Defragmenting experience – from James to Merleau-Ponty

Until recent decades, William James was rarely mentioned in the context of the thought of phenomenologists such as Edmund Husserl, Martin Heidegger or Maurice Merleau-Ponty. The mentioning of James coincided more with the views of pragmatism, radical empiricism, or pluralism, so it was on rare occasions that the word phenomenology was used in connection with the great American philosopher. But recently, James’ findings are increasingly used in attempts to understand phenomenological thought, where he is also considered as a philosopher who contributed to the development of some phenomenological concepts, such as the notion of Husserl’s “horizon”, “object of thought”, and “intentionality”. His findings are mentioned both in empirical research of experience and in psychological circles. Given the rise of interest in James and the use of his concepts in the theoretical queries of phenomenology, as well as in empirical approaches to the study of consciousness and experience, I want to explore the ideas of the stream of thought and fringe awareness from James’s corpus by approaching the idea through the lens of Merleau-Ponty’s thought. My overall goal in this text is to show how the latter’s phenomenological explorations can help to enrich the former’s endeavours. Continue reading Defragmenting experience – from James to Merleau-Ponty

An exploration of Gelassenheit through Meister Eckhart and Martin Heidegger

This text centres around the term “Gelassenheit”, presenting 1) how Meister Eckhart, its progenitor, understood the term; 2) how it was adopted and adapted by Martin Heidegger; and 3) how it ties into the act of being released or letting go – specifically focusing on how releasement is understood in Heidegger’s texts and how we can cultivate it. Due to the inseparable nature of the act of being released and the state of Gelassenheit, these directions resist being disentangled, flowing throughout the text as if in a dance. Continue reading An exploration of Gelassenheit through Meister Eckhart and Martin Heidegger

Between conceptual and non-conceptual knowing – Husserl and Patañjali

Authors in the field of phenomenology often make passing glances or occasionally even directly reference certain teachings of the Eastern canon. In ‘The Idea of Phenomenology’ Edmund Husserl says that in his explication of a pure way of knowing based on intuition, we can be »reminded of the speech of the mystics when they describe the intellectual act of seeing that contains no discursive knowledge«. This article delves into some similarities and differences between Husserl’s phenomenological method and the yogic system as presented in The Yoga Sūtra of Patañjali. Continue reading Between conceptual and non-conceptual knowing – Husserl and Patañjali