaining familiar existential categories (being-in-the-world). Heidegger’s purpose is to put Being--not humans--at the center of philosophizing. Unlike Husserl, Heidegger did not embrace the Cartesian ideal of epistemological “objectivity” that represents the standard of truth, yet only exists as an ideal for a hypothetical disinterested epistemological subject. In Heidegger’s view this Cartesian method of establishing all truth exacerbated the classical philosophical conflict between realism versus idealism--and the forgetting of the question of Being.

    The Logos is the most beautiful concept in all of philosophy. One must use historical, philosophical, cultural, and Christian biblical resources in understanding the Greek concept of “Logos” and how early Christianity adopted this concept. “Logos” is a key concept to understanding Heidegger’s theology.

    Heraclitus, the pre-Socratic Greek philosopher, is recognized in Western philosophy as the originator of the doctrine of the Logos. Logos (Greek λόγος, ου, ὁ logos) means "word," or "reason. Philosophers have used the term logos in various ways through history, but the two terms “word” and “reason” are closely related in the Hebrew religious thought. "Word", is meant as conveying meaning more than as a dictionary term. A better term might be lexis (λέξις). logos and lexis are derived from the same verb legō (λέγω), meaning "to count, tell, say, speak" Using language is a creative act and not just utilizing a vocabulary, but constructing meaning by drawing, or negating distinctions. In English "logic," is derived from logos. This concept of “word” is foreign in a hyper-empirical-materialist scientific environment. Language has a power beyond just providing synthetic propositions (factual propositions), or being logically tautologous—or just a digital font symbol. Language was believed to have the power to reveal the hidden essential structure of G-d, human beings, and the world.

    Hundred years before the birth of Christ the Hebrew language was dead even though the Old Testament is written in Hebrew. Only the religious Hebrew scholars knew Hebrew, not ordinary persons. The people spoke Aramaic. The Old Testament was translated into Aramaic so ordinary people could understand it. Those translations are known as the Targums.
    The Hebrew religious tradition understood the transcendence of G-d. It was the fear of objectifying “G-d,” or trivializing the concept of G-d that brought about the phrase “The word of God.” For Feuerbach, "All Theology is Anthropology." God is nothing else other than man: he is the outward projection of man's inward nature. Feuerbach’s critique of the theology of his day is in part the result of a literal anthropomorphic theistic monism in which the Real is a supra-personal entity, or thing.
     
    Last edited: Aug 26, 2018
  11. Kyklos

    Kyklos Well-Known Member Donor

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    # Posts and Topic:
    - 1, Introduction to Phenomenology
    - 2, Phenomenological Tools
    - 5, Dasein Analytic and Critique of Culture
    - 7, 8 Neo-Kantians and Eidetic Analysis
    - 9, Mystic A priori
    - 10, 11, 12, Phenomenological Reduction of the Aesthetic Life
    - 15, 16, 17, The Lifeworld
    - 23, Husserl: Empiricism, Psychologism, Circularity, and Reification
    - 24, 25, Absolute Consciousness, Sartre
    -26, 27, Theological Phenomenology, Paul Tillich
    - 29, 30, Ideological Paradigms
    - 31, 32, 33, 34, Martin Heidegger: The Question of Being.
    - 35, Heidegger: The Logos

    - 36, Heraclitus and The Logos


    Heraclitus and The Logos

    Heidegger is interested in the Ancient Greek philosopher, Heraclitus, and other pre-Socratic philosophers as representing living in the presence of Being for they thought of being as “presence.” After the dominance of Plato and Aristotle in Greek thought, Western philosophy defined all thinking as hyper-conceptualization and focused on the essent (entity, or object) exclusively while forgetting the question of Being. This historical trend continued in the Western Enlightenment when Descartes’ radical rationalism put the “objective subject” (a contradiction in terms?) as the judge of all truth. In more recent history, logical positivism represents a fuller development of an object representational epistemology itself based on a subjective idea of objectivity. Also, there is another reason Heidegger is interested in Heraclitus: the deep theological roots of Western Christianity originate from the mystic Weeping Philosopher.
    The Greek word for “The Obscure” is ὁ ςκοτεινος, but it also means “dark.” It is in both history and legend that Heraclitus had a melancholy personality, or was possibly bipolar. Heraclitus’ contribution to the history of philosophy is “the conception of unity in diversity and difference in unity.” The philosophical question at the time was “What is the world made of?” Thales proposed that everything could be reduced to the substance water. But then if the world is only one thing Anaximenes asked, “How can One become Many and if there are Many, how does it become One?” Heraclitus saw a solution to the question of what the world is made of and how its many manifestations are really a single substance that makes up the world.
    This was the genius of Heraclitus: he saw the limit of materialism and directed his attention instead to the immaterial. The Ionic philosophers sought a material foundation to the world, but they didn’t deny the existence of the immaterial. Logic was viewed differently from the physical laws of mechanical motion. The logical relationship between the premises of an argument and its conclusion isn’t from cause and effect, or the mechanical motion of atoms. Mathematics existed in another realm.

    Heraclitus sought regular relations, or patterns among events rather than an underlying thing or substance—he was attempting to abstract from changing events a concept of “process” or “formula.” Heraclitus was, “Unable to think abstractly about process, he slipped into using an image that represented process...he ended by identifying it with fire.” (The Classical Mind, by W.T. Jones, p. 15.). Heraclitus selected fire as the single underlying substance, “Fire, is want and surfeit—it is, in other words, all things that are, but it is these things in a constant state of tension, of strife, of consuming, of kindling and of going out.”

    Heraclitus said famously, ποταμοῖσι τοῖσιν αὐτοῖσιν ἐμϐαίνουσιν, ἕτερα καὶ ἕτερα ὕδατα ἐπιρρεῖ.
    "Ever-newer waters flow on those who step into the same rivers."

    The world is in a constant state of flux, but we see the world as relatively stable. W.T. Jones used the analogy of water flowing in and then out a swimming pool at a constant rate causing the pool water level to appear constant to any observer—such is the κόσμος (kosmos), meaning "order," but also means rather poetically, “ornament.” Heraclitus was one of the first Western philosophers to be skeptical of sense perception: perception is not reality. Heraclitus believed in the unity of opposites. The 18th Century German philosophers Georg Friedrich Hegel, Johann Fichte, and Arthur Schopenhauer are known for this dialectical principal in their philosophical systems.

    When Saint John The Apostle embraces the Greek Logos paradigm, he is also embracing the doctrine of the unity of opposites. Pairs of opposites can be logically indistinguishable like; “Beginning and end are ‘common’ on the circle.” Or pairs of opposites can be “unvarying in ‘mutual succession’ as night follows day.” This doctrine is very important.
    For Heraclitus, pairs of opposites are logically indistinguishable and are divine.

    Heraclitus wrote,” all things come to be in accordance with this "Logos" ("word", "reason", or "account), “Logos is both discourse and contents, both the truth about things and the principle on which they function.”(Ibid., page, 477.). Logos is understood here as “formula.”

    Interestingly, Heraclitus wrote during the collapse of the Ionian civilization and during a revival of mystery religions. The Pythagorean Society c. 570–c. 495 BC was one of those quasi-religious movements that combined a strong commitment to scientific understanding. Heraclitus urged men to “listen to” and become “attuned” and be overtaken by the Logos. The Logos is accessible by humans. It is a rule of “proportion” (another meaning of logos) in which change is counter balanced with reverse changes in the same proportion. This invisible and hidden principle has a material form of fire and is “steering all things.” The logos is One, Single, and monistic. Heraclitus said, “...man’s chief good is to ‘listen to,’ to become attuned to, even to become absorbed into, this logos.” (Ibid., page, 477.). Heraclitus’ all encompassing and directing Logos is both a religious and scientific paradigm.
    “Men" says Heraclitus, " are as unable to understand it when they hear it for the first time, as before they have heard it at all.” So the Logos has a sound, the sound of words—it is audible. Heraclitus said of religion, “They pray to images, as if one were to talk with a man’s house.” Heraclitus was an atheistic pantheist and believed that the Logos is resistant to objectification—to be named, “Zeus.”
     
