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.
on second thought i think i get your point and probably need to revise this considerably. perhaps phenomenology does or could have a role to play in psychology. i also like gadamers hermeneutics, charles taylors wk on the self, so i need a clear way to discuss proper application and limits rather than wholesale dismissal. thanks a lot for this comment. i still think the argument holds as regards the whole but i should more clearly circumscribe it.
thanks for your thoughtful comment. i m not entirely convinced you grasped my argument, but that is likely my fault and i will work to revise this so the argument is clearer. i have no problem with the field of psychology thomistic, freud even has some profound insights and his vocabulary is also objective if i think his framework flawed. i don´t think the gist of phenomenology is to say we see through a glass darkly so much as its method to needlesly muddy the waters. the tennis parable is supposed to drive home that the false assumption that we can approach reality through the description of experience, we cannot do this because then reality will become something mpracticable, and reality the ultimate reality should qucken us to virtue and the good. i also dont think phenomenology is working in the realm of mystical theology though perhaps someone like heidegger thought himself to be doing so. perhaps i fail to see your point here. but its aiming at establishing a new bASis for philosophy in a particular method and concommitant assumptions about the world that justify the method. to me the false assumption is that we get to the knowledge of things through the experiencing of things. or that interrogating and describing our experiencing of things is going to get us to the knowledge of htings, as i said this bifurcates the harmony between speculative and practical reasoning. i dont think a phenomenologist says you need to say i see a ship coming, but something more obstruse like: " on the horizon that presents itself always already as an opening to marine vessels, there is a disclosing of shipness, a pressencing of that which is a floating but also encloses a sinking, a tension in the manifestation of the presencing of boyancy..." i see phenomenology as a sort of sterilized and mindnumbingly boring poetry, all with the aspirations of the most ambitious novelist to create a literary world that moves the soul. perhaps this is what you mean by mystiicism, but real mystical theology is a guide to prayer and doesnt supplant prayer itselff. my point here is phenomenology as a method is opposed to living, it doesnt support living well but makes it more difficult.
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.
thanks for the comment. i wasnt going for an ad hominem. but moreso that this philosophical method produces a type of knowledge that cannot translate into practical knowledge, which if it holds would be a thoroughgoing K. i have read and actually taken a few classes with marion. i read a lot of christians trying to make use of this philosophcal framework to extend or ground their work. i generally dont find their writing helpful or edifying. but i am sort of a curmudgeon.
Fair enough! I only bring up the Heidegger example because he seemed to fit your tennis analogy, in that he seemed to have stopped playing the game altogether. I’d go on but don’t feel qualified to discuss the critique of curiosity (via St. Thomas) due to just not being super familiar. (Although perhaps Marcel’s conception of “mystery” helps here? He straddles complete uselessness in a way you might find irritating while also prescribing Christian living.)
Nevertheless I’m afraid I’ll have to be the friend in Rome again, simply walking away haha! Thanks again for the thoughts.
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.
on second thought i think i get your point and probably need to revise this considerably. perhaps phenomenology does or could have a role to play in psychology. i also like gadamers hermeneutics, charles taylors wk on the self, so i need a clear way to discuss proper application and limits rather than wholesale dismissal. thanks a lot for this comment. i still think the argument holds as regards the whole but i should more clearly circumscribe it.
thanks for your thoughtful comment. i m not entirely convinced you grasped my argument, but that is likely my fault and i will work to revise this so the argument is clearer. i have no problem with the field of psychology thomistic, freud even has some profound insights and his vocabulary is also objective if i think his framework flawed. i don´t think the gist of phenomenology is to say we see through a glass darkly so much as its method to needlesly muddy the waters. the tennis parable is supposed to drive home that the false assumption that we can approach reality through the description of experience, we cannot do this because then reality will become something mpracticable, and reality the ultimate reality should qucken us to virtue and the good. i also dont think phenomenology is working in the realm of mystical theology though perhaps someone like heidegger thought himself to be doing so. perhaps i fail to see your point here. but its aiming at establishing a new bASis for philosophy in a particular method and concommitant assumptions about the world that justify the method. to me the false assumption is that we get to the knowledge of things through the experiencing of things. or that interrogating and describing our experiencing of things is going to get us to the knowledge of htings, as i said this bifurcates the harmony between speculative and practical reasoning. i dont think a phenomenologist says you need to say i see a ship coming, but something more obstruse like: " on the horizon that presents itself always already as an opening to marine vessels, there is a disclosing of shipness, a pressencing of that which is a floating but also encloses a sinking, a tension in the manifestation of the presencing of boyancy..." i see phenomenology as a sort of sterilized and mindnumbingly boring poetry, all with the aspirations of the most ambitious novelist to create a literary world that moves the soul. perhaps this is what you mean by mystiicism, but real mystical theology is a guide to prayer and doesnt supplant prayer itselff. my point here is phenomenology as a method is opposed to living, it doesnt support living well but makes it more difficult.
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.
thanks for the comment. i wasnt going for an ad hominem. but moreso that this philosophical method produces a type of knowledge that cannot translate into practical knowledge, which if it holds would be a thoroughgoing K. i have read and actually taken a few classes with marion. i read a lot of christians trying to make use of this philosophcal framework to extend or ground their work. i generally dont find their writing helpful or edifying. but i am sort of a curmudgeon.
Fair enough! I only bring up the Heidegger example because he seemed to fit your tennis analogy, in that he seemed to have stopped playing the game altogether. I’d go on but don’t feel qualified to discuss the critique of curiosity (via St. Thomas) due to just not being super familiar. (Although perhaps Marcel’s conception of “mystery” helps here? He straddles complete uselessness in a way you might find irritating while also prescribing Christian living.)
Nevertheless I’m afraid I’ll have to be the friend in Rome again, simply walking away haha! Thanks again for the thoughts.