DOCSLIB.ORG

Sartre and the Nothingness of Consciousness

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
Sartre and the Nothingness of Consciousness University of Tennessee, Knoxville TRACE: Tennessee Research and Creative Exchange Doctoral Dissertations Graduate School 12-2004 Sartre and the Nothingness of Consciousness Matthew Dale Massey University of Tennessee - Knoxville Follow this and additional works at: https://trace.tennessee.edu/utk_graddiss Part of the Philosophy Commons Recommended Citation Massey, Matthew Dale, "Sartre and the Nothingness of Consciousness. " PhD diss., University of Tennessee, 2004. https://trace.tennessee.edu/utk_graddiss/2284 This Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by the Graduate School at TRACE: Tennessee Research and Creative Exchange. It has been accepted for inclusion in Doctoral Dissertations by an authorized administrator of TRACE: Tennessee Research and Creative Exchange. For more information, please contact [email protected]. To the Graduate Council: I am submitting herewith a dissertation written by Matthew Dale Massey entitled "Sartre and the Nothingness of Consciousness." I have examined the final electronic copy of this dissertation for form and content and recommend that it be accepted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy, with a major in Philosophy. Richard E. Aquila, Major Professor We have read this dissertation and recommend its acceptance: John Nolt, James Bennett, Les Essif Accepted for the Council: Carolyn R. Hodges Vice Provost and Dean of the Graduate School (Original signatures are on file with official studentecor r ds.) To the Graduate Council: I am submitting herewith a dissertation written by Matthew Dale Massey entitled “Sartre and the Nothingness of Consciousness.” I have examined the final electronic copy of this dissertation for form and content and recommend that it be accepted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy, with a major in Philosophy. Richard E. Aquila Major Professor We have read this dissertation and recommend its acceptance: John Nolt James Bennett Les Essif Accepted for the Council: Anne Mayhew Vice Chancellor and Dean of Graduate Studies (Original signatures are on file with official student records.) SARTRE AND THE NOTHINGNESS OF CONSCIOUSNESS A Dissertation Presented for the Doctor of Philosophy Degree The University of Tennessee, Knoxville Matthew Dale Massey December 2004 ABSTRACT Sartre’s claim in Being and Nothingness that consciousness is nothingness is typically understood as meaning either that consciousness is not itself, that it is not its objects, that it is not its past, or that it is some sort of state of affairs. Although these interpretations of Sartre are often presented independently of each other, I argue that one can combine several of them in order to arrive at the best understanding of Sartre’s treatment of consciousness. Such an understanding treats consciousness as the state of affairs that is its facticity transcending itself toward its objects. One could also combine the four typical interpretations of Sartre so that consciousness for him is a different state of affairs, specifically the state of affairs that is the appearance of objects along with their various indications. This second way of understanding Sartre’s treatment of consciousness seems inferior to the first way, though, since the former can account for what seemingly motivates the latter. In order to do so, one must utilize certain aspects of Husserl’s description of consciousness, a description that Sartre actually rejects. ii TABLE OF CONTENTS Introduction 1 Chapter One: Phenomenological Ontology and Metaphysics 9 Chapter Two: Consciousness as Not Itself 53 Chapter Three: Consciousness as Not Its Object 79 Chapter Four: Consciousness as Not Its Past 109 Chapter Five: Consciousness as a State of Affairs 143 Conclusion 175 References 180 Vita 184 iii INTRODUCTION In Being and Nothingness, Sartre claims that consciousness is nothingness. Some examples of this claim are the following: Nothingness is the putting into question of being by being- that is, precisely consciousness or for-itself. It is an absolute event which comes to being by means of being and which, without having being, is perpetually sustained by being.1 The for-itself in its being is failure because it is the foundation only of itself as nothingness.2 The For-itself can never be its Future except problematically, for it is separated from it by a Nothingness which it is.3 The For-itself is nothing more than this translucent Nothingness which is the negation of the thing perceived....Thus in the perception of the object the For-itself acknowledges itself to itself as not being the object, while in the unveiling of the Past, the For-itself acknowledges itself as being the Past and is separated from it only by its nature as For-itself, which can be nothing.4 But if the For-itself is to be the nothingness whereby ‘there is’ being, then being can exist originally only as totality.5 ...in order for its determination as the nothingness of being to be full, the for-itself must realize itself as a certain unique manner of not being this being.6 There are many possible interpretations of what he means by the nothingness of consciousness and of what leads him to say that, but four interpretations seem most supported by the text and most frequently emphasized by commentators. 1Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, Washington Square Press, New York, 1956, p. 126. 2Ibid, p. 139. 3Ibid, p. 186. 4Ibid, p. 200. 5Ibid, p. 251. 6Ibid,p. 260. 1 One of those interpretations centers on Sartre's claim that consciousness is not itself, a second one on his claim that it is not its object, a third one on his treatment of it as not its past, and a fourth one on Sartre’s description of consciousness in a manner that can be put using such general ontological terms as ‘relation,’ ‘state of affairs,’ and ‘event.’ It should be noted that the first three interpretations explain the nothingness of consciousness by means of it not being something while the fourth one explains it in terms of what it is. The type of thing that the fourth interpretation treats consciousness as being, then, must be such that it somehow is nothing. It should also be noted that the first of these propositions- that consciousness is not itself- is of course very different from the other three. For one thing, presumably just about everyone agrees that consciousness-or, for that matter, anything at all-is not (except in special cases) its own object and not its own past, and most would at least be open to the suggestion that consciousness is an event or a relation, whereas hardly anybody is inclined to agree that consciousness-or, for that matter, anything at all-is not itself. Secondly, while Sartre himself emphasizes the connection, it is hardly clear why anyone should agree that, just because consciousness is not its past, or not its object, or is a state of affairs, it is therefore nothingness. The question then naturally arises whether either Sartre's insistence that consciousness is 'not itself' or his insistence that it is 'nothingness,' or both, are not just melodramatic ways of saying something to which one might more readily agree. For instance, one might take the claim that consciousness is not its past simply to mean that 2 consciousness is free and not determined by anything in the past. Such a reading of Sartre is found in the following; A pederast is not a pederast, since, in his most intimate consciousness, he knows that there is no compulsion for him to be what he is. He is not what he is, for human nature escapes all definition and refuses to see in its act any destiny whatsoever.7 Although an assertion of such freedom is hardly non-controversial, equating such freedom with consciousness not being itself or with it being nothingness would surely be melodramatic. But, alternatively, perhaps one should rather suppose that Sartre draws the connections that he does precisely because he means to assert two additional claims which are neither melodramatic nor ones with which many would be inclined to agree, namely, that consciousness is in some sense its object, and is its past, in addition to not being them. As already noted, each of the four previously-mentioned interpretations of Sartre’s treatment of consciousness as nothingness has support from commentators. One can find acceptance of the first interpretation, that the nothingness of consciousness signifies that consciousness is not itself, in the following passage by Klaus Hartmann: Consciousness is appearance-to-self, presence-to-self…Sartre’s meaning is expressed once more in a pictorial account, in which presence-to-self is interpreted as a being with a ‘fissure’…What is meant…is a fissure within consciousness…, a fissure within a unity. What separates is an ‘ideal distance,’ a ‘nothing’… Nothingness regarded as a fissure is, first, separation-a relationship of otherness between things. The separated entities, however, must make up a unity if consciousness can be presupposed as a unity of immanence. The separated entities are not each the "other" of the other, their relationship is not one of otherness, because the other 7 Wilfrid Desan, The Tragic Finale, Harper and Row, New York, 1960, p. 26. 3 maintains an identity with the one. Thus, this unity is, by its very form, a whole negating something which is no Other for it.8 It seems clear that the nothingness of consciousness is being taken here as its not being the very thing it is identical with-itself. Some commentators have taken a more minimalist approach to the claim that consciousness is not itself, treating that claim as simply making the epistemological point that consciousness is necessarily aware of not being whatever it is conscious of. This epistemological take on Sartre would entail that consciousness ‘is not’ itself, since, as we shall see in Chapter Two, consciousness is always necessarily consciousness of itself.
