G.A. Schrader: “The Structure of Emotion”

George A. Schrader attempts, in his article “The Structure of Emotion,” to use the theory of phenomenology to concretely define human emotion. He begins this definition through a short analysis of the words “feeling” and “emotion,” applying the Heideggarian concept of the structure of language to these two basic words so crucial to human existence. He goes on to ask two fundamental questions pertaining to the phenomena of feeling: (1) What is the intrinsic form or structure of feeling? (2) How is feeling related to other conscious processes of the human subject such as thought or volition?

Merleau-Ponty on History and Meaning

Class on December 3rd…Today was our second to last class, and we continued the past week’s trend of revisiting Husserl after a semester of slowly moving away from his thought into Heidegger. As you recall, last week we discussed Fink, who was a Husserlian at heart, and wrote a powerful defense of Husserl from both neo-Kantians and Heidegerrians in the article covered in class. One of Fink’s claims was that phenomenology was always concerned (if not *always*, then certainly after Ideen in 1913) with the ontological question, and not merely the “ontic” one, or the one directed toward beings. This is a claim meant to challenge Heideggerian critiques, which lump Husserl in with metaphysics writ large.

M. Natanson: “Alienation and Social Role”

In Maurice Natanson’s account of sociality not as a sociological feature but as an object of phenomenological discourse, he discusses the structural elements at play within processes of alienation and social role taking. Natanson’s essay entitled “Alienation and Social Role”, provides a critical framework through which the thematics of alienation emerge as both a “structural deformation in sociality” and as a “grounding condition” of that social order itself (Natanson Pg. 256).

E. Kaelin: “The Visibility of Things Seen: A Phenomenological View of Painting.”

Eugene Kaelin’s essay “The Visibility of Things Seen: A Phenomenological View of Painting.” is an investigation into the phenomenological system of paintings: how the consciousness is guided in the viewing of an aesthetic object by the intentional visual structure of the object’s “universe” (55). He begins with a critique of Roman Ingarden’s Das Literarische Kunstwerk, in which he describes literature as a phenomenological experience constituted by the way a literary work shows itself: “in a polyphonic harmony of sounds and sense.” In other words, the work is composed of firstly, a sensuous surface, and then into units of meaning contained in sentences, then into a structure of relationship which constitute and idea, and finally an order of schematized images.

J. Wild: ‘Authentic Existence: A New Approach to “Value Theory”‘

In Wild’s essay ‘Authentic Existence: A New Approach to “Value Theory,”’ he attempts to expand upon efforts made by such thinkers as Kierkegaard, Heidegger, and Merleau-Ponty to designate the norming sense of particular experiences with ‘real,”genuine,’ and ‘authentic’ states. These terms and the states they apply to are observed by a newly emerging attitude towards value theory grounded in existential philosophy and phenomenological reduction. Wild argues that the implementation of an existential value theory as such is the direct route to authentic living (that is, self-directed, self-valued living).

P. Kerszberg: ‘Natural Science and the Experience of Nature’

We began this course, and Husserl in a sense began his phenomenological project, with a concern over the “grounding” of the natural sciences. Citing extensively from Husserl’s The Crisis of European Sciences, Pierre Kerszberg’s article, “Natural Science and the Experience of Nature,” is an extended review of the ways in which the natural sciences have attempted to ground themselves, and how, for Husserl, they have failed in this attempt. As such, the article rehearses the phenomenology-motivating dialectic we outlined in the first class and saw in Ideas I, though it does so in considerably more detail with regard the dialectic’s relation to developments in the historiography of mathematics/science and philosophies of mathematics/science (e.g. Euclidean space, Plato’s Theory of Forms, the Copernican Revolution, the principle of induction, Newtonian physics, Einstein’s theory of relativity, quantum mechanics, among others) —all of which, as we shall see, Husserl interprets as having become appropriated as part of the “Galilean project” that characterizes modern philosophy.

S. Ahmed: ‘Orientations: Toward a Queer Phenomenology.’

Ahmed begins by questioning what it is to be oriented. Simply by existing in a space, we are oriented, that is to say we have an understanding of what we can see, where we are in relation to other things and where these things lead us. We are oriented around objects in a space; objects on their part ask to be used in a particular manner, they “create a ground” (543). Orientation then, implies a kind of starting point from which we proceed. Ahmed posits the question of sexual orientation, specifically, the sexualization of spaces based upon the objects (people) within those spaces and the direction of our desires towards objects.

