Writing is a habit; if you set it aside too long, the desire to write grows weaker and weaker, and in the end you lose the habit altogether. That is a terrible thing. In short, no matter what, I have to write something from time to time, to wake up the habit of putting pen to paper again.
This semester, the Wumen group is reading Sokolowski’s *Introduction to Phenomenology*, and I’ll also take the chance to keep piggybacking on Jin Xiping’s offbeat Husserl, aiming to make a decent start in phenomenology this semester~ So I’ll casually jot down some notes and the like……
The introduction to *Introduction to Phenomenology* explains the book’s origins, aims, and outline. In brief, this book intends to step outside the commentaries on phenomenologists such as Husserl, Heidegger, Merleau-Ponty, and so on, and, entirely in its own language, re-express “what phenomenology is.” For an introduction to phenomenology, this is undoubtedly the most appropriate approach. Of course, this approach assumes that phenomenology is still, today, a living body of thought, rather than something like the “Stoic school,” which has long since become history and can only be studied in a philological way. The author directly uses “the philosophical vocabulary developed within the phenomenological tradition,” without commenting on it, precisely because these words “still retain vitality … there is no need to explain them by showing how others use these terms. We do not need to bind them in dead textual meanings in order to profit from them.”
As a philosophy book, this one may disappoint in terms of conceptual clarification and the rigor of its arguments. Yet on the one hand this is to avoid getting entangled in concepts and thereby straying from the purpose of an introduction; on the other hand, this is precisely a certain phenomenological attitude—do not be too superstitious about abstruse philosophical concepts; the key is how to think philosophy through. If a concept has vitality, then through simple interpretation and illustration it will become a vivid and tangible part of your language, and under its guidance you will be able to unfold your thought. That concept will then be at your command, and you will no longer need constantly to return to a strict definition of it in order to confirm its meaning. After all, the aim of phenomenology is to return to the things themselves; if one always has to return to concepts for investigation, how can that be appropriate? In the first place, the concepts used by phenomenologists are mostly drawn from ordinary language. Although after being reinterpreted they can no longer be read in a simple everyday way, neither can they, because of their slight departure from the everyday world, be elevated into something sacred. The quotation marks around “terms” are like the halo above an angel’s head; students of philosophy seem to think they have gained something great once they grasp the meanings of a few words, and writers of philosophy seem to think they have achieved something great once they have produced strings of text dense with technical terms. Such attitudes are dangerous. In my view, if after going through an “Introduction to Phenomenology” one ends up having mastered a pile of phenomenological terms and speaking in a polished, specialized way such that even outsiders can tell one has studied phenomenology, then that introduction has failed. What would a successful introduction look like? I think the best thing would be to digest all that speculative content into one’s own language, to appropriate the phenomenological method as one’s own, so that one can use it unobtrusively, expressing it in language that even outsiders find plain and palpable. This is probably also how those early masters of phenomenology transmitted it: each person, upon receiving phenomenology, transformed it into their own language. Heidegger spoke of Dasein, Merleau-Ponty spoke of the body; what they spoke of was not Husserl’s own stuff at all. There are practically no two great phenomenologists who speak in similar language. This style is probably the opposite of analytic philosophy, where philosophers often tend to speak in similar patterns, and even share the common aim of devising a universal and rigorous language system; that is the analytic style. Phenomenology’s style itself, by contrast, requires the continual unfolding of linguistic richness. To analytic philosophers this richness is of course a kind of confusion and lack of rigor, but only when one is too obsessed with fixed verbal concepts does this richness become an obstacle to understanding phenomenology. If, however, one understands that the crux of understanding phenomenology does not lie in mastering so many dazzling verbal concepts, but in grasping a method and an attitude of thought, then this richness signifies phenomenology’s openness.
