week 1: Phenomenology/HegelHeidegger/Bachelard

' A life unexamined is not worth living.' (Socrates).


'His argument runs as follows, and he intended that it should be absorbed in it's entirety. ( Leaps of ordinary logic, which may defy our credulity, are resolved when the argument is reviewed as a whole, We are assured.)
Hegel begins by saying that logic is the study of thought. As we have seen, the dialectical process ascends towards mind or absolute spirit. Mind is the ultimate reality, abstracted from the particular forms it assumes in the natural world. It is the mind that shapes the world. Therefore a study of how the mind works (thought) will reveal how the world works.

From the above argument it follows that there is no objective reality independent of thought. Indeed, in The phenomenology Of The Mind Hegel argues that thought is objective reality, and vice versa. The two are one and the same thing. This means that when logic is directed towards thought, it is also directed towards reality. From "The Essential Hegel" Paul Strathem. Pub Ted Smart 2003.

Good radio programme: Melvyn Bragg: 'In our time.'

There are different types of research:

everyday- Unstructured.

Systematic: Planned, scholarly research.

Phenomenology: philosophy concerned with intuition.

Phenomenology:

*study of phenomena from the viewpoint of the experiencing person.

* Raises issues of subjectivity.

SUBJECTIVE: Very personal, emotional

OBJECTIVITY: Cool, distanced, 'factual.'

Phenomenologists- 'interpret meaning.' (Gaston Bachelard). Poetics of space.

'Poets and painters are born phenomenologists.' (To examine the world).

Phenomenology....a smell, sky even a feeling.

Freudian slip- 'Every act of consciousness is thought to be intentional.'

Intentionality: Could be a doodle....

Useful* Maurice Marleau Ponty, Heidegger.

Zen Buddhists- 'Notions of being in nothingness.'

Hegel- The phenomenology of the mind. (1807).

'To understand the world you have to understand the self.'

'...to describe objects just as one experiences them and to extract philosophy from the process...' (Understanding phenomenology- michael Hammond, Jane howarth and Russel Kant).

'logic is the study of thought...' (Essential Hegel) Paul Strathem, Pub Ted smart 2003.

Hegal tells if we can work out how we think we can understand the world.

'...the dialectical process ascends towards mind or absolute spirit. Mind is the ultimate reality, abstracted from particular forms it assumes in the natural world. It is mind that shapes the world. therefore a study of how mind works (thought) will reveal how the world works. from the above argument it follows that there is no objective reality independent of thought. indeed in 'the phenomenology of the mind Hegel argues that thought is objective reality and vice versa. The two are one and the same thing. this means that when logic is directed towards thought, it is also directed towards reality.' from "The Essential Hegel," Paul Strathem. Pub. Ted Smart 2003.

'The house shelters day dreaming, the house protects the dreamer, the house allows one to dream in peace.' Poetics of space, Gaston Bachelard, Beacon press.

The Hermeneutic Cycle:

The whole is reflected in the parts,

just as together the parts are reflected in the whole.

"To understand the world you have to understand the self."

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Notes from the poetics of space: Gaston Bachelard

'Bachelard guides the reader into wondering recall childhood cellar stairs from the top looking down but recall attic stairs from the bottom looking up, into musing on the significance of doorknobs encountered at eye leve, into pondering the mysteries of fingertip memory. How does the body, not merely the mind, remember the feel of a latch in a long forsaken childhood home?'

'If the house is the first universe for its young children, the first cosmos, how does its space shape all subsequent knowledge of other space, of any larger cosmos? Is that house "a group of organic habits2 or even something deeper, the shelter of imagination itself?'

~~look up Jung...

...'one must be receptive, receptive to the image at the moment it appears: if there is to be a philosophy of poetry, it must appear and reappear through a significant verse in total, adherence to an isolated image, to be exact the very newness of the image.'

* I throw the strap of my bag across my shoulder each morning...and here is, in its latest resting place, on the table before me. The carrier of my wallet, coins, pens, mobile phone and bits of fluff...

How can one view an object as if 'seeing' it for the first time? I've already referenced some of my prior knowledge of the item, the objects that are contained within its 'rooms.' It casts various shadows across the table, brass buckles gleaming, strap sprawling. I look at the different material of the bag and strap....

'the philosophy of poetry must aknowledbe that the poetic act has no past, at least no recent past, in which its preparation and appearance can be followed.'

'The image, in its simplicity, has no need of scholarship. It is the property of a naive consciousness, in its expression, it is youthful language. The poet, in the novelty of his images, is always the origin of language. To specify exactly what a phenomenology of the image can be, to specify that image comes before thought, we should have to say that poetry, rather than being a phenomenology of the mind, is a phenomenology of the soul, we should then have to collect documentation on the subject of the dreaming consciousness.'

* I've found the Baechelard book to be quite dense and pretty heavy going. It would be of great benefit to read such work in a state of relaxation. I'd really like to enjoy the book in a way that feels like an extended dream. I need to read the book in an unpressurised state if I am going to be able to grasp some of the content....