L. Ma and J. van Brakel: ‘Heidegger’s Comportment Toward East-West Dialogue’

Known as one of the most influential Western philosophers of the twentieth century, Martin Heidegger’s connection with Eastern thinking, both as he as influenced it and as it has influenced him, has long been an area of debate. In a very detailed and comprehensive article called Heidegger’s Comportment Toward East-West Dialogue, Lin Ma and Jaap van Brakel tackle the question of Heidegger’s relationship with the East by examining remarks and actions he takes towards the subject.

R. Gotesky: ‘Aloneness, Loneliness, Isolation, Solitude’

In this essay, Rubin Gotesky studies the condition of aloneness that acts as the foundation for alienation. Aloneness is an innate condition defined by the fact that each person is singular, residing in one conscience. However, we are social creatures with an innate capability and desire to connect to the others in which we share the earth with. During the countless connections that we make with others, it is inherent that they will lead to some form of rejection that disconnects, or rather, alienates us. According to Gotesky, alienation is a negatively inescapable state that can be transcended only in solitude or else we cope “in the walled prison of loneliness” (226). Evaluating why, for how long, and in what way alienation arises, he describes aloneness as the foundation that leads to loneliness, isolation and solitude. These different modes transform into the state of alienation depending on the emotions associated with a social circumstance.

Aloneness encompasses the fundamentals that define loneliness and isolation. The main difference is that it is possible to experience aloneness without feeling alienated. Distance in time and space grounds Gotesky’s description of aloneness. Distance can occur in time and space in, to name a few, physical, psychological, intellectual, or social experiences. A psychological separation in time is usually distinguished by “age, training, tradition, and value-differences” (217). Socially, it is easy to feel distant from someone who is sitting right next to you if you have different habits, ideologies, or conceptions of nature (217). Most of the time, these separations or disconnections do not affect us. We do not feel alienated from our children as parents because of the distance in age or from a stranger that we sit next to on a plane ride. Thus, aloneness is a condition that can be inhabited in what Gotesky says is a “neutral” (215) state. These experiences must evoke distressed emotions for alienation to arise.

Loneliness occurs on two conditions. The first, a person must feel rejected or excluded by others, the second is that the rejected or excluded person wants to be accepted or included (219). Loneliness is a state of alienation that is “deeply rooted in permanence” (222). Often, a bond that was unexpectedly disconnected by another person inflicts loneliness. Gotesky explains that time and knowledge can heal the alienation felt in loneliness. However, obtaining the knowledge or waiting the length or time in order to learn why someone broke up with you so that you know when and how to get back together with that person, is nearly impossible. We feel particularly alienated when we create a relationship by sharing our thoughts, truths or needs with person who, without warning, breaks the engagement (226).

Isolation differs from loneliness in that it requires acceptance of loneliness as an inescapable condition of life (214). We have to realize that our relation to others will in some way let us down for some unknown reason at some point in time. It is a permanent mode upon which we have little control. Isolation is not a place to only suffer in anguish because, as Gotesky points out, through what he calls, “attainment-isolation” (229) we can accomplish work, create ideas, solve problems, or practice skills. Due to law, intolerance, and prejudice we have had to learn how to keep secrets. “Survival-isolation” allows us to safely be who we are authentically so that others will want to punish or “destroy us” (230). For instance it is necessary for “criminals, political revolutionaries, nonconformarmists, opposionists of all sorts” (230) to hide a part of themselves in order to survive. When others discover hidden parts of ourselves, we feel alienated.

Solitude “is that state of living alone…without the pain of loneliness or isolation” (236). Gotesky believes that few people have been able to reside in solitude (239). Interactions with, what Heidegger refers to as, the ‘they’, tempt us to a dishonest entanglement in which we have become alienated. Gotesky emphasizes a point made by Berdaeyev who believes, “that men at one time did not experience alienation in our terms of loneliness and isolation” (235). We have lost a pure self now diluted by others. The long lost person in solitude who “hates no one and yearns for no one” (237) is no longer free to be content in loneliness.

Gotesky, Rubin. Aloneness, Loneliness, Isolation, Solitude. (226) (217) (215) (219) (222) (226) (214) (229) (230) (236) (239) (235) (237)

E. Tehennepe: ‘The Life-World and the World of Ordinary Language’

This essay discusses the arguments regarding the relationships between ordinary language philosophy and phenomenology. Tehennepe prefaces this discussion by contrasting two opposing views. John Wild affirms that ordinary language is present in the phenomena of everyday life, and that phenomenology and language analysis seek the same existential explanations of “concrete experience” (133) from different perspectives. On the other hand, Maurice Natanson sees a separation in the absence of intentionality from the analyst’s scheme of consciousness because there is a fundamental difference in its conception of meaning to phenomenology. Language analysis, according to Natanson, is also tied to a behavioristic bias and a therapeutic positivism that lacks an existential dimension.