tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6367540557347019200.post3934510554432998336..comments2024-02-20T00:47:19.513-08:00Comments on Currents in Catholic Thought: The Death of God and the Necessity of a New PhenomenologyJoe Chttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14191089729473477072noreply@blogger.comBlogger21125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6367540557347019200.post-82726171681735627482015-11-07T05:03:44.341-08:002015-11-07T05:03:44.341-08:00I think it best to conclude this particular commen...I think it best to conclude this particular comments section with simply stating that phenomenology is a philosophy of experience in the tradition of Husserl and Heidegger and Merleau-Ponty with important antecedents in Hegel and Kant, though these last 2 are about something very different. <br /><br />The philosophical tradition has understood very well what each giant of phenomenology has accomplished. Marion stands in that tradition as a revolutionary, bringing phenomenology completely out from metaphysical constraints, finally freeing things to appear in themselves.<br /><br />Some philosophers see being, knowing and appearing as either identical or in terms of the other...terms. Whether this is a fatal blow to phenomenology in general remains to be seen. Either way, phenomenology marches on.Joe Chttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14191089729473477072noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6367540557347019200.post-25445707432226012942015-11-06T14:28:09.058-08:002015-11-06T14:28:09.058-08:00This comment has been removed by the author.Joseph Charles https://www.blogger.com/profile/02849704279926794392noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6367540557347019200.post-5567773927744174062015-11-06T14:25:18.711-08:002015-11-06T14:25:18.711-08:00This comment has been removed by the author.Joseph Charles https://www.blogger.com/profile/02849704279926794392noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6367540557347019200.post-69294848871839438292015-11-06T14:15:41.290-08:002015-11-06T14:15:41.290-08:00This comment has been removed by the author.Joseph Charles https://www.blogger.com/profile/02849704279926794392noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6367540557347019200.post-14510589027495020412015-11-06T12:54:45.231-08:002015-11-06T12:54:45.231-08:00I understand your point, but it's less about &...I understand your point, but it's less about 'camps' than about some epistemological modes being better suited for some tasks over against others. Phenomenology is best thought of as a philosophy or philosophical method of *experience*. <br /><br />THAT a causal account is available is different from making it the only available account. Phenomenology is an alternative to metaphysics (or other metaphysical systems), one I think is better for some phenomena, but not necessarily for others. When the task is to describe experience, phenomenology tends to work better because it imposes no conditions under which things can appear. Causality is a concept that forces things to appear as they are constituted by a subject; that's all well and good as far as it goes. For some, that's just as far as things can get. Not so for a system that allows things to appear on their own terms, unconstituted except by its own givenness.Joe Chttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14191089729473477072noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6367540557347019200.post-46346531400689951532015-11-06T11:57:05.369-08:002015-11-06T11:57:05.369-08:00You implied that studying a score and experiencing...You implied that studying a score and experiencing the music were different: studying a score means examining it as a completely defined object using the classical tools of musical analysis (I learned the Longy method). You now say that studying a score is experiencing music. That's fine. Having done both, I cannot begin to understand how these 2 things are the same thing. Having done both, YOU can.<br /><br />Phenomenology can certainly access the experience of 'studying a score'. And that is what you apparently meant all along. Now who's playing the word games.<br /><br />The discussion is not advanced by this pseudo-deconstruction.Joe Chttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14191089729473477072noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6367540557347019200.post-20407795315522118692015-11-06T11:45:15.034-08:002015-11-06T11:45:15.034-08:00This comment has been removed by the author.Joseph Charles https://www.blogger.com/profile/02849704279926794392noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6367540557347019200.post-77785611255975044532015-11-06T11:30:03.870-08:002015-11-06T11:30:03.870-08:00This comment has been removed by the author.Joseph Charles https://www.blogger.com/profile/02849704279926794392noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6367540557347019200.post-68086269315595296612015-11-06T11:24:37.211-08:002015-11-06T11:24:37.211-08:00This