Phenomenology is Sinful
It falls into the vice of curiousity which St Thomas says is a species of pride.
intellectus… natus est omnia quae sunt in rerum naturae intelligere. (Contra Gentiles 3.59)
Philosphy is, I think properly, translated as the love of wisdom, and wisdom obtains the knowledge of things as regards their proper end. A foolish man, for instance, tries to avoid failure, thinking that avoiding failure leads to success. A wise man knows the contrary, that failing well or a willingness to fail is material to success. And life is full of like instances, where the pursuit of a false means produces the exact opposite of the intended result. It turns out there is likely no more brutal subjugation of and denigration of women than in a society where they have learned to will a strict equality with men by aping base masculine traits and activities. Modern feminism is foolish, it seeks means that are not ordered towards the intended goal: the flourishing of women. The wise man knows the means ordered to the end he intends.
In the argument that follows, I demonstrate that phenomenology, as a philosophical method or approach to doing philosophy, is not merely foolish but vicious. It’s error can be simply stated and resembles the previous two examples: it intends knowledge of reality through the false means of the making sense of the first-person human experiencing of reality. Unfortunately, the study or interrogation of the first-person human experiencing of reality does not lead to the knowledge of reality itself or even an practical enrichment of ones experience of reality. On the contrary.
Of course, phenomenology does produce a sort of knowledge, it produces a vocabulary and (unfortunately!) also a syntax for making sense of human experiencing, and it does produce a sort of knowledge thereof. This I cannot deny. I only deny that the knowledge can be good for anything outside of this scope: a theoretical appraisal of human experience or consciousness. It doesn’t, as other philosophies do, help one grasp reality at a speculative level, and thus, cannot lead to practical knowledge or wisdom. Phenomenology does’t help us know in a way that could aid us or propel us toward perfection. Hereby stands the claim that it produces a vicious knowledge. By definition, this theoretical thematization of first-person human experiencing is the fruit of curiousity, a species of pride, which seeks to know that which cannot be ordered toward the good.
There are other devastating critiques of phenomenology, Wittgenstein´s private language argument is one for instance, but due to the apparent glossalia of its most prized practicants, phenomenology has proved a difficult target to hit. Phenomenogy is a way of describing experiencing, and tends to respond to objections with more of its magic bullet, with more describing of experiencing. In any case, this argument, i think, is novel because it is a critique of phenomenology from the point of view of moral philosophy, and the critiques I have seen come from philosophy of mind, language, metaphysics and epistemology. So here is the argument:
Ancient philosphy sought to know reality by arriving at knowledge of the form of things. These could be material things like rocks or immaterial things like justice.
The lynchpin of the ancient philosophical enterprise was the form of the Good, it was that which should sought be both known and desired above all.
The Good established a harmony between theoretical and practical knowledge and reason, contemplation and desire, between thought and action. Yet this depended on a common object that could be both contemplated and desired.
And philosphy could concievably, in this universe, itself be good, it could help you live better, if only you better comprehend the form of the Good, and thereby better desire it and live it.
Modern philosphy introduced a scepticism concering if we can know reality, if we can get at the real form of things. Cartesian skepticism interrogates the difference between appearance and real. Kantian skepticism interrogates the conditions of the possibility of knowing at tall.
Phenomenology is a method for resolving the problems introducted by the Kantian form of skepticism, the—how is knowledge possible at all?—sort of question. Phenomenology claims to secure knowledge of the form of things through uncovering the structures of experiencing of the things. E.g. so you will know the form of justice by your experiencing of justice as it presents itself to human consciousnss. Like most sects, it takes a good idea and over-extends it. A great deal of our knowledge of reality is mediated by first-person experience, a good reason to get clear about what experience or consciousness is. But getting the structure of first person experiencing right doesn’t inversely lead to a proper knowledge of reality.
This type of knowledge can be useful in theory. Husserl´s critique of scientism for instance is good and a good humanistic argument defending the irreducable uniqueness and character of human consciousness. Gadamer´s hermeneutics is also a useful theoretical application. As is Charles Taylors phenomenological defense of human selfhood from materialist reductions in the first two chapters of Sources of the Self.