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'The house shelters day dreaming, the house protects the dreamer, the house allows one to dream in peace. Thought and experience are not the only things that sanction human values. The values that belong to daydreaming mark humanity in its depth. Daydreaming even has a priviledge of autovalorisation. It derives direct pleasure of its own being. Therefore, the places in which we have experienced daydreaming reconstitute themselves in a new daydream, and it is because our memories of former dwelling -places are relived as daydreams that these dwelling places of our past remain in us for all time.'

'...for our house is our corner of the world. As has often been said, it is our first universe, a real cosmos in every sense of the word. If we look at it intimately, the humblest dwelling has beauty. Authors of books on "the humble home" often mention this feature of the poetics of space. But this mention is much too succinct. Finding little to describe in the humble home, they spend little time there; so they describe it as it actually is, without experiencing its primitiveness which belongs to all, rich and poor alike, if they are willing to dream.'

( Poetics of Space, Gaston Bachelard, Beacon Press).

# One has to find out about one's place in the world by knowing the self and understanding the self. It is something that can be done in the home first before taking it out into the wider world.

# ' If the house is the first universe for its young children, the first cosmos, how does its' space shape all subsequent knowledge of all other space, of any large cosmos? is that house "a group of organic habits" or even something deeper, the shelter of imagination itself?' (The poetics of space, Gaston Bachelard, foreword by John R. Stilgoe).

# As children we explore the world in ways that are often not revisited during the adult years - we have different ways of seeing when we are very young. For most of us, our first experience of the world is within the house...a 'safe haven' in which to embark upon our experience of the every day.

# Different objects have different relationships to individuals. For example I'm looking at the coal on the fireplace. I assume it is the colour black. I look again at the light shining across the coal...is it grey? What does coal mean to me as an individual? I know and remember how it tastes, what it smells like, how its sounds when it falls to the ground. The association with the 'coal man' who used to deliver it when I was younger. The miners strike of 1984. The train journey through Doncaster...

# I make lots of associations through visual, sensory and learned experiences. How does my elderly neighbour view the same object? How does a person in Russia view it? Is my 'self'' unique only to me?

# Time...where does a person find the time to understand the self? Going on holiday is often a time when it is possible to 'find yourself ' again. Our lives seem so consumed by the day to day; paying bills, going to work, a rush to the shop. I feel that for a person to know the self, time has to be made to suit the purpose. Here I am sitting at the computer, thinking, taking time out from a 'need' to make 'art'.

# Understanding the self can begin at home. The objects that we've acquired over time, artwork on the walls. Something chosen by me, others by my partner and those objects given or received. Understanding the 'self' for me starts with 'home' as the base for all my thoughts and philosophies.

# Sometimes I'll look at the area where wallpaper meets the ceiling, evoking a reverie, an association with a moment that has passed whilst being current...now and then past.

# I can understand how it becomes possible to make your own reality.

# 'Bachelard guides the reader into wondering why adults recall childhood cellar stairs from the top looking down but recall attic stairs from the bottom looking up into musing on the significance of doorknobs encountered at eye level, into pondering the mysteries of fingertip memory. How does the body not merely the mind, remember the feeling of a latch in a long forsaken childhood home?'

#I've found the Bachelard book to be rather heavy reading, especially in the light of the fact that I've had to look at such a wide range of phlosophies in such 'relatively' short space of time. I feel that this is the kind of book to really appreciate when one has the time to engage in the text, jumping from one chapter to the next, allowing the mind to take in the beauty of the writing...'

# Some of my most interesting artwork has been produced whilst in a state of the daydream. Allowing the mind to wander, somehow without the confines of what has gone before (although it is difficult to disregard this, particularly whilst living in what is said to be a Postmodern era). Allowing for a sense of the freeform.

I'm sitting in the library at the moment, conscious of the whirring of the photocopier machines, and find myself looking at my bag again, my inanimate companion as I drift through my first couple of months as an MA student. I see it for the first time once again in a different location.

# I remember as a child, lying in my bed in my grey council house home. I'd imagine that I was hiding in a small country cottage during a future world war. I'd been taken in by an elderly lady, who would but me up until the war was over. I'd hear the sounds of guns, explosions in the distance, images of cities being thrown into chaos. Meanwhile, I'd be safe, hidden, in an anonymous house, sheltered fronm the outside world. This, somehow, made the explosions, and gunfire good as the house, and its wall kept me safe...

. I find myself daydreaming regularly, be it at home or in the studio. I sometimes find myself akin to a child, and will lie on the floor and look at the edges of the skirting board. I'll throw myself down in different parts of the house and just look. I sometimes gret to a state of feeling nothing. i don't always do these things consciously, when I become conscious the daydream loses it's impact. Bachelard comments that we respond to the spaces that we occupy in a different way to that of the objects in it or perhaps the items that we posess.

. 'Thought and experience are not the only things that that sanction human values. The values that belong to daydreaming mark humaninty in it's depth.' I think it is difficult to relive a daydream, finding more and more in the current climate that the daydream seems to be something consigned to the past.

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