© Roger M Tagg 2013
This is a revised version of Todes' book first published in 1990. However it is still based on Todes' PhD thesis which he submitted in 1963. Todes himself died in 1994.
There are no less than 3 introductions, respectively by Hubert Dreyfus, Piotr Hoffman and Todes himself. Dreyfus also wrote a foreword.
Piero Scaruffi wrote a brief review of the book in 2000.
It seems that this work is experiencing a revival of interest. A Samuel Todes Blog started in 2011.
For me, Todes' viewpoint has - so far - been the one that comes nearest to my own way of thinking. I have prepared a slide show giving my take after reading his book and relating it to some of my other reading.
| Chapter | Page | Highlight | ||||||||||||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Fore-word | xi | Todes' work has become relevant today since the revival of Merleau-Ponty's (henceforth M-P) work on the role of 'body'. No-one in the US in the 1950s (M-P died in 1961) was interested then. But it is now relevant due to the links between philosophy and psychology, linguistics, cognitive science, anthropology, artificial intelligence and neuroscience. | ||||||||||||||||||||
| xii | There was a chain of influence: Husserl influenced Aron Gurwitsch at Freiburg, who influenced M-P at Paris and, later, Todes at Brandeis Uni. Earlier, Todes was influenced by Wolfgang Köhler, a pioneer of Gestalt Psychology, at Swarthmore. Gurwitsch also wrote on Gestalt Psychology. | |||||||||||||||||||||
| Dreyfus Intro | xv | "Painters, writers, historians, linguists, philosophers in the romantic tradition, Wittgensteinians and existential phenomenologists - who have felt that there is another kind of intelligibility that gets us in touch with reality(,) besides the conceptual kind elaborated by Kant" (and followed by the mainstream of philosophical tradition). | ||||||||||||||||||||
| xvi | "In Todes' terms, our perception of things around us is a response to our dissatisfaction with our lost-ness in the world." | |||||||||||||||||||||
| xvii | "When Todes describes our absorbed, skillful coping, he is clear that in coping we are not trying to achieve a goal that can be described apart from our activity (as John Searle, for example, claims)." | |||||||||||||||||||||
| xviii | "Trying to achieve conditions of satisfaction only occurs when the flow of ongoing coping is somehow disturbed." | |||||||||||||||||||||
| xix-xx | "In everyday coping, what has yet to be faced is experienced as the future, what is currently being faced and dealt with makes up the pragmatic present, and what already has been faced and is behind us is experienced as both spatially and temporally passed." | |||||||||||||||||||||
| xx | "According to Todes, we also make perceptual inferences and form perceptual judgments." | |||||||||||||||||||||
| xxi | 'Re-identification' [RT: i.e. recognizing that something is the same 'instance' as we experienced before] in Todes' perception, "consists simply of my coping with the object in a way that is in fact similar to the way I have coped with it on other occasions". | |||||||||||||||||||||
| xxv | John McDowell, who wrote a book 'Mind and World' (pub 1994), and who appears to show some partial similarities with Todes' view, is nevertheless still very much a Kantian - i.e. it's all 'conception'. [RT: See Jerry Fodor's review of this book. It is interesting that the title 'Body and World' of Todes's work - when it was eventually published - clearly contrasts with this.] | |||||||||||||||||||||
| Hoffman Intro | xviii | Todes repudiates "two dogmas that dominate current philosophy': 1) "that interpretations alone constitute the human world" (i.e. not 'data', 'facts' etc); and 2) "that human individuals are products of socially-constituted fields of meaning". | ||||||||||||||||||||
| xxix | Hoffman (PH) hopes to highlight the improvements Todes (ST from now on) made over Heidegger (H) and Merleau-Ponty (M-P), especially since ST himself didn't push them. If ST had published immediately, his work would have been recognized as very significant. | |||||||||||||||||||||
| H's 'Dasein' rules out "much of what is customarily viewed as (commonsensical and philosophical) realism". | ||||||||||||||||||||||
| xxx | Heidegger tries to get round this by his references to 'Nature'. [RT: see article 'Heidegger on Nature' by Cooper] | |||||||||||||||||||||
| xxxii | "Nature is said (by H) to be 'unmeaning' to us." | |||||||||||||||||||||
| xxxiii | But, PH says, "... our moods make us affected by reality, because our moods reveal our thrownness, that is, our ontological vulnerability and powerlessness. For this reason, we cannot be genuinely 'indifferent' to the conditions of our life; the latter must 'get through to us' in one way or another". | |||||||||||||||||||||
| xxxiv | H appears to have two forms of 'anxiety' - in 'weaker' and 'stronger' senses. | |||||||||||||||||||||
| xxxiv-v | H said "... nihilism discloses these beings (in the natural world) in their full but heretofore concealed strangeness as what is radically other. ... In the clear night of the nothing of anxiety the original openness of beings as such arises". | |||||||||||||||||||||
| xxxv | H means "the non-human, undomesticated being" - PH says that's all a bit mystical. | |||||||||||||||||||||
| xxxvii | M-P wasn't at all mystical, but "Some of M-P's formulations approximate those of Berkeley". | |||||||||||||||||||||
| M-P wrote "Paradoxically, there is for-us an in-itself" [RT: I take this to mean that 'real' objective facts do have some relevance to our perceptual world]. PH says that against this paradox "the recurring waves of modern idealism have been breaking again and again". M-P thought that we need to re-examine and escape this dilemma [RT: but he died at age 53]. | ||||||||||||||||||||||
| xxxix | "But, it seems, our body has the capacity of suspending its ordinary involvement in the world and of raising to the apprehension of an unmeaning, other-than-human reality." M-P: "The thing holds itself aloof from us and remains self-sufficient. This will become clear if we suspend our ordinary preoccupation and pay a metaphysical and disinterested attention to it. It is then hostile and alien, no longer an interlocutor, but a resolutely silent Other". | |||||||||||||||||||||
| xxxix-xl | This is highly metaphysical, unlike Sartre's 'nausea' or Camus' 'absurd'. | |||||||||||||||||||||
| xl | Todes does better and closes off the "specter of idealism". | |||||||||||||||||||||
| xli | "There does exist, of course, a more contemplative ('spectatorial', as Todes calls it) form of perceptual exploration." And, PH says, this doesn't lose its bond with normal perception. | |||||||||||||||||||||
| "Experience, then, is not a given, but an achievement of our body as the latter maintains 'poise' in dealing with the perceptual field." But how do we avoid the drift to idealism? | ||||||||||||||||||||||
| xlii | Are "the limits of our body" the "limits of our world"? Todes would say yes. | |||||||||||||||||||||
| "Todes' 'body' is not M-P's 'body'" - its involvement "constitutes the entire experiential reality" and "our experience is nothing but our quest to meet our needs". | ||||||||||||||||||||||
| "The world of human experience is the humanly habitable world, not just because we make it so, but because the world enables us to make it so." | ||||||||||||||||||||||
