Experience and Reflection

Humanistic philosophy like existentialism makes emphasis of one's experience as the source of meaning in life.  In fact, English philosophers, Hobbes and Locke claimed, "experience is the measure of all things."  Making emphasis of "experience" unveils some facts: (1) before existentialism, knowledge is based on theoretical frameworks like the metaphysical or theological one, but not experiential or "empirical,"  and (2) any knowledge which is based on experience is considered "humanistic."  Existentialism is a philosophical belief which considers the following: one's individual existence and his unique experience.  Thus, existentialism is a very humanistic philosophy.  Yet, any humanistic philosophy may avoid conversations about God or any metaphysical theories since any of these ideas eludes one's concrete experience, or say, it is never experiential.  

Existentialism is known to be attributed to Soren Kierkegaard (1813—1855), generally considered as the Father of Existentialism.  Kierkegaard is one of the philosophers who detest modernism -a kind of perspective which heavily relies on man's thinking power (true to all modern philosophers).  "Knowledge is power," is somehow part and parcel of this modern perspective.  With this perspective, man is believed to have all the ingredients in knowing the laws of nature.  In knowing the laws of nature, man can control or manipulate nature.  Nature, then, is subjected to the controlling power of man's thinking capabilities. With "thinking power," man becomes superior to all other beings.  

Kierkegaard, together with some other philosophers, reacted this kind of philosophical belief.  This philosophical belief presupposes that man is "essentially" thinking being (as Descartes claimed).  The defining nature of human beings is thinking.  Yet, Kierkegaard believes that man doesn't possess such thing as "essential nature," like thinking. Fundamentally man "exists" first before he thinks.  For Kierkegaard, there should be an emphasis first of existence before anything else.  With man's existence, man defines his/her essence.  His essence does not necessarily become "thinking."

The emphasis of existence leads philosophers, especially existentialist philosophers to explore some related ideas like "individuality," "subjectivity," "experience," and a lot more.  In this article, I'd like to take into consideration of the beautiful word, "experience."  This word sounds great and favorable to young generation, but if taken to the extreme, it causes some problems in one's life.  I don't totally agree in the saying, "experience is the best teacher."  For me, the idea of experience is somehow helpful for any individual to become what he wants to become, or for him to become human.  Yet, the idea of experience should be imbibed with some qualifications.

First, experience should be coupled with reflection.  I agree that experience is the best source of meaning in life.  But experience alone is blind; it does not speak by itself of its meaning.  One should reflect on his experience.  For Gabriel Marcel, reflection is a way of transcending or moving from one level in life to the next or to the higher level in life.  For example, at this moment, you have experienced failure.  Your experience of failure does not by itself speak of its meaning.  In fact, that experience may ruin your life because of some negative feelings associated with it.  But if you start asking question of your experience such as, "why did you fail?", "which part have you failed?", "what are the causes of my failures" and so on and on, you are "reflecting" on your experience.  In reflection you find answers, which nobody has ever found (Yes, your answers can be found in books!)  But, your answers are unique in that they are experiential.  Your answers will enlighten your life.  With this enlightenment, you are now ready to move or transcend to the next chapter of your life.  Take note: we should always put in mind the advice of Husserl in doing reflection: "Set aside all emotions in doing reflection!"  

Second, experience is always associated with experimentation.  This is one thing we need to avoid if we want to imbibe the idea of "experience."  Experience connotes "experimentation."  If we equate experience with experimentation, we might come to think of living our life in  doing "experiments."  For example, I haven't any knowledge of sex that my teachers are explaining or my classmates are talking about, so I need to experience sex.  Again, from existentialist point of view, experience is the best teacher.  So, you think you need to experience it (say, pre-marital sex).  If you do it, you are making "experiments" in your life. Experience and "wanting to experience" are two different things, but somehow the difference of both gives us some confusion.  Take note: there is always time for everything. The value of waiting is still important.  Patience is still a virtue.  We don't need to rush everything.  

In conclusion, our road to become human is rough and winding.  Experience is the best way we can answer our quest to become human.  Yet experience should be coupled with reflection and we should not equate experience with "experimentation." 

Is God Really Dead? (part 3)

This is the last of the series of articles written about the theme, "Is God Really Dead?"  Of the three articles, it is only the first which is true to its title since it really talks about Nietzsche's pronouncement, "God is Dead!"  The second and third articles merely give credits to the implication of Nietzsche's claim, which is in general atheism grounded on his abject nihilism.  In the second article, Heideggerian phenomenology and its atheistic overtones are specifically discussed.  In this third article, I'd like to spend few spaces to discuss another type of atheism as explicitly claimed by deconstructionism and neo-pragmatism.

Deconstructionism and neo-pragmatism are off-shoots of what is generally considered as post-modernism.  Post-modernism is not a school of thought like deconstructionism and neo-pragmatism, but a sort of "perspective or a way of presenting the situation of people or philosophers at the contemporary times."  Nietzsche is usually attributed as the "prophet of post-modernism."  As commonly agreed by scholars, post-modernism is associated by its philosophical claim, "there is no such thing as reality."  As systems of thought, deconstructionism and neo-pragmatism are built in the edifice of the unintelligibility (un-knowability) of reality.

