A Problem in Philosophy

You so do not want to know what I’m reading…

It came to me as a question while reading Husserl’s Phenomenology of Internal Time Consciousness: why is this so correct and exact and yet not convincing?  Why do I need more than a philosophically sound argument, even one that I might judge to be correct in all its truth claims (even if it isn’t).

The issue may be one of practice, and philosophy is, in fact, a practice.  Phenomenology, beginning with the phenomenological reduction, is a precise practice.  It is satisfying and has led me to the more ancient practice of meditation, and seems almost indistinguishable from some meditative practices.

So this is not an argument supporting “the death of philosophy”.  I’m just arguing for philosophic practice to be one of embodiment and community, and the engaged philosopher.  There is indeed a philosophic community.  It is caricatured as a community of navel-gazers; that is how it is often characterized and ridiculed.  Maybe indeed the caricature needs to be appreciated for what it does, as any caricature does:  it exaggerates the actual traits that characterize the individual or the community.

The lack of extension, beyond oneself as an individual philosophizing and as a community that philosophizes, is what strikes me as problematic.  Yet here, with respect to time consciousness, we have a moment of intersection between physical sciences, theoretical physics, and neuroscience with philosophy.

Where can we meet and break bread together?

Well, yes, in movies.  See Babette’s Feast.

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