| xliii | "Both our needs and the properties of the world allowing for those needs' satisfactions are not constructed by an (individual or social) agent. They are ... discovered ..." | |||||||||||||||||||||
| Unlike in H and M-P, "our sense of the 'alien-ness' of nature is present within everyday life, since our needs are always endangered - albeit in varying degrees - by the 'blind, dark and world-less forces' of an undomesticated nature (menacing the body with droughts, floods etc)". | ||||||||||||||||||||||
| "In Darwin's The Descent of Man (and since), our erect posture and bipedalism have been recognized as being of paramount importance in the formation of the specifically human form of life-activity. Yet, strangely enough, such important features of our bodily constitution are almost totally absent from the account of human embodiment, not only by Heidegger (who wasn't interested) but even by M-P." | ||||||||||||||||||||||
| xliv | Hoffman goes on about Todes' recognition of our 'bodily asymmetry'. | |||||||||||||||||||||
| xlv | Todes' concept of 'thrown-ness' (i.e. in terms of gravitation) goes far beyond H's - and M-P's versions. | |||||||||||||||||||||
| Author's | 1 | "All issues concerning our body's role in our knowledge of persons are carefully avoided." Ditto "all issues concerning our body's role in our sense of death ..." (or immortality). | ||||||||||||||||||||
| Intro | 2 | "I make the commonsense assumption that I live in the same world as you, my reader ..." | ||||||||||||||||||||
| "Traditional epistemology is perennially plagued with the problem of avoiding solipsism" - and it "regards our body merely as an object in the world". | ||||||||||||||||||||||
| 3 | "The features of civil society may reflect those of our individual body." | |||||||||||||||||||||
| 4 | "We have a commonsense conviction ... that there is one and only one actual world." | |||||||||||||||||||||
| 6 | (According to Kant and Hume) "nothing can come 'into' our experience. The subject is therefore regarded as merely making explicit an antecedently existing world unity". | |||||||||||||||||||||
| 7 | "Does it not seem that our circumstantiality defeats our struggle for autonomy?" Kant tried to address this, but was too hidebound. | |||||||||||||||||||||
| 8 | "Modern existentialism begins with a rejection of Hegel (idealism supreme) by Kirkegaard and Nietzsche. It is most significantly carried forward by Heidegger and M-P, as aided by the work of Husserl." | |||||||||||||||||||||
| "The fundamental aspect of this problem (i.e. gaining autonomy by overcoming circumstantiality) is to understand a local situation in the world, as distinct from the universal condition of the world's total content." | ||||||||||||||||||||||
| "A local situation is understandable only in terms of the felt unity of our active body in these circumstances." | ||||||||||||||||||||||
| 9 | "For while local judgment is perceptual, universal judgment is the work of our theoretical imagination." | |||||||||||||||||||||
| 1 - | Descartes' rejection of the 'classic' view (of Plato and Aristotle) | |||||||||||||||||||||
| 10 | Plato and Aristotle (Ari) "held that the human subject ('soul') is unified only so far as he becomes identified with the ordering unity of the world" - but with rare exceptions, people don't achieve much of such unity. | |||||||||||||||||||||
| 11 | For Ari, "the actual living human subject" is a thing, a substance. If someone manages to raise himself from this state, he forsakes the earlier 'lower' state. | |||||||||||||||||||||
| For Plato, the body draws him lower, the mind draws him (his soul) higher. | ||||||||||||||||||||||
| 13 | Descartes discovered 'human necessity'. He "discovered that what immediately resists a purely intellectual rejection is only the belief in the existence of one's own intellect (the 'cogito'). But he didn't go on "to discover all that the human subject can not dispense with. | |||||||||||||||||||||
| 14 | Cartesian dualism - that "mind and body are entirely distinct, so that one could exist without the other". | |||||||||||||||||||||
| 15 | "The thinking subject, in existing outside of space and only in time, is conceived by Descartes to be outside the world." | |||||||||||||||||||||
| "Descartes seems confused about the relation between God and a thinking substance." | ||||||||||||||||||||||
| "Scholastics had concentrated on how God orders the world", but Descartes was concerned with "how man knows". | ||||||||||||||||||||||
| 19 | "These self-evident principles (i.e. those that generate matters of fact in the world), considered as endowed with the free capacity to create and order things down to the last detail, are what Descartes mainly means by 'God'." | |||||||||||||||||||||
| 20 | Descartes " 'failure' to distinguish between a reason and a cause". [RT: The trouble may be that they both answer the question 'why?'] | |||||||||||||||||||||
| Descartes was "convinced that 'nothing more perfect can come from something less perfect' ". | ||||||||||||||||||||||
| 21 | Descartes' view "is that man is essentially passive, receiving his existence and all his representations from God ..." Man "is not in possession of the very first principles of knowledge". | |||||||||||||||||||||
| 22 | "... God, who is considered to create the world with a will of the same kind as our own." | |||||||||||||||||||||
| 2 - | Critique of Leibniz and Hume | |||||||||||||||||||||
| 23 | These two philosophers represent the "two divergent streams of thought that had their common source in the troubled headwaters of Descartes' mind". | |||||||||||||||||||||
| 25 | "For Plato and Ari, the source of the order in the world has no will or desire to give that order to the world; it is self-sufficient and indifferent to the world; it is strictly impersonal." | |||||||||||||||||||||
| Leibniz's God's creation is "all at once". | ||||||||||||||||||||||
| 31 | Leibniz's world "was no longer, as for common sense, an open field for things in order or disorder, but became instead entirely an order of a logically tight plenum of things". | |||||||||||||||||||||
| 34 | Leibniz's 'petites perceptions' ("those perceptions of which we are not consciously aware") - as with all perceptions for Leibniz, are related to all other perceptions. | |||||||||||||||||||||
| 41 | "Hume views the human subject as entirely passive in the determination of matters of fact. The human subject can notice, remember and compare his own impressions, and thereby, with the aid of words, he can acquaint himself with the regularity or unity of the world of his experience to date. But he cannot do more than expect a continuation of this regularity" (at least, without some further justification). | |||||||||||||||||||||
| For Hume, we have "only undependable circumstances and no dependable 'body' ... For Leibniz, we have "no undependable circumstances and only a dependable 'body'. But in practice we cannot help believing that since the human subject has both a dependable body and undependable circumstances, his experiences are moderately ordered. This implies that there is at least a moderately dependable regularity in appearance of things in the world ..." | ||||||||||||||||||||||
