Tip-Off #128 - Suspending Judgment
"We must go back to the things themselves." - Edmund Husserl
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You've heard the quip, "It's amazing what you can see when you look." That, of course, was Yogi Berra. It could have been a renowned thinker, with the addition of one word: "It's amazing what you can see when you look closely." Instead of seeing things as they are, we see them as we think they are, driven by our biases and preconceptions.
This is inevitable. If what I am talking about could speak for itself, I wouldn’t need to write about it. That's like going on a silent retreat and texting incessantly about it.
One of the most influential philosophers of the 20th century, Edmund Husserl, building on ideas from earlier thinkers like Immanuel Kant, argued that we should be aware of the presuppositions we bring to what we see and put on hold ("suspend") traditional questions like "What is real?" and "What is true? This is not to reject but to "bracket" these questions and focus on our direct experiences and how we actively constitute and participate in what we know.
For example, we ordinarily consider a tree a living plant with roots, trunk, branches, and leaves. By bracketing, we focus instead on describing the tree as our experience presents — the colors, shapes, movements, sounds (rustling leaves), smells, etc. The same is true with music. We don't think about the nature of sound to enjoy the music; by enjoying the music, we may think about the nature of sound. And so on.
As Thoreau said, "If you would make acquaintance with the ferns, you must forget your botany. Your greatest success will be simply perceiving such things, and you will have no communication to make to the Royal Society."
A theologian said, "Monet signs his sunsets. God doesn’t." Enjoy the sunset; don’t look for God's signature. Let life speak for itself; don't turn it into a parable. Others may not see what we do. That could sharpen or expand what we see. Without this, our views are just that — our own.
Social and political resonances follow. Analytical perspectives commonly confuse standpoints with understanding. Consider, for example, the demonization of political opponents. Their views, like ours, are often reduced to simplistic caricatures, ignoring the nuances and personal experiences that inform their perspectives. It’s easier to take a log out of their eye than to think there could be one in ours.
More divisive than anger and disagreement is an inability to see others for who they are. I had an English professor who made this point simply by remarking that highway signs read "Caution: Workers Ahead” when they should say: "Caution: Men at Work." (sic)
I remember an old cartoon with the line, "I love humankind. It's people I hate.” Abstractions can be a form of denial —as though we could appreciate a forest without trees or the seashore without sand.
The poet speaks of seeing the world in a grain of sand. Virginia Woolf saw "the enormous energy of the world" in a moth on the windowpane. Annie Dillard said that by looking closely at things as they are, we can see the world "wilder in all directions, more dangerous and bitter, more extravagant and bright."
“What I have been after all along is not an explanation but a picture. This is the way the world is, altar and cup, lit by the fire from a star that has only begun to die. Beauty and grace are performed whether or not we sense them. The least we can do is try to be there.”
- Pilgrim at Tinker Creek.
Notes and reading
One of the most influential philosophers of the 20th century - Edmund Husserl: Founder of Phenomenology, Dermot Moran (2005). Moran is a professor of philosophy at Boston College.
As Thoreau said… - Uncommon Learning (1999), Thoreau Society - esp. Journal entry October 4, 1859.
A theologian said… - Frederick Buechner, Secrets in the Dark (2007), 19. Buechner was an American author, Presbyterian minister, preacher, and theologian. His writing has been compared to that of C.S. Lewis and G.K. Chesterton.
An English professor… “Men at work” - Andrew Bongiorno, Oberlin College. “Too many think of art not as making and of the artist not as a maker of things. To nearly all of them, art was expression," a notion Bongiorno denounced as the "supreme silliness” (cf. Husserl’s critique of subjectivism: a prescient rejoinder to postmodern thinkers often considered successors).
“… seeing the world in a grain of sand” - William Blake, “Auguries of Innocence,” Poetry Foundation (1803).
Virginia Woolf - The Death of the Moth and Other Essays (1942, 1974).
”wilder in all directions…” - Annie Dillard, from her Pulitzer prize-winning nature meditation, Pilgrim at Tinker Creek (1974, 2009), 181. (A Literary Shema: Annie Dillard’s Judeo-Christian Vision and Voice, Lori A. Kanitz (2020): Dillard's work is shaped by immersion in Hasidic and Kabbalistic mysticism.)