Today I only read two sections, about the distinction between what is called the natural attitude and the phenomenological attitude. Simply put, the natural attitude is the non-reflective attitude of everyday life, whereas the phenomenological attitude is the reflective philosophical attitude. To distinguish these two attitudes is not to set them against each other, as if one were the natural attitude of ordinary people and the other the phenomenological attitude of philosophers. In fact, the phenomenological attitude is a kind of transcending of the natural attitude, not a rebellion or a rupture. After all, the natural attitude is the basic condition of human life; reflection can only be discussed on the premise of ordinary experience. And on the other hand, ordinary people, like philosophers, often switch between the natural attitude and the reflective attitude; it is just that ordinary people do not have explicit self-awareness of entering the reflective attitude, whereas philosophers must consciously carry out reflection.
The natural attitude contains, in the mode of “belief,” an acceptance of all things, that is, taking what is experienced as real. Of course, with the growth of experience and reason, we gradually introduce multiple dimensions such as illusion, appearance, deception, and so on. But “recognizing falsity” does not mean overturning the belief in the real; on the contrary, negation, doubt, refusal, confusion, and the like are also different modes of belief, rather than levels such as non-belief or anti-belief. The “recognition” of “falsity” always occurs in the form of confirming some higher-level truth; in other words, precisely because one possesses a belief in truthfulness can one recognize falsity. Only on the basis of some more basic belief can certain special beliefs be corrected and refuted. So the most basic belief is the so-called “belief in the world.” The so-called “world” is not something that exists as a reality; rather, it is “reality” itself, reality or truthfulness itself. The world is the total background from which all things are given to me.
In everyday language, “world” is precisely truthfulness. To say that something “does not exist in the world” means that it is illusory. And the “world” reflected upon in everyday discourse and in the rationalist philosophical tradition often turns into a big container or a big collection. This is also because people generally have not distinguished the difference between the natural attitude and the reflective attitude, and have used the way things are intended in the natural attitude to intend the “world.” Thus “in the world” or “does not exist in the world” becomes analogous to “in the basket,” “not in the room,” or “among animals,” “not among fruits,” and so on. In short, people tend to intend the “world” in the same way they intend things like baskets or rooms in the natural attitude, and this produces paradoxical results. Then philosophers begin to doubt the truthfulness of the “world”; they intend the self as a small black box and the world as a big room. Yet in fact, the “world” is not a thing. It is not an object that can be experienced under the natural attitude, nor is it the sum total of various objects of experience; it is the ultimate background of all experience.
As Heidegger puts it, the world is one link in the existential structure (Dasein—being-in-the-world). Or we might say that the world is one link in intentionality, as revealed by phenomenological reflection. When I reflect on my intention toward some specific thing, I will discover the context or background in which it stands; and when the original background is brought into the open and then further reflected on and traced back, these backgrounds also have still more basic backgrounds of their own. The “world” is precisely such an ultimate background: it always recedes when traced back, and it can never be brought into the open.