| 41-2 | "In this book I seek to develop the view that we can understand the general but incomplete regularity of our experience only by understanding that it is the experience of a human subject having an entirely governable body that is, however, set in the midst of initially alien and ungovernable circumstances into which he must introduce order so that they may be livable and durably endurable. A regular connection can be established between appearances that may have little or no direct connection with one another [,] by threading them to one another through our single body which, in action, is responsive as a whole." | |||||||||||||||||||||
| 42 | "The knowable world, I seek to show, is the human body's world (not a wholly random collection), and only those elements that have some kind of affinity to the human body can enter it." | |||||||||||||||||||||
| 53 | "The mirage (of an oasis), like all illusions about particular things, disappears rather than further appears in the course of movement designed to make it further appear." If it's a 'momentary appearance', the "umbilical cord of body movement" has been cut. "What remains is a spectator's 'object', but not the 'object' of an active man". | |||||||||||||||||||||
| "To deny that both kinds of 'object' exist, to insist that one is really the other, is foolish. The interesting problem is to explore the relationship between the two. My conclusion will be that the actively felt object is primary and the inactively regarded object (i.e. the spectator's view) is phenomenologically derivative." | ||||||||||||||||||||||
| 55 | "Because the movements by which we finally reach them (appearances) turn out to make illusions disappear, we cannot give illusions any place in the apparent field of our activity, which is a matrix for those things we can reach, possess or use by movement." | |||||||||||||||||||||
| Carnap and Russell transformed "Hume's basic relation of temporal sequence into one of logical consequence". Todes calls that 'illicit' [RT: I'd say unwise]. | ||||||||||||||||||||||
| 63 | "My knowledge of what it (something) is, is largely fixed by my response to it, and then somehow confirming this anticipation by an actual (present) response to the thing anticipated. It is the terminal (post-anticipatory) response to a thing that enables me to know it, to fix it as certainly having a meaning ..." | |||||||||||||||||||||
| "The activity of our body is required for the world of our experiences to exist as the humanly habitable world." | ||||||||||||||||||||||
| 65 | "The primary form of directed action is an intention of the body, a body-directedness, which first gives us the global sense of space and time presupposed by all our higher personal forms of directed activity, principally those of will and judgment. This intention of the active body is poise in dealing with the things and persons around us." (This isn't poise = 'pose' of the inactive body - "pose is a way of separating oneself from these objects". | |||||||||||||||||||||
| 66 | "The success of poise is not in its execution, but in its very existence by which the body is, to begin with, knowingly in touch with the objects around it." | |||||||||||||||||||||
| 70 | "Even though I withdraw from the things I am observing by sitting or standing still as a mere spectator, nevertheless, in order to be at ease in my inactivity in respect to what I see, I must maintain a reliable actively responsive sense of poise and balance in the place where I am standing or sitting, in the place from which I am inactively observing." | |||||||||||||||||||||
| "We necessarily know to some extent what we are doing because we are necessarily to some extent really doing it, and thereby making our world habit-able, if we have a world of experience at all. This is the rock of our knowledge on which all skepticisms and dogmatisms are shattered, even those ... to which, as we will see, the capacious and elaborate Kant was not immune." | ||||||||||||||||||||||
| 72 | "Poise is lost as soon as anticipations cease being met as rapidly as they are made. There is no time interval between the having and the meeting of the anticipation of poise." | |||||||||||||||||||||
| 80 | "Because perception is anticipatory ... perception is habit-forming." (E.g., we fill in the missing 'L in 'DOLAR'.) | |||||||||||||||||||||
| 86 | "Complete hopelessness is the surrender of life, and therewith, of all experience of truth. We cannot knowingly die in peace, realizing that we personally are dying, unless we do so hopefully. [RT: How relevant is this comment?] The religious sense of immortality is a perennial faith rooted in this felt necessity, though it is usually a faith perverted into a dogmatic conviction." | |||||||||||||||||||||
| 87 | "Hume finds that the experience of activity makes his philosophy seem ridiculous, even to himself." | |||||||||||||||||||||
| Plato and Ari's view was that "the human subject is considered to be a migrant, able to identify himself closely with his body as merely one material thing among others in the world, and able to free himself from the body to become, through his mind, closely identified with the ordering unity of the world". | ||||||||||||||||||||||
| For Hume and Leibniz, "the human subject is identified only with the function of explicating the unity of the world, and is never identified the the human body, which is regarded as merely one material thing among others in the world". | ||||||||||||||||||||||
| 88 | Descartes' position was "an unstable way-station between these two ..." | |||||||||||||||||||||
| The purpose of this book is to demonstrate ... "the misinterpretation of human body as merely [RT: my underlines] a material thing in the world." [Instead, it's the 'subject'!] | ||||||||||||||||||||||
| 3 - | Kant and the Human Subject | |||||||||||||||||||||
| 93 | "But it does not seem ... (despite Kant's lumping them together) that we must include 'perceptions' in 'all abstract thought about matters of fact', or ... 'abstract conceptions' in 'all acts of veridical perception' " [RT: my quotes; I assume 'veridical' means 'verifying through bodily activity'] | |||||||||||||||||||||
| There are cases when either the perceptual contribution, or the conceptual contribution, is very small. | ||||||||||||||||||||||
| 96 | ST feels Kant 'failed' "because he imaginized all appearances in order to make them intelligible in a purely theoretical way". | |||||||||||||||||||||
| 97 | "Theoretical thought is possible only in terms or words [RT: what about diagrams?], and words in turn can be understood as having a definite meaning only insofar as they can be correctly read or heard." | |||||||||||||||||||||
| 98 | "I wish to show that although the senses imaginatively intuit a priori only in respect to their form (just as Kant thought), they nevertheless perceptually intuit a priori in respect to their content as well (which Kant never suspected)." | |||||||||||||||||||||
| "I (also) want to show that since imagination makes sense only on the basis of perception, even imaginative intuition is indirectly founded on an a priori intuition of the content as well as the form of sense experience." | ||||||||||||||||||||||
| "In short [RT: could have fooled me!], I seek to show that all human knowledge is based on knowledge of some necessary facts such that without knowledge of them we could not make sense of knowing or doubting anything. Necessary facts are those facts that we must know in order to be sufficiently balanced to have objective experience of any kind, perceptual or imaginative." | ||||||||||||||||||||||
