Phenomenology

A Basic Introduction in the Light of Jesus Christ

Donald Wallenfang

• Publisher: Cascade Books
• Year: 2019
• ISBN:
  9781532643552
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Christian Theology

What is phenomenology? That is precisely the question this book seeks to answer. In an age of information overload, complex topics must be simplified to make them accessible to a wider audience. Phenomenology: A Basic Introduction in the Light of Jesus Christ not only presents the basic building blocks of phenomenology, it also gives body to voice by putting abstract ideas in contact with the Word made flesh, Jesus of Nazareth. In five manageable chapters, Donald Wallenfang introduces major themes such as the natural attitude, givenness, interpretation, paradox, and ethics. Each subject is considered in how it applies to daily life and relates to the gospel of Jesus Christ. Several biblical scenes are tapped to harvest their sweet nectars of meaning through phenomenology. At its limit, philosophy gives way to the revelatory rationality of theology as expressed by Jesus the phenomenologist.

1

The Natural Attitude

As its name suggests, phenomenology investigates phenomena—any and all phenomena. A phenomenon is anything that happens, signifies, or shows itself within human experience. Phenomena are the stuff of experience. Experience is built by phenomena. Every experience consists of an encounter between the person who does the experiencing, the phenomenon that is experienced, and the interaction between the two. Let us consider an example. I am walking outside on a sunny day and all of a sudden I hear a buzzing sound near my ear. The sound is more pronounced in kind, so I begin to wonder what kind of insect is flying at my ear. Many phenomena ensue: seeing that the insect is a honey bee, feeling slight fear that I may be stung, and all of the associated meanings that accompany the present experience.

The beauty of phenomenology is that it never is finished in its investigation and description of an experience. Because it is open-ended and led by possibility, phenomenology follows one meaning to another. Buzzing sound. Sight of honey bee. Motion. Fear. Distance. Honey. Sweet. Flowers. Colony. Hive. Pollen. Queen bee. And the description continues. This is the beginning of contemplation. This is how contemplation works. Contemplation embarks on discovering a cornucopia of meaning and meaningfulness. Meanings are plentiful and phenomenology helps promote the virtuous habit of contemplation.

I. The Natural Attitude

There is one arch-nemesis opposed to good phenomenology and fruitful contemplation. It is called the natural attitude. What is the natural attitude? It is a biased attitude. It is a worldview calcified by assumptions of all sorts. It is an outlook that is colored by past experiences that form the rules for present experience. A person living according to the natural attitude is accustomed to saying things like, “That could never happen. That is impossible. There is nothing new under the sun. There is no God.” A person living according to the natural attitude has silenced certain questions because they do not appear to be financially or socially profitable. The natural attitude passes judgment prematurely and does not give new (or old as new) ideas or experiences a chance. The natural attitude closes the door on possibility because it is convinced that it already knows what is.

The problem with the natural attitude is that it is not fair to the data of experience. Instead of gathering data as they give themselves within experience, the natural attitude assigns the terms and conditions of what may or may not give itself in advance. The natural attitude prevents phenomena from giving themselves as they may. It limits the possibilities within experience by imposing unwarranted qualifications for phenomena to earn the right of their own appearance.

Yet this is not even how our five senses work. Our eyes and ears do not determine the parameters of what they receive. They simply receive. Our nose and tongue do not assign the qualities of the aromas and tastes they perceive. They simply suffer them. Our bodies do not designate the characteristics of phenomena they encounter. They simply undergo them. Our bodies and senses are radically passive media in relation to the world. Though I can respond with some level of agency to phenomena as I encounter them, I do not invent phenomena as they give themselves to me. In this way I am their servant and not their master. I am their accomplice and not their manufacturer. I am their depot and not their dispatcher.

The natural attitude is the first and recurring opponent to overcome for the method of phenomenology. Without unmasking this formidable foe, phenomenology cannot begin its task of passive receptivity to what gives itself within experience. Therefore phenomenology always is beginning. It begins with a conversion away from the natural attitude and toward what gives. This conversion must happen daily, even at every instant so as not to hinder what gives itself by itself. In order to ask what gives with absolute openness, the phenomenologist must forfeit the question, what gives not? All biases and presuppositions must be shed as a snake sheds old skin.