    Last edited: Aug 30, 2018
  12. Kyklos

    Kyklos Well-Known Member Donor

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    # Posts and Topic:
    - 1, Introduction to Phenomenology
    - 2, Phenomenological Tools
    - 5, Dasein Analytic and Critique of Culture
    - 7, 8 Neo-Kantians and Eidetic Analysis
    - 9, Mystic A priori
    - 10, 11, 12, Phenomenological Reduction of the Aesthetic Life
    - 15, 16, 17, The Lifeworld
    - 23, Husserl: Empiricism, Psychologism, Circularity, and Reification
    - 24, 25, Absolute Consciousness, Sartre
    -26, 27, Theological Phenomenology, Paul Tillich
    - 29, 30, Ideological Paradigms
    - 31, 32, 33, 34, Martin Heidegger: The Question of Being.
    - 35, Heidegger: The Logos

    - 36, Heraclitus and The Logos
    - 37, The Christian Logos
    - 36, Heraclitus and The Logos
    - 37, The Christian Logos



    The Christian Logos


    Ἐν ἀρχῇ ἦν λόγος, καὶ λόγος ἦν πρὸς τὸν θεόν, καὶ θεὸς ἦν λόγος.
    “In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and the Word was God.”-- St. John Gospel, Chapter 1 (100 A.D.).

    “What does Jerusalem have to do with Athens?”--Tertullian (c.160 – c.220 A.D.).


    What is it about the Logos paradigm that St. John found coherent with the experiences of the first century Christian mystics? Within the concept of the Logos is the tension between g-d as named, and un-named because once g-d is named, the symbol becomes reified (an conceptual abstraction treated as a concrete entity) over time and the original meaning is codified, but forgotten.

    The fullest development of the synthesis of 1st Century mystic Christianity and Greek thought can be found in the writings of Philo of Alexandria (20 BC – 50 AD). Philo, a Hebrew, studied both Jewish and Greek philosophy and was especially attracted to the concept of the Logos.
    The problem of naming g-d arises with the question of the deity of Jesus. Scottish Theologian William Barclay states the standard and now accepted interpretation in Critical Biblical literature of St. John Chapter One.
    According to this Christology Jesus has the same qualities, but not identical with G-d. There are different schools of thought in Christology regarding the divinity of Jesus: Nestorianism (the Human and Divine persons of Christ are separate), Eutychianism (Human nature absorbed in Christ’s Divine nature), and Chalcedonism ("two natures and that the one hypostasis of the Logos perfectly subsists in these two natures"). This question reappears time to time in history. In historical times of authoritarianism Christology emphasizes the Divinity of Christ, but during times of Liberalism the humanity of Christ is emphasized. This may be one of those historic times this Christology should be reexamined. When we name the g-ds, we name ourselves in an act of self-revelation.
     
    Last edited: Sep 2, 2018
  13. Kyklos

    Kyklos Well-Known Member Donor

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    # Posts and Topic:
    - 1, Introduction to Phenomenology
    - 2, Phenomenological Tools
    - 5, Dasein Analytic and Critique of Culture
    - 7, 8 Neo-Kantians and Eidetic Analysis
    - 9, Mystic A priori
    - 10, 11, 12, Phenomenological Reduction of the Aesthetic Life
    - 15, 16, 17, The Lifeworld
    - 23, Husserl: Empiricism, Psychologism, Circularity, and Reification
    - 24, 25, Absolute Consciousness, Sartre
    -26, 27, Theological Phenomenology, Paul Tillich
    - 29, 30, Ideological Paradigms
    - 31, 32, 33, 34, Martin Heidegger: The Question of Being.
    - 35, Heidegger: The Logos
    - 36, Heraclitus and The Logos
    - 37, The Christian Logos
    -38,
    Apeiron: Infinity


    The Pre-Socratic Non-conceptual Apeiron (Infinity)

    Heidegger invents many neologisms in an attempt to build an alternative epistemological paradigm where Being is the center of human understanding. Heidegger’s new terminology sidestep twenty five centuries of Western philosophical development by avoiding classic irresoluble logical antinomies and forgotten theoretical presuppositions in the realms of being and thinking; being and becoming; being and appearance; being and ought. Heidegger is radically refocusing his ideological telescope turned toward pre-Socratic history to bring back into appearance the forgotten distant planet of Being. In each of these relationships to being he provides new paradigms to apprehend being and being-human. Heidegger uncovers overlooked dynamic processes of being which “...for two thousand years, these ties between logos, aletheia [unconcealment], physis [nature], noein [apprehension], and idea have remained hidden in unintelligibility.” ]”(An Introduction to Metaphysics, by M. Heidegger, Doubleday/Anchor 1961 , p.143; Referred to “IM” here on.).

    Definitions of key terms and concepts used by Heidegger can be found at Heideggerian Terminology. Also, one should note the dialectical manner in which Heidegger’s analysis treats the dynamic relationships between polar opposites such as Being/Non-Being, Authentic Dasein/ Inauthentic das Man, and Concealment/Un-concealment. Each polar opposite influences the other creating a balance--or in some cases imbalance--of a third state of synthesis. Take for example a falling body: “...it is a contradiction to depict one body as constantly falling towards another, and as, at the same time, constantly flying away from it. The ellipse is a form of motion which, while allowing this contradiction to go on, at the same time reconciles it”(Capital Vol. I: Karl Marx, p. 70.). There is clearly a Hegelian influence on Heidegger’s phenomenology which is not unexpected from two philosophers strongly influenced by Heraclitus. One classic example of Hegel giving a dialectical analysis between antithetical forces can be found in his work, The Phenomenology of Spirit in the Master-Slave Dialectic.

    While reinterpreting Heraclitus, Heidegger does not mention any etymological analysis of the pre-Socratic concept of “Apeiron.” However, Heidegger does name “guilt” or “debt” as an essential existential of Dasein’s structure. “Guilt” is treated by Heidegger in its original pre-Socratic meaning as “indebtedness.” Heidegger uses the term “nullity, to describe Dasein’s existential finitude in the fulfillment of its authentic freedom. When Dasein decides and projects a future project, its choice automatically “nullifies” a multitude of other possibilities.
    The early Ionian Pre-Socratic philosopher Anaximander of Miletus, (610 BC to 546 B.C) who pre-dates Heraclitus of Ephesus, (535-c. 475 BCE) likely provided Heraclitus the inspiration for his concept of the primary substance of all things as fire. Anaximander is the first Greek scientist known in detail and is also the founder of Greek astronomy and natural philosophy (physics). He created the first Greek world map, celestial map and invented the gnomon, which is the vertical pointer on a sundial.

    Anaximander was concerned with explaining the interaction of opposites and the conflict of opposites (Birth/Death, Hot/cold, Solid/liquid, Light/Dark). The primary element (ἀρχή) of all things is according to Anaximander, 'Apeiron (ἄπειρον) a Greek word meaning unlimited, infinite or indefinite from ἀ- a-, "without" and πεῖραρ peirar, "end, limit," the Ionic Greek form of πέρας peras, "end, limit, boundary".” ἄπειρον is the substance without limits, Indeterminate Infinite, Eternal, Ageless, Un-traversable, and all Encompassing. Anaximander wrote, “It is neither water [Thales’ primary element] nor any other of the so-called elements, but a nature different from them and infinite, from which arise all the heavens and worlds (κόσμοi) within them.” He means a succession of κόσμοi rather that simultaneous plurality of κόσμοi. ἄπειρον is θεῖος,(The Divine) that steers and governs the κόσμοi (worlds).