Load more

Recommended publications
  • Review of Being and Nothingness
    Being and Nothingness: An Essay in Phenomenological Ontology by Jean-Paul Sartre, translated by Sarah Richmond. Abingdon: Routledge, 2018. Jonathan Webber Review published in Mind 2019 Author’s post-print. Please cite only published version. Legend has it that when Jean-Paul Sartre’s first epic tome L’Être et le néant appeared in 1943 the publishers were rather surprised by how well it sold. Who were all these people in the midst of war yet eager to read a 722-page philosophical analysis of the structures of human existence? They discovered that the book, which weighed exactly one kilo, was mostly selling to greengrocers, who were using it to replace the kilo weights that had been confiscated by the Nazis to be melted down for munitions. Sarah Richmond’s superb new translation weighs in at nearly a kilo and a half. The text itself is supplemented by a wealth of explanatory and analytical material. Richmond has taken full advantage of the extensive scholarly and critical analyses of Sartre’s book published over the past three-quarters of a century. The book has been translated into English only once before, by Hazel Barnes over sixty years ago. Richmond’s strategy has not been to edit that version, but to translate the text anew, informed by its reception in both its original form and its Barnes translation. Richmond traces the main contours of this reception in her introduction to the book, which relates the text to the main currents of anglophone and European thought since the war and, in so doing, indicates the influences on her own reading of the text.
    [Show full text]
  • Beauvoir on Gender, Oppression, and Freedom
    24.01: Classics of Western Philosophy Beauvoir on Gender, Oppression, and Freedom 1. Introduction: Simone de Beauvoir (1908-1986) Beauvoir was born in Paris and studied philosophy at the Sorbonne. She passed exams for Certificates in History of Philosophy, General Philosophy, Greek, and Logic in 1927, and in 1928, in Ethics, Sociology, and Psychology. She wrote a graduate diplôme (equivalent to an MA thesis) on Leibniz. Her peers included Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Claude Lévi-Strauss, and Jean-Paul Sartre. In 1929, she took second place in the highly competitive philosophy agrégation exam, barely losing to Jean-Paul Sartre who took first (it was his second attempt at the exam). At 21 years of age, Beauvoir was the youngest student ever to pass the exam. She taught in high school from 1929-1943, and then supported herself on her writings, and co-editorship of Le Temps Modernes. She is known for her literary writing, and her philosophical work in existentialism, ethics, and feminism. She published The Second Sex in 1949. 2. Gender ‘One is not born, but rather becomes, a woman. No biological, psychological or economic fate determines the future that the human female presents in society.’ (II.iv.1) A. What is a woman? “Tota mulier in utero: she is a womb,” some say. Yet speaking of certain women, the experts proclaim, “They are not women,” even though they have a uterus like the others. Everyone agrees there are females in the human species; today, as in the past, they make up about half of humanity; and yet we are told that “femininity is in jeopardy”; we are urged, “Be women, stay women, become women.” So not every female human being is necessarily a woman… (23) So there seems to be a sort of contradiction in our ordinary understanding of women: not every female is a woman, otherwise they would not be exhorted to be women.
