Cutting The Gordian Knot Of Phenomenology

(reblog from April 2011)

My personal thought is that Husserl's phenomenology is just too complicated to be useful or correct.

It was obviously very difficult to build his intricate mazes and puzzles which analyze consciousness and how we know what we know. The alter-ego, intersubjectivity, self-alienation, self-externalization, and on and on, seem to be scaffolding built around the pet idea that we are solipsistic, trapped in our own ego, our own consciousness. This is its presupposition even though they claim to be “presuppositionless,” a word they would like.

Heidegger continues the maze, he was a student of Husserl. And philosophy students in this field continue to enter the maze and trap themselves, or even add new structures to the maze, or are forced to do if they want to be professionals.

I don't buy it, at least not the complication. I pull an Alexander and cut the Gordian knot of phenomenology, rather than sitting there, for years, trying to untie the pretentious knot. The truth has to be simpler. I offer the Four Givens which I believe are simpler yet deeper than phenomenology.

The first given is what comes in from the senses, the second is our memory of what comes in from the senses (mind), the third is the supermaterial Spirit-Will activating the material world, fourth is the synthesis of these givens (Soul-Mind). It is the Soul not the ego which is the center of the mind's integration. The Soul-Mind, with great effort, can even rid the mind and body of all desire, as in Traditional religion, which is only one of the Twofold Path. The central mission of life is to evolve materially and supermaterially all the way to Godhood.