I didn’t have a similar site, actually. Alas.

European philosophy – whether postmodern or phenomenological – is in real crisis here in the U.S., as well. Sadly. I have met Miguel a few times at U.S. conferences…his books are consistently first-rate.

Thanks for your note.

-Don

So, as per Fink’s identification of the primary reduction-motivating force as a sense of “astonishment” or “wonderment” at how the world takes on meaning, should the phenomenologist just go around attempting to “astound” dogmatists out of their dogmatism? But if so, does not Fink, in responding to Criticism at length regarding the contents of phenomenological analysis, contradict this guidance? If we take a sense of astonishment as the only way of motivating the reduction, then I think Fink does contradict himself. But I think, and I assume from the contents of Fink’s essay that he also thinks, that the reduction could be motivated by pointing to the rewards of it: “Want to know the origin of the world? Well, I’ll tell you how it’s done. Interested?” “Well, of course I’m interested. I’ve been wanting to know the origin of the world for a mighty long time now.” And of course we could conceive of many other strategies for motivating the reduction. Thus, the phenomenologist must skillfully employ and innovate such strategies—which admittedly are expressed in the mundane terms of the natural attitude—not in order to directly expound the insights of phenomenology to those who by nature would be incapable of understanding, but in order to motivate all the dogmatists into seeing for themselves. Right?

I don’t really know how to intelligently address the problem of language in the phenomenological attitude. However, for me, there has always been an inherent naivety to language. What comes to mind to me right now is problem of language in a reading of Lévinas. That is, roughly speaking, how can we talk about the infinitely Other in a language of finitude? I bring this up because I think, with language, there is always a story of betrayal to be told. With respect to language, the natural attitude becomes inextricable from the phenomenological – and this is unacceptable. And, as you say Jonathan, it is not as though some sort of permutation can exist (i.e., a “transcendental language”).

In any case, and this is an issue I’m thinking about for a paper in the Derrida class, the thing about language (in particular, I think) is that there is always a promise. Even in its naivety, an utterance always carries with it a promise of meaning. So, for me, there is some possibility in language and that possibility lies in the potentialities of language. What does this mean for Fink’s problem? I guess we’re sort of stuck with the natural attitude…but I think one would be fundamentally mistaken to say that we’re not “getting at” something inherently phenomenological even when we “speak” in the language of the natural attitude.

?

I’ll add a poem that reminds me of much in phenomenology, this sense of inhabiting in order to describe, encounter, and, in a special phenomenological sense, understand.

The Snow Man

by Wallace Stevens

One must have a mind of winter
To regard the frost and the boughs
Of the pine-trees crusted with snow;

And have been cold a long time
To behold the junipers shagged with ice,
The spruces rough in the distant glitter

Of the January sun; and not to think
Of any misery in the sound of the wind,
In the sound of a few leaves,

Which is the sound of the land
Full of the same wind
That is blowing in the same bare place

For the listener, who listens in the snow,
And, nothing himself, beholds
Nothing that is not there and the nothing that is.