    [Show full text]
  • European Academic Research
    EUROPEAN ACADEMIC RESEARCH Vol. II, Issue 9/ December 2014 Impact Factor: 3.1 (UIF) ISSN 2286-4822 DRJI Value: 5.9 (B+) www.euacademic.org Condemned to be Free: Orestes in Sartre’s The Flies MOHSIN HASSAN KHAN Research Scholar Department of English A.M.U., Aligarh, India Abstract: Jean Paul Sartre’s Orestes’ is one of the strong characters as far as literary sketch of any existential character is concerned. Embodiment of Sartrean philosophy, Orestes, in the play The Flies (1943) is a representation of the philosophy of freedom in which Sartre has put his literary thesis with the philosophic. In doing so with the character of Orestes, he comes back again to his lifelong pursuit of freedom and tries to explore it in the most possible and natural sense making freedom as an absolute and a strong value. The idea of freedom has been smoothly sketched in the play and its strident treatment matches the doctrines of freedom by the playwright. In this play, Sartre expresses the idea of condemned freedom and an attempt has been made in this paper to show this particular Sartrean brand of freedom expressed in Orestes. Key words: Existentialism, Existence, Freedom, Condemned, Absolute, No. Enlightenment Jean Paul Sartre, an avowed existentialist and a militant atheist, being at the centre of the modern philosophy is a very important figure in French existentialism. Truly a philosopher in the traditional sense like Heidegger and also a political figure protesting in the student’s revolution of 1968 in which he was almost close to becoming a rebel, he is a fine amalgamation of 20th century thought in which letters and actions go together 11954 Mohsin Hassan Khan- Condemned to be Free: Orestes in Sartre’s The Flies simultaneously.
    [Show full text]
  • Existential Aspect of Being: Interpreting J. P. Sartre's Philosophy
    Existential aspect of Being: Interpreting J. P. Sartre’s Philosophy Ivan V. Kuzin, Alexander A. Drikker & Eugene A. Makovetsky Saint Petersburg State University, Russia Abstract The article discusses rationalistic and existential approaches to the problem of existence. The comparison of Sartre's pre-reflective cogito and Descartes' reflective cogito makes it possible to define how Sartre’s thought moves from the thing to consciousness and from consciousness to the thing. At the same time, in Being and Nothingness Sartre does not only define the existence of the thing in its passivity—which in many respects corresponds to Descartes' philosophy, but also as an open orientation towards consciousness, the latter concept not being fully developed by him. This statement may be regarded as a hidden component of Sartre’s key thesis about the role of the Other in the verification of our existence. The most important factor in understanding this is the concept of the look. Detailed analysis of Sartre’s theses in Being and Nothingness enables us to demonstrate that the concept of the look makes it possible to consider the identity of being-in-itself and being-for-itself (consciousness). Keywords: Sartre, rationalism, existentialism, thing, being, the look, existence, nothingness, consciousness, the Other 1. Introduction E. Husserl said that being of the object is such “that it is cognisable in itself” (“daß es in seinem Wesen liegt, erkennbar zu sein”). (Ingarden 1992: 176) This statement is important if we are to accept the fact that the possibility of looking at the object correlates with being of the object itself.
    [Show full text]
  • Existentialism in Two Plays of Jean-Paul Sartre
    Journal of English and Literature Vol. 3(3), 50-54, March 2012 Available online at http://www.academicjournals.org/IJEL DOI:10.5897/IJEL11.042 ISSN 2141-2626 ©2012 Academic Journals Review Existentialism in two plays of Jean-Paul Sartre Cagri Tugrul Mart Department of Languages, Ishik University, Erbil, Iraq. E-mail: [email protected]. Tel: (964) 7503086122. Accepted 26 January, 2012 Existentialism is the movement in the nineteenth and twentieth century philosophy that addresses fundamental problems of human existence: death, anxiety, political, religious and sexual commitment, freedom and responsibility, the meaning of existence itself (Priest, 2001: 10). This study tries to define what existentialism is and stresses themes of existentialism. This research finally points out these themes of existentialism by studying on two existentialist drama plays written by Jean-Paul Sartre who was a prominent existentialist writer. The plays by Sartre studied in this research are ‘The Flies’ and ‘Dirty Hands’. Key words: Existentialism, freedom, absurdity, anguish, despair, nothingness. INTRODUCTION Existentialism is the philosophy that makes an religious, political, or sexual commitment? How should authentically human life possible in a meaningless and we face death? (Priest, 2001: 29). We can briefly define absurd world (Panza and Gale, 2008: 28). It is essentially existentialism as: ‘existentialism maintains that, in man, the search of the condition of man, the state of being and in man alone, existence precedes essence’. This free, and man's always using his freedom. Existentialism simply means that man first is, and only subsequently is, is to say that something exists, is to say that it is.