My argument isn´t that phenomenology cannot be usefully employed at the level of theory, it can speak ensightfully about how humans experience and what they experience. Each of these three applications stays within these boundaries. It goes hey-wire at the theoretical level when the first person experience itself is seen as a window into the nature of things. or reality.
In contrast, this focus opens up an indissoluble gap between theory and practice, between speculative and practical reason. What we desire is derivative of what we know, and here we know the first-person experiencing of the thing, not the thing. Thus, the common object between speculative and practical reason disappears, and the fruits of the philosophy, the theoretical appraisal of consciousness cannot have practical import, because desiring the thing itself, and desiring the experience of the thing are two different things, with the former being far more excellent.
Furthermore, desiring the experience of the thing is never going to produce the same experience as desiring the thing. To desire justice isnt the same as to desire the experiencing of justice. To desire mystical experience, for instance, is a guarantee that one will not be given a mystical experience. If one quite simply desires God or seeks to penetrate a particular divine mystery in prayer, then it is possible one will be given a mystical experience. Thus the sort of knowledge produced by phenomenology is always going to be retrograde in terms of practice as it won´t clarify what we are to desire, and in fact it will tempt us with desiring the givennness of the thing to consciousness rather than the thing itself.
This presents a catch-22. If the objects of practical reason are desired simply, they cannot be perfected or perfectly known through the phenomenological method, which seeks to know the objects of practical reason, so an action, but only as the action is experienced at the first-person level. If one desires instead the first-person experience of a certain action, rather than the action itself, then the experience itself, which is contingent upon desiring the action, not the experiencing of the action, itself disappears.
An Example: a pervert who hears sex is the most pleasurable when you truly love your partner, and then seeks to truly love his partner more for the purposes of sexual pleasure, well… even if his thesis is true, he is never going to get there so long as his intention is for his personal pleasure. If he ever intends the act well, his experience will not be his object, but the creation of a child. So long as the experience is his object, he will not intend well and this absence of proper intention cuts him off from the true experience. But he can only know the proper end of the action (and charity would insist upon this end) by accepting external authority, he´s a pervert.
Q.E.D. Phenomenology is sinful knowledge. It falls into what St Thomas would define as the sin of curiousity, a species of pride. Curiousity seeks knowledge of what is not good or useful, of what cannot become practical, and this is exactly the sort of knowledge produced by the phenomenological method and vocabulary.
The Tennis Parable
In order to explain the problem, I came up with a parable about tennis instruction. So lets start with the ancient study of tennis. In the olden times, in order to learn how to play tennis, a teacher would show you an ideal form. You might look at a various pictures of the ideal serve, forehand, and backhand. And then you would desire the form, you would try to reproduce this form in action. And learning the game was in part a negotiation, often with the aid of a teacher, between contemplating the proper form, desiring it, and putting it into action. Of course this isn´t ancient, this is how we basically learn any skill even today. We are shown the form, we practice reproducing it. Without seeing the form, we cannot desire it or practice it well.
Now consider a new type of tennis coach that begins to doubt whether there is such a thing as an ideal form for a serve or for a forehand or backhand. He views the previous method of helping students approximate an ideal form was harming his students, that they weren´t enjoying the game because of the terrorizing presence of the ideal forms and suspected that fear of not approximating the proper form cause them to hesitate and crippled their ability to play. Furthermore, upon further study of the all time greats, he found a surprising variance in how the greatest players did in fact execute their serve, adding to his scepticism that there is such a thing as a proper form.
This coach cames to believe that the presence of an external, universal ideal form was limiting their ability to access the proper form through the playing of the game itself. He thinks that through the playing of the game itself each student will arrive at his own proper form, should they have the right disposition toward the game. Thus, though he already learned tennis the old way, he desires to teach students a new way: that they will learn to play tennis both by playing freely with no instruction or correction and also through learning to identify the structures of experiencing playing tennis. The proper form for playing the game will reveal itself to them through their experiencing of the game itself. Seems intuitive enough. So the teacher gives them no instruction or correction as to the proper form of the game, stance, balance, arm movement, etc. They do watch a few classic matches but he never breaks down visually the proper form for them regarding the mechanics of a good tennis stroke. He lets his students play the game without his intervening. Yet the teacher does think he can, through his efforts, allow the experience of the game to be more effective in trasmitting its own proper form to each student. He does insist that all the students come to a class for 3 hours twice a week, where he elucidates the structures of experiencing tennis to the students. If we take Sein und Zeit as an template, each 3 hour sitting of the class covers one of the following topics.