II. Bracketing the Natural Attitude

Once the natural attitude is identified, it must be purified. The first step of naming the natural attitude begins the process of its purification. Similar to the way a physician first must diagnose an ailment in order to treat it, once the natural attitude is diagnosed properly, including its level of severity within a person, it is ready to be deconstructed and set aside. Phenomenology calls this process of purifying the natural attitude bracketing, also known as the phenomenological reduction. From the Greek word epoché (“to stop, cease, suspend, pause”), intentionally bracketing the natural attitude involves suspending judgment about a particular phenomenon or possibility. Without suspending the natural attitude, we miss the essences of things. In bracketing the natural attitude, fuller access is given to the phenomenon—to the thing itself that first gives itself to the human subject. Instead of asking, What is it?, phenomenology asks, What gives? For phenomenology, to be or not to be, is not the question after all. Questions about being and existence are set aside when the natural attitude is bracketed. This is done because oftentimes our assumptions about what is interfere with our experience of what gives. Since the natural attitude causes a reductionism within perception, the reductionism must be reduced in order to prevent the phenomenon and all it gives from being reduced.

The natural attitude is bracketed every time we negate the negation of possibility. This means that whenever we assume that something is impossible, the alleged impossibility itself must be rendered impossible, thereby reopening the field of possibility once again. Because the impossibility of impossibility is possibility, every presumed impossibility is a roadblock for the possibility of the self-revelation of phenomena. Judging a phenomenon to be or not to be in advance is like deciding the outcome of an experiment before it is performed. That would be bad science. Similarly, bad phenomenology passes judgment prematurely, before an experience has run its course. The natural attitude is content to put things in neat and tidy categories before giving phenomena a chance to reveal themselves as they may.

Even the fact that we can draw a line between possibility and impossibility suggests the possibility that this (superficial) line can be crossed. Phenomenology reminds us of the possibility of possibility over and over again. This is its genius. This is its great value for daily life. Instead of interpreting our experiences as boring, mundane, ordinary, and monotonous, everything lights up because every phenomenon is a new creation. And this is the truth. It is not merely wishful thinking or naïve blissful ignorance. It is life ever blissful not because of ignorance but because of insomnolence. We sleep not while awake so that we do not miss out on the ceaseless epiphany of living. We refuse to sleepwalk through life so that we do not fail to receive the beauty of the other. We keep watch so that the destination of the gift is fulfilled. We begin to perceive with wonder the incredible meaningfulness of life and develop a hunch that we were made to breathe the drama of the gift.

Oftentimes the natural attitude is subdued by saturated phenomena that befall us outside of our control. These phenomena disorient the disorientation of the natural attitude and, in effect, reorient consciousness around the prerogatives of possibility. Saturated phenomena send us into a tailspin of vertigo that upsets our self-insulated comfort zones and calculated corners of being. Bracketing the natural attitude is spurred on by the grace of saturated phenomena. This is to say that bracketing the natural attitude is difficult to accomplish by one’s willpower alone. It depends, largely in part, on the effect saturated phenomena have on a person. For example, if I have become cold and unconvinced by love, as if true love is not possible after all, it will require the love another has for me to persuade me to believe in love again. Love loves love into love. Love, as a saturated phenomenon, rejuvenates the possibility of love. It takes an other-than-the-self to awaken love in the self because love signifies personal gift that registers between persons. It takes two to tango. Because the natural attitude is reinforced by self-interest, self-concern, and non-disinterestedness for manipulating truth into a self-serving caricature, the self must be displaced by the other to restore vigilance of the gift. Evidence of the absence of the natural attitude is the presence of the gift—when all experiences are interpreted according to the play of the gift. For without the interpretive measureless measure of the gift, possibility remains impossible. With the bracketing of impossibility by the saturation of the gift (givenness), possibility becomes possible once again.

