How do you know someone is a phenomenologist?

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41

I have a friend. Jack. He is gay and doesn’t want to be. Why? I think because a person in his life told him he better be and better be it in the way that person says. That’s certainly a good reason not to want to be.

Jack is a good close friend of mine. Sometimes he makes passes at me. I think he thinks that if a straight man seduces a straight man in secret, then it is not gay. This causes him a fucking world of pain. Which, because I am his friend, causes me pain.

What would you have me do? Wonder about phenomenology or some bullshit? Fuck you.

I want my friend to be free.

It is also a fact that my friend hurts people because of his frustration. I want to stop this as well.

But I value him as a person more than I want him to stop hurting people. My objective is his health, not morality. Because he is my friend and I care about him.

I would like to tell my friend that he will be more powerful, not less, if he accepts his desires. I want to tell him that gayness is far from the only thing the fucking machine appropriates and makes shitty, and he should just deal with it regarding that person that tells him he shouldn’t be.

But. And this is a big reason why we are friends, he has some fucking pride on him. So I cannot approach him in public. And I know enough about wanting someone to know that if a girl I want says anything to me in private, even if it is to tell me how she will never be mine that way, I will find a way to construe it as she wants me that way.

What would a lover of wisdom like me do in this situation? First of all, tell him that it’s not abouy coming out of the closet or some faggety ass modernist shit like that. It is simply to accept his desires and build THEM into his conscious self rather than the goddamn soul eating machine.

Not provide him with some stupid ideal form. Gay is not an ideal form. It is just a convenient word for a man who often desires other men sexually.

But here’s the catch! I know there is a deep cruelty in me. So I hesitate to do anything about this because I fear it will wind up being a cruel thing somehow.

I have accepted this will to subjugate into my conscious self where care about other people also is. So I just turn it on myself. I subjugate ghosts in myself. It’s been pretty fruitful. Sometimes people jump in while I do it and they have a choice: allow the ghost I am subjugating to be subjugated in him or protect the ghost.

If I see the person is in any actual danger, I hit the self immolate button and give him an exit. I figure, if he is brave, he will subjugate the ghost. If he is not brave, then he is of no interest to me and might as well leave.

42

By simplification I did mean a logical simplification which is less complex at the same time. Since You are a nihilist, You must realize that a before the threshold of where the either or was the primary signifier, exclusion of one guaranteed the absolute inclusion of the other. So either reality or a logical system not meeting certainty.

The absolute certainty guarantees that hole or abyss, toward which doubt, or states of it, fall or is reduced toward- an existential hole.

It is simpler and more connected to reality. the kind of real reality described in ‘realism’, as an art form.

I must confess, I feel a lot more comfortable in that reality than the abstractions which break reality into the kind of parts which don’t male much sense nowadays.

In aesthetic terms , I am bracketing my safety zone as well. and find comfort with aestheticians such aa Kierkegaard, in my fall. But the tension. Is overwhelming , nevertheless, since art plays a limited role in my life.

Icarus was burned by the sun because he got too close to the sun, and that metaphore plays out for people with ideals that have to navigate though a complex , conflicted world.

43

But in a No God world what is the next best thing?

And how does the next best thing react to the manner in which I construe a human identity out in the is/ought world?

The idealism per aesthetic rules may give credence and homage to a god, but it doesent have to. The rules pertain to god as well as a principle and /or a structural continuity.

This is because the ideal world proceeded a causative god. The pagan gods and reality were interconnected causally. Pagan gods preceded logic and language. nature as metaphore symbolized an anthropomorphism.

I am not entirely sure if a simpler causation based on perceptual signifiers lead to the classical logic inherent in language. But that’s another topic.

44

As more time goes by it becomes more clear to me what popular philosophy is about; to find a replacement for God. To find a Rule, a Law, something to alleviate the grand burden of having a will and multiple options of using it, as well as the option of not using it, “trading it” for the pleasures of self-consumption.

And what un-popular philosophy is, on the other hand; the rejoicing of the mind at the will and its various options; the dawn of true human Agency.

I do not blame the former category for not rejoicing - neither do I pity them - but I do take displeasure at seeing the anti-will institutionalized under the noble name of Philosophy.

45

From my frame of mind, it’s not a question of what you wonder about phenomenology but the extent to which you are able discuss the phenomena that revolves around homosexuality; such that what you think is true regarding this particular context, is in fact true objectively for all sentient human beings.

There is what is in fact true here and what particular individuals think is in fact true here. Juxtaposed in turn with what they are convinced ought to be true instead. Is Jack a homosexual? Is how he feels about that a rational frame of mind? Is how you think that he thinks about it a rational frame of mind? Is there a moral narrative and a political agenda here that reflects the most [or the only] virtuous manner in which the phenomena revolving around human biology revolving around human sexuality ought to be embodied by all reasonable men and women?

What on earth does it mean for someone to be “free” here given the gap between what any particular one of us think we know about homosexuality and all that can be known about it as a phenomenon?