(In-der-Welt-sein= Being-on-the-Court) This refers to the player's fundamental existence within the tennis court, not just as a physical location but as an environment where the player's identity as a tennis player is disclosed. The court is the "world" of tennis, and the player is situated within it, interacting with its conditions.
(Mitsein= Being-with-Opponent) In tennis, this refers to the player’s existence as always in relation to other players (particularly the opponent) on the court. Tennis is never played in isolation—it is always an interaction with an "other."
(Zuhandenheit= Being-at-hand-of-the-Racquet) The racquet is encountered not as an object for detached observation but as something ready-to-use, something the player uses skillfully without reflecting on it as a separate entity. The racquet’s “readiness-to-hand” becomes apparent through skilled play.
(Vorhandenheit=Being-present-as-an-Object (of the Ball) The ball, when it is outside the game or when it's static (on the ground), can be understood as present-at-hand, an object to be observed or considered outside its normal use in the game. It becomes something you examine or consider, such as during a pause between sets.
(Geworfenheit=Thrown-Serve) The player finds themselves "thrown" into the game, much like the existential thrownness of life. In tennis, this could be interpreted as the moment when a player is thrust into action (as with a serve)—not by choice, but by necessity. You have to respond to the circumstances of the match.
(Sein-zum-Tode=Being-toward-Match-Point) The "death" of a game is the match point, a finalizing moment that each player must approach. The awareness that the game could end makes the player confront their own limitations and potential defeat, forcing authenticity in how they play.
Ok so I had a little fun with this and the list continues down below1 , but you get the point. Rather than study proper foot placement for a serve, the student of this new school of tennis with hear a three hour long lecture about being-toward-match-point. Basically a fundamental category of the experiencing of tennis. They would be taught this theoretical apparatus with the expectation that it would somehow aid them in playing well, or in allowing them to experience the game in such a way as to arrive at the proper form.
So what happens? The vocabulary the students would learn would be oriented towards them making sense of their experiencing of the game. They would truly learn to speak quite articulately about what one experiences when one plays tennis. The students of this school can watch tennis and have fascinating conversations about various matches, what the players are going through in terms of their experiencing of the game. They might make great and very erudite commentators and a few students start calling tennis matches and truly professionals are quite impressed with their ability to make sense of what they experience in competition. As commentators they can be quite insightful.
They could even become gurus themselves of a sort. They could offer advice about how to approach experiencing the game. Perhaps even some professionals, when in a slump, turn to these students to cash out their problems in terms of their inauthentic experiencing of the game, or an existential wrinkle in the wrist-raquet relation. Placebo´s work and this could offer more, maybe a player really did fear match point in a way that was psychologically destructive. This sort of approach could be akin to mindset training specifically for tennis players. Thus, when circumscribed to the psychology of the game, perhaps this method generates some insights. Furthermore, if someone sought to dramatically alter essential aspects of the game, say remove boudaries, replace the raquets with cricket bats, perhaps no one would be more equiped to cash out the experiential effects of these changes at a theoretical level as one of these new students of the game.
But there is only one problem: they can´t play. They will never learn to play tennis well without being taught the proper form, because the proper form is not accessible through the experiencing of the game. Without instruction, coaching, and an ideal form to conform to, these players will develop bad habits, and bad form, and they aren´t going to be able to break these without external help, without someone teaching them to recognize and approximate the proper form, which will be increasingly uncomfortable for them the harder these bad habits are baked into their tennis game. And without being taught the proper form they will never even be able to access, at the level of practice, the experiential aspects of the game for themselves, a game they learned to speak so articulately about. In fact, the more they study the more frustrated they will become. Because they will desire what they contemplate, and that is the experiencing of the game, but the true enjoyment of the game only comes through the proper form and the desiring and practicing of this form. Thus the students will gradually grow to hate playing the game, because they won´t be competitive, but also because even the experiencing of the game will elude them practically. Being-at-hand-of-the-Raquet isnt the same experience when you can´t ball.
