You’ve probably heard the joke, “It’s amazing how much you can see if you look hard enough.” Of course, this is a Yogi Berra quote. But any famous thinker could make this quote work, too, with the addition of this line: “It’s amazing how much you can see if you look hard enough.”CloselyWe do not see things as they are, but as we think they are, influenced by our own biases and preconceived ideas.
This is inevitable. If what I’m talking about could speak for itself, there would be no need to write about it. It would be like living a silent retreat while texting about it incessantly.
Edmund Husserl, one of the most influential philosophers of the 20th century, built on the ideas of earlier thinkers such as Immanuel Kant, arguing that we should acknowledge the assumptions we bring to what we see and suspend (or “suspend”) traditional questions such as ‘What is reality?’ and ‘What is truth?’ The idea is not to reject these questions but to ‘bracket’ them, and instead focus on our direct experience and how we actively construct and participate in what we know.
For example, we typically think of a tree as a living plant with roots, trunk, branches, and leaves. By bracketing, we focus on describing what our experience shows us: the color, shape, movement, sound (rustling leaves), smell, etc. of the tree. The same is true of music: we might not think about the properties of sound in order to enjoy music, but rather, enjoying music makes us think about the properties of sound. And so on.
Thoreau said, “If you wish to know ferns, forget botany; your greatest success will be simply to recognize such plants, and have nothing to tell the Royal Society.”
A theologian once said, “Monet signs sunsets, God doesn’t.” Enjoy the sunset. Don’t look for God’s signs. Let life speak for itself, don’t make it into an analogy. Others may not see what we see. It may clarify or expand what we see. Without it, our view is only our own.
Social and political resonances follow. Analytical perspectives often confuse position and understanding. Take, for example, the demonization of political opponents. Their views, like ours, are often reduced to simplistic caricatures, ignoring the nuances and personal experiences that shape their views. It’s easier to take the log out of their eye than it is to consider that there might be a log in ours.
More divisive than anger and disagreement is the inability to see others as they are. My English professor told me that when you see a highway sign that says “Caution: Workers Ahead,” it should actually say “Caution: male At work.” (Original text)
I remember an old cartoon with the line, “I love mankind. It is man that I hate.” Abstraction can be a form of negation, like appreciating a forest without trees or a beach without sand.
Poets talk about seeing the world in a grain of sand. Virginia Woolf saw “the great energy of the world” in a moth on a window pane. Annie Dillard said that by observing things carefully as they are, we can see the world “in every direction, wilder, more dangerous, more bitter, more gaudy, more glorious.”
“What I have always sought is not a description, but a picture. Here is the world, the altar and the cup, lit by the fire of a star that has only just begun to die. Beauty and grace are expressed, whether we feel it or not. All we can do is try to be there.”
– Tinker Creek Pilgrims.
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 University.
As Thoreau said… – Unusual learning(1999), The Thoreau Society, especially the diary of October 4, 1859.
One theologian said: – Frederick Buechner Secrets in the Dark (2007), p. 19. Buechner was an American author, Presbyterian minister, preacher, and theologian. His work has been compared to that of C.S. Lewis and G.K. Chesterton.
English professor: “Male At work” – Andrew Bongiorno, Oberlin College. “Too many people think that art is not something to make, that artists do not make things. For most of them, art is an expression.” Bongiorno denounced this idea as “the ultimate stupidity” (cf. Husserl’s Criticism of Subjectivism: A prescient rebuttal to the postmodern thinkers who are often seen as his successors.
“…seeing the world in a grain of sand” – William Blake, “A sign of innocence” The Groundwork of Poetry (1803).
Virginia Woolf – Death of a Moth and Other Essays (1942, 1974).
“Wild in every direction…” – Annie Dillard, Pulitzer Prize-winning Nature Meditations Tinker Creek Pilgrims (1974, 2009), p. 181.The Literary Shema: The Judeo-Christian Vision and Voice of Annie Dillarde, Lori A. Kanitz (2020): Dillard’s work is shaped by her immersion in Hasidic and Kabbalistic mysticism.
Source: 2 + 2 = 5 – williamgreen.substack.com