    In the first century B.C., philosopher Aetius wrote, “ Everything is generated from apeiron and there its destruction happens. Infinite worlds are generated and they are destructed there again. And he says (Anaximander) why this is apeiron. Because only then genesis and decay will never stop.” ( Aetius I 3,3<Ps.Plutarch; DK 12 A14, at Wikipedia).

    Reading Heidegger’s Being and Time and Introduction to Metaphysics carefully will show the deep underlying analysis of Dasein’s existentials (essential characteristics of being-human) is historical, dialectical, dynamic, and process oriented. Hegel applied the same dialectical paradigm to Western theology and the history of Western philosophy. Marx employed this paradigm to capitalist economics, while Freud investigated the human psyche as conflicted by imbalanced opposing internal forces.

    Also, with the concept of Apeiron we confront the non-conceptual (that which cannot be fully conceptualized) and like Kant’s “thing-in-itself” or “noumena” we can only know representationally, or symbolically and incompletely. The conceptual origin of the infinite non-conceptual can be traced back to the Upanishads, then through Greek Ionian philosophy, Christianity, German Idealism, and Early American Christian Transcendentalism.

    The Frankfurt School philosopher, Theodor W. Adorno, believed it is possible to “unseal the non-conceptual” for this is the true mission of philosophy. Adorno rejected the “Kantian Block” that separated appearance (phenomena) from being (noumena) rendering the real unknowable and inaccessible to thought.
    The “non-conceptual” is extremely important for understanding Adorno’s philosophical works that are surprisingly very relevant to Christian theology and formulating a theory of spiritual experience.

    Heidegger again blames Plato and Aristotle for distorting the relation between being and appearance by demoting the role of appearance in knowledge as inferior copies of the Platonic Forms unlike the pre-Socratics who understood instead “...Appearing is the very essence of being...The essence of being is physis [“physics,” or ‘nature’]. Appearing is the power that emerges from concealment. Since the essent as such is, it places itself in and stands in unconcealment, aletheia [Truth]”(IM, p.86.).

    Heidegger further writes, “ Because being is logos [gathering together, order], harmonia [harmony], aletheia [unconcealment, or truth], physis [nature], phainesthai [to appear, show], it does not show itself as one pleases.”(IM, 112.).

    The demotion of appearance in the Western theory of knowledge had a profound effect on Western Philosophy and Christian Theology resulting in a bifurcated worldview of the perfect idea, or concept and its opposite—existence. The concept (essence) is now viewed as more concrete—more real-- than the object (essent) it is supposed to represent in thought.

    Heidegger takes issue with another Western misinterpretation regarding Heraclitus’ doctrine of change that distorts the dialectical character of being.

    Western thought views being-human and being as only historical and is unable to comprehend the difference between being and being-human. Only being-human asks the question of being.

    There are no “human beings,” per se for these are only objects; “being-human” better describes the process and activity of human development in existence. Unlike other beings (ontic), being-human (ontological) cannot be understood only as a static historical entity, but as dynamic, indeterminate, independent, self-reflecting Dasein that is able by a process of apprehension and decision question its purpose in existence. “The determination of the essence of man is never an answer but essentially a question” (IM, p. 118.).
     
    Last edited: Sep 6, 2018
  14. Kyklos

    Kyklos Well-Known Member Donor

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    # Posts and Topic:
    - 1, Introduction to Phenomenology
    - 2, Phenomenological Tools
    - 5, Dasein Analytic and Critique of Culture
    - 7, 8 Neo-Kantians and Eidetic Analysis
    - 9, Mystic A priori
    - 10, 11, 12, Phenomenological Reduction of the Aesthetic Life
    - 15, 16, 17, The Lifeworld
    - 23, Husserl: Empiricism, Psychologism, Circularity, and Reification
    - 24, 25, Absolute Consciousness, Sartre
    -26, 27, Theological Phenomenology, Paul Tillich
    - 29, 30, Ideological Paradigms
    - 31, 32, 33, 34, Martin Heidegger: The Question of Being.
    - 35, Heidegger: The Logos
    - 36, Heraclitus and The Logos
    - 37, The Christian Logos
    -38, Apeiron: Infinity
    -39, Logoi: The Limited Logos


    Logoi: The Limited Logos.


    I will call λόγοι (logoi),or the plural of λόγος (logos), the limited logos since it is through language(s), a symbolic universe, that we connect to being. Heidegger doesn’t always make clear what sense of Logos is being used in a discussion. Our tool of investigation is philosophy, “For philosophy...the object is not present; what is more, philosophy has no object to begin with. It is a process which must at all times achieve being (in its appropriate manifestness) anew. (Introduction to Metaphysics, Heidegger, p. 71.).” Philosophy is a permanent critique--a rebellion against appearance at first-- asking the question of Being.

    Being is undefined and ambiguous but, “the determinateness with which we understand the indeterminate meaning can be unambiguously delimited, and not after the fact, but as a determinateness which, unbeknownst to us, governs us from out of our very foundations (IM, p. 71).” Being reveals itself as un-concealment and appearance in which we also find the possibility of deception, illusion, and error. I will use the Greek word λόγοι (logoi) , or the plural of λόγος (logos), meaning the limiting of λόγος (logos). The term “logoi” used in this way cannot be found in Heidegger’s writing, but it can assist understanding what he means by the “limited logos.” This is still λόγος understood as a governing paradigm, but rationality as a specific form of logoi that is a cultural pattern, the cultural stock of knowledge, epistemological categorical typifications, ranges of logical possibilities, and reified meanings for interpreting the world for objective content.

    Heidegger uses the term logos in two ways: Logos as Being, and as Human Logos, or limited Logos as the humans in Antigone’s poem (lines 368-416) Human beings can apprehend being but in apprehension νοέω (noein thinking by the subject of the object") and τέχνη (techne) “a knowledge, the ability to plan and organize freely, to master institutions...” does δίκη, (law) to φύσις (nature), which is “the realm of being as a whole.” The violence is by thought dividing the whole of being into many parts. “But in thinking we not only place something before ourselves, we not only dismember it for the sake of dismembering, but, reflecting, we pursue the thing represented."(IM, p.100.).

    The logoi are the interpretive concepts of the excluded, included, valid, invalid, logical, irrational, scripts, frames, truth, falsity, requirements, prohibitions, rules, algorithms, violations, objects, entities, conditions, situations, states, non-states, relations, meaning, meaninglessness, usage, mistakes, expressions, kinships, social arrangement, institutions, history, knowledge, sense, nonsense, context, boundaries, parameters, appearance, real, illusion, reification, and the symbolic.

    The logoi is a systematic attempt by thought to make sense of human existence in the world. Culture is logocentric (forming around culture symbols of meaning). This systemization of experience is expressed as symbolization of life to embody the world, and our apprehension of the world. Symbolization is a strategy for living in a world because it relates everything into a larger context—a cultural context to provide meaning. Symbolization is powerful and over time the whole of life becomes dissected into unrelated moments in experience and the possibility of new experiences is blunted. Life is no longer lived in the moment, but in disconnect paradigmatic micro-worlds. Experience is delimited and censored by uncritical predetermined cultural concepts and notions. When Life and the world of cultural symbols diverge, society loses its power to give meaning to experience. Life becomes ἄλογος, not rational, or irrational.

    Heidegger accepts Husserl’s view that all appearance is intentional and from this intentionality all objectivity is given pre-shaped meaning. This creates an ontological (ontos) structuring to the world of entities, or essents, “a fundamental characteristic of the essent is to τέλος which means not aim, or purpose, but end...End is ending in the sense of fulfillment. Limit and end are that wherewith the essent begins to be” (IM, p. 50.).

