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I'm currently reading Camus' <i>Myth of Sisyphus</i>.
<b>Phenomenolgy</b>
I managed to explain phenomenology (I think) by analogy with a game of pool.
The balls are arranged on the table more or less randomly but there are rules governing how you must proceed so the random arrangement of balls on the table constitutes an instrumental complex. The randomness has order imposed upon it by the rules of the game.
Your consciousness as a player transcends the balls and the table and your body becomes an instrument, an intentional object, that exists in relation to the balls, cue, pockets and cushions.
There are rules, your shot must begin by hitting the white and then procedd to hit another ball, ideally you will pot a ball of your own colour and not the white or the black, else leave the opponent with nothing to aim for or hit of their own colour.
So there's a hierarchy of intentional objects, your consciousness analyses the position of the balls, pockets, etcetera as an instrumental complex then places your body and the cue in a position relative to the white ball and the desired outcome of your shot.
After your game you learn to see again, you are no longer playing pool you are now a person moving about and you see the world through a new perspective, which you will tend to do without reflecting upon your change of attitude, just as you don't really reflect greatly upon the change of attitude to that of a person who plays pool.
Basically the self transcends itself but in so doing does not generally grasp the minutae of its intentions. These intentions all exist in a kind of complex that's keyed towards such-and-such an end.
MYTH OF SISYPHUS
================
I haven't finished yet, I'm on page 44 of the Penguin Englsh translation, at this point Camus seems to be dropping his first "bombshell". Taking the view of phenomenolgy I attempted to explain by the pool game example, Camus seems to be saying that life is pretty much random and that we impose order fairly arbitrarily with our intentions, some of which are of the Other and some of which are of the Self.
In my view phenomenology treats the Self as a kind of "privaleged Other", in that we have first hand perceptions of underlying motives and thoughts, rather than having to infer them from third hand perceptions, but the Self is an Other is the sense that in the act of grasping ourselves we (unintentionally) "flee" that perception and the Self, that we van never fully transcend our Self because the act of setting up the Self as an intentional ibject is "contaminated" by the perspective from which we try to grasp it (first person by proxy, to put it in some hazy kind of language).
We may rationalise our perceived failings, over-romanticise our motives, our successes or simply be blind to our abilities where we have them, assuming, say, everyone else possesses them too. We may flee our "shame".
[ As Nietzsche put it, in Thus spoke zarathustra, "I love him who is ashamed when the dice fall in his favour and who then asks: Am I then a cheat?—for he wants to perish." ]
Here I'm using an alaysis of the Self that I find in Sartre's Being & Nothingness, The Existence of Others, which I think isn't a million miles away from where Camus is at as regards the Self. Camus is certainly working within a similar framework legacy to Sartre.
so, Camus seems to be saying that the world of any Self is not much more than an arbitrary random set of perceptions given order by a transcendent consciousness. This consciousness may conclude that this world is all meaningless and painful, that it is no longer longer worth struggling with. At this point the Self confronts nihilism head on and may be tempted to cease playing pool altogether, concluding, say, that they will never be any good at the game.
Camus confronts this situation but makes the philosophical leap that resistence is meaningful in-itself and that to resist with passion is essence of life. You may be doomed to lose one particular game of pool, that's a possibility, perhaps a certainty in the "meta-game" of life, but there are individual "games" (events) to be struggled over, there's perhaps a certain nobility that can be salvaged in defeat so (philosophical) suicide is not really an option.
As I wrote, I've only read to page 44 and I'm infering a bit perhaps, or my interpretation may just be plain wrong. any comments welcome.
<b>Phenomenolgy</b>
I managed to explain phenomenology (I think) by analogy with a game of pool.
The balls are arranged on the table more or less randomly but there are rules governing how you must proceed so the random arrangement of balls on the table constitutes an instrumental complex. The randomness has order imposed upon it by the rules of the game.
Your consciousness as a player transcends the balls and the table and your body becomes an instrument, an intentional object, that exists in relation to the balls, cue, pockets and cushions.
There are rules, your shot must begin by hitting the white and then procedd to hit another ball, ideally you will pot a ball of your own colour and not the white or the black, else leave the opponent with nothing to aim for or hit of their own colour.
So there's a hierarchy of intentional objects, your consciousness analyses the position of the balls, pockets, etcetera as an instrumental complex then places your body and the cue in a position relative to the white ball and the desired outcome of your shot.
After your game you learn to see again, you are no longer playing pool you are now a person moving about and you see the world through a new perspective, which you will tend to do without reflecting upon your change of attitude, just as you don't really reflect greatly upon the change of attitude to that of a person who plays pool.
Basically the self transcends itself but in so doing does not generally grasp the minutae of its intentions. These intentions all exist in a kind of complex that's keyed towards such-and-such an end.
MYTH OF SISYPHUS
================
I haven't finished yet, I'm on page 44 of the Penguin Englsh translation, at this point Camus seems to be dropping his first "bombshell". Taking the view of phenomenolgy I attempted to explain by the pool game example, Camus seems to be saying that life is pretty much random and that we impose order fairly arbitrarily with our intentions, some of which are of the Other and some of which are of the Self.
In my view phenomenology treats the Self as a kind of "privaleged Other", in that we have first hand perceptions of underlying motives and thoughts, rather than having to infer them from third hand perceptions, but the Self is an Other is the sense that in the act of grasping ourselves we (unintentionally) "flee" that perception and the Self, that we van never fully transcend our Self because the act of setting up the Self as an intentional ibject is "contaminated" by the perspective from which we try to grasp it (first person by proxy, to put it in some hazy kind of language).
We may rationalise our perceived failings, over-romanticise our motives, our successes or simply be blind to our abilities where we have them, assuming, say, everyone else possesses them too. We may flee our "shame".
[ As Nietzsche put it, in Thus spoke zarathustra, "I love him who is ashamed when the dice fall in his favour and who then asks: Am I then a cheat?—for he wants to perish." ]
Here I'm using an alaysis of the Self that I find in Sartre's Being & Nothingness, The Existence of Others, which I think isn't a million miles away from where Camus is at as regards the Self. Camus is certainly working within a similar framework legacy to Sartre.
so, Camus seems to be saying that the world of any Self is not much more than an arbitrary random set of perceptions given order by a transcendent consciousness. This consciousness may conclude that this world is all meaningless and painful, that it is no longer longer worth struggling with. At this point the Self confronts nihilism head on and may be tempted to cease playing pool altogether, concluding, say, that they will never be any good at the game.
Camus confronts this situation but makes the philosophical leap that resistence is meaningful in-itself and that to resist with passion is essence of life. You may be doomed to lose one particular game of pool, that's a possibility, perhaps a certainty in the "meta-game" of life, but there are individual "games" (events) to be struggled over, there's perhaps a certain nobility that can be salvaged in defeat so (philosophical) suicide is not really an option.
As I wrote, I've only read to page 44 and I'm infering a bit perhaps, or my interpretation may just be plain wrong. any comments welcome.
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