| "Though we may change our circumstances by modifying them or going elsewhere, we cannot change our circumstances by whatever we do. Rather, we take our circumstanced-ness with us, we take it invariably for granted, in taking any action at all." | ||||||||||||||||||||||
| "Central among the necessary facts ... is ... that we have a human body that functions as the material subject of the world." | ||||||||||||||||||||||
| 99 | Kant's conclusions ... "represent a too one-sided victory ... for the imagination ..." | |||||||||||||||||||||
| 100 | "My (ST's) solution is to show that there are two levels of objective experience", i.e. the 'ground floor' (perceptual) and the 'upper storey' (imaginative). [RT: compare Daniel Kahneman's Thinking Fast and Slow.] | |||||||||||||||||||||
| 4 - | Prelude about Kant's 'Imaginizing' of Perception | |||||||||||||||||||||
| 102-6 | The four main themes of this chapter are: 1) Justification of the assumption that the percipient is a self-moved mover (in contrast to Aristotle's view); 2) A systematic analysis of the perceptual sense of the passage of time; 3) The perceptual world as a field of fields within fields; and 4) Why the percipient is 'satisfied' with the perception of an object. [The word 'percipient' is abbreviated here to 'P'.] | |||||||||||||||||||||
| 109 | The P doesn't see himself as a set of parts - he's an un-divide-able functional individual. | |||||||||||||||||||||
| 110 | The P doesn't see movement as an intervening series of states - he sees it as a 'flow'. | |||||||||||||||||||||
| 113 | "The perceptual sense of passage is made up of four ordered senses ..." [see below] | |||||||||||||||||||||
| 114 | "The felt unity of our active body" leads to 1) The primary field ("the field of all fields of our activity"); 2) "The sense that something has come to pass"; 3) "The sense of where something has come to pass"; and 4) "The sense of what has come to pass". [RT: my italics] | |||||||||||||||||||||
| 117 | "... The perception of an object is the successful conclusion of the P's search for himself." | |||||||||||||||||||||
| 118 | "The bodily basis of the irreversibility of perceptual time ..." (because of our 'front/back asymmetry'). | |||||||||||||||||||||
| 119-22 | "How passing an object enables the the P to determine it as a concrete unity ..." [RT: my italics - I think he means passing in a spatio-temporal sense.] | |||||||||||||||||||||
| 121 | "What was at first actually perceived as facing, is finally virtually sensed as facing away, and vice versa. What was at first actually perceived on the right, is finally virtually sensed on the left, and vice versa. [RT: my italics] | |||||||||||||||||||||
| 122 | "By virtue of being motion-mirrored, a passed object has a kind of concrete unity that a merely anticipated object cannot have." | |||||||||||||||||||||
| 123 | "The horizontal field of objects is the field of our body direction." Vertical is rather different. | |||||||||||||||||||||
| 124 | There's a 'phenomenological priority of balance (vertical) over poise. "Poise is our capacity to cope effectively with circumstantial objects." | |||||||||||||||||||||
| 125 | "This vertical field is applied not to us, as active participants, but through us." | |||||||||||||||||||||
| "When active, we seem to draw energy from this perpetual field of vertical influence. This energy seems to flow down through us as through a pipe. We seem in our poised movements merely to direct this flow of effective energy upon the things about us in the normal horizontal field of our needs." [RT: Sounds a bit metaphysical to me.] | ||||||||||||||||||||||
| 127 | "Our sense of discovery testifies that objects are 'independent' of ourselves as percipients, in the sense that they are (retroactively) revealed to have been that way before their manifestation, and (prospectively) revealed to be capable of remaining that way after their manifestation." [RT: sorry, Berkeley?] | |||||||||||||||||||||
| "The percipient is the world's messenger to objects." | ||||||||||||||||||||||
| 128 | "In respect to fullness of content, the P and his object are initially unmatched." | |||||||||||||||||||||
| "This sense (of integrity of his perceptual activity) ... is derived from the verification of his anticipations." | ||||||||||||||||||||||
| 5 - | Imaginization versus Perception (countering Kant's subsumption of the latter under the former) | |||||||||||||||||||||
| 130 | "I can, however, imagine something even if it does not actually exist." [RT: And I'm pretty good at that] | |||||||||||||||||||||
| With perception, "something is itself made evident to us by this way of experiencing it. But imagination is proxy-evidence ... only a representation of something is made evident. | ||||||||||||||||||||||
| 132 | "Images, i.e. what we entertain in our imagination, are given as 'representations' [RT: as opposed to the percipient's 'presentations']. In this capacity, they are given as related to the perceptual world in general, if not to particular circumstances. They are given as representations of possible, though not necessarily actual, perceptual conditions." | |||||||||||||||||||||
| "... insofar as we belong to the world of our imagination, we divest ourselves of our active body and assume another identity as particular beings characterized by our productivity." | ||||||||||||||||||||||
| "... we are our ability to transform ourselves reversibly between the two forms of ourself." | ||||||||||||||||||||||
| But still, our perceptual self is primary. | ||||||||||||||||||||||
| 133 | "Our imaginative activity does not, however, appear to take up any perceptual space ..." | |||||||||||||||||||||
| "Though our imaginative activity seems to take up perceptual time, what we imagine does not." | ||||||||||||||||||||||
| 134 | "Our spectatorial attitude mediates our reversible turning back and forth ..." | |||||||||||||||||||||
| 135 | "Perception is only of objects near enough to sensibly pose a practical problem." | |||||||||||||||||||||
| 135-6 | "Normally, human perception takes place in such an atmosphere of an imaginatively characterized world. Normally, furthermore, there is some precipitation from this imaginative atmosphere onto the perceptual field, producing in our experience not merely a juxtaposition of imaginative representations and perceptual presentations, but a positive fusion ..." | |||||||||||||||||||||
| 136-7 | "...we would have to show the following: 1) How the practical imagination is expressed by determinative purposive activity directed towards abstract goals ...; 2) How the conceptual imagination is expressed by words (or other written or spoken symbols [RT: including diagrams, maps etc] and how words ... are related to perceptual objects; and 3) How the aesthetic imagination is expressed by works of art ..." | |||||||||||||||||||||
| 137-8 | ST limits himself to "the conceptual form of imagination" (for reasons of brevity). | |||||||||||||||||||||
| 138 | "In perception, however, the world encompasses both the object and our capacity to experience the object" - but "in imagination, we are left alone with our object". | |||||||||||||||||||||
| 139 | "The field of our imaginative productivity is united by nothing more than our reversible capacity to produce in it, and extinguish from it, any specifiable image." | |||||||||||||||||||||
| 140 | 'Balance' and 'poise' do "play a role in imaginative as well as perceptual experience". | |||||||||||||||||||||