    All forms of human logoi are distortions of being that give meaning to life. They embody meaning shared by members in a culture and are intersubjective—shared by all as the meaning, or definition of reality. It is an intersubjective reality. Intersubjectivity is characteristic of intentionality.

    Heidegger is saying that reducing meaningful thinking to logic has damaged our understanding between being and thought, “Logic relieves us of the need for any troublesome inquiry into the essence of thinking.” (IM, p.101.). The question of being is τὰ μετὰ τὰ φυσικά after (meta) the φύσις or physics (Nature): or meta-physics. For Heidegger logic is metaphysics and is itself an object for examination. Heidegger agrees with Wittgenstein about logic and intellectualism (what we have called scientism rooted in logical positivism). Logic arises with the division between being and thought. “To surpass the traditional logic does not mean elimination of thought and the domination of sheer feeling; it means more radical, stricter thinking, an thinking that is part and parcel of being”( IM, p.103.). Heidegger’s call is for authentic thinking that goes beyond mere appearance and entities, “If one is to ask the question of being radically, one must understand the task of unfolding the truth of the essence of being; one must come to a decision regarding the powers hidden in these distinctions in order to restore them to their own truth.” (IM, p. 50.). Some are αχγηετοι, uncomprehending, but the logoi is intersubjective so there is correspondence and mediation between Humans and Being (Logos).
     
    Last edited: Sep 7, 2018
  15. Kyklos

    Kyklos Well-Known Member Donor

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    I finally got around to getting a of list of Heidegger's works in English.

    Collections of Heidegger’s works in English Translation

    Basic Writings, Edited by David Farrell Krell. New York: Harper & Row, 1977.
    Contains the Introduction to Being and Time and nine key essays: “What is
    Metaphysics?,” “On the Essence of Truth,” “The Origin of the Work of Art,” “Letter on
    Humanism,” “Modern Science, Metaphysics, and Mathematics,” “The Question
    Concerning Technology,” “Building Dwelling Thinking,” “What Calls for Thinking?,”
    and “The End of Philosophy and the Task of Thinking.”

    Poetry, Language, Thought. Translated by Albert Hofstadter. New York: Harper & Row, 1971.
    Contains “The Thinker as Poet” (a few of Heidegger’s attempts at poetry), and the essays
    “The Origin of the Work of Art,” “What are Poets For?,” “Building Dwelling Thinking,”
    “The Thing,” “Language,” and “. . . Poetically Man Dwells . . .”

    The Question Concerning Technology and Other Essays. Translated by William Lovitt. New
    York: Harper & Row, 1977. Contains “The Question Concerning Technology,” “The Turning,” “The Word of
    Nietzsche: ‘God is Dead,’” “The Age of the World Picture,” and “Science and Reflection.”
     
  16. Kyklos

    Kyklos Well-Known Member Donor

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    # Posts and Topic:
    - 1, Introduction to Phenomenology
    - 2, Phenomenological Tools
    - 5, Dasein Analytic and Critique of Culture
    - 7, 8 Neo-Kantians and Eidetic Analysis
    - 9, Mystic A priori
    - 10, 11, 12, Phenomenological Reduction of the Aesthetic Life
    - 15, 16, 17, The Lifeworld
    - 23, Husserl: Empiricism, Psychologism, Circularity, and Reification
    - 24, 25, Absolute Consciousness, Sartre
    -26, 27, Theological Phenomenology, Paul Tillich
    - 29, 30, Ideological Paradigms
    - 31, 32, 33, 34, Martin Heidegger: The Question of Being.
    - 35, Heidegger: The Logos
    - 36, Heraclitus and The Logos
    - 37, The Christian Logos
    -38, Apeiron: Infinity
    -39, Logoi: The Limited Logos
    -40, Collections of Heidegger’s works in English Translation

    -41, Adorno’s Critique of Husserlian Phenomenology


    Adorno’s Critique of Husserlian Phenomenology


    The Frankfurt school philosopher, Theodor W. Adorno, is the most famous and powerful critic of Edmund Husserl’s phenomenology, and Martin Heidegger’s fundamental ontology found in Being and Time (1927), and Introduction to Metaphysics (1935).

    Edmond Husserl’s phenomenological method of intuiting essences (the necessary structure of the object) is his remedy of the “loss of experience” in modern life. Husserl’s goal is to construct another kind of epistemology, or knowing, that is not causal-mechanical thinking which dominates modern science. Natural-scientific reductionism which has characterized epistemology since Galileo’s scientific view of nature is the cause for this lost experience according to Husserl in this work, “The Crisis of European Science,” (1934-1937).

    Modern science applies universalizing concepts, or categorization, of particular objects as the way to analyze and gain control of objects. For example, the color red can be an attribute of a particular thing from which the color can be abstracted from a number of particular instances of red to form a universal concept of “redness.” However, now, the particular thing, such as a cup, is only a subordinated exemplar, or substitute for the color red. In practice the prefabricated abstracted conceptual universal becomes more real than its actual particular existential instantiation. This process of abstraction and subordination by classification is essentially natural empirical science.

    Husserl acknowledges classifying science as a great achievement in human thought; however, this classificatory thinking, which is coherent for science and technology, is appointing itself as the sole judge of what is recognized as a valid experience and what is real. The totalizing philosophy of empirical-scientific reductionism has infiltrated all sphere of life resulting in the dehumanization of society and disenchantment with modernity. Husserl is not asserting that positivistic empirical science is invalid, but that sphere of causal mechanical thinking must be integrated with human values.

    This is the, The Crisis of the European Sciences, by Husserl (1911)( free pdf.) Our current challenge today is 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--and it leads to an epoch of dehumanization.

    Husserl proposed a new method of the “intuition of essences” (Wesensschau) in which essences are like numbers with a priori necessary characteristics. “Intuition” is meant here as Kantian “sense experience”). The intuition of essences counters the classificatory concept. Husserl extracts essential meaning from the particular rather than extracting common universal attributes with other particulars. The essence of a thing is revealed by phenomenology critiquing the object’s conceptual abstractions (‘eidetic abstraction’).
    The “natural attitude” is a theoretical attitude that views the world and experience through preexisting assumptions of its structure--it is ordinary experience. Husserl wants to translate this experience into a science of “essential structures.” Empiricism, a form of the natural attitude, only allows perception of the object to count as experience and demands that all cognition be verified through experience. However, experience is narrowed by delimiting preexisting concepts that fail to capture the entire meaning of the particular. A photographer will comprehend a forest differently than a logger needing 10 metric tons of lumber in 8 hours. The history of science and philosophy has continually demonstrated that conceptualization continually fails to capture the object. Hegel said, “The object is the true.” That part of the object which is not captured by the subjective concept is the nonconceptual. That part of the object that is not identical to the subjective concept is the nonidentical. In both case experience is lost, or as Adorno described this loss as a “withering of experience.”

