(Page 24 of 25) - A Phenomenology of World Affairs authored by Pettman, Ralph.

In other words, phenomenology is a method. In implementing this method, I had

to relocate myself with regard to my mental context, bracket off my rationalism, intuit the
basic aspects of my own being, and describe each outcome with regard to world affairs. I
then returned to a rationalist perspective to appraise each of these intuited outcomes in
the light of all those windows through which rationalists say the truth appears. Having
bracketed off rationalism, I was free to roam across all rationalist outlooks, and my
personal penchant for trans-disciplinarity acquired a philosophic rationale. I did not seek
that panoptic room, with windows all around, from which rationalists think we ought to
be able to see all that is real, however. I returned to phenomenology once more, this time
to bracket off the rationalist concept of truth as something represented, and to be had by
adding rationalist outlooks together. I eschewed the rationalist notion that world affairs
can be known by adding realism, liberalism and constructivism together, for example. I
sought to intuit truth in phenomenological terms instead, that is, by assaying the whole
for its emergent properties. What emerged was a singular appreciation of how clout
works. In sum, then, using Husserl’s method meant ontologically becoming re-embedded
in my social context, epistemologically reaffirming truth-seeking (not as rationalist
accounts added together, but as a whole), and methodologically becoming trans-
disciplinary. A meta-thesis subsequently emerged to do with the significance of authority
in contemporary world affairs.

Husserlian phenomenology is not a cure-all, since intuitions can be illusions, self-

evidence can be false, primal cognitive purity can be anything but, and a sense of social
context can be no more than a cover for repression or suppression. (Levin,1970) Hence
the return to a rationalist perspective to appraise each phenomenological insight. Hence
the importance of not pitting rationality against phenomenology. And hence the
significance of seeing these two as complementary parts of a cycle of knowing. .

In asking us to bracket off rationalism, to intuit the most fundamental forms of

our own awareness, and to describe the outcome using reason, Husserl asked us to
identify the most “inescapable aspects of ourselves”.(Bowie,1998,138) He asked us to
describe how these aspects craft our awareness of the world. This was not Weber’s
Verstehen (Weber,1949,14,41), nor was it what the so-called interpretivists want (Hollis
and Smith,1990), since attempts like these to posit an experiential alternative to
positivism end up appealing to the “feeling” of understanding, and eliding romanticism
and phenomenology as a consequence. This was not Husserl’s position. His
phenomenology was more particular than this. Like the romantics, he critiqued Cartesian
detachment. Unlike the romantics, however, he did so using intuition and reason, not
intuition and emotion. As such, he provided a different epistemological approach. He
provided his own way to critique the rationalist project, and his own way to complete it.

In reaching towards Husserl’s Grail, we are shown how profoundly we are

implicated in world affairs, and we are shown a way to compensate for the “limitations
and obscurities” that rationalism creates.(Sokolowski, 2000,202-3,204) Other critiques of
rationalism do this too, but so does phenomenology. It shows us how rationalism puts the
world at a mental distance, where only formal principles need apply. It shows us how
leaders and led appeal to such principles, and in doing so, misconstrue world affairs. It