| 140-1 | But they "are embedded in one way in perception, and in another way in imagination". | |||||||||||||||||||||
| 142-3 | The differences are 1) "the image appears directly in the world ... (it) need not be sought and found"; 2) "it so appears through our internal activity in the world"; and 3) our "anticipatory response to something outside us and present with us in the world" is "altogether eliminated in imagination". | |||||||||||||||||||||
| 143 | "It is thus as if we lifted ourselves up by our imagination into union with the world in which we were perceptually balanced." | |||||||||||||||||||||
| "But the perceptual object is not determinately perceived as soon as it exists in our perceptual field. It first appears as merely determinable." | ||||||||||||||||||||||
| 144 | "Because of the anticipatory way in which perceptual objects are determinable, we cannot perceive any succession of determinate events as having taken place in less than reaction-time." (But imaginative objects can be 'instant'.) | |||||||||||||||||||||
| 145 | "Thus the content of the imaginative world can be dense" [sounds like my 'Fire Island'] - but not the perceptual world. | |||||||||||||||||||||
| "We cannot be surprised by what we find in our image, even though we may be surprised to find ourselves imagining such a thing." | ||||||||||||||||||||||
| 146 | But something imagined remains the same through any variation in the way it is entertained." But we can imagine more, additively. As an example, we don't find new scratches on imaginary objects. | |||||||||||||||||||||
| 147 | "The evident incompleteness of something imagined is thus the incomplete explicitation of something given as determinately implicit." | |||||||||||||||||||||
| "The {distinction between the possibility and the actuality} of something imagined is simply this distinction between the implicit and the explicit way in which it is determinately imagined. But the {distinction between the possibility and the actuality} of something perceived is the distinction between the determinable and the determinate reality of that thing." [RT: my curly brackets and underlines] | ||||||||||||||||||||||
| 147-8 | Ordinary language "has two layers of meaning. [RT: at least!] First there is the meaning that the words have by themselves" (i.e. the dictionary meanings). "Second, there is what we mean by using ordinary words in a certain way" (which includes, context, expression etc). [RT: what about the recipient's filters?] "Technical language, on the other hand, has only one layer of meaning." [RT: well, fewer levels!] | |||||||||||||||||||||
| 148-9 | It's similar with fact versus fiction. If it's a factual story, "we are referring to someone [RT: or something?] who is further determinable" and it "makes sense to ask" for more information about them. But it makes no sense to ask "How many children did the first gravedigger (in 'Hamlet') have?" | |||||||||||||||||||||
| 149-52 | Our experiential capacity can be "more completely filled in imagination than in perception". | |||||||||||||||||||||
| 149 | In perception, we could always find out more. | |||||||||||||||||||||
| 151 | "Full use of our imaginative capacity consists rather in an imagistically representative way of imagining an inexhaustible idea." | |||||||||||||||||||||
| 152 | "In an objective imaginative experience, we regard the world of our imagination as implicitly completed." | |||||||||||||||||||||
| "The function of perceptual conditions was to make possible the appearance of perceptual objects. This function, as we have seen, is exercised in the imagination by the imaginative idea. But the order of the imaginative idea, unlike that of the perceptual field, is the explicatable order of its content. Hence imagination eliminates the fundamental perceptual distinction between an ordered field and its ordered content." | ||||||||||||||||||||||
| 153 | "The initial appearance of an object as encounterable and determinable implies that we are thrown together with it in a common world. A successful perceptual encounter with an object, terminating in a perceptual determination of it, appears to verify this implication. And an abnormal failure to determine an object appears accordingly to throw doubt on this implication." I.e., it's 'weird'. | |||||||||||||||||||||
| 153-4 | "The main implication of the imaginative transformation of our relation to the world ... is that we thereby shed our humbler perceptual role as conveyors of experience, and assume a more imposing role as originators of experience." | |||||||||||||||||||||
| 154 | ST calls the perceptual form subtentional experience and the latter (i.e. imaginative form) intentional experience. In other words, "imagination is intentional". | |||||||||||||||||||||
| "The perceptual world can only be momentarily and locally filled." [RT: I thought 'momentarily' meant "we'll serve you when we can get round to it"!] | ||||||||||||||||||||||
| 6 - | Main critique of Kant [RT: even tougher going than chapter 5!] | |||||||||||||||||||||
| 155 | Kant assumed that there's such a thing as 'pure reason' - "uncontaminated with perceptual sense". ST says there isn't. | |||||||||||||||||||||
| 156 | According to ST, "the whole level of our conceptual imagination (form as well as content) makes sense only in terms of a primordial level of perceptual experience". | |||||||||||||||||||||
| Kant's 'pure concepts' of understanding and sensibility "represent the systematic fulfillment of the objective needs presented by corresponding perceptual forms". | ||||||||||||||||||||||
| 157 | Kant noted "that 'synthetic a priori judgments' can be neither logical nor empirical." | |||||||||||||||||||||
| 158 | Kant discounted the idea that "the object alone must make the representation possible", so he assumed it had to be the other way round (i.e. the representation implies the object). | |||||||||||||||||||||
| 159 | ST says that Kant overlooked a "third element, viz the world. Practical perception is a three-term relation - a relation between 1) a percipient, with 2) what he perceives, in 3) a common world in which he is thrown together with his object. Imagination is only a two-term relation ... because the imaginative subject is identical with the world of his imagination." [RT: my commas and numbers] | |||||||||||||||||||||
| "There is positive phenomenological evidence that the active percipient (if not the imaginative subject) makes sense out of his object by conveying to that object a sense originated not in himself, but in the common world-field that embraces him together with his object." [RT: my italic 'to'; this quote seems pretty fundamental] | ||||||||||||||||||||||
| 160-1 | "All we can justifiably conclude is that the matter of our experience must be conformable to our categories if it is to be capable of being intelligible." | |||||||||||||||||||||
| 163 | "All our knowledge, according to Kant, is a product of our self-activity as thinking subjects spontaneously responding to received sensation" - and we synthesize these sensations. | |||||||||||||||||||||
| 167 | Kant: 1) We start with a 'split ego'; 2) "We are objectively impelled (in order to know anything) to gain a merely de facto reflexive self-awareness"; 3) "this ... objectively compels us to hope, albeit unrealistically, for a thoroughly necessary manifest unity of the self". | |||||||||||||||||||||