    Philosophy’s mission, according to Adorno, to use concepts to know the non-conceptual. Adorno said it is the challenge of philosophy,
    Whenever that which is suppressed, disparaged, and discarded by the concept is recovered, Adorno calls this process spiritual experience. Husserlian phenomenology is concerned with the same philosophical project of recovering experience.
    Both Adorno and Husserl agree the goal of philosophy is to uncover the nonidentical and nonconceptual that is discarded by procrustean conceptualization and identity thinking; however, their methodologies are different. Adorno’s methodology is negative dialectics that is in part Adorno’s refinement of Hegelian dialectical thinking; Husserl’s method is the discovery of phenomenological of essences.
    But does Husserl’s new way of thinking--intuition of essences—achieve what Adorno calls the “breakout” from natural-scientific reductionism by using conceptual classification to discover essences? Adorno’s judgment is Husserl’s “breakout” attempt is a failure. Foster summarizes Adorno’s reasoning as “Husserl’s failure to overcome the natural-scientific reduction: ideal objects [abstracted essences] turn out to be the same brute facts shorn of their experiential significance.” (Ibid., p. 99 | 236). Adorno therefore considers these essences as “empty abstractions.” Husserl’s essences “will simply replicate the ossified, isolated facts that pass for genuine experience in empiricist naturalism.” (Ibid., p. 104 | 236). Husserlian phenomenology failed because it “used concepts to unseal the non-conceptual with concepts.” Adorno’s described Husserl’s failure as an “escape into the mirror.” (Negative Dialectics, Adorno, p. 51).” Later, Adorno claims that Heidegger makes this same error of escaping into the mirror with phenomenological fundamental ontology, but with less success in Roger Foster’s reasoned analysis.

    Ludwig Wittgenstein was much more careful at this point in confronting the nonidentical. The realm of the nonidentical is not within the sphere of experience. Language does not and cannot function the same outside of the boundary of sense experience.
    Consequently, Wittgenstein famous statement, “What can be said at all can be said clearly; and whereof one cannot speak thereof one must be silent.” (Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, (1922),” On the other hand, Adorno believes there is another way of thinking, and philosophical writing that can reveal the nonidentical in a nondominating relation to the subject without embracing pure subjective idealism and irrationalism just as Husserl and Heidegger have mistakenly done. Interestingly, Adorno recognizes the metaphysical notion of the absolute, or what Kant referred to as the “unconditional.”
    Utopian Futures
     
    Last edited: Nov 1, 2018
  17. Kyklos

    Kyklos Well-Known Member Donor

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    # Posts and Topic:
    - 1, Introduction to Phenomenology
    - 2, Phenomenological Tools
    - 5, Dasein Analytic and Critique of Culture
    - 7, 8 Neo-Kantians and Eidetic Analysis
    - 9, Mystic A priori
    - 10, 11, 12, Phenomenological Reduction of the Aesthetic Life
    - 15, 16, 17, The Lifeworld
    - 23, Husserl: Empiricism, Psychologism, Circularity, and Reification
    - 24, 25, Absolute Consciousness, Sartre
    -26, 27, Theological Phenomenology, Paul Tillich
    - 29, 30, Ideological Paradigms
    - 31, 32, 33, 34, Martin Heidegger: The Question of Being.
    - 35, Heidegger: The Logos
    - 36, Heraclitus and The Logos
    - 37, The Christian Logos
    -38, Apeiron: Infinity
    -39, Logoi: The Limited Logos
    -40, Collections of Heidegger’s works in English Translation
    -41, Adorno’s Critique of Husserlian Phenomenology
    -42, 43, 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.
    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
    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 [My bold text for emphasis].
     
    Last edited: Nov 9, 2018
  18. Kyklos

    Kyklos Well-Known Member Donor

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    Adorno’s Critique of Heidegger continued...


    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.(Post #1).

    Heidegger changed his phenomenological analysis of being from an analysis of consciousness and meaning to a philosophy of “appropriation.”
    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 (post #29: 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.
    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.
    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.” (Ibid., p. 27.).

    Orlando: Coming
     
  19. Kyklos

    Kyklos Well-Known Member Donor

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    phusis loves to hide.”--Heraclitus​

    The ancient Greek pre-Socratic philosopher Heraclitus conceived of phusis (or Nature, or physics) as being characterized by both logos (Reason) and of what-is (all things). Philosopher Carol J. White wrote, “...phusis is both the activity which lets what-is manifest itself and that which is manifest. As the activity of manifesting, it itself does not show itself, and thus it hides; but this activity reveals phusis as ‘nature’....”

    Carol J. White further notes that for the pre-Socratic philosopher, Parmenides, noein [apprehension] perceives the ...being of what-is as a totality, noein is the Parmenidean equivalent of Being and Time’s moment of insight or, more exactly, of our special capacity as Dasein which enables us to have this insight.” This is the ability to see the One in the many.

    This wonderfully spiritual poem “Stonemilker” I think captures the meaning of logos in nature and our capacity for spiritual openness and insight. This artistic work is so beautiful I want to weep. She loves to hide so you must use the arrow keys to keep up with her.


    "Stonemilker"

    A juxtapositioning fate
    Find our mutual coordinate

    Moments of clarity are so rare
    I better document this

    At last the view is fierce
    All that matters is

    Who is open chested
    And who has coagulated
    Who can share
    And who has shut down the chances


    Show me emotional respect
    I have emotional needs
    I wish to synchronize our feelings

    What is it that I have
    That makes me feel your pain
    Like milking a stone
    To get you to say it


    Who is open
    And who has shut up
    And if one feels closed
    How does one stay open


    We have emotional need
    I wish to synchronize our feelings
    Show some emotional respect​
     
    Last edited: Dec 1, 2018
  20. Kyklos

    Kyklos Well-Known Member Donor

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    # Posts and Topic:
    - 1, Introduction to Phenomenology
    - 2, Phenomenological Tools
    - 5, Dasein Analytic and Critique of Culture
    - 7, 8 Neo-Kantians and Eidetic Analysis
    - 9, Mystic A priori
    - 10, 11, 12, Phenomenological Reduction of the Aesthetic Life
    - 15, 16, 17, The Lifeworld
    - 23, Husserl: Empiricism, Psychologism, Circularity, and Reification
    - 24, 25, Absolute Consciousness, Sartre
    -26, 27, Theological Phenomenology, Paul Tillich
    - 29, 30, Ideological Paradigms
    - 31, 32, 33, 34, Martin Heidegger: The Question of Being.
    - 35, Heidegger: The Logos
    - 36, Heraclitus and The Logos
    - 37, The Christian Logos
    -38, Apeiron: Infinity
    -39, Logoi: The Limited Logos
    -40, Collections of Heidegger’s works in English Translation
    -41, Adorno’s Critique of Husserlian Phenomenology
    -42, 43, Adorno’s Critique of Heideggerian Fundamental Ontology

    -45, Heidegger: Christian Theology Demythologized



    Heidegger: Christian Theology Demythologized


    "Reason and feeling exist in me side by side, but they touch each other and form a galvanic pile. The innermost life of the spirit consists for me in this galvanic process, in the feeling of reason and the reason of feeling, yet so that the two poles always remain separate." (Schleiermacher: Personal and Speculative, by Robert Munro B.D., Pub. Paisley, Aleander Grardner, 1903, p. 82) Not Copyrighted, [Pdf].

    Theology is a complex system of symbols. Heidegger formulated a secularized demythologized philosophical version of Christian theology by applying a phenomenological eidetic reduction to strip away old philosophical dichotomies, worn out formulas and parochial sentiments. A philosophical interpretation of Christian theology must be atheistic in principle (Negative Theology) and also apply to non-religious experience as well (Heidegger, M. (2002) Supplements: From the Earliest Essays to Being and Time and Beyond, trans. J. van Buren et al., Albany, State University of New York Press, p. 121). Individual spirituality can flourish even in this essentialist-reductionist form of Christianity, but organized religion cannot. Organized religion as Christian orthodoxy must have symbols and not necessarily Christian symbols. Some Christian sects may reject the literalist interpretation of some Christian symbols, but accept its central truths. The fatal flaw of humanism is it has no symbols. Demythologized Christian theology can be re-mythologized into a more meaningful and relevant theological paradigm for modern generations living in advanced industrial sociality to counter dehumanization and absolute scientific nihilism.

