"To the Things Themselves!"


"To the Things Themselves!" was Edmund Husserl's motto.

To this we can add another, less famous of his sayings: "phenomena are intentional acts of consciousness!"

With Maurice Merleau-Ponty's "perception is constitutive," we now have a lot to reflect upon.

It is difficult, yet necessary, to realize that the "world" we (I) live/experience is not "the world," but a world 
we (I) constitute by way of "passive remembrance" and "passive anticipation."

Our (my) "living present" is "made of" a constant passive retaining of past experiences and 
constant passive anticipation based on our (my) recollection of these past experiences.

Further more, we (I) seem to experience this present moment with a "reclamatory" aspect: when the present 
is experienced as "stable/unchanging," we (I) tend to "lean towards" change. ("Flux reclaiming")

When this present is experienced as "unstable/changing," we (I) tend to lean towards stability. (Stasis reclaiming.")

At no time do we (I) have conscious access to a "state of dynamic equilibrium" between the two aforementioned poles/modes.

The "objective world" might be the world we (I) live in, but what we (I) know of it is definitely "subjective."

Jean-Paul Sartre has shown that we (I) do not have access to "the world in itself," that at best it is "the world in itself for us (me)."

This "for us (me)" is the one aspect of our (my) lived experience science is busy denying/ignoring/dismissing.

Yet, this "subjective" aspect is part and parcel of our (my) experience of "the world," and that experience makes us (me) who 
we are (I am), which makes us (me) see "the world" we (I) see.

Art and artists have been too easily tempted to accept the "scientific" model of "the world" and are thus busy "removing the human 
from the artefactual!"

Dr. José Huertas-Jourda defines phenomenology as "the objective science of subjectivity."
(José has a lot to do with the ideas presented on these pages as he is, amongst other crimes, responsible for my introduction to Husserl.)

I would define art as the means to investigate that "objective subjectivity," not with the model of science, but with 
the ultimate commitment to "the appearing as it appears," however unusual, unexpected, unexplainable that appearing might be.

And if that appearing cannot be "reproduced" in other circumstances, instead of being its undoing, it makes it the more unique!

More on this later...




I will revisit these issues here at a later date, please remember this is a site under construction




Back to the page that brought you hereor, back to the front page