comment has been removed by the author.Joseph Charles https://www.blogger.com/profile/02849704279926794392noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6367540557347019200.post-78895360682613527422015-11-06T06:35:27.209-08:002015-11-06T06:35:27.209-08:00Your comments on measurement are helpful. Is there...Your comments on measurement are helpful. Is there anything, any object or phenomenon that is 'incommensurate' or 'immense'? I would suggest that "when we sit down to study a score" the proper tool is more like a ruler than what we might find in phenomenology. Studying a score does not put before us a lived experience; it is simply the activity of investigation. Phenomenology asks what is going on in the experience of music; musicology asks what is going on in a score. Each of those tools is appropriately deployed in their tasks, their jobs.<br /><br />Monet's Haystacks series comes to mind. I would be doing 2 very different things when I study the series, or even the technique of a single painting; or when I experience the art. Is Monet himself exploring, that is, offering 'studies' of what Levi Bryant calls the local manifestations of objects? That would pose another task before me.<br /><br />When I come before "Haystacks: the effects of sun and snow" at the Met, I am alive in that moment, and want to experience my own experience of this work of art. If that is my task, my job, I want phenomenology to be the method/tool. If I want to contextualize the work within the series, or within Monet's life at Giverny, I better choose the tools of art history or art criticism.Joe Chttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14191089729473477072noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6367540557347019200.post-3294590841319917942015-11-06T05:45:05.791-08:002015-11-06T05:45:05.791-08:00'Possibility' in phenomenology is utterly ...'Possibility' in phenomenology is utterly free, whereas in propositional, mathematical logic it answers to 'conditions' such as falsifiability, the law of contradiction etc. Possibility in the new phenomenology is truly a priori, true and pure *idea* as distinct from 'concept.' For Kant we experience through concepts constituted by a transcendent subject; for Marion, we experience 'givenness,' which is not constituted, but prior to constitution. Metaphysics is overcome by phenomenology because it does not try to fit experience into concepts but instead, allows the given to fill intuition, which may or may not lend itself to the intention, which aims to grasp it in signification or *Begriff*. Our word 'concept' not longer rings of grasping, or gripping, with which *Begriff* is cognate (same Germanic root: grip/-*griff*). What gives itself is the essence of a thing, an idea, an *eidos*. This seems more Platonic than Aristotelian in its purity.<br /><br />Impossible possibility, or the possibility of the impossible are very much at work in phenomenology whereas they die the death of the law of contradiction in formal logic.<br /><br />Physics and metaphysics seem to solve some problems, but not others. For some people, using a hammer to twist the lid of a jar is worth a try; eventually another tool becomes more attractive after enough broken jars. <br /><br />In the consideration of the possibility of revelation (which seems really to be what we are talking about in these discussions), metaphysics is something of a hammer to the jar of revelation. Bad results. The jar must break. Phenomenology lets the jar be a jar and opens it up as a response to the idea of 'twisting' which hammers simply do not know or do. <br /><br />God is a broken jar only when metaphysical categories beat him to death. Ontotheology must break its god because it does not know of givenness. If we think God in categories of intellection, it is not God thought at all.<br /><br />Phenomenology's task is to give voice to possibility, which is anterior to constitution. You say well when you describe your approach in these matters, your natural attitude: "the premise that there are *actual* limits on *possibility*." Sometimes its best to imagine no such limits; so much more is permitted as possibility. Imagine an unconditioned possibility, one without limits set by (fill in the blank) prior to such an experience, possibility itself, *posse ipsum* of the mystics, perhaps.