Of course, philosophical study must after all remain grounded in texts. If you do not chew on the writings of the great philosophers, but merely rely on your own feeling to say a set of “your own words” and count that as learning, that obviously won’t do. But where should one begin? Begin with Husserl? That is certainly a rigorous path. I have heard some scholars explain it this way: because the phenomenological tradition is complex and varied, with each thinker having their own phenomenology, it is hard to say who really counts as a phenomenologist, or which parts of a given philosopher’s thought are phenomenology and which are elements of other traditions such as existentialism or hermeneutics. But in any case, Husserl, as the founder of phenomenology, must surely be phenomenological; all the other phenomenologies are branches from him, so starting with Husserl can never be wrong! It is not wrong, but the key question is whether it is meaningful—why do I want to study phenomenology? Is it merely in order to learn “phenomenology,” that is, so that after I have learned it I can stand in the academic world with the badge of a “researcher of phenomenology” on my chest, and with confidence? If so, then yes, of course, you have to do Husserl; as for Heidegger, Merleau-Ponty, and so on, they will probably be regarded as existentialism or something else rather than phenomenology, and that would not be wrong. But why must I first guarantee that what I study counts as “phenomenology” before I study it? If what I am doing does not count as phenomenology, so what? If you keep circling around Husserl’s texts, no matter how deeply you study them, phenomenology will remain a dead subject for you. It is just like studying Stoic philosophy: no matter how carefully you ensure that what you are studying is indeed “Stoic philosophy,” that will not make you a “Stoic scholar”; at most you will be a “scholar who studies Stoic scholars,” because the Stoic tradition has long been broken off, and a genuine Stoic scholar probably does not need to repeatedly study and interpret the theories of the tradition’s founding master in order to establish their identity.
If phenomenology is still a living tradition, then the way into it does not have to begin with Husserl. Rather, one first lets oneself be steeped in a certain intellectual background, senses a distinctive style, and gradually merges into that current and fashion; only then, in further study, does one examine and develop the specific doctrines of one’s predecessors. And what an “introduction” ought to provide is precisely such a basic atmosphere, an open background that lets you experience the style of phenomenology and perhaps follow that fashion step by step. Of course, an introduction must also provide some keys for entry and train some basic methods. These basic methods are not necessarily the most perfect or rigorous, nor must they be the most original or fundamental. It is just like learning physics: you do not begin with Aristotle or with Einstein, but with some of the plainest, most ordinary knowledge and methods. Or take the introduction to analytic philosophy: what it requires is learning mathematical logic, which is a basic method and also contains within it a style or attitude of thought. It is not based on any particular scholar or theory, but on mathematics and symbols; correspondingly, an introduction to phenomenology also has to learn some basic method that embodies a style and attitude of thought. And this method too is not grounded in some scholar or theory, but in the basis of our everyday lived experience.
The first chapter of *Introduction to Phenomenology* gives a brief overview of “intentionality” and its importance. Put simply, consciousness is defined by the fact that consciousness is always consciousness of something. This is an utterly ordinary statement, but why is it important? Because for the traditional mind-body dualistic mode of thought represented by Descartes, the concept of “intentionality” is a return-to-simplicity correction. In traditional philosophy, the mind is always dealing with ideas within itself; the objects of consciousness are still various ideas, or rather the “impressions” stamped on the mind by the external world. Human consciousness merely points to those marks inside the mental world, and thus the question arises: how is it possible to get out of the mental world and connect with the external world? Phenomenology says that this epistemological problem does not exist in the first place; the process of consciousness is already directed toward so-called external things. External things are not the unreachable true thing behind the perceived appearance; rather, the appearance itself is the real thing. An appearance can be clarified and corrected by new observation, but what one reaches through correcting the appearance is still an appearance, not some thing behind it. Phenomenology emphasizes that sensory experience has richer layers than traditional philosophy recognizes, yet it does not accept a so-called ontological or real level separated from the mental world, or separated from the phenomenal realm. But phenomenology also does not accept postmodern nihilism; it still seeks the luminosity of truth through reflection and interpretation, though this truth is no longer that extremely simple abstract being sought by traditional philosophy.
The second chapter is very short but important. It uses the perception of a cube as an example to demonstrate phenomenology’s so-called intentional analysis. Notice the position of this chapter: the various structural layers of phenomenological analysis have not yet been unfolded, and it is only in the title of the fourth chapter that we finally get “What is phenomenology.” To begin by simply presenting an example like this will naturally irritate some people: all sorts of statements are just being taken for granted without sufficient argument, this analysis is obviously too crude, and so on. But this is probably also precisely where phenomenology’s style lies—that is to say, phenomenological thinking is not grounded in concepts, definitions, axioms, and the like, but in everyday lived experience. To start by giving a cube here is not to have you first get clear on concepts like side, aspect, outline, mode of perception, and so on; it is to guide you into reflecting on your experience of a simple thing. Through the example of the cube, you can reflect on all sorts of other experiences; in the later, more detailed explanation of phenomenology, you can keep recalling these experiences and, through reflecting on them, come to grasp the phenomenological method more deeply.