    Friedrich Schleiermacher: Spirituality Unchained

    One excellent model for a new theological paradigm other than Heideggerian demythologized Christianity is that of the German Lutheran theologian Friedrich Schleiermacher (1768 – 1834). In 1917 Heidegger discovered Schleiermacher’s theology and enthusiastically gave lectures on Schleiermacher’s Discourses on Religion, and gave as gifts Hermann Suskind’s book Christianity and History in Schleiermacher. Then in 1918 and 1919, Heidegger extensively discusses Schleiermacher in a letter with philosopher Elisabeth Blochmann ("The Earliest Heidegger: A new Field of Research" by John Van Buren. in "A companion to Heidegger / edited by Hubert L. Dreyfus and Mark A. Wrathall, 2005, p. 20)[Pdf]. Schleiermacher believed “that there are an endless multiplicity of valid forms of religion.” (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy: Schleiermacher). Unlike Martin Heidegger’s philosophy, Schleiermacher has an explicit socio-political theory and is known as the “Father of Modern Liberal Theology” who opposed state interference in the Christian religion that should be family based and not state based. However, Schleiermacher also believed society should be organized around the cosmopolitan multiplicity of human diversity in which each individual might fully live an enriched spiritual life. For Schleiermacher, “This inner life, reached through self-contemplation, is man's real and abiding life.”(Munro, p. 65).

    The young Schleiermacher had been educated by the Moravian Brethren (Herrnhuter) known as a mystic pietist Christian sect that had five religious principles: simplicity, happiness, unintrusiveness (non-proselytizing), fellowship, and the ideal of service. Later he studied at the University of Halle in 1787 and earned has degree in theology with minors in classical philosophy and philology. He was assigned to pastorships in Prussian Stolp and in Berlin. In 1810 at the founding of the University of Berlin, Schleiermacher was appointed head of the theology department. Later in life he wrote, “ I am still a Herrnhuter (a member of the Moravian Brotherhood) only a Herrnhuter of a higher order." (Munro, p. 35). During his lifetime Schleiermacher translated nearly all of Plato’s dialogues from Greek into German. He had a German Romantic neo-Spinozistic view influenced by other philosophers such as theologian, poet Johann Herder who was the first to argue “language contributes to shaping the frameworks and the patterns with which each linguistic community thinks and feels...language is 'the organ of thought”; Johann Fichte who first originated the thesis-antithesis-synthesis dialectical epistemic model later known as the hallmark of Hegel who never used those triadic terms. Schleiermacher personally knew philosopher poet of the German Romantic school Friedrich Schlegel.

    Schleiermacher wrote his most famous work on philosophy of religion Discourses on Religion, Addressed to the Cultivated among its Despisers in 1799 at a time that religion was thought to be irrelevant as the Enlightenment emphasized human reason. Schleiermacher argued “ecclesiastical theology is not fixed and immovable, but living and adapting itself to the ever-growing Christian consciousness of the ages.”(Munro, p. 109). In this publication Schleiermacher,
    The most important concept in Schleiermacher’s theology is the distinction between organized religion and spiritual experience. Human experience is characterized by a conscious intuition (not intellectual) originating from a pre-logical ontological understanding of the universe and of an infinite universal non-reified being that unifies all of existence. He rejects the idea of direct intuition of the absolute, or a Hegelian universal science of philosophy. It is from the fact of this fundamental religious experience that religious dogma is derived post hoc.
    Later in his writings Schleiermacher shortens his description of the non-thematic ontological connection humans have with the universe as a “feeling of absolute dependence on the infinite.” Of course, his critics seized on the term “feeling” to characterize it as “irrational emotionalism.” Hegel, famous for his aphorism, “The Real is the Rational, and the Rational is Real,” wrote in the forward to Religion in Its Internal Relationship to Systematic Knowledge, (1822), authored by his student Hermann Hinrichs, that "If religion grounds itself in a person only on the basis of feeling, then . . . a dog would be the best Christian, for it carries this feeling more intensely within itself and lives principally satisfied by a bone." This tendency in theology toward the emotional and spiritual that Schleiermacher represented in Lutheranism was derisively referred to as “pietism” which really meant sanctimoniousness.

    Schleiermacher attempted to create a modern philosophy based on ancient Greek thought. Heidegger was likely inspired by Schleiermacher to revise Western ontology based on the pre-Socratic Greek philosophers Anaximander, Heraclitus, and Parmenides to uncover the question of being. Heidegger first investigates the question of being ontologically, not epistemologically. We encounter being with our whole body, and not just intellectually, so that there is no troublesome Cartesian mind/body dichotomy in Heidegger’s ontology. Again, Schleiermacher’s pre-epistemological religious intuition, or feeling, likely inspired Heidegger’s analysis of Dasein’s ontological structures which include “unconcealment” (aletheia), “meditation,” “apprehension”(noein), and “appropriation.”
    Existentialists say, “Existence precedes essence.” This means that human existence is grounded in material existence first, and only afterwards is thematic meaning (essences) derived from consciousness in a process of mediation and (re-) interpretation. Ontology precedes epistemology. And every epistemology posits a concealed ontology. For Schleiermacher, infinite divine reality is not about knowledge or ethics, but rather “the identity of Spirit and Nature in the Universe or G-d. Conceptual thought cannot apprehend this identity. But the identity can be felt...an ‘immediate self-consciousness, which equals feeling’.” (Fredrick Copleston, S.J., A History of Philosophy: Modern Philosophy, Fichte to Hegel, Vol. 7, Part I, Doubleday, 1965, page 185.)

    Schleiermacher viewed the Church as a society in itself separate from the State arguing for a free society with the organizations necessary to fully develop each individual’s potential and freedom. The union of Church and State inhibits the contributions of the multiplicity of religious traditions. And a State Church encourages corruption of religion itself by injecting “alien political functions onto religious mysteries,” such as requiring Jews to be baptized to obtain civil rights. Organized religion should instead center on the family. Schleiermacher was among the first male proto-feminist and wrote publicly for the civil rights of Jews in Prussia. In 1789 Schleiermacher “encouraged women to seek sexual fulfillment, and to free themselves from inhibitions about discussing sex.”(Stanford: Schleiermacher). Of the anti-science sentiment in the Church of his day he wrote, “Why was the tree of knowledge so sternly prohibited? Was it that our masters were afraid to make known the results of modern research lest perchance they should approve themselves to our intellect; or lest, mayhap, they should not be able to refute them?”(Munro, p. 29).

    Ethical individuals are created by the local community, general society, and social institutions and are an end in themselves (Kant) to create the greatest good for the person and others around her creating a virtuous cycle of societal input and individual output that makes a “free society.” Society thinks by means of discourse (this is another theme Heidegger borrowed from Schleiermacher). Every individual (not the Smithian truck and barter accumulating economic man) is unique and must be allowed to participate in the life of society.
    Schleiermacher is known for reformulating Protestant theology emphasizing Christocentrism in which Christ is the source of one’s inner religious consciousness.

     
    Last edited: Dec 28, 2018
  21. Kyklos

    Kyklos Well-Known Member Donor

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    # Posts and Topic:
    - 1, Introduction to Phenomenology
    - 2, Phenomenological Tools
    - 5, Dasein Analytic and Critique of Culture
    - 7, 8 Neo-Kantians and Eidetic Analysis
    - 9, Mystic A priori
    - 10, 11, 12, Phenomenological Reduction of the Aesthetic Life
    - 15, 16, 17, The Lifeworld
    - 23, Husserl: Empiricism, Psychologism, Circularity, and Reification
    - 24, 25, Absolute Consciousness, Sartre
    -26, 27, Theological Phenomenology, Paul Tillich
    - 29, 30, Ideological Paradigms
    - 31, 32, 33, 34, Martin Heidegger: The Question of Being.
    - 35, Heidegger: The Logos
    - 36, Heraclitus and The Logos
    - 37, The Christian Logos
    -38, Apeiron: Infinity
    -39, Logoi: The Limited Logos
    -40, Collections of Heidegger’s works in English Translation
    -41, Adorno’s Critique of Husserlian Phenomenology
    -42, 43, Adorno’s Critique of Heideggerian Fundamental Ontology
    -45, Heidegger: Christian Theology Demythologized

    -46, Phenomenological Obstruction

    Phenomenological Obstruction


    “The individual, [Schleiermacher] maintained, was a self-determining, self-authenticating product of the creative reason the image of God, the mirror of the universe, the midpoint and centre of finite being. Here, in man's rational will, he discovered not only a sure basis for the ethical, but the true explanation of the entire cosmical process” (Schleiermacher: Personal and Speculative, by Robert Munro B.D., Pub. Paisley, Aleander Grardner, 1903, p. 139) Not Copyrighted, [Pdf].