<br /><br />Can you imagine ideas that are not concepts? It's really not natural, but by bracketing off the natural attitude, the given can give itself on its very own terms its very self.Joe Chttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14191089729473477072noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6367540557347019200.post-89987504953979988122015-11-05T18:13:21.267-08:002015-11-05T18:13:21.267-08:00This comment has been removed by the author.Joseph Charles https://www.blogger.com/profile/02849704279926794392noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6367540557347019200.post-33403095761740436632015-11-05T17:57:24.242-08:002015-11-05T17:57:24.242-08:00This comment has been removed by the author.Joseph Charles https://www.blogger.com/profile/02849704279926794392noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6367540557347019200.post-31512975922119155252015-11-05T17:43:12.692-08:002015-11-05T17:43:12.692-08:00This comment has been removed by the author.Joseph Charles https://www.blogger.com/profile/02849704279926794392noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6367540557347019200.post-11702918980354150272015-11-05T15:22:02.189-08:002015-11-05T15:22:02.189-08:00This comment has been removed by the author.Joseph Charles https://www.blogger.com/profile/02849704279926794392noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6367540557347019200.post-20132738147652705372015-11-05T12:35:51.936-08:002015-11-05T12:35:51.936-08:00You've heard the adage, 'use the right too...You've heard the adage, 'use the right tool for the job.' The right tool to answer the question you pose, that is, the right epistemological mode for answering 'why' one knows whether witches of the specific type you describe are actual, is rather simple empiricism. <br /><br />There are witches all over the place (Wiccan), but there really are no wicked witches of the west, unless they limit their 'being' to fairy tale narratives. <br /><br />So, there are, in fact, no fairy tale witches outside of fairy tales. If someone told me that they 'saw' a fairy tale witch doing fairy tale witch-things outside of fairy tales, I would have serious questions about the 'witness.' I do not 'believe' in such witches, for one reason, is because I do not trust the witness.<br /><br />You can substitute any number of fantastic figures for 'witches' in your question. Phenomenology is not the tool for that job. Unless, of course, the question is posed differently. Simple logic will suffice to answer your question. I do not believe in *your* witch because [s]he is illogical and incoherent. Such a figure is unlikely to enter my experience of the world outside of fiction or fantasy.Joe Chttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14191089729473477072noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6367540557347019200.post-56610654131884829132015-11-05T11:07:09.909-08:002015-11-05T11:07:09.909-08:00This comment has been removed by the author.Joseph Charles https://www.blogger.com/profile/02849704279926794392noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6367540557347019200.post-62226064055807128612015-10-30T14:06:15.979-07:002015-10-30T14:06:15.979-07:00Though I usually mean 'event' the way Capu...Though I usually mean 'event' the way Caputo has defined it in _The Weakness of God_ , Zizek's 'event' would work as well here, so think of his notion with which you are familiar. There are many (several?) events stirring in sacred texts. One could be the calling of a community into existence. Another could be justice, another still, love/agape. Not all events are all warm and fuzzy; some are things better left 'unreleased.' Violence can be stirring there as well.Joe Chttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14191089729473477072noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6367540557347019200.post-63767854905998184342015-10-30T13:11:47.235-07:002015-10-30T13:11:47.235-07:00Which are the historical occurrences of the biblic...Which are the historical occurrences of the biblical narratives, the first time they are written, the second? How about when they're copied in the scriptoria? Every printing of every bible? <br /><br />What's going on when people hearing the voice of God promulgate sacred violence? Now that's a phenomenality worth talking about.<br /><br />We need to remind ourselves that phenomenology speaks to possibility; not to actuality. Phenomenology has no apparatus to make claims about what is an actuality. In a similar vein, we should maintain a distinction between facticity and fact. I could be mistaken, but hasn't your comment confused or blurred these 2 terms? Fact and facticity play out very differently in the sands bloodied by ISIS than in the witch-hunts of the 17th or 20th centuries. So would, I think, a rigorous phenomenology.<br /><br />I did gently critique Caputo's analysis, which takes into consideration your concerns about a false choice (though Caputo never sets it up in has argument as a 'choice').<br /><br />I do not believe in witches (except for tomorrow); do you?Joe Chttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14191089729473477072noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6367540557347019200.post-26201211819996506052015-10-30T13:06:57.749-07:002015-10-30T13:06:57.749-07:00This comment has been removed by the author.Joseph Charles https://www.blogger.com/profile/02849704279926794392noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6367540557347019200.post-502514566429153392015-10-30T11:43:35.901-07:002015-10-30T11:43:35.901-07:00This comment has been removed by the author.Joseph Charles https://www.blogger.com/profile/02849704279926794392noreply@blogger.com