| 172 | "This representation of the complete experience of the object is what Kant calls the 'transcendental object=X' ". | |||||||||||||||||||||
| 173 | "Kant imaginizes the ego." | |||||||||||||||||||||
| 175 | "In the case of the practical percipient ... self-activity helps to make the active self" (Sartre would agree). | |||||||||||||||||||||
| "What we perceive is what we discover. Because perception does not create what is perceived, it easily goes unnoticed that perception does in some measure create the perceiver." | ||||||||||||||||||||||
| 179 | "Kant writes: 'Before the artist can produce a bodily form he must have finished it in imagination.' " But ST says "Kant has no sense that the work of art is not finally planned to begin with, but is only worked out in the act of producing it." | |||||||||||||||||||||
| "Our understanding presumes a unity of our self as subject, but cannot present this unity; it can do no more than represent it." | ||||||||||||||||||||||
| 191 | " 'When the sun shines on the stone , it grows warm' is a judgment of perception; 'The sun warms the stone' is a judgment of experience." | |||||||||||||||||||||
| 195 | Kant gave up his idea of 'synthesis of apprehension' because he felt that "all systems ... even that which renders perception possible, is subject to the categories." (See table below) | |||||||||||||||||||||
| ||||||||||||||||||||||
| 200 | "Kant consistently holds that the source of our capacities is in principle hidden from us." | |||||||||||||||||||||
| 201 | Kant had two views on this: 1) "our worldly understanding consists of a fusion of reason and perception, neither of which is derivable from the other"; and 2) "our understanding of the relation between (them) is from the viewpoint of one of them" - and Kant chooses reason. Most critics of Kant agreed with 2) but disagreed with 1). ST, on the other hand, accepts 1) and disagrees with 2). | |||||||||||||||||||||
| 202 | According to ST, Kantian categories are "imaginative idealizations of perceptual categories". | |||||||||||||||||||||
| 206 | "Perceptual objects can become objects for us only by perceiving them. And to perceive an object is ... to find oneself in the midst of circumstances that the object helps to make up." | |||||||||||||||||||||
| "We sense the skillfulness of our body-activity in respect to circumstantial objects, as founded in the coordination of the activity of our various body members in respect to one another, and this in turn is founded in the felt unity of our active body." | ||||||||||||||||||||||
| 209 | "When sufficient evidence is in, we are 'satisfied' that our belief is correct" [RT: but it still may not be!]. " 'I perceive that ...' means 'I am satisfied that ...' ". | |||||||||||||||||||||
| 213 | "A perceptual judgment has the form 'I am satisfied that <...> is so'." [RT: my angle brackets] | |||||||||||||||||||||
| 216-7 | Kant's categories are derived from the possible forms of (theoretical) judgment, so gives four versions of the triad 'If A', 'and B', 'then C' - referred by Kant as 'Barbara' [RT: That doesn't seem the same as the one above that I got from Wikipedia!]. ST says that the theory breaks down in the 'B' of 'Relation'. [RT: For me, ST doesn't explain this too well.] | |||||||||||||||||||||
| 219 | ST proposes his 'table of perceptual categories', parallelling Kant. But his triads are '-', '0' and '+', instead of the 'A', 'B' and 'C' of Kant's 'Barbara'. | |||||||||||||||||||||
| ||||||||||||||||||||||
| 220-1 | ST contrasts Kant's 'degrees of reality' (on a 0 to 1 scale) with his own 'perceptual sense of nothing' (or 'lack'), which he sees as 'minus', '-'. | |||||||||||||||||||||
| 223 | In Quantity, this lack is 'Disappearance'; in Quantity, it's 'Dissatisfaction'; in Relation, it's 'Destruction'; and in Modality, it's 'Disillusion'. [RT: i.e., ST's '-' is more intense than just 'absence'.] | |||||||||||||||||||||
| 224 | Kant sees his '0' as: for Quantity, 'none'; for Quality, 'absence'; for Relation: 'empty'; and for Modality, 'impossible'. | |||||||||||||||||||||
| 225 | "Kant does not seem to have noticed the perceptual sense of objective loss of quantity and quality ... and objective loss is the sense of the disruption, the discontinuity, of experience." | |||||||||||||||||||||
| 226 | "What, then, is the systematic relation between perception and conception?" | |||||||||||||||||||||
| 227 | Kant saw the "difficulty of applying his interpretation of sense experience to the experience of pleasure and pain". | |||||||||||||||||||||
| 229 | Kant was more rigorous in his 'Dialectic', and "even the difficulties he fails to see in his position are nevertheless implicit in what he writes". | |||||||||||||||||||||
| 239 | "Kant's general antinomy of the subject: Thesis (suppressed) - The knowing subject is a material subject who is aware of his own existence. Otherwise he could not be the subject of his actual experience. Antithesis (expressed) - The knowing subject is a purely logical subject spontaneously forming judgments. Otherwise he could not give his act of knowing an unconditional unity." | |||||||||||||||||||||
| 251 | Kant had the tricky concept of 'semi-perception'. | |||||||||||||||||||||
| 254 | Kant thought "we can discern our practical interest only by 'right thinking' ". [RT: There's often not enough time for that!] | |||||||||||||||||||||
| Kant has "no sense of our ability to know what we are doing merely by virtue of skillfully doing it". | ||||||||||||||||||||||
| 255 | Kant saw practical freedom as "freedom from being affected by sensuous motives - such effect being in all cases 'pathological' ". | |||||||||||||||||||||
| 261 | Norman Kemp Smith [RT: who contributed to some Wittgenstein-based books I've read] was a critic of Kant - he interpreted Kant's work as "a mere compilation of views once held by the author"! | |||||||||||||||||||||
| 7 - | General conclusion - just a half page summing-up. | |||||||||||||||||||||
| 262 | The last words are: "The unity of the world therefore lies in our sense of life, our sense of being an individual self-moved mover seeking to meet our needs." | |||||||||||||||||||||
| 8 - | Appendix 1 - The Subject Body in Perception and Conception (written 1993) | |||||||||||||||||||||
| 263 | And our body as source of our experience is cross-culturally and trans-historically invariant(,) in the sense that it has not evolved in historical time, so that a naked Pharaonic man would not stand out for us, nor would we stand out nakedly among his crowd. Our idea of the 'naked truth' about men and women would differ from theirs, but each of us would see our own truth exhibited in all of us." | |||||||||||||||||||||
| 265 | "The body contributes a categorical structure to perceptual objects." | |||||||||||||||||||||
| "The self-moving, freely responsive percipient constitutes himself not merely as a fact, but as the factory of all facts in the perceptual world." | ||||||||||||||||||||||
| "Merleau-Ponty [M-P] ... only makes a start. In constant battle with his compatriot Sartre, for whom all structure is on the side of the object, and for whom the subject is nothing but empty transparency to the object, M-P manages to salvage only pure motility as an ever-present perceptual content on the 'hither' side f the percipient." | ||||||||||||||||||||||
| 265-6 | "M-P repeatedly slides back into Sartrean formulations, such as 'the perceiving subject is the perceived world'." | |||||||||||||||||||||