What is Reality?

The problem of reality started to be seriously discussed in ancient Greece when the sophists (ambulant teachers) began claiming that "might is right."  The criterion of what is considered "right or true" is not reality but "might."  Power makes everything right or true.  Because of this, the sophists taught students the crafts of becoming powerful leaders by enhancing their skills in oratorical speeches and debate.  Logic and rhetoric were taught, instead of subjects which assume the task of "seeking for truth."  It was in this period of history when Plato was educated by his master Socrates (469/470-399 BCE), who was one of the sophists.  Socrates was a master of dialogue who believed that knowledge is worth nothing for no one can have it or desperately seek it for nought.  In consequence, he claimed that "he knows only of one thing -that is, he doesn't know."  He cannot be certain of anything; he cannot arrive of what is true or real.  Reality, then, is not only put to doubt but eventually buried in its graveyard of uncertainty.  But he claimed of being certain of one thing -his ignorance.

Plato might have been disturbed by his master's philosophical claim.  If certainty is untenable, then every truth-claim is opinion.  But opinion keeps on changing, or depends on one's perception.  Thus, it is unreliable and not true.  Plato was very aware of the arbitrariness of opinion.  So, he thought of some ideal forms, which are immutable or unchanging in various contexts and time.  These ideal forms are only found in the World of ideas.  The postulation of the World of Ideas ensues in the polarity of two sources of man's knowledge: that of opinion and that of true knowledge.  What is received from perception is opinion, and what is received from pure reason is the true knowledge.

This is the spell of Platonism that plagued the history of philosophy, according to Richard Rorty (1931-2007).  Wilfrid Sellars (1912-1989) calls this spell-bound philosophy as the "myth of the given" distorting the philosophical search from Plato onwards.  Aristotle, Plato's student, seeks reality (in Plato's definition: that which remains unchanged) in a concrete particular object in that it is a composite of matter and form, and it has substance in it.  Medieval thinkers seek it in the "divine mind of God."  Rene Descartes grounds it in the "cogito" (in man's thinking power).  Following Descartes, Immanuel Kant is able to ground it in man's pure reason yet pure reason has to be impinged by experience.  This spell has continued even in the works of Edmund Husserl, until finally Martin Heidegger breaks this spell when charging all philosophers in the West of being "oblivious or forgetful of Being."  Rorty is claiming that he has broken free of Platonism and he is now a staunch critic of it (Platonism) but not the person of Plato.

Deconstructionism and Neo-pragmatism

It's hard to isolate neo-pragmatism from deconstructionism.  Although they are entirely different schools of thought and founded by two philosophers with different philosophical backgrounds (the former by an American, Rorty and latter by a French, Jacques Derrida (1930-2004), yet as implied by Rorty, neo-pragmatism continues what deconstructionism has failed to do.

Jacques Derrida is famous in his claim that "there is nothing outside the text."  For example, when I say, "Simon is a male student," Derrida would tell us that "there is no reality in it."  There is no such thing/person as "male student" like Simon since what seems to be a reality of "male student" is simply a matter of convention.  "Male student" has no correspondence in reality.  The word "male" or "student" is simply created by language, thus simply a matter of convention.  To find out that there is really no reality, all you have to do is deconstruct language.  In deconstructing language, you can show the disparity between word and reality, and you will eventually find out that reality is simply created by language.

What Derrida is wary about is the Western binaries: male-female, presence-absence. central-marginal. Without these binaries, everything is possible.  One is free to play with language -without rules to follow, without any foundation of knowledge to engage in.  If one talks about God, that's the trouble in it.  At first, only few have direct experience of God.  Secondly, God is a very remote idea.  With deconstructionism, the idea of God is shun off as senseless and baseless conversation.

Neo-pragmatism also agrees that reality is non-existence and any knowledge of it is untenable.  It, however, does not make emphasis of deconstructing language but how language works for social progress.  For Rorty, it is enough to believe that language does not correspond to anything outside of it.  What matters most in the use of language is how it works in certain situation without any worries of whether it's true, or it coheres or in line with that of the authority.  The only criterion of Rorty's talk of what works for social progress is what he calls as "social hope."  Although he doesn't assume of any reality but his talk of pragmatism is still grounded (or basically assumed) on the idea of "social hope."

In conclusion, Rorty believes that language (ex. the language of God) is baseless since any foundation of it is nowhere to be found.  Likewise, his talk of "social hope" is also baseless since any foundation of it is nowhere to be found.  If "social hope" is baseless, neo-pragmatism also becomes a "useless" enterprise like theodicy (as he claims it is).

