Transcendental Phenomenology Part 2

I’ve

done a bit more digging about transcendentalism and uncovered another opinion.

In The Phenomenological mind Gallagher & Zahavi discuss transcendentalism in the section on Phenomenological reduction. To put it simply, (which Gallagher and Zahavi do not) is that Transcendentalism relates to the moving beyond the natural attitude.

This starts by describing our natural state, which is that we perceive reality as it is presented, without question. It is a case that “reality is assumed to be out there, waiting to be discovered and investigated… This realistic assumption is so fundamental and deeply rooted that it is not only accepted by the positive sciences, it even permeates our daily pre-theoretical life, for which Husserl called the natural attitude.” (P24). It is this natural attitude that gives reality its realism, that we can trust our five senses as they interact with this reality. It provides a bedrock of understanding and the ability to trust the world, that when we turn a kettle on it will boil, the ground will be wet and muddy after heavy rainfall and that sunlight will brighten the day. It means that the world will behave as we expect it to through the knowledge and experience we have gained through previous encounters with reality. It gives the objectivity that underpins reality and it is this objectivity that we can, and do, rely on in our everyday lives.

So, it is this natural attitude that needs to be transcended. It is a question of moving beyond what we just accept reality to be, but how is that to be done? It is not achieved by looking deeper into reality, with being more understanding of how things work and how reality interacts with itself. It is achieved by pursuing a totally different direction, literally coming at reality from a different perspective.

As stated above, reality has a level of objectivity to it and it is this objectivity that gives reality its foundation. But for phenomenology to transcend this reality it needs a direction to go in and this is found within subjectivity. Of what Gallagher and Zahavi assert is that reality is always interpreted by the subject, ie; the person. Consequently, because of this interpretation there is always an element of subjectivity as it is interpreted from the first person perspective inherent within our consciousness.

With this being the case, true objectivity cannot be achieved. Reality will be moulded to fit within our consciousness, which will be decided by our five senses, along with memory, indexicality, intelligence and so on. This will mean that the experiences will shape reality to fit in relation to the person and give the first person perspective and that unmodified reality is, in essence, an impossibility.

Thus, objectivity is then transcended by subjectivity and leads to the conclusion that everything is from the first person perspective. This, in itself, is a real challenge to science and in particular logic, but both of these have been created by human beings to analyse, control and manipulate reality from a human perspective.

The more I think about this, the more sense it makes. It defines what is being transcended and also leads to a conclusion as to the direction of the transcendence. Ultimately it leads to the conclusion that reality is subjective, which in turn means that this can be expressed within a self-portrait and so becomes a valid line of enquiry.