    According to Heidegger’s fundamental ontology, Dasein’s “originary” ontological structure is to project entities onto existential possibilities that it finds itself thrown. The “unowned,” or inauthentic Dasein carries out its life in a temporal mode of “everydayness” absorbed by daily tasks (career, family, friendship) so that Dasein’s time directional sense (TDS) is that of pursuing instrumental projects in a never-ending cycle of busyness, (see unownedness). This TDS is characteristic of unowned Dasein as it seeks to avoid the fact of its own finitude and future death.

    In extreme anxiety Dasein’s time directional sense is disrupted, paradigms fail, and reinterpretation of being becomes urgent. Dr. Boedeker Jr. calls such disruptive traumatic events “phenomenological obstructions.” The demand for reinterpretation would not come about in Dasein’s fixed unowned anxiety-free temporality of everydayness, nor would the full field of possibilities for Dasein’s self-actualization (self-ownership) become known without the appearance of an obstruction that gives access to Dasein’s underlying ontological structure of freedom.
    *“Apophantic interpretation” is the same as our use of the concept “paradigm interpretation.”

    What could become noticed and thematized by Dasein in time of crisis? For the ancient Greeks, it was “phusis” (or Nature, or physics) characterized as both logos (Reason) and of what-is (all things). Phusis gives what-is the ability to manifest itself, but does not show itself as the activity of manifesting. Only authentic Dasein can comprehend the One in the Many unlike inauthentic Das Man. (see “Heidegger and the Greeks,” by Dr. Carol J. White, p. 127)[Pdf].

    “In the form of feeling, known as " immediate self-consciousness," [Schleiermacher] finds that the idea of God is immediately given...consequently concludes that the "indwelling being of God " is the final principle both of knowledge and of volition... Schleiermacher accepts the conclusion that all knowledge of reality is limited by experience” (Munro, p.143).


     
    Last edited: Jan 1, 2019
  22. Kyklos

    Kyklos Well-Known Member Donor

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    # Posts and Topic:
    - 1, Introduction to Phenomenology
    - 2, Phenomenological Tools
    - 5, Dasein Analytic and Critique of Culture
    - 7, 8 Neo-Kantians and Eidetic Analysis
    - 9, Mystic A priori
    - 10, 11, 12, Phenomenological Reduction of the Aesthetic Life
    - 15, 16, 17, The Lifeworld
    - 23, Husserl: Empiricism, Psychologism, Circularity, and Reification
    - 24, 25, Absolute Consciousness, Sartre
    -26, 27, Theological Phenomenology, Paul Tillich
    - 29, 30, Ideological Paradigms
    - 31, 32, 33, 34, Martin Heidegger: The Question of Being.
    - 35, Heidegger: The Logos
    - 36, Heraclitus and The Logos
    - 37, The Christian Logos
    -38, Apeiron: Infinity
    -39, Logoi: The Limited Logos
    -40, Collections of Heidegger’s works in English Translation
    -41, Adorno’s Critique of Husserlian Phenomenology
    -42, 43, Adorno’s Critique of Heideggerian Fundamental Ontology
    -45, Heidegger: Christian Theology Demythologized
    -46, Phenomenological Obstruction
    -47, Schleiermacher’s Ethical Socio-Political Theory



    Schleiermacher’s Ethical Socio-Political Theory


    "I am human and consider nothing that is human alien to me."
    —Roman playwright, Publius Terentius Afer, 163 B.C.


    Unlike Martin Heidegger, theologian Friedrich Schleiermacher has an extensive explicit theory of Society, State, School, and the Church. Schleiermacher’s written work is massive with his sermons alone filling fifteen volumes, theology eleven volumes and philosophical writings nine volumes. The best short, but complete summary of Schleiermacher’s theology is theologian Robert Munro’s book,“Schleiermacher: Personal and Speculative,” Pub. Paisley, Aleander Grardner, 1903, which is not copyrighted and free! [Pdf].

    Munro’s book is divided into two parts covering Schleiermacher’s history and philosophy. The second part “Speculative Significance,” beginning on page 129 includes epistemology/ontology (p. 131), ethical doctrine (p. 222) that includes his socio-political theory. The epilogue (p. 287) is the most condensed summary of Schleiermacher’s thought and is worth reading first. Munro’s description of Schleiermacher’s epistemology is the best exposition of Kantian epistemology (Critique of Pure Reason, 1781) without the complex technical terminology (thing-in-itself) and is a philosophical masterpiece in itself. Schleiermacher did not agree with every point of Kantian transcendental philosophy, but he certainly had a clear understanding of Kant’s epistemology. I believe Schleiermacher’s onto-theo-ego-logy provides a philosophical foundation for a revived of an environmentalism movement.

    On the first day of my first post-graduate class in philosophy decades ago, my first philosophy professor’s first words to the class were “Friedrich Schleiermacher!” Who? I could of saved decades of studying philosophy—and slogging through Heidegger—if I had not assumed I already knew what he meant by religious “feeling.” Besides, I wanted to go hunting in the philosophy of theologian Friedrich Hegel (1770-1831) for a theory of spiritual experience. Also, political economist Karl Marx (1818-1883) offered a theory of existential alienation and I hoped to form a synthesis of the two philosophers. What I thought was in Hegel’s system turned out to really be Schleiermacher’s theology. Schleiermacher’s primary philosophical influence is Johann Fichte (1762-1814) who formulated the thesis-antithesis-synthesis epistemological model that Hegel gets all the credit for. Adorno criticized Hegel for turning Fichte’s dynamic dialectical model into a static mechanical formulation. It is easy to overlook, or underestimate the value of a solution to a philosophical problem if one does not really clearly understand the problem.

    The Individual

    Today the term “individual” is most likely to mean the mythic Neo-Liberal self-interested Smithian truck and barter Hobbesian economic savage. Modern libertarian ideology views the individual as an isolated economic monistic unit of activity driven by self-interest, competition, distrust, and greed. When Schleiermacher writes about the individual during the early 1800s, he meant “personhood.” A Person is not merely a material object, nor pure spirit, but rather wholly body and spirit. Personalism resists reductionist materialism that only recognizes human ability as labor to be exploited in a narcissistic society of competitive nihilistic drones. The person only exists as a member of community, as a ‘we’, and only in this social context morality is meaningful. Emmanuel Mounier (1905-1950) wrote, that Personalism as a “philosophy of engagement,” a “fighting science” in a call to action against tyranny. Neo-Liberalism is anti-Human, because it is anti-Divine.

    Fortunately, by chance, I found a contemporary point of view that essentially captures this aspect of Schleiermacher’s social philosophy of the individual.
    We will examine the relationships of the person, state, and church in greater detail later.