Is God Really Dead? (part 2)

I was surprised with a number of comments posted online regarding the last article entitled, "Is God Really Dead?"  More than half of my students in Philosophy of Human Person classes commented on this article.  Because of this, I am compelled and inspired to write another article on the same title but I'd like to discuss it in the context of phenomenology, particularly Heideggerian phenomenology.

Nietzsche is not the only philosopher who rejects or denies God's existence.  There are several philosophers considered as atheists (those who don't believe in God) but Nietzsche is somehow a unique kind of atheist --unique in the sense that, he pronounced the death of God amidst millions of faithful still believing in God and at the height of the Roman Catholic religion tested by time and circumstances as a true religion established by Christ.  Unlike before the spread of Christianity, we understand that those self-claimed atheists would deny God and his existence because God hasn't revealed himself yet, or that they denied God's existence because God has no place in their hearts and minds.  Nietzsche is like a devoted Christian dissatisfied of God's promises of salvation to his people.  

In this article, I'd like to consider some other forms of atheism --particularly, Heideggerian phenomenology.  Strictly speaking though, Heidegger's claim on the problem of God is not atheism but a sort of agnosticism.  Agnosticism is a philosophical belief which claims the impossibility to know about God.  I will elaborate this point after discussing phenomenology.

PHENOMENOLOGY

Phenomenology is not a philosophical school of thought.  It is rather a movement founded by Edmund Husserl (1859-1938) against the behaviorist psychology during his times. Husserl is considered as the Father of Phenomenology; the teacher of Heidegger (1889-1976).  Husserl was somehow dissatisfied with how behaviorist psychologists were conducting their research studies on human behavior.  Based on their studies of dogs and rats, they come to a conclusion that human beings (as members of Kingdom Animalia) can also be conditioned -thus, we have no freedom.  Husserl was not battling on the conclusion that humans have no freedom.  What he was battling about is on how they have come to that conclusion.  It is on the method of study that Husserl was questioning about, not so much of their idea on human beings.

For Husserl, there is something wrong in the way behaviorists conducted their studies.  They carried many assumptions, prejudgments or what Husserl calls "natural attitude," in conducting their studies.  To find new meaning in our experiences, or to see it "with eyes," we need to bracket our "natural attitude."  Once our "natural attitude" is held in abeyance, we can reduce our experience into its essence or what is "invariant" in it.  The "glassy essence" found in our experience must be viewed objectively without being tainted by subjective presuppositions.  Thus, phenomenology makes philosophy a "presupposition-less science."  Moreover, Husserl asserts that the essence of the experience must still be reduced into the very activity of the person who has found it in his experience.  Otherwise, this essence will not become meaningful since it is only us, human beings, can make it meaningful.  In other words, human beings shall translate this "essence" found in our experience since we are the ones who can it meaningful, or can make our life meaningful out of it.  

On its foundation, phenomenology assumes that what one can only know is the phenomenon, not the thing-in-itself or reality (or the noumenon).  It is impossible to know what does not appear to our perception.  The thing-in-itself (or the noumenon) can only be thought of, but cannot be known objectively.  In other words, what is outside human experiences cannot exactly be known.  God is outside any human experiences, or say, outside the experiences of philosophers.  Thus, God cannot be known objectively. Consequently, phenomenologists tend to deny God's existence.  However, there are some existentialist phenomenologists like Gabriel Marcel (1889-1973) claiming the opposite.  For Marcel, God is within one's experience.  One experiences God when he/she is at the brink of death.  At the moment of his death, he/she has to entrust his/her  life to someone Absolute whom Christians calls God.  This experience of entrusting one's life at the moment of death is a phenomenon that one can't deny the existence of God. 

Heidegger, Husserl's student, suggests that man is a being thrown into this world.  As being thrown, Heidegger has thought of man's reality as nothing but a chance.  This is, I think, a form of atheism that has roots in the theory of evolutionism proposed by Charles Darwin. Many theist philosophers have already proved that this theory "doesn't hold water."   There are no solid evidences to support that human beings evolve from primates.  It is, however, tempting to believe that since man knows how to cope with the hostile environment, he is able to evolve from primate's way to man's way or "adapt" his new environment through the process of "natural selection."  Man's adaptation process is, I think, entirely different from saying that "he evolves from primates."  It does not follow that if man adapts his environment, he evolves from previous state of being to a new kind of being.  For me, Darwin mistakenly defines evolution with adaptation.

Let me go back to Heidegger's claim.  His emphasis on man's thrown-ness is, I think, his way of escaping the fact that human beings cannot live without God and imbibing the extreme position of existentialism that man can become what he wants to become if God doesn't exist.  The extreme position of existentialism is that man is absolutely free.  To make sense of it, one has to deny God's existence because God determines man's life and his purpose in life.

In conclusion, the denial of God's existence among atheist thinkers, whether existentialists or phenomenologists, is the outcome of the over-emphasis of man's freedom.  Since if man is completely free, then he shall be the one who has to determine his future.  Without God, man turns himself into a god.  For these atheist philosophers, to claim that God exists is an illusion, but for me, it is more of an illusion if man claims that he is God.