I’m writing this on my phone, so sorry the following seems compact, because it actually manifested from a compact screen, and thus, is inherently, compact.
Descartes emphasized an objective perspective of the natural world as a means of understanding and participating in the immediate reality.
Until very recently, most Western thought has been founded in, and has proven itself valid within, the Cartesian practice.
Culturally, we mathematically analyze the immediate reality with language that ultimately depicts the natural world as a mechanism, and that which in turn [the immediate reality] becomes mechanical and formulated.
In the early 1900s ( which by the way, was the same time eugenics became steadfast in popular culture and also coincidentally, invented by a mathematician) a counterargument of Cartesian sciences came to fruition (even though conjunction to the invention of the natural sciences in the early 17th century, a counterargument had always been suggested, but was never fully investigated due to the political and economic systems of the time.) It was at this time, the subculture had become a science unto itself, a branch from the Cartesian thought, the manifestation of…… *~°phenomenology°~*.
Edmund Husserl describes a world of experience and subjectivity rather than depict the world objectively, mathematically, and systematically. Husserl, interested in how the world makes itself evident to one’s awareness by the sensory experience, had an existential crisis, in the purest sense. Husserl’s dilemma (great band name) was that ,inherently because phenomenology is a branch of Cartesian thought, it too was solidifying the mind into another object! This coincided with the early disciple of psychology and also emphasized a solitary,sensorial experience, unable to render anything or anyone outside of the subjective experience… This had proven itself just as terrible as the philosophy designed by the group of elite and white men who determined their research superior because of economic status and thus forced it upon everyone to experience the world in a specific (perhaps limited) way.
Therefore, Husserl differentiated that the phenomenal field contains other bodies, and that the gestures and expressions of the other bodies resonate with one’s own body and experience from within through something called, “empathy.” Groundbreaking, I know. And therefore, the phenomenal field becomes a collective consciousness with intersubjective experiences.
Maurice Merleau-Ponty continued his predecessor’s ideas (Predecessor Professor is another great band name….but maybe better as an album name) and improved upon them…
Merleau-Ponty rejects the transcendental ego…. and God bless him for it. Instead, he identifies the subject, or the experiencing self, as a bodily organism.
Ok and so this is where it gets interesting… MP describes something as the body subject, meaning we experience the world through our bodies… And perhaps our bodies have adopted to the world to which they are able to sense and understand. For instance, I have not one,but two eyes,parallel to the horizon.
But moreover, MP understands, and describes, that perception of the sensorial experience (aka sentinent in the physical field with other sensuous subjectivities) is voluntary,>and is ultimately, an active participation of the collective consciousness, as Husserl described before.
This all means that participation and perception go hand-in-hand. Perception involves an active interplay between the subjects body and that what it perceives. According to MP, the subject’s various senses converge (something similar to synaesthesia) in the perceived thing, as the thing beckons the subjective experience. By interweaving the subject’s senses, the object of gaze demands to be experienced and vice versa.
Anyway, we have the ability to participate or deny anything sentiment by acknowledging or ignoring it in the sensuous field with our bodies or how we interact with it (e.g. merely describe it is an act of active participation) only if other perceiving entities don’t acknowledge us. which means, if for instance,if a tree senses I am cutting it down, the tree can’t ignore I exist , perhaps it is acknowledging my presence, and participating in the perception of me. I too acknowledge that the tree is apart of me, that it is a sensing object and, I am taking something from it. Meanwhile, I’m cutting it down, with a saw that is made out of metal and wood, wood being something of a previously living tree, and is still breathing and sensing that it’s apart of a mechanism that is cutting down another tree. Crazy, I know.
What is different between the saw and the tree is what I’m interested in. Our bodies are organic forms, the tree is an organic form…. the saw… is a man made form but we still voluntarily participate in its being… by perceiving it and its use.
We can ignore or participate with the sensorial field around us, specifically,with language. How the thing that perceives me and describes me can beckon me in a very specific way and vis-versa.