But the more profound thing I think is whether the students would desire to win or to desire the experiencing of the game. If they were taught to desire to win, or how to desire to win in this class, in terms of generating a mindset or subjective mood, this too would be a supreme source of frustration. As winning would only come through the knowledge of the form that had been vieled from them. But perhaps they would settle for desiring the experience of playing, over time, they would develop passable but never excellent skills, the temptation would be to grow content merely with desiring playing and giving up concern about excellence or winning. But this reveals again the fundamental catch-22. If being-towards-victory is a fundamental category upon which the meaning, nay the mystery of tennis, presents itself, then these guys are going to be frustrated, as they will be sub-rate players and will often lose. If instead, they alter the end to conform to the object of knowledge, that is the experiencing of the game, then they are content to play without desiring to win, and, if enjoyable, the experience of tennis itself disappears, it will not be accessable. The best solution is to avoid the practical activity of playing altogether, and for these students of the game to focus on talking about the game, which is what they are good at.
But this is why I think phenomenology is sinful, it generates a vocabulary for making sense of experience that is not oriented towards practice and in fact cannot be oriented towards practice, which can only be learned by imitating the form in itself, not the experiencing of the form. Because the knowledge of the form of the good is not communicated to us internal to our experiencing of life itself.
A Second Application: Theology of The Body versus Thomistic Metaphysics
When I was staying at the homeless shelter of the Sisters of Charity in Rome for a month. A priest from the same order came each tuesday to give a catechism to the 40 or so men sleeping there in the evening. A good half of them stayed for the talk, and he was going through the ten commandments. My first week there was the 6th commandment, and he hoped to make the catholic take on sexual morality intelligible to these bawdy men, a group of men who were largely uncatholic and not at all interested in being chaste. The priest, realizing his audience, thought the best way to make the teaching of the church intelligible was through his reading of the Theology of the Body, rather than the thomistic natural law point of view. Having not studied the former I can only relay his approach but he basically tried to defend the church teaching on the basis of a subjective disposition towards sexual commerce, by saying its bad to use people for your own wants and pleasure and that true sexual love is about offering yourself as a gift. But basically he tried to ground the teaching on this basis, and he failed. Of course the men wanted to ask about various acts and situations and why that would or would not be appropriate. Unsurprisingly, the men weren´t really buying it. If its about not using people, why is homosexual sex a sin? why premarital sex, or even promiscuous sex when both parties are on the same page? Can I not give myself to myself? They already knew what the church taught, and disliked the teaching, and after his shoddy defense they were insulted, Iˋm not using anyone, the women I see want it. Or so they say and I think they have a point.
I talked to him after and told him the only way to make the teaching intelligble is to talk about the relation between the form and the end, to say that the principle end of the act is pro-creation. And procreation shouldn´t happen, for the childrens sake, without the parents being married, and procreation cannot happen with oneself, amongst people of the same sex, or with animals. I said they aren´t going to agree with you that the act is about procreation, I told him, but they will be able to understand. At least in this case you can explain and defend the teaching. And tell them they cannot see eye to eye with it because they are perverts. Anyway, he did, to his credit, actually do this, all except the last part, the next week he came. I say this because you cannot get to the form through the proper experiencing of the form with sexual ethics, you just cannot. Attempts to do so are self-defeating. The objective form itself has to be understood as normative in relation to its end. As I said I cannot speak to the Theology of the Body as a whole but the way it was presented through this very well meaning priest made be very sad. Sad because he hadn´t been given the proper tools to defend the catholic teaching, sad because he was led to believe teaching in a straightforward philosophical manner the real reason for the teaching would not go over well, and thus to avoid it.
