{∅, {∅}, {∅, {∅}}} : Rage Against the Meat Grinder

Consciousness flows. Consciousness is not me, but I am of consciousness. I am a species of consciousness. Husserl can’t transcend the ‘unknown forces of Nature” without invoking specific “magical” terminology such as the phenomenological act of reduction (epoche, bracketing off, suspending judgment). “Magic” is a simple direct way of escaping the narrowness of everydayness. Instead of turning to the great thinkers, the student of the occult turns immediately inward and tries to reach down to his subliminal depths, into the cognitive unconscious itself, what Husserl imagined to be a “pure consciousness,” a primordial pre-scientific awareness, the ground of non-conceptual, “spiritual” knowledge. I think the chief thing is to establish a link between the conscious and subconscious mind.

“There is indeed the inexpressible. This shows itself; it is the mystical.” (Wittgenstein)

According to Western neuroscience, consciousness is a product of the physiological processes in the brain, and thus critically dependent on the body. We have absolutely no proof that consciousness is actually produced by the brain. We do not have even a remote notion how something like consciousness could possibly happen. That consciousness is a brain process remains one of the leading myths of Western materialistic science and has profound influence on our entire society (Grof).

To me, radicalizing phenomenology is simply acknowledging that when Husserl attempted to use rational means for attaining a transcendental state, he unleashed into the world a confusion. When I refer to myself as a “radical phenomenologist,” I mean that I fully embrace the confusion Husserl has exposed; in fact, I rest in this confusion. Edmund Husserl, without trying to do so, has undermined Reason, the god of the Industrial World. As a radical phenomenologist, I call into question the conventional scientific worldview. In so doing, I set about to further undermine mass industrial society. The connection between science and totalitarian control has become apparent. The general population finds itself existing within a gargantuan industrial apparatus which it admires, worships, and idolizes, and yet cannot comprehend. Hence, the general population defers to the authority of the experts and specialists.

Albert Camus writes, “Husserl’s manner of proceeding negates the classical method of reason, disappoints hope, opens to intuition and to the heart of the whole proliferation of phenomena, the wealth of which has something about it inhuman. These paths lead to all sciences or to none.”

I am moving towards an embodied realism, and yet I trust Schopenhauer when he writes, “True philosophy must at all costs be idealistic; indeed, it must be so merely to be honest. For nothing is more certain than that no one ever came out of himself immediately with things different from him; but everything of which he has certain, sure, and hence immediate knowledge, lies within his consciousness. Beyond this consciousness, therefore, there can be no immediate certainty; but the first principle of a science must have such a certainty. It is quite appropriate to the empirical standpoint of all the other sciences to assume the objective world as positively and actually existing; it is not appropriate to the standpoint of philosophy, which has to go back to what is primary and original. Consciousness alone is immediately given, hence the basis of philosophy is limited to the facts of consciousness; in other words, philosophy is essentially idealistic.”

But I digress. Spiritualism is the false safeguard against materialism; but the real and true safeguard against materialism is idealism. In spiritualism, what is proved is the knower’s independence of matter, but in idealism, what is proved is the dependence of all matter on the knower. Husserl always reminds us that consciousness is always consciousness of something. Schopenhauer says that consciousness without object is no consciousness at all. Both appear to be transcendental idealists.

When one views oneself as a willer rather than a knower one understands that there can be no “knowledge of knowing” but only an experiential, a posteriori apprehension of an aspect of oneself beyond ones power of representation. This radical division within a unitary subject can be interpreted as a dramatic attempt at overcoming the logocentric centering of the human in reason endemic to modern thinking. Schopenhauer is very aware of the revolutionary aspect of his thought and the difficulty one faces in accepting the fact that the full range of human experience transcends rationality. Yet, he remains firm on this foundational division: “Now the identity of the subject of willing with that of knowing by virtue whereof (and indeed necessarily) the word
I includes and indicates both, is the knot of the world (Weltknoten), and hence inexplicable” (FR, 211). Further: “Fundamentally it is the will that is spoken of whenever
I occurs in a judgement. Therefore the will is the true and ultimate point of unity of consciousness, and the bond of all its functions and acts. It does not, however, itself belong to the intellect, but is only its root, origin, and controller” (WWR II, 140).

Husserl is unquestionably seen as the ' Father of Phenomenology;' however, the philosophy about which I am writing has very little in common with what most people associate with Husserl's phenomenology. While it is widely debated, I hold that Husserl abandoned his commitment to true phenomenology when he turned from realism to a transcendental idealism. However, I wish to avoid this dispute completely. One of the best expositions of the view that Husserl made a turn from realism to idealism can be found in Josef Seifert' s Back to Things in Themselves and I   would strongly recommend its reading to anyone interested in phenomenological realism.