    [Show full text]
  • Nausea and the Adventures of the Narrative Self Ben Roth1
    How Sartre, Philosopher, Misreads Sartre, Novelist: Nausea and the Adventures of the Narrative Self Ben Roth1 Besides, art is fun and for fun, it has innumerable intentions and charms. Literature interests us on different levels in different fashions. It is full of tricks and magic and deliberate mystification. Literature entertains, it does many things, and philosophy does one thing. Iris Murdoch (1997, p. 4) If there is something comforting—religious, if you want—about paranoia, there is still also anti-paranoia, where nothing is connected to anything, a condition not many of us can bear for long. Thomas Pynchon, Gravity's Rainbow (p. 434) Both those who write in favor of and against the notion of the narrative self cite Sartre and his novel Nausea as exemplary opponents of it. Alasdair MacIntyre, a central proponent of the narrative self, writes: “Sartre makes Antoine Roquentin argue not just [...] that narrative is very different from life, but that to present human life in the form of a narrative is always to falsify it” (1984, p. 214). Galen Strawson, a critic of narrativity, writes that “Sartre sees the narrative, story-telling impulse as a defect, regrettable. [...] He thinks human Narrativity is essentially a matter of bad faith, of radical (and typically irremediable) inauthenticity” (2004, p. 435). I think that this type of interpretation of Nausea is blindered and bad and relies on an impoverished approach to reading fiction typical of philosophers: of taking one character at one moment as mouthpiece for both a novel as a whole and author behind it. Beginning as it does in description, the novel challenges these conceptual orders rather than taking one side or the other; it thus invites us to rethink the terrain of narrativity.
    [Show full text]
  • Transcendence, Facticity, and Modes of Non-Being
    Massachusetts Institute of Technology Artificial Intelligence Laboratory Working paper 282 March 1986 Transcendence, Facticity, and Modes of Non-Being B. Randall Donaldt J. Francis Cannyt Abstract: Research in artificial intelligence has yet to satisfactorily address the primordial fissure between human consciousness and the material order. How is this split reconciled in terms of human reality? By what duality is Bad Faith possible? We show that the answer is quite subtle, and of particular relevance to certain classical A.I. problems in introspection and intensional belief structure. A principled approach to bad faith and the consciousness of the other is suggested. We present ideas for an implementation in the domain of chemical engineering. A.I. Laboratory working papers are produced for internal circulation, and may contain information that is, for example, too preliminary, too detailed, or too silly for formal publication. This paper handsomely satisfies all three criteria. While it is destined to become a landmark in its genre, readers are cautioned against making reference to this paper in the literature, as the authors would like to rejoin society with a clean slate. This paper could not have been produced without the assistance of many brilliant but unstable individuals who could not be reached for comment, and whose names have been suppressed pending determination of competence. tFormer member, National Rifle Association lFormer member, Australian Amateur Radio Association Transcendence, Facticity and Modes oNon-oein In Being and Nothingness Sartre proposes a primordial split, or fissure, between human (conscious) reality and the material order--that is, between the being-for-itself and the being-in-itself.
