The Drama of Possibility: Experience as Philosophy of Culture

19. Experience Grows by its Edges: A Phenomenology of Relations in an American Philosophical Vein

nineteen experience grows by its edges A Phenomenology of Relations in an American Philosophical Vein  All my knowledge of the world, even my scientific knowledge, is gained from my own particular point of view, or from some experience of the world without which the symbols of science would be meaningless. —Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Phenomenology of Perception It is to take a precarious and even treacherous path to begin an essay on philosophy with an acknowledgment of one’s ‘‘own particular view.’’ Foundationalism, in either its Cartesian or contemporary analytic formulation, forbids such an allegedly subjective point of departure . Yet it is precisely here that phenomenology and classical American philosophy share both assumptions and endeavor. And both traditions can resonate to the description of phenomenology by Merleau-Ponty: ‘‘The opinion of the responsible philosopher must be that phenomenology can be practiced and identified as a manner or style of thinking, that it existed as a movement before arriving at complete awareness of itself as a philosophy.’’1 Both American pragmatism and phenomenology have been called ‘‘methods’’ rather than ‘‘philosophies.’’ So be it. Practitioners of both know the differences which exist between pragmatism and phenomenology. Despite these acknowledged differences, some have made efforts to close the gap or at least to stress similarities.2 My own predilection on this issue, if I can be forgiven a violation of the ostensible objectivity now required in philosophical discussion, comes {  } experience grows by its edges  to this: phenomenology has taught me to take things, attitudes, ambience , and relations straight up, with no excuses. I pay little attention to the famous Husserlian bracket, which seeks for the pure essence of things, for I regard such efforts in his work and those of his followers as a form of epistemological self-deception, a result of the rigid science it deplores in a fruitless search for true objectivity. To the contrary, nothing , nothing, is ever totally bracketed, for leaks are everywhere.3 Yet the effort of phenomenology is salutary. Pay attention, says the phenomenologist. I listen to that warning. Intentionally, pay attention, says the phenomenologist. I listen more intently. This attending to the flow of experience is multisensorial, for it involves not only hearing but feeling, touching, seeking, smelling, and tasting as well. What, then, is it for a human being to be in the world? I Taken straight out, and day by night, to be in the world is not to be inert, a thing among things, a bump on a log. However surprising for the tradition of Aristotelian natural place and Newtonian mechanics, quantum physics merely confirms the multiple processing which is endemic to the activity of the human organism. Merleau-Ponty writes: ‘‘Our own body is in the world as the heart is in the organism: it keeps the visible spectacle constantly alive, it breathes life into it and sustains it inwardly, and with it forms a system.’’4 We do not fit into the world as a Lego piece or a Lincoln Log. In fact, I believe that we have no special place in the organic constituency of nature. Our consciousness—so different , so extraordinary, so bizarre, especially in its dream state—is a marvelous and pockmarked perturbation of the eonic history of DNA. Following Dewey, we are in, of, and about nature. We are nature’s creature , its consciousness, its conscience, however aberrant and quixotic; its organizer, namer, definer, and defiler; a transient in search of an implacable , probably unrealizable, final consummation. The human organism is surrounded, permeated, and contexted by both the natural and social environments. In speaking of William James’s doctrine of the self as a relational manifold, John E. Smith writes, ‘‘Radical empiricism is a radically new account of how the self penetrates and is penetrated by the world.’’5  the drama of possibility The way in which the human self abides in the world is an extraordinarily complex affair. The self projects itself into the world. The self constructs a personal world, a habitation. The self, when threatened, retreats, even attempts to eject from the world, a form of dropping-out. The rhythm of these transactions is often lost in the macroscopic setting of ‘‘getting through the day.’’ The algorithmic subtleties of our movements , shifts in attitude, and construction, deconstruction, setting, shifting , and bypassing of barriers are often buried in the frequently graceless syntax of duties, obligations, and habituations. So typical...