Song of a Reformed Headhunter

The fourth and final class of the Brooklyn Institute for Social Research course took place last night. The course was taught by the historian of philosophy Michael Stevenson. I signed up to learn more about Edmund Husserl, but Husserl led me to the much more interesting figure of Merleau-Ponty. What have I learned? Better understanding of Descartes' method of doubt. Franz Brentano's attempt to distinguish between mental and physical phenomena. Husserl's adoption of one of Brentano's criteria, that of intentionality as the distinguishing mark of consciousness. Consciousness is always the consciousness of something. Husserl's foundationalist attempt to build on Descartes' cogito, ergo sum by innovating the phenomenological reduction, i.e., to treat as irrelevant the "reality" of the outside world and as indubitable the "reality" of the intentional act. Merleau-Ponty's re-interpretation of the phenomenological reduction: the chief lesson of ...

I wrote a poem for Kevin Kwan, yes, the author of Crazy Rich Asians . Thanks, Hsien Min and QLRS, for publishing it. Chinese New Year celebrations. Had lunch and lo hei at West New Malaysia with Kim L, Dee M, Joel A, Melinda, Zhi Yuan, and Guy. Having steamboat dinner at Patsey's place tonight in Croton-on-Hudson. On Monday, announced the 4th cycle of Singapore Unbound fellowships: two writing residencies in a Southeast Asian country of the fellow's choice. Started on Wednesday the 4-class course on phenomenology with the Brooklyn Institute for Social Research. The instructor is Michael Stevenson, a historian of philosophy. Brentano's distinction between mental and physical phenomenon, picked by Husserl in his Logical Investigations , with the emphasis on "intention," to be glossed as the "aboutness" of consciousness. Consciousness is always the consciousness of something. Hard, but interesting.

The absurd, according to Camus, arises from the tension between an inhuman world and our human longing to make sense of it. To kill oneself is to try to escape the absurd. Camus recommends, instead, living in lucid acknowledgement of this tension. It is not easy. In his view, existential philosophers such as Kierkegaard evade the problem by positing transcendence, or God, as beyond human reason. They abolish human reason in favor of the eternal. On the other hand, the phenomenologists such as Husserl claim to attend to the phenomena of the world but end up finding essences in them, analogous to Platonic forms, and so abolish the unknowability of the world. Instead of destroying or weakening either of the terms, Camus prefers to live fully and creatively in the gap between mind and world. For him, the figure of Sisyphus embodies this attitude of heroic futility. Unexpectedly, Camus finds a happiness in Sisyphus' plight. All of Sisyphus' silent joy is contained therein. His fa...