    Religious Self-Consciousness

    Munro wrote that Schleiermacher did for theology what Kant did for philosophy. Schleiermacher emphasizes the personal religious spiritual life rather than abstract doctrine which should not be “fixed and immovable,” but a living ever-advancing development of Christian self –consciousness. This is the opposite view of strict textualism and dogmatism. Non-textual information such as intention, purpose, system objectives, designs, fundamental values, or goals is external --ex post facto-- to the interpretative meaning of text. Schleiermacher wrote, “The soul must be forever recreating itself, trying all its various modes, vibrating in all its fibers, raising up new interests for itself ”(Munro, p.126). In Schleiermacher’s view the individual personality has an “eternal idiosyncrasy” given by G-d that may be latent, but this idiosyncratic "indwelling being of God " must “still be regarded as existent if men are to be considered as created in the divine image.” (Ibid., p.118). The individual is “self-determining,” “self-authenticating,” “a mirror of the universe,” and the center of finite being. The individual is not only the foundation of ethics, but within her the "indwelling being of God " finds an explanation of the whole of cosmic processes. For Schleiermacher, human existence “instead of being a necessary accident, like everything else in nature, is the ethical end, the teleological goal of the universe” (Ibid., p.139). Schleiermacher’s use of the term “feeling” does not mean mere affection, or “sensation,” which is “...the lowest stage in the development of the human spirit,” but rather “feeling, as immediate self-consciousness, is the last and highest stage in the same development.” Feeling is the synthesis of thought and will; it is the unity of our being.
    The integrated unity of feeling, reason, and volition is important for Schleiermacher’s concept of religious self-consciousness. Tyrannical societies deny the existence of individual intuition and teaches that feeling is only irrational sensation to be repressed. In order to maintain a monopoly on what is real, authoritarian societies disseminate as conventional wisdom sociological propaganda to repress both intuition and feeling because they are obstacles to the coarse regimenting of society as a whole.

    The World and The Absolute

    Human reason is an organizing activity that transfigures physical being and attempts to unite Reason (Logos) and Nature (phusis) to make it subservient to her purpose by shaping and classifying the world. Heidegger’s analysis of the Greek word “Logos” found it original meaning as “gathering together, to collect, to order.” However, empirical existence also shapes consciousness: “We are free in as far as we can act from our own inner being; we are not free in as far as we can be determined by the objective whole, of which we are an integral part”(Ibid., p.231). The “sphere of evil” is the unity of the empirical and human volition in which, “Everywhere it is the same all-dominating might, giving shape to spirit, and compelling it to submit to its rude, aggressive sway” (Ibid., p.181). Yet Schleiermacher says that sin exists in empirical existence not by absolute necessity thereby rejecting dualistic Manicheaism. Heidegger also described Dasein as “being-there,” and as “Fallen” by virtue of being in finite existence. Also, Heidegger borrowed from Schleiermacher the same terminology such as “ground of being,” “universal being,” “real being,” “finite being,” “Being,” “Absolute Being” and “Being of all beings.”

    Schleiermacher makes no distinction between G-d and the World for material existence is only another form of “divine being.” He famously wrote,“ ...no world without a God, no God without a world”(Ibid., p.231). Some accused Schleiermacher of being a pantheist and this is also a common criticism of theologian Paul Tillich. Both theologians reject pantheism; Absolute Being is not an object. Yet, the intellect forces us to see the world as a conglomeration of entities. Through knowledge of ourselves and of the world we can gain knowledge of G-d. However, the idea that we can comprehend Absolute Being as if it were a thing, existing “is one of those peculiar anomalies of thought for which there is no accounting”(Ibid., p.288).
    In 1636 the Netherlands entered into a period of financial speculation called the Tulip Mania. Tulip speculators wanted rare tulips to sale for large sums of money. The Dutch Republic sent scouts to the jungles of the world to find unique tulips, collect them, and then burn down the jungle so that the collected tulip would be extinct, and therefore sell at a higher price. The implication of Schleiermacher’s theology is that Nature is the face of G-d, yet we mutilate His face daily.

    Ask The Mountains

    Don't come after
    Please don't follow me along
    When you read this I'll be gone

    Ask the mountains, springs and fountains
    Why couldn't this go on?
    Couldn't our happiness go on?
    Ask the sun that lightens up the sky
    When the night gives in, to tell you why

    Ask the mountains
    Wild woods, highlands
    Ask the green in the woods and the trees
    The cold breeze coming in from the sea

    Springs and fountains
    Ask the mountains
    Springs and fountains
     
  23. Appleo

    Appleo Newly Registered

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    All you need is reason and individualism. None of the mystical nonsense all over this thread.
     
  24. Kyklos

    Kyklos Well-Known Member Donor

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    “...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, 1963, p. 27).

    This Chris Hedges video interview is an excerpt from the movie American Psychosis (2017). The date on YouTube is listed for Nov 2018 and published on Jan 10, 2018. Anyway, I knew Hedges’ social critique was well ahead of everyone way back in 2004.

    Speaking of social critiques...in Negative Dialectics Adorno’s strategy typically was to take up an ideology such as nihilism, or scientific empiricism, or capitalism and assume the explicit and implicit principles of those paradigms. With these internally posited principles, he then attempts to derive logical contradictions. This informal methodology is called, “immanent critique.” However, Adorno would intensely object to calling this a formulaic systematic methodology. He wanted Negative Dialectics to be non-systematic. The term “immanent” is used here since this critique is using the paradigm’s own internal principles to construct a contradiction. Examining the oppositional components of a contradiction might show directly, or indirectly which one of the elements is true, or false.

    Now this critical comportment has gotten me into endless trouble. Most persons misinterpret critical theory methodology as pessimism, contrarianism, insubordination, and even fatalism.

    Some famous Christian Existentialists are Soren Kierkegaard, Paul Tillich, Rudolf Bultmann, Rollo May, Emmanuel Mounier, Karl Jaspers, Karl Barth, James Cone, and even St. Thomas Aquinas according to Jacques Maritain.
     
  25. Kyklos

    Kyklos Well-Known Member Donor

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    # Posts and Topic:
    - 1, Introduction to Phenomenology
    - 2, Phenomenological Tools
    - 5, Dasein Analytic and Critique of Culture
    - 7, 8 Neo-Kantians and Eidetic Analysis
    - 9, Mystic A priori
    - 10, 11, 12, Phenomenological Reduction of the Aesthetic Life
    - 15, 16, 17, The Lifeworld
    - 23, Husserl: Empiricism, Psychologism, Circularity, and Reification
    - 24, 25, Absolute Consciousness, Sartre
    -26, 27, Theological Phenomenology, Paul Tillich
    - 29, 30, Ideological Paradigms
    - 31, 32, 33, 34, Martin Heidegger: The Question of Being.
    - 35, Heidegger: The Logos
    - 36, Heraclitus and The Logos
    - 37, The Christian Logos
    -38, Apeiron: Infinity
    -39, Logoi: The Limited Logos
    -40, Collections of Heidegger’s works in English Translation
    -41, Adorno’s Critique of Husserlian Phenomenology
    -42, 43, Adorno’s Critique of Heideggerian Fundamental Ontology
    -45, Heidegger: Christian Theology Demythologized
    -46, Phenomenological Obstruction
    -47, Schleiermacher’s Ethical Socio-Political Theory

    -50, Schleiermacher’s Ethical Social Theory/Christian Pattern


    Schleiermacher’s Ethical Social Theory
    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.
    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)

    We have already discussed logical circularity and its implications for theology in the post # 9, “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.
    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. And besides, I decided to change strategy in reviewing Schleiermacher’s socio-political theory. So I will try again to examine Schleiermacher’s “four ethical relations” of right, sociability, faith, and revelation out of which emerges three moral organisms, or "the perfect ethical forms," which are the State, Society, School, and the Church.

    The Mysterious Barricades

    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....​
     
    Last edited: Jan 22, 2019

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