Autor: Lonergan, Bernard J.F.

Buch: Phenomenolgy and Logic: The Boston College Lectures on Mathematical Logic and Existentialism

Titel: Phenomenolgy and Logic: The Boston College Lectures on Mathematical Logic and Existentialism

Stichwort: Phänomenologie: Definition (Daten, strukturiert durch Einsicht); Wesensschau (eidetische Struktur d. Daten; Aristoteles: Form - Materie); Phä.: nicht direkt Analyse d. Einsicht (Mangel an vereinheitlichender Synthese) -> Kluft zw. Phänomen und Begriff

Kurzinhalt: That is my own definition of it: an account, description, presentation of data structured by insight. ...On the other hand, phenomenology is not concerned with insight as such. Insight as such is something extremely elusive.

Textausschnitt: 1 The Nature of Phenomenology

266a It will be more helpful to start from the question of the nature of phenomenology. What is phenomenology? It is an account, description, presentation of data structured by insight. That is my own definition of it: an account, description, presentation of data structured by insight. (Fs) (notabene)

1.1 'Of Data'

266b It is 'of data,' of what is given, what is manifest, what appears, phenomena. It is not just of external data, external phenomena, but also of inner data. That is the basis of its opposition to experimental psychology as commonly understood, to all behaviorism, to all types of mechanism. It includes the internal among the data, the phenomena, what is manifest, what is given. But it is also not exclusively of internal data. The inner intentional act terminates at the outer datum, and the outer datum is just the term of the inner intentional act. The subject is nothing apart from the intended term, and the intended term is nothing apart from the intending subject. The synthesis of both is found in the intentional act. (Fs) (notabene)

266c Nothing is excluded from consideration. Phenomenology is not a matter of considering primitive data as opposed to derived, natural as opposed to cultural, sensitive as opposed to intellectual, cognitional as opposed to emotional or conative. It is concerned with everything that appears, everything that is given, everything that is manifest. (Fs)

1.2 Data Structured by Insight

267a However, it is of data structured by insight. In other words, it is selective. It does not offer an exhaustive description of all and any data whatever. There is a structure to it, a selection, and the selection is of the significant. It seeks basic, universal structures. Husserl spoke of the eidetic (from eidos, form), the structure in the data. He also spoke about Wesensschau, an intuition of essence. I bring in the word 'insight' because what he is talking about seems to me to be quite parallel to the distinction in Aristotle's Metaphysics in book vii, about chapter 10, between parts of the matter and parts of the form.1 With regard to a circle, for instance, the form is the necessary roundness of the circumference, resulting from the equality of all radii, where radii are multiplied to infinity. If all the radii are absolutely equal, you see that the curve has to be perfectly round. And if any one is not equal to any of the others, you see that this curve, because of the inequality of any one radius, involves a bump or a dent. That is something manifest, something presented, something that appears, and it is structured by the insight. Parts of the matter, on the other hand, are, for instance, the fact that the circle is white on black, that the drawing is in chalk, or that it is in almost a vertical plane, or that it is just this size and no bigger or smaller. But the parts of the form are the perimeter, the equal radii, and the center. You understand why the circle has to be round because of the inner ground of that roundness in the circle. Among the multiplicity of data, some are merely casual and are called parts of the matter, but there also are parts of the form: the center, the equal radii, and the circumference. That is a case of data structured by an insight. Husserl and phenomenology are concerned with considering all data without any exclusion, as structured by insight, as given a form, an eidos, from the insight. (Fs)

267b Now to present data structured by insight, Husserl does not proceed on the basis of the first bright idea that comes along. To find what really is the proper structure of the data takes effort and time; it calls for scrutiny, penetration, contrasts, and tests. It may be necessary to overcome spontaneous tendentiousness, systematic oversights, common over-simplifications, preconceptions arising from a scientific outlook or a philosophic position or any other source. In other words, we are not accounting for data structured by the first insight that comes along but for data structured by an ultimate insight that hits things off and meets the issues. (Fs)

1.3 Not Insight as Such

268a On the other hand, phenomenology is not concerned with insight as such. Insight as such is something extremely elusive. If the phenomenologist had hold of the insight itself, the act of intelligence by which you grasp the necessity of roundness when the radii are equal and the impossibility of roundness when they are unequal, he would immediately be led to unity, to a unification of insights into a science, to the movement of the sciences from lower to higher viewpoints, to the integration of the sciences, and to the integration of science and common sense in philosophy. A study of insight leads immediately to a synthetic position, as is illustrated in the book called Insight. And there is not that kind of tendency to unity in phenomenology.1 Husserl spent his life perpetually discovering new fields of possible investigations. He would investigate something and define the issue more and more closely. He would set aside other fields, and the fields of possible investigation in which data might be structured by insight kept multiplying. He kept filling in more and more pages of notes in shorthand.2 Again, there is no tendency to unity among his successors either; they do brilliant work in particular limited fields, but phenomenology does not head towards a synthesis, towards a unification. (Fs)

1.4 Data, Not Concepts

268b Finally, it is the data as structured by insight that are the objects of phenomenology, not the subsequent conceptualization or definition or theoretic statement of the data in their essential features. What you have to attend to in the circle, the data as structured by an insight, consists in these radii or other particular radii that you imagine, and similarly this circumference or another particular circumference that you imagine: not the concept of radius, of which there is only one, or the concept of center, of which there is only one. The basis on which you grasp this necessity is only in the imagined multiplicity. You need an infinity of radii to be able to get the insight: only if every possible radius is absolutely equal to every other one do you get this necessary roundness. (Fs)

269a There is a sharp distinction, then, in phenomenology between what appears as structured by proper insights and, on the other hand, the thematic treatment, the phenomenological exposition, of the data as structured by the insight. What is manifest is one thing, and on the other hand what the phenomenologist says is quite something else. Just as when you grasp this necessary roundness in the data you define the circle as the locus of coplanar points equidistant from the center, so the phenomenologist, considering what is manifest, what is given, what appears, as intelligently structured, distinguishes that sharply from his thematic treatment of the data. He is not concerned with his own statement about it; that is just his report. His report is one thing, and what he reports on is another. (Fs)

269b Consequently, there is in phenomenology a terrific emphasis on what is called the pre-predicative, that is, what is known before you conceptualize, before you formulate any theory, before you make any judgment or any statement. It is the pre-predicative manifest, what is manifest pre-predicatively, pre-theoretically, pre-judicially, what is there, what is given, that the phenomenologist is concerned with. He distinguishes that sharply from what he calls the thematic treatment, exposition, presentation, which is his writing, his report, his observations. The etymology of the word 'phenomenology' speaks of phenomena and legein: to read off the phenomena. The phenomena are what are manifest, and reading them off, legein, is what the phenomenologist does. I make my own statement in terms of insight because I think it makes the matter very clear, and I have provided a broader context for it. But they do not speak of insight, although they are sufficiently aware of the fact. (Fs)