    [Show full text]
  • DEVELOPING a HAUNTOLOGY of the BLACK BODY Kashif Jerome
    View metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk brought to you by CORE provided by Carolina Digital Repository SPECTERS AND SPOOKS: DEVELOPING A HAUNTOLOGY OF THE BLACK BODY Kashif Jerome Powell, MA A dissertation submitted to the faculty of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Department of Communication Studies. Chapel Hill 2014 Approved by: Renee Alexander-Craft Ashley Lucas Della Pollock Alvaro Reyes Eric King Watts © 2014 Kashif Jerome Powell ALL RIGHTS RESERVED ii ABSTRACT Kashif Jerome Powell: Specters and Spooks: Developing a Hauntology of The Black Body (Under the direction of Dr. Renee Alexander-Craft) This dissertation utilizes theories of embodiment and performance to develop a “hauntology of blackness,” which investigates imaginative sites of death constructed through the historical, social, and performative facets of institutional slavery in the United States to theorize notions of blackness and the black body. I argue that the relationship between the black body and death have conjured a death-driven specter that manifest historically, performatively, visually, and phenomenally as blackness. The rise and continual return of this “specter of blackness” positions the black body in the United States as a body “haunted” by its own biological and phenotypical disposition. Placing the theory of Jacques Derrida and Frantz Fanon in conversation with scholars such as Avery Gordon, Saidiya Hartman, Toni Morrison, and others, I evoke the language of haunting to consider the profound effect the relationship between the black body and death has had on ontological, psychoanalytic, and phenomenological understandings of blackness within post-modernity.
    [Show full text]
  • Cristine Celich G. the Face of the Other As Human Facticity: from Husserlian Lebenswelt to Levinasian Alterity . Philos Int J 20
    Philosophy International Journal ISSN: 2641-9130 MEDWIN PUBLISHERS Committed to Create Value for Researchers The Face of the Other as Human Facticity: From Husserlian Lebenswelt to Levinasian Alteritya Cristine Celich G* Post Degree Program of Philosophy of the Federal University of Santa Maria, Brazil Research Article Volume 4 Issue 2 *Corresponding author: Grasiela Cristine Celich, Philosophy PhD student at the post degree Received Date: April 13, 2021 program of Philosophy of the Federal University of Santa Maria. City: Santa Maria. State: Rio Published Date: May 10, 2021 Grande do Sul, Brazil, Email: [email protected] DOI: 10.23880/phij-16000176 Abstract This article aims to demonstrate the possibility of a connection between phenomenology, human facticity and ethics. The possibility of connection between the concepts becomes pertinent from the philosophy of Husserl and the philosophy of Levinas, for both are inserted in the phenomenological theme. Since Husserl’s discovery that science, when based on concepts, on reason, has separated itself from the concrete world and the experiences of the subjects, it has lost its ethical dimension. sphere is characterized by being richer and wider than the objective world of science. Facing this, Levinas, having Husserl as Therefore, Husserl, in formulating the phenomenological method, sought to recover the pre-scientific sphere of life. This his master, managed, based on some Husserlian concepts such as Lebenswelt and the “return to the same things”, to find in the figure of the Face of the Other an irreducible human facticity to all apprehension and understanding by the concept. Thus, concepts are presented regarding Lebenswelt, so that later, the Levinasian concepts which lead to the meeting of irreducible Levinas explains that ethics focuses on the Face of otherness.
    [Show full text]
  • Hermeneutics of Heidegger's Facticity and Its Religious Aspects
    Studia Philosophiae Christianae UKSW 50(2014)1 POVILAS AleksandravičIUS HERMENEUTICS OF HEIDEGGer’s FACTICITY AND ITS RELIGIOUS ASPECTS Abstract. The concept of facticity that was developed by Heidegger from 1919 to 1923 composes the basis of all his further thought: the conceptions of Dasein and ontological temporality will originate namely from this concept. The article analyzes various expressions of the factitious life (care, Er-eignis, life, Self- Destruction, meaningfulness, death), yet the special consideration is paid to its religious aspects. Really the essence of facticity is treated by Heidegger as a temporality that is essentially correlated with the Christian experience. The influence of Saint Augustine to Heidegger and the Heideggerian concept of methodical atheism are analyzed and this analysis raises the intricate problem of the relation of the Black Forest philosopher to Christian faith and to God. Keywords: Heidegger, hermeneutics, facticity, religious, care, Er-eignis, life, temporality 1. The emergence of the concept of facticity in Heidegger’s work. 2. The account of facticity. 3. Facticity as movement: care. 4. Er-eignis and the formation of the living world. 5. Facticity as life 6. Factical life as self-destruction. 7. Meaningfulness of factical life or the hermeneutic dimension of facticity. 8. Facticity as temporality. 9. Factical life and death. 10. Christian facticity. 11. St. Augustine’s influence on hermeneutics of facticity and the issue of God. 12. Methodological atheism and the mystery of life’s facticity. Povilas Aleksandravicius Mykolas Romeris University, [email protected] Institute of Philosophy and Humanities Ateities g. 20, LT-08303 Vilnius, Lithuania 174 Povilas aleksandravičius [2] On 9 January, 1919, a 30-year old Martin Heidegger wrote a letter to his friend, the canon Engelbert Krebs, informing him of his withdrawal from the Catholic Church and indicating the main reason for his choice: a scholastic system, where the Church aimed to squeeze Christian be- liefs, had become “problematic and unacceptable”1 to him.