III. The Natural Attitude in Everyday Life

Now that the natural attitude and the possibility of its bracketing have been introduced, let us consider an example from everyday life. Phenomenology is done in the first person, that is, it makes its description of a given phenomenon from the direct perspective of the self. It will use the first person pronoun, I, as the primary point of reference. The world gives itself to me, and, even if I refer to the experience of the other through the phenomenon of empathy, I will describe the experience of the other through my own experience. For phenomenology, as the science of meaning, its laboratory is life and every experiment involves first-person description. Let us proceed then to describe a scene from everyday life, taking my own life as the material for our experiment in phenomenology.

Before anything else, I am a husband and father. The meaning of these terms continues to unfold throughout my life. I have six children and at present the youngest is three years old. His name is Oliver. Oliver and I love to walk outside in the woods and look for animals: deer, frogs, toads, snakes, birds and many more. Sometimes we walk side by side. Sometimes we hold hands. Sometimes I give him a shoulder ride. It all depends on our moods, the weather and other factors. How is the natural attitude at play in this kind of experience?

It’s been a long day. Many tasks to accomplish at work. Many emails, grading, meetings, teaching, (never enough) writing and the like. I arrive at home later than I had hoped on this beautiful spring day, the temperature hovering around 60 degrees Fahrenheit. I pull up the driveway in my car and there is Oliver waving to me, desperately wanting to tell me about adventures he had that day. I listen without appearing to be distracted by anything, though perhaps feeling a bit disappointed with myself for my lack of productivity, my falling short of my goals for the day, my lack of clarity about who I am and what I’m supposed to be doing, my inability to prevent mild to severe headaches at times. I eventually work my way into the house to put down my bag, change my clothes, grab a snack, and reemerge into the great outdoors with my son. My wife, Megan, asks me to change his diaper and to play with him while she talks with her mother. I feel a great sense of joy in doing so, while still wrestling with so many other things that preoccupy my thoughts and imagination. I know I must detach from the preoccupations, but how?

On this day the natural attitude haunts me according to its arsenal of “more important things.” I continue to check my work email on my cell phone every time I walk past the kitchen counter. Am I not finished with my work away from home for the day? The natural attitude tries to convince me that there is nothing new under the sun after all. I will go outside with Oliver, we will walk through the woods and encounter nothing new, nothing original, nothing spectacular. My slight headache will grow from mild to worse, and I may even need to take some pills to ease the pain. Nevertheless Oliver and I embark on a new adventure and at least there is part of me that is anticipating surprise.

We set out on our four-wheeler and he takes the throttle. I hand over the reins of the expedition to him and my natural attitude begins to dissipate. Suddenly off to the right we behold a medium-sized animal dancing through the woods. Its fur is of a reddish-orange hue, with a dab of white on the tip of its tail. The encounter lasts only for seconds until the agile mammal disappears from sight. “It was a fox!” I say to Oliver, and he says “fox” too. We try to track down where the animal went, but to no avail. Etched in my mind as a new memory of elation, I replay the episode again and again.

Oliver leads us down another path and calls me to attention: “Deer!” he says. I had not even seen them standing in the middle of the trail. We gaze on their vulnerable majesty and elegance until they decide to stop gazing at us and trot off in the opposite direction. We would encounter five other deer within minutes as the forest grew in its enchantment and mystery. We turn off the four-wheeler and are enveloped in a symphony of birdsong: incredible variety of melodies performed for whoever has ears to hear.

Oliver grasps my little finger and leads me to walk atop moss-covered cinder blocks stacked row upon row. For a moment I feel as if I’m standing upon the parapet of a castle. We marvel together at the embryonic leaves extending in brilliant green, in contrast to their earthy brown stems. It seems as though a message is being proclaimed all around us and I search further into the meaning of this secret kerygma addressed to all who would heed its silent summons.

Still wrapping his little hand around my finger, Oliver leads me down the cinder block castle onto the cool grass under bare feet. He says to me, “Dad, I won’t let you fall.” I look at his small face and wonder if he speaks a prophetic promise to care for me in old age and illness. I wonder if I should not be saying that to him, but his words seem even more fitting, even more profound. Meaning and meaningfulness have lit up like the dawn of a new day and the n...