Thus like the man who is afraid to fail, or like the feminist seeking equality, so too the phenomenologist chooses a faulty means to his end. In the end, the mysticism about experience dessicates the richness of experiencing itself, which is contingent upon lofty desires for something outside of experience. In the end, the attempt to make theory more about life, ends up making life all too theoretical. A phenomenologist can be a commentator, he can even be a guru. In fact they show a predilection for this latter role. But they can´t play, they cant act well. And thereby nor can they impart wisdom. Again the symptom of this spiritual poverty one finds in the degradation of langauge itself. Or to highlight the problem (nominalizations disease with a copula!) aping their own obstruse langauge: The presencing of the verb, which is always already a call, a summons to being, an unvieling in the manifestation that is both a vulerability and not yet an awakening, in the disclosure of the noun, which both totalizes and violates its object all while ushering in the horizon on which and within which it may call-forth is a symptom of impoverished insight, misanthropy, and just plain bad writing.
(Sorge=Care-for-the-Match) The player is invested in the outcome and progress of the game. They show "care" for how each point is played, how strategies unfold, and how they navigate the match. This care is what drives the player’s attention and effort.
(Das Man=Tennis Conformity) The tennis player, like anyone else, is often influenced by a public—the collective expectations of how a tennis match should be played according to norms, rules, and traditions. Inauthentic play arises when a player merely follows these conventions without engaging fully in their personal style or experience.
(Eigentlichkeit=Authentic-Play) To play authentically in tennis means engaging fully in the game, expressing one's true skills, tactics, and intentions rather than merely conforming to external expectations or going through the motions of play.
(Auslegung=Tactical-Interpretation) This is how a player interprets the flow of the match, the opponent’s style, and the environment (e.g., the court, weather). The player interprets these factors to form strategies and make sense of their position in the game.
(Befindlichkeit=Court-State-of-Mind) The player’s mood or mental state during the match. Are they anxious, excited, or calm? This existential disposition significantly affects how they engage with the game.
(Verfallen=Falling-in-the-Game) The tendency of the player to lose themselves in the moment, either becoming too absorbed in trivial matters (like focusing on a single mistake) or distracted by external influences (like the crowd). The player "falls" into the non-essential aspects of the game.
(Gerede=Idle-Talk/Commentary)
Tennis is surrounded by idle talk: the chatter of commentators, spectators, or even the player’s inner voice. This chatter often distorts the reality of the game, creating an atmosphere where the player loses focus on the authentic moment of play.(Entschlossenheit=Match-Resoluteness) The player’s capacity to make decisive, committed moves in the game, free from doubt or hesitation. Resoluteness in tennis means acting with full conviction, taking control of the game with deliberate actions.
(Entwurf=Game-Projection) The player’s ability to foresee possible future outcomes in the game (e.g., how points might unfold based on the opponent’s weaknesses). This projection allows the player to strategize and adjust their play toward achieving those outcomes.
(Ruf des Gewissens=Call-to-Play-Fair) In the game of tennis, the call of conscience might emerge as a sense of fairness, calling the player back to the spirit of the game, to play according to its rules and in the true spirit of competition, despite the desire to win at any cost.
I wonder what you would think about Thomistic psychology. Thomas talks a lot about rational faculties, appetites, etc. Of course, it's in an objective way. He's claiming to describe them as they actually exist, not as they are experienced. (Well, sometimes both, but the GOAL is the objective part.) Maybe, phenomenology is something like that. But, I agree with what you're saying. Of course, we "see through a glass darkly." Obviously we are embodied and can see only a certain perspective. But the point is to "triangulate" so to speak to get at the objective reality. Phenomenology seems preoccupied with making what is really a pedantic point, which is that we see through a glass darkly. It's like if someone looked through a telescope and saw a ship on the horizon and said "there is a ship approaching," the phenomenoloigist would "correct" him by saying "ah, you should say that you see in your telescope there is a ship." It may be that there is some intersection of philosophy and psychology that is helpful. Maybe they are trying to systematize what was traditionally the realm of mystical theology. But like you said, I agree a lot of it is misleading pedantry.
I think this a really interesting argument. I disagree, but I definitely see how you get there. My only contribution would be that your critique of phenomenology as faux experience to a certain extent is exactly what others have leveled (Heidegger the biggest target—how is he living out being-in-the-world, tucked away in the Blackforest, isolated from the world in his post Nazi years?) There are a few Christian writers who take phenomenology in very fruitful ways. Try out Gabriel Marcel if you feel like it; I love his definitions of hope and charity—much more readable than, say, MMP. Contemporarily, Jean Luc Marion and Emmanuel Falaque are likewise lovely.