Experience of a cube has many layers: the cube as a whole, one side of the cube, a specific perspective on one side, and a fleeting glimpse at one instant of one specific perspective on one side. These layers are not presented one by one in sequence, but are given simultaneously. The whole cube is not the result of stacking together what you see after observing six sides; a side is not something recognized only after scrutiny from all possible angles; seeing “one side of the cube” simultaneously means that you see “the cube.” The cube is the identity of the various sides, the side is the identity of the various perspectival aspects, and the perspectival aspect is the identity of the various outlines (the contours of the glimpse). Of course, this is only a preliminary analysis. Further on, we can also reflect on the background in which the cube is presented, the cultural and intellectual background that accompanies your experience of this cube, and the actual context, and so forth. In short, the key point of this example is to get you to reflect on the perception of a cube, not to make you memorize a specific set of levels.
In the later third chapter, this cube repeatedly comes in handy. First, when discussing the relation between whole and part, the text gives “part” as having two types: “fragment (substantial part)” and “element.” A “whole” is always a “concrete thing,” while a “fragment” refers to a “part” that can be taken out and regarded as a concrete thing in its own right as another whole, even though once separated out, this fragment may take on a different meaning. For example, the branches, leaves, and fruit on a tree; an “element,” by contrast, refers to a part that cannot be taken out on its own, but can only be talked about abstractly, such as the redness in an apple, the shape of a leaf, and so on. One can abstractly speak of redness, roundness, etc., but these abstract concepts do not correspond to certain entities.
If one takes abstractions as though they were concrete things, that is the so-called fallacy of “misplaced concreteness.” For example, the book mentions the modern philosophical concept of “mind” as one such case: confusing the mind and its inseparable objects by separating them out, and treating this abstraction as an independent existence, thereby leading thought into confusion. I can also add another example, namely the thing called “force” that I discussed earlier.
What follows, the question of identity and multiplicity, is even more interesting. The cube as identity differs from its sides, its aspects, and its outlines, yet it is presented through those sides, aspects, and outlines. This structure can be used to analyze other things, even the relation between language and semantics. For example, the author says that the sentence “Snow covers the street” and various other formulations such as “The street is covered with snow” are different “sides” of the same “meaning”; they present the same fact. Treating one particular sentence as meaning itself is a case of misplaced concreteness. Someone here asks: how do we account for complex cases such as “what is meant between the lines”? For instance, when I say “Snow covers the street,” I do not mean the fact that there is snow on the street; rather, I mean that we cannot go out today. How should such a case be understood? In fact, this is precisely what phenomenology can explain, whereas the line of thought that imagines “meaning” as a proposition will struggle to understand this kind of “what is meant between the lines.” What phenomenology emphasizes here is exactly the “meaning between the lines,” the “meaning beyond what is said.” That is to say, of course you can say that “Snow covers the street” and “We cannot go out today” are expressions of different aspects of the same meaning, and there can be even more varied forms of expression—for example, curling up under the covers and not getting out of bed, or taking off the overcoat you just put on, and so on—all of which may be expressing the same meaning. This “meaning” is like that “cube”: each time it can only be presented through one side, and the perspectives from which it may be presented are inexhaustible. And to present, or rather to express, a thing always requires some context. For example, the same thing, when presented to you in the context of geometry, is what you see as a “cube”; when presented to you in a building-block game, it is what you see as a part, and so on. Likewise, the same sentence “Snow covers the street” will present different meanings in different contexts. On the other hand, the communication of things can of course go wrong, and among the many ways of expressing something there are also better and worse ones. For instance, when a cube is presented from certain specific sides, it can be especially hard for you to recognize it as a “cube,” and you may even easily mistake it for a “cylinder” or some very different thing; then you will ask for further supplementation, to look again from another angle, and so forth. Expression of meaning is similar: some sentences readily convey what is meant, while others may leave people puzzled, in which case one can continue the exchange and provide more expression.
I’ll stop here for now.
March 18, 2010
Translated from the Chinese original with AI assistance. The original text is authoritative.
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