Words and Things: The Problem of Constituting Phenomenological Meaning (original) (raw)
Related papers
Phenomenology is Not Just Intuition But Also Expression
Presented to the Twenty-Ninth Annual Meeting of the International Merleau-Ponty Circle: “Expression, Language, Art,” Muhlenberg College (Allentown, PA), September 30–October 2, 2004
In the Sixth Cartesian Meditation, Eugen Fink, in dialogue with Edmund Husserl, points to a problem: how can the phenomenologist transform ordinary language so that she can effectively communicate new transcendental meanings? The danger, warns Fink, is one of "seduction by mundane meanings." 1 Fink argues that the phenomenologizing ego has access only to the ordinary language at her disposal. This language must be "taken over" by the phenomenologist, who must "judge the suitability of mundane concepts and representations for analogously indicating transcendental concepts." 2 Both Fink and Husserl refer to this judging as a "transformation" of ordinary language, one that is necessary if the phenomenologist is to avoid slipping out of the transcendental attitude with every word she speaks. 3 In the end, however, Fink claims that the tension between the natural sense of words and the transcendental sense that is indicated in them can never be abolished. 4 This exposes not only the reader of phenomenology but also the phenomenological researcher to ambiguities and ultimately, misunderstandings. 5 Husserl, on the other hand, while clearly alive to the problem, declares it exaggerated.
A critical assessment of Merleau-Ponty's conception of phenomenology highlights singular differences between Husserl's phenomenological methodology and existential analysis, between epistemology and ontology, and between essential and individualistic perspectives. When we duly follow the rigorous phenomenological methodology described by Husserl, we are confronted with the challenge of making the familiar strange and with the challenge of languaging experience. In making the familiar strange, we do not immediately have words to describe what is present, but must let the experience of the strange resonate for some time, and even then, must return to it many times over to pinpoint its aspects, character, or quality in descriptively exacting ways. Moreover as Husserl points out, language can seduce us into thinking we know when we do not know. The methodology thus highlights the import of being true to the truths of experience, and in doing so, authenticates the basic value of a phenomenological methodology to the human sciences.
The Necessity of Communicating Phenomenological Insights—and its Difficulties
Meaning and Language: Phenomenological Perspectives, 2008
The communication of insight-be it through a transcription, translation, 5 a seminar or classroom lecture-is a philosophical task as old as Plato. 6 Phenomenological insight, according to Husserl, is to be gained by tem-7 porarily "bracketing" the various presuppositions of the different realms 8 of human activity for the purpose of intuiting the essential structures 9 of experience that appear to a consciousness purified by the method of 10 the epoché. And Husserl makes it abundantly clear that an essential part 11 of phenomenology's task is the communication of phenomenology's in-12 sights to the various regions of human activity which it claims to ground 13 through its activity. It is through such communication that phenomeno-14 logy invites humanity to return to "the things themselves" that underlie 15 all of our various preconceptions of these things, so that it may have a 16 deeper understanding of the lived world common to all. This is often 17 forgotten about phenomenology: it is not only about intuition, but also 18 expression. 19 This first half of this essay will show that Husserl was acutely aware 20 of the role that language must play in the successful expression of pheno-21 menological insight It will also show, through an analysis of his theory 22 146 Meaning and Language in Phenomenological Perspective just communicating the insights gained by his method. This analysis will 1 also reveal what might be called a nascent but essential rhetorical element 2 in Husserl's understanding of how insight is gained and meaning consti-3 tuted. 4 This points to the second half of the essay, which concentrates on the 5 considerable problems of the mobility of phenomenological insight via 6 expression, and the subsequent constitution of phenomenological mean-7 ing and community. This investigation will yield a clear sense of the 8 demands being made on phenomenological expression, as well as nega-9 tive insights into what phenomenological expression can not be like. It 10 will also suggest a possible way in which practicing phenomenologists 11
Phenomenology, community, and the problem of the mobility of meaning
Presented to the Society for Existential and Phenomenological Theory and Culture, Dalhousie University and University of King’s College (Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada), May 28-29, 2003
Husserlian phenomenology seeks to constitute a more fundamental meaning of the world. It attempts to do so by temporarily "bracketing" the various presuppositions of the different realms of human activity, which allows the intuition of the essential structures of experience that appear to a consciousness purified by the method of the epoché. This is how phenomenological meaning is constituted. It is this meaning that lends depth of meaning to all of the various human activities grounded in the lifeworld.
Theory of Language and Meaning in Phenomenological Structuralism
Archives of biomedical engineering & biotechnology, 2019
This work explores the nature of language and meaning according to Paul C. Mocombe’s structurationist theory of phenomenological structuralism. The author posits that language is a tool used in human society to both capture the nature of reality as such, and how we ought to recursively organize and reproduce our being-in-the-world within the aforementioned systemicity or structure despite the human potential to defer meaning in ego-centered communicative discourse.
Meaning making from life to language:The Semiotic Hierarchy and phenomenology
Cognitive Semiotics
The paper rethinks a proposal for a unified cognitive semiotic framework, The Semiotic Hierarchy, in explicitly phenomenological terms, following above all the work of Merleau-Ponty. The main changes to the earlier formulation of the theory are the following. First, the claim that a general concept of meaning can be understood as the value-based relationship between the subject and the world is shown to correspond to the most fundamental concept of phenomenology: intentionality, understood as “openness to the world.” Second, the rather strict nature of the original hierarchy of meaning levels made the model rather static and one-directional, thus resembling an old-fashioned scala naturae. Reformulating the relationship between the levels in terms of the dynamical notion of Fundierung avoids this pitfall. Third, the phenomenological analysis allows, somewhat paradoxically, both a greater number of levels (life, subjectivity, intersubjectivity, sign function, language) and less discre...