    [Show full text]
  • Facticity and Transcendence Across the Disciplines: Phenomenology and the Promise
    Digital Collections @ Dordt Faculty Work Comprehensive List 12-2015 Facticity and Transcendence Across the Disciplines: Phenomenology and the Promise Neal DeRoo Dordt College, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcollections.dordt.edu/faculty_work Part of the Christianity Commons, and the Philosophy Commons Recommended Citation DeRoo, N. (2015). Facticity and Transcendence Across the Disciplines: Phenomenology and the Promise. Schutzian Research, 7, 89-103. https://doi.org/10.5840/schutz201576 This Conference Proceeding is brought to you for free and open access by Digital Collections @ Dordt. It has been accepted for inclusion in Faculty Work Comprehensive List by an authorized administrator of Digital Collections @ Dordt. For more information, please contact [email protected]. Facticity and Transcendence Across the Disciplines: Phenomenology and the Promise Abstract This paper begins from one of the most commonly found questions in phenomenology, “What is Phenomenlogy?”, to argue that phenomenology is a trans-disciplinary approach to engaging with the products of human culture. This approach is characterized by paying particular attention to the distinction between facticity and transcendence within “lived experience” so as to help us better articulate and evaluate the promises that animate every human institution. Such a task necessarily requires inter- disciplinary input and helps us engage in our lives—in our shared cultural life—differently. Keywords facticity, transcendence, phenomenological method, the promissory discipline, inter-disciplinary Disciplines Christianity | Philosophy Comments This paper was first presented at the annual meeting of the Interdisciplinary Coalition of North American Phenomenologists (ICNAP) at Brock University in St. Catharines, ON, May 22-24, 2015. It was subsequently published in December 2015.
    [Show full text]
  • Human Values in a Postmodern World
    Human Values in a Postmodern World Steven L. Winter* More than forty years ago, Maurice Merleau-Ponty identified a philosophical fault line that continues to rumble through diverse contem- porary debates. "Today," he proclaimed, "a humanism does not oppose religion with an explanation of the world. It begins by becoming aware of contingency. ' In the current period of deconstruction and other postmodernisms, Merleau-Ponty's rejection and reconception of the Enlightenment idea of humanism has greater resonance than ever.2 For many, it has become a postmodern truism that "the human condition" cannot be represented, described, or explained as just so many facts about the world. According to the now standard (if somewhat overstated) axiom of postmodernism, everything about humanity is socially contingent. Reactions vary dramatically. For some, the recognition of contingency appears to open up conceptual space for transformative politics and radical social change. For others, however, the specter of contingency is radically destabilizing. Because they equate social contingency with the loss of foundations, they believe that social contingency leads inevitably from moral relativism to nihilism. For them, the logic of this trajectory is ineluctable. If everything is socially contingent, no social or moral system can claim greater validity than any other. And if all such systems are equally valid, then we are left with no reliable values, no moral standards, and no criteria of choice. The absence of sure foundations, they are convinced, means that we are left with an alarming and intolerable nihilism.3 * © Steven L. Winter, 1994. All rights reserved. 1. MAURICE MERLEAU-PONTY, SIGNS 241 (Richard C.
    [Show full text]