The phenomenological attitude is not a rebellion against the natural attitude, but a reflective activity that takes intentionality itself as the target of intention. Reflection is not doubt or negation. You see a piece of glass, walk up and touch it, and it feels cold. Then you feel something is off, doubt that it is glass, look carefully, and find that it is not glass at all but a piece of ice… Processes of doubt and negation like this do not mean that one has entered the reflective attitude; they are still merely various forms of the natural attitude. Of course, if when I doubt that it is glass, I begin to examine my way of observing, to think about under what background and from what perspective I was observing it so as to take it for a piece of glass, then these reflections and thoughts can be said to be entering the reflective attitude. It is just that such a reflective attitude is not a conscious transcendence, but an inadvertent crossing-over. Such reflection does not necessarily arise from doubt; for instance, it may also happen that I am certain I have seen a piece of ice, and when I want to explain my experience to others, I will also reexamine the way in which I experienced it and then describe it. And when philosophers consciously and spontaneously carry out reflective activity, they do not base themselves on a doubtful state of mind, nor on a stance of certainty, but on an attitude of “epoché,” that is to say, I do not care whether what I saw really is a piece of glass; I suspend my attitude toward the concrete intentional object and turn instead to attend to intentionality itself. And this suspension is not a simple relinquishing. It is not that I no longer intend this object and turn instead to intend certain concepts or mental states, but that I still remain concerned with it. Perhaps one could say that when we suspend the intentional object and enter reflection on intentionality itself, we are ignoring the object’s “content” while retaining its “form,” and this “form” is precisely what can be revealed through our grasp of the structure of its intentionality. Thus the author says, “We are now precisely considering it as something intended by a certain intentionality within the natural attitude, … if it is an object of perception, we examine it as perceived; if it is an object of memory, we examine it as remembered…”
We remember that phenomenology begins by saying, “Consciousness is always consciousness of some object.” So when we reflect on intentionality itself, what is the object of this consciousness? Is it still that intentional object, or the subject, or intentionality itself? What kind of being is “intentionality” itself when it becomes an intentional object? I am not very clear about this question. Phenomenological contemplation seems like something quite mysterious. In this contemplation, we seem to become “detached spectators,” but what are we spectating? We are not spectating a reified self, nor that original object, but rather a structure such as “I—intend—object.” Yet while examining this structure, we still always remain connected to the object… All of this sounds extremely subtle…
Here, I imagine, if one introduces the thinking of philosophy of technology or media philosophy, it becomes easier to understand this method (even if such an understanding deviates from Husserl). The key lies in the fact that “intentionality” itself can, in some way, be reified, or be intended in a reified way. That is “technology,” or rather “media.” McLuhan says “the medium is the extension of man”; in fact, one can further say that media are an extended intentionality.
The so-called switch from the natural attitude to the phenomenological attitude, in other words, is a switch from “immediacy” to “mediation,” that is, a reflection on media. Let us look at the author’s formulation: “In the natural attitude, we go directly toward the object; we pass through the object’s appearance and proceed straight to the object itself. From the standpoint of philosophical reflection, we make these appearances into a theme. We look at what we normally see through…” “Appearance” always has a “screen” on which the “image” appears; so what is this place of “appearance”? Is it not “media”? If we recast the above discussion in the terminology of media phenomenology, then in the natural attitude, “media” are transparent: we are unaware of the existence of media and go directly toward the object; whereas philosophical reflection brings out this “thing we normally see through,” namely “media,” and we suspend the “content” conveyed by media and instead reflect on the nature and structure of media itself.
But a phenomenological reflection on media does not mean fully leaving behind the content of media and taking media itself as a new object of study. In phenomenological reflection, the object of consciousness under the natural attitude is not discarded, but merely suspended, or “bracketed.” What kind of mode is this reflection? Let me try to give an example. For instance, I look at an object through glasses (eyes, a telescope). Under the natural attitude, my glasses are “transparent”; I am not aware of my glasses, but deal with the object directly through them. Then the first kind of situation is the unselfconscious interweaving of the natural and reflective attitudes. For example, I can no longer see things clearly, and thus begin to reflect on the way I am seeing, discovering that something is wrong with my glasses, and then take them off to inspect and wipe them. In the process of inspecting the glasses, my intention has already moved away from the previous object of viewing and toward the glasses themselves. At this moment, the glasses do not exist as glasses; they no longer function as media, but are inspected as a present-at-hand technological artifact.
But there is a third attitude or mode as well, namely, to keep the glasses existing as glasses while at the same time reflecting on the glasses themselves. That is to say, I still wear the glasses, still look at the object through them, but at this point what I am concerned with is no longer what content I see through the glasses, but the activity itself of seeing through the glasses. I still need to look at the object behind the glasses, but this looking is no longer for the sake of investigating the content of those objects; rather, it is to help me adjust or help me understand the function of the glasses. Only in this special activity of viewing do the glasses, on the one hand, play the role of glasses themselves, and on the other hand, receive reflection and examination.
Correspondingly, there are three forms of media research. The first concerns only the content transmitted by media, for example “journalism”; the second concerns only the mechanism of media, like taking off the glasses to study their structure, for example “communication studies”; the third is media phenomenology, which neither studies the object of media nor takes media as an object, but instead studies the meaning of media as media in operation.
2010年4月7日
Translated from the Chinese original with AI assistance. The original text is authoritative.
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