| 266 | "In feeling in all its forms - tactile, proprioceptively motile, and emotional - the thickly substantive character of the subject body is sensed and fleshed out in a way that M-P and the whole phenomenological tradition overlook." | |||||||||||||||||||||
| "As inactive spectators, we appear to ourselves as an insubstantial point of view on our spectacle" (in comparison with the 'thick' character above). | ||||||||||||||||||||||
| 267 | "How ... does our body underlie our mind, not merely causally, but as a sense inseparable from the sense of 'mind', so that the idea of a mind is unintelligible without reference to the idea of a body? There is, of course, a mountain of literature that denies this is the case." (I.e., Descartes and much of Platonic, Gnostic, mystic, religious, Kantian and Husserlian thought.) "All who think the mind logically separated from the body regard the body merely as a thing, one object among others in the world discovered by the mind. They have no inkling of the subject body." | |||||||||||||||||||||
| "Our skills are inscribed in the flesh of our percipient body ..." | ||||||||||||||||||||||
| "In (an) aesthetic attitude, we 'see' pictorial qualities rather than a colored thing hanging there, and we 'hear' tonal qualities rather than things making sounds." | ||||||||||||||||||||||
| 268 | "This perceptual inhibition is the initial stage of withdrawal from perpetual involvement in the actual world." [RT: Is this ST's equivalent of 'semi-perception'?] | |||||||||||||||||||||
| "The mind is the interiority of the body as it is made to appear by changing a) our initial perceptual stance of standing in the actual world of our circumstances into b) our conceptual stance of standing back from the actual world." [RT: my a) and b)] | ||||||||||||||||||||||
| This "undercuts the skeptical and solipsistic tendencies and conundrums of mind-body dualism". | ||||||||||||||||||||||
| 9 - | Appendix 2 - Sensuous Abstraction and the Abstract Sense of Reality (written 1969) | |||||||||||||||||||||
| 269 | "The interpretation is responsible to the facts (i.e., by fitting or failing to fit the data), but "is also responsible for the facts, because interpreted data first gain factual significance (whether properly or misleadingly) by being subjected to interpretation". | |||||||||||||||||||||
| "... an 'interpretable datum' ... is evidence of nothing in particular." | ||||||||||||||||||||||
| 270 | "That the theoretician is presented with certain data rather than others appears as a 'brute' fact into which no insight is possible." | |||||||||||||||||||||
| "So in theoretical data pure qualitative-ness is associated with pure given-ness." | ||||||||||||||||||||||
| "Philosophers have perennially sought to peek behind the 'facade' of brute facticity [RT: sometimes here I've abbreviated 'brute fact' to BF], to discover, like Leibniz, some 'sufficient reason' [RT: my quotes] for the facts being just as they are, or, like Plato and Descartes, some self-evidently necessary principles from which they follow." Non-philosophers explain BFs as due to "some God, Fate or Destiny working secretly behind the scenes of experience". ST calls these 'puppeteers of existence', and asks "aren't these BFs themselves? | ||||||||||||||||||||||
| 271 | "We are struck ... not with our ignorance of why things are as they are, but with our knowledge of the intrinsic unintelligibility of things being just as they are." It's an unnatural attitude that things "come to appear startling, surprising, inexplicable ..." [RT: I suppose it's better just to say "That's life".] | |||||||||||||||||||||
| "Extreme disaffection of this sort produces ... questioning such as "What am I doing here (rather than elsewhere)?" "Why am I alive (anywhere) at all?" "Why here, not there?" In sum, "Why are things the way there are rather than some other way?" and ultimately, "Why is there anything rather than nothing at all?" | ||||||||||||||||||||||
| "But with normal concern and hope (and participation) the fact - and facts - of everyday life do not seem arbitrary and surprising." | ||||||||||||||||||||||
| 272 | "Which sense of reality is more fundamental, which more to be trusted?" [RT: I suppose he is asking, 'perceptual' or 'conceptual'.] | |||||||||||||||||||||
| What's "the connection between the BFicity of science and the BFicity of ordinary disillusionment?" | ||||||||||||||||||||||
| "The 'standing back' that produces sensuous abstractions is not the spontaneous total disengagement of a Husserlian or Kantian transcendental attitude ... It is rather a 'standing back' of the bodily man who remains, however tentatively, in touch with his real material rather than detached from it." [RT: ST-style semi-perception again?] | ||||||||||||||||||||||
| 273 | ST rehearses his three stages of perception: 1) prepare ourself - get in position, reach toward it, sniff it, etc; 2) ready the object to be perceived - touch, look, smell, listen; 3) we perceive the object - we 'get' it. | |||||||||||||||||||||
| "We indulge in a kind of perceptual foreplay" (as with a sensualist or gourmet - we are 'savoring' the object). | ||||||||||||||||||||||
| 274 | By doing the above, "one becomes aware of qualities, rather than things". This is what ST means by 'sensuous abstraction' (title of this appendix). | |||||||||||||||||||||
| 275 | For the scientist, "the 'this-ness' of things systematically eludes his abstract comprehension". | |||||||||||||||||||||
| "So theory assigns to 'thing', 'situation', 'world' and 'knower' a new sense which (as the price paid for a wonderfully lucid insight into the nature of things) barters their actual facticity for a brute facticity. 1) The particular thing is understood as a purely logical, rather than real, conjunction of its properties ...; 2) The local situation is the context of its relevance." | ||||||||||||||||||||||
| 276 | In science, "the local situation as a context of relevance within the world is simply eliminated". [RT: I take this to mean, we (temporarily) abandon our perceptual world.] | |||||||||||||||||||||
| "Theory leaves the existence of the knower's formerly all-encompassing mind not merely unintelligible but unacknowledged." [RT: Because, I suppose, we feel we have 'risen above' our perceptual self. Maybe that's what 'abstraction' means.] | ||||||||||||||||||||||
| 10 - | Appendix 3 - Anticipatory Postscript (written 1990 about his planned next work, 'The Human Body as Personal Subject of Society' - it never appeared) | |||||||||||||||||||||
| 277 | The theme of ST's next book was to be the 'social dimension', but my [RT] feeling is that he might have struggled! | |||||||||||||||||||||
| The original book was written when American philsophy was primarily concerned with Epistemology. Now (2001) it's "moral, political and social philosophy" - but they are still neglecting the body! | ||||||||||||||||||||||
| 278 | (In contemporary social philosophy) "a double cover-up is produced: society covers up, and in doing so arrests the development of the individual person, who in turn covers up his own perceptual body, thereby rendering himself hostage to society as nothing more than a moving image of it". | |||||||||||||||||||||
| ST proposes a 'noumenological' method for putting this right. [RT: I'm not sure I like the sound of this - too reminiscent of Kant's 'noumenon'. 'Noumenological' means, I suppose, 'to do with how things really are' - as opposed to how we perceive them. Kant thought that we could never know this.] | ||||||||||||||||||||||
