barebones communication

“Thus what is established by statistics seems to be a language of facts, but which questions these facts answer and which facts would begin to speak if other questions were asked are hermeneutical questions. Only a hermeneutical inquiry would legitimate the meaning of these facts and thus the consequences that follow from them”.

Hans-George Gadamer: “Philosophical Hermeneutics”, Translated and Edited by David E. Linge, University of California Press, Los Angeles 1976, page 11.

Library Thing.  

More on pitstops.

Please note, that he photograph above has been inserted by the blog author, who also made the shot. The photograph is, therefore, not a part of Gadamer’s original text.

Shot at Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, Denmark 2008. Exhibition by Candice Breitz. 

“This means that what affects us from the current passively pregiven background is not a completely empty something, some datum or other (we have no really exact word for it) as yet entirely without sense, a datum absolutely unfamiliar to us. On the contrary, unfamiliarity is at the same time always a mode of familiarity.”

Edmund Husserl: Experience and Judgment,  revised and edited by Ludwig Landgrebe, translated by James S. Churchill and Karl Ameriks, Routledge & Kegan Paul,London, UK 1973, page 37.

Library Thing.  

More on pitstops.

 Photograph shot by the blog author.

“Yet this feeling of gratitude does not fully characterize our true situation. Quite often we  feel overcome by a profound weariness, as if the rythm of life which technology has produced does violence to us. This is because technological progress is achieved to the detriment of other essential values. We are not satisfied with hurrying. We often find ourselves using the phrase “scientific barbarism” when we want to point to one of the characteristic traits of our time, and we speak with regret of the slow pace and the luxury of the good old days. We feel revolt rumbling in us; we would like to recapture our rights over time, rights of which contemporary life seems to have deprived us”.

Eugène Minkowski: Lived Time. Phenomenological and Psychopathological Studies, translated with an introduction by Nancy Metzel, Northwestern University Press, Evanston, USA, 1970, page 3.  

Library Thing. 

More on pitstops.

 Picture by blog author. 

Robert Sokolowski:

“The actual segment of conscious life, the lebendige Gegenwart, is an absolute concretum because everything happens within it: remembering, expecting, perceiving, judging, being passively affected, and even doing phenomenology - all are nested inside the living present, while it is not nested inside anything else. We cannot get down to anything more basic because all further divisions - into central impressions and retentions, for instance - are abstractive. The living present is the theater in which the whole spectacle of conscious life is available for phenomenological viewing. Even the past and future are present only inside it; the living present is a present for my past and future”. 

Robert Sokolowski, Husserlian Meditations, Northwestern University Press, Evanston , USA, 1974. Pages 158-159. 

Library Thing. 

More on pitstops. 

Picture by blog author. 

Yes, you can ask that again. 

The section on phenomenology that I am now working on will lay bare some of the steps of the phenomenological method.

I could have chosen between a number of sources, but Spiegelberg’s big book on the history on the phenomenological movement was at hand. Apart from being an extensive historical introduction to the movement, it does a good job in enhancing the essentials of the method.

It does not really matter what source you use for this ground work, anyway. Operational phenomenology does not have much in common with phenomenological history when it comes down to it.  It is nice to know, not necessarily need to know. But as good a starting point as any.

Remember what Stephan Strasser said in one of the pitstop quotes? I do. Husserl says about the same thing. I’ll see if I can find the quote for you.

So, please bear with me for a couple of posts yet, and I and hope to make the phenomenological inspiration much more interesting. ’cause it is. 

Be aware what Herbert Spiegelberg rightly says: Phenomenology begins in silence. Sorry then for being so noisy

I’ll make it up to you with one of my pictures. Actually, one of my favorites  (and a prize winner), that I will use for proper illustration later on. 

Yes, phenomenology will bring a different perspective to things . 

Enjoy. And cheers. It’s late.

David Ogilvy: 

“Advertising people who ignore research are as dangerous as generals who ignore decodes of enemy signals”.  

For more quotes go here.  

More on barebones pitstops.  

“What is phenomenology? It may seem strange that this question has still to be asked half a century after the first works of Husserl. The fact remains that it has by no means been answered. Phenomenology is the study of essences; and according to it, all problems amount to finding definitions of essences: the essence of perception, or the essence of consciousness, for example. But phenomenology is also a philosophy which puts essences back into existence, and does not expect to arrive at an understanding of man and the world from any starting point other than that of their “facticity”.

Maurice Merleau-Ponty: ”Phenomenology of Perception”, page vii. Routledge & Kegan Paul. New York 1970, (Translated from the French by Colin Smith). Library Thing.

More on barebones pitstops.

” … the need, that is, of grounding moral not von oben, but von unten, as Husserl frequently expressed it; that is, to derive ethics not from a metaphysical structure systematized in advance and therefore a priori, but from an authentically verified description of the phenomena of conscience. In a word, it is necessary to begin building the moral edifice from solid ground rather then from the roof. In this perspective the phenomenological method proves very useful as an introduction to a morality existentially lived and at the same time removed from a relativistic and historicist situationism“.

Paper by Paolo Valori: “Phenomenology and Personalistic Morality” in Analecta Husserliana Volume VI (The Self and the Other, page 82), D. Reidel Publishing Company, Holland 1975. (Edited by Anna-Teresa Tymieniecka).

Library Thing. 

More on barebones pitstops