Fuck me? Is that a philosophically appropriate thing to express here? Or is that too just another manifestaton of your own partiular “I” as an “existential contraption”?

Okay, but to what extent is your reaction to his reaction to your reaction to his pain embedded in the most rational assessment of the situation? To what extent might his pain be rooted instead in conservative political dogmas that construe homosexuality as, among other things a Sin against God or “unnatural” or a “perversion”?

How are all of these variables not embedded in a particular historical, cultural and experiential context? Ever evolving over time in a world of contingency, chance and change?

What is the most philosophically astute reaction that all reasonable and ethical men and women are obligated to embody here?

The way he thinks about it? The way you think about it? The way I think about it? The way others do?

So, is this the most phenomenologically sound assessment of these relationships? Should we poll all phenomenologists [and then all the ontologists] and see if we can construct the most rational consensus regarding same-sex relationships?

And, again, how is all of this related to the OP:

How do you know someone is a phenomenologist?
If you scratch under the surface, they believe in ideal forms.

In my view, this is basically just another “existential contraption”. A particular political prejudice rooted more rather than less in dasein. In the actual sequence of your lived experiences, relationships and sources of information/knowledge — as they relate to homosexuality.

Why don’t you apprise us of this sequence. In the manner in which I describe my own existential trajectory with respect to abortion. How would you differentiate between philosophical realism and political idealism with respect to this issue?

Okay, is this cruelty more the product of genes or of memes? In the manner in which some argue that homosexuality itself is more the product of genes than memes? How does the philosopher [as a moral objectivist] go about pinning this down? As either a phenomenologist or as an ontologist. With respect to human sexuality a priori and a posteriori.

And then of course a deep dive into the convoluted nature of human psychology:

We can take this assessment to folks that champion Carl Jung or Sigmund Freud or Wilhelm Reich. And then after they chip in we can take their insights to the phenomenologists and the ontologists.

Pin down once and for all Jack’s actual objective situation. And then move on to yours and mine.

46

I note this:

And you come back with this:

We are clearly not in sync here regarding the manner in which phenomena might be or can be or ought to be discussed.

Or so it seems to me.

What I am after instead is more in sync with Pedro’s description of his friend Jack above. An actual existential context in which we can discuss phenomenology by “illustrating our text”.

We may not agree on the meaning of the words that we use but at least they are in reference to actual human interactions out in a particular world.

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Note to others: Is this a reasonable point of view?

Does it pin down a correct distinction between popular and un-popular philosophy?

If it does accomplish this, how, for all practical purposes, would it be applicable to your own life? How would embracing un-popular philosophy be pertinent to you given your own interactions with others?

And, in particular, phenomenal interaction embedded/embodied in the “human condition” that revolves more specifically around the question that I pursue here above all else: How ought one to live in a world of conflicting goods?

Or of conflicting values. Is there a “value ontology” that one might subscribe to here?

Can actual examples of this be provided here such that we more clearly grasp its potency in regard to “the rejoicing of the mind at the will and its various options”?

What on earth might that mean?

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Phenomenologists don’t necessarily believe in transcendent, or imminent forms, they do necessarily believe in appearances.

49

He will mention particulars he has no contact with, sometimes by category - the hypothetical pregnant women who want an abortion. I am sure he thinks Trump is a concrete example and not an abstraction, but it is not him, encountering something specific in his life and living in some way in relation to it. It is always a case study related to what the universal ‘I’ should do or cannot do.

50

Again, for years now I have been confined to my apartment by and large. But, as the Vicomte Sébastien de Valmont might observe, “it is beyond my control”.

But, over the course of my life, I have had many, many, many wide and varied experiences. I was a devout Christian growing up and I did in fact stumble into adulthood in the belly of the white working class beast. I worked a couple of years at Maryland Shipbuilding and Drydock. I was drafted into the Army and served a year in Vietnam. After being discharged I became a member of the Unitarian Church. I worked summers at Bethlem Steel to help pay for college. At college [almost 6 years] there was almost nothing that I did not try at least once. I majored first in political science and then in philosophy. Concurrent with that I commenced my involvment in radical political organizations. After dabbling with the CPUSA, the RCP and the SWP, I spent a couple of decades in and out of such organizations as NAM, DSOC and DSA. I was married and became a father. Then a single parent.

In other words, tons and tons of close encounters with the world around me.

And Mary and John were no hypothetical couple struggling with a pregnancy that was unwanted by one and wanted by the other. Though I changed their names my involvement in their experience was a fundamental turning point in my life. I began to struggle with the question “how ought one to live?” from a whole other frame of mind.

As for “I”, I make what I construe to be an important distinction between the parts of me that are true objectively [for everyone] and the parts of me that are embedded/embodied more in an existential contraption rooted in dasein out in a world of conflicting goods resolved in the final analysis by those able to enforced [legally, politically] their own moral/political narrative/agenda.

Or [here and now] so it seems to me.