Monday, July 20, 2009

Self and Other

Okay, here is why I object so vehemently to phenomenology and all other such egocentric epistemologies.

The whole premise of the Hellish Creature is that he makes all things a part or (as Lewis says) an "appendage" of himself, of his own ego. Phenomenologists and Idealists, whilst on This Side of Time, do just that. It's almost as if they were perverting the Socratic notion of "preparation for death" into, indeed a preparation for death, but a death which ends in Hell.

This is why I am convinced that not all forms of thinking are equally valid or, for that matter, equally safe. A philosophy which excludes the brutality of fact, which ignores the opacity of the sheerly other seems not only suspect, but perhaps, even, in a sense, demonic.