| With Kant (and his followers), "theoretically useful observations are evidently so theory-laden that it is no longer clear how data confirm our theory; how data are anything more than sophisticated Rorschach blots from which we read out only what we have first interpretively projected and read into them". | ||||||||||||||||||||||
| "The traditional correspondence theory of truth is on the defensive." [RT: Probably an understatement] | ||||||||||||||||||||||
| "Feyerabend simply discusses realism and affirms a projectionist theory of truth, but most (authors) are perplexed and still searching for a satisfactory resolution that preserves some sense of realism." | ||||||||||||||||||||||
| "Social philosophy has reached a similar impasse." | ||||||||||||||||||||||
| 279 | "This social influence (i.e. the regulation and standardization of behavior in modern society) is so pervasive ... that it comes to seem we are no more than modulations of our society." [RT: Like we regard ants, I suppose] | |||||||||||||||||||||
| Foucault "depicts this(,) ... the spirit of his work protests it. But the content of his work simply displays it". | ||||||||||||||||||||||
| "Derridaean deconstructionists, especially the American variety, those scavengers of destructive skepticism (not like Montaigne) ... flock to devour the dying body of traditional social values. Like Feyerabend ... they celebrate projectionism: the idea that nothing is intelligible but interpretations ..." | ||||||||||||||||||||||
| 280 | "... Deconstructionists make equal room for every conceivable interpretation. Foucault presents "a painful dilemma"; but Derridaeans "dance on the grave of responsible social criticism". | |||||||||||||||||||||
| 280-1 | Judging whether a foetus is a human is not the same as judging whether the universe will go on expanding indefinitely. reliable data and evidence is more likely in the latter. | |||||||||||||||||||||
| 283 | "Our freedom is the transformational freedom of our self as understanding subject " [RT: i.e. we are free to transform our self]. | |||||||||||||||||||||
| 285 | "We are supposedly forced to choose between the heteronomy from below of an imperial Humean sensibility and the heteronomy from above of an imperial Kantian rationality." [RT: my italics] | |||||||||||||||||||||
| 286 | "Social normalization does somehow bring off the fusion of thought and sensibility in terms of human needs, but it does not show on its face how this is done, displaying merely the result while covering up the procedure." | |||||||||||||||||||||
| 287 | "... The general grounding of moral sensibility in motivated perceptual experience ..." | |||||||||||||||||||||
| "... Rationalist philosophers looked up for their inspiration in formulating their conceptions of guiding ideas of conduct and thought ..." | ||||||||||||||||||||||
| 288 | "As our erect stance gave us our original sense of actually being in the natural world, our possibility of upright principled conduct comes to give us our sense of being in a moral social world." [RT: Sounds a fanciful metaphor to me.] | |||||||||||||||||||||
| "If we do not actually manage such (codified) conduct most of the time, we are social and moral illiterates ... not members of society at all, merely resident aliens in it." | ||||||||||||||||||||||
| ST's concept of 'noumenology' is based on the idea that "understanding itself changes form understandably", so it's "self-transformation of the knower by the knower". [RT: that's about as tortuous as one can get!] | ||||||||||||||||||||||
| 289 | ST's three 'stances' of noumenology are: 1) "the standing-up of perceptual bodily understanding"; 2) "the standing-back of imaginative mental understanding"; and 3) "the standing-for of social understanding". | |||||||||||||||||||||
| "The end of social life is to fuse the divergent stances of standing-up and standing-back into the whole-some stance of standing-for." | ||||||||||||||||||||||
| 290 | "Perception (effected by actual movement is the form of actuality; imagination is the form of possibility. Social understanding is effected by the realization of significant ideas through their productive embodiment in actual movement." | |||||||||||||||||||||
| "Social understanding is the form of necessity." | ||||||||||||||||||||||
| 291 | "Rational understanding, in its seemingly bodiless stance as disinterested - not uninterested and passionless, but 'passionately dispassionate' - is transfixed by its ideal object and blind to its bodily origin and destiny, to which it must be transformationally awakened by the individual thinker, perhaps at the prompting of some urgent circumstance. Otherwise, rational deliberation mesmerizes itself ..." [RT: I feel pretty mesmerized by that first sentence.] | |||||||||||||||||||||
| "Rationality ... is beholden to actuality from which it refines the idealized and problematicized data it means to interpret." | ||||||||||||||||||||||
| 292 | "We originate in the self-actualization of our perceptive body in the actual world, die the death of reason in the self-idealization of our bodiless mind, and finally return to our original world resurrected in the perfected body of an interiorized life of a rooted person who has found his true place in the world ..." |
Despite the toughness of reading this, and concerns with how watertight ST's arguments are, I do feel that this approach is the most pragmatic and 'common-sense' one I have come across. I don't really understand why this book hasn't had more publicity. I can't say it's the 'end of philosophy as we know it', but it does seem a line worth building on. But most of what I read these days is dredging up stuff from earlier philosophers, and there seems an inordinate amount of 'fashion' in philosophical work. Academics - much like politicians - seem to want to hang on to whatever they wrote, said and thought before.
Then there's the big religious implication - which is not at all new - that if we scrap mind-body dualism we further devalue the 'do good or else' sanction of eternal heaven or eternal punishment.
Hubert Dreyfus (died 2017) did his best to push Todes work - including the re-publication of this book. For a relevant 2005 address given by Dreyfus, see this page. There's also a transcript of a fascinating 2005 interview of him by J Hanley. In 2006 he also co-edited the Wiley book A Companion to Phenomenology and Existentialism with Mark Wrathall.
Recent literature suggests the general subject of Existential Phenomenlogy (E-P) has been taken up most seriously by psychologists. The following web sites indicate this trend, where E-P provides ideas for treatment and recuperation of affected individuals.
But these don't explicitly take on Todes' 'perception is primary' stance. However I think the point expressed in Dreyfus' foreword - as to why this work is important today, i.e. because of the links between philosophy, psychology and a number of other disciplines - is very clear.
I also think that Todes' work points to how we should regard the human race in relation to other animals. Todes doesn't address this at all, but someone who does is Mark Rowlands, author of The Philosopher and the Wolf (see review by John Gray). However Rowlands seems to be very much a Sartrean.
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This version updated on 4th March 2013