Black Books

If, like me, you have read Hans-Georg Gadamer's Truth and Method, Jean-Paul Sartre's Being and Nothingness, Maurice Merleau-Ponty's The Phenomenology of Perception, and Jacques Derrida's Of Grammatology and Dissemination from cover to cover, and all just out of curiosity, then I think it's fair to say that 1: You're a div, 2: You're a div with too much time on your hands, 3: You're none the wiser and 4: You'll know that the only benefit to be derived from the exercise is the chance to impress nobody at all by telling them you've read all that bollocks (and should anyone tell you they have, incidentally, 1: they're a div and 2: the correct response is, "Of course there's no point reading any of those unless you've read the complete works of Edmund Husserl beforehand.")

There's also a 5, however, which is that you could have saved yourself a lot of bother and read Dermot (not Dylan) Moran's book An Introduction to Phenomenology. This is a hefty book in its own right, but you could get through it in a couple of weeks even if you're a slow reader, like I am, and even if your lips move at the same time, because Moran manages to keep the jargon to a minimum, and most of the book is actually spent presenting biographical details of the various phenomenologists (Husserl, Heidegger, Levinas, Sartre, Arendt, Merleau-Ponty, Derrida) rather than plumbing the profundities of phenomenological terminology. Of course, if you're seriously masochistic, you could go to the texts themselves (there are some useful commentaries out there on Being and Nothingness and Heidegger's Being and Time for those who prefer masochism-lite) and you'll find all the abstract theorizing your perverted heart desires. What Moran focuses on doing is putting the Phenomenologists into some sort of context, explaining why it was that Husserl embarked on the project of generating a "science of sciences" in the first place, why and how Heidegger felt Husserl's work fell short as a philosophy and how Heidegger's work fits in with his Nazi sympathies. And unusually for such an introductory text, Moran doesn't pull his punches, either. Sartre's ontology, for instance, is described as embarrassing in its naivety; indeed, Moran doesn't seem to think much of Sartre as a philosopher at all, seeing him as more of a literary figure with a flair for self-promotion, plagiarism, and a nice turn of phrase. On occasion, I found myself thinking, "How odd. An introduction to a subject that actively discourages the reader from delving any further into it. He must really hate phenomenology."

Part of the problem, of course, is that phenomenology is such a difficult philosophy to outline without if those profundities are not plumbed, but even sticking a toe into the water takes the reader into unknown waters. However, it's fair to ask, what layperson in their right mind would be looking for an introductory book on phenomenology? There isn't one. Therefore, it's fair to assume that this is a book aimed at undergraduates and that a small amount of jargon is permissible. All well and good, except that while phenomenology involves a form of introspection that all of us engage in from time to time, the moment the jargon is introduced, the reader is rapidly pulled down a slippery slope with no handrail to hang onto to slow their descent. One piece of jargon leads to another, and to another, and another, all with a dizzying inevitability and with no bottom to the abyss.

Moran very wisely avoids dragging the novice reader into those uncharted waters, but the result is that the reader may well feel (to labour the metaphor) stranded on the beach and not all that much wiser for the paddle. But that doesn't really matter because, as I pointed out at the beginning, reading the original texts will leave you none the wiser either. In the words of Lin Yutang (thanks Stuart!) :

"As for philosophy... the danger is even greater that we lose the feeling of life itself... We really can afford to do without it... I am such a materialist that at any time I would prefer pork to poetry, and would waive a piece of philosophy over a piece of fillet, brown and crisp and garnished with good sauce."

And I don't even like fish.