Percept, concept, and the stratification of ideality

Luis R. Rabanaque

pp. 71-85

in: Thomas Nenon, Philip Blosser (eds), Advancing phenomenology, Berlin, Springer, 2010

Abstract

Since this paper mainly deals with levels and strata, let me begin by incidentally sketching three levels or stages one can distinguish in phenomenological investigation, namely, a founding level of primary evidencing, or what Lester Embree calls direct experiencing in its proper sense, a founded lower-level of scholarship, or what he terms indirect experiencing, whereby phenomenological evidence is conveyed or, better, guided by evidences taken from other thinkers (e.g., philosophers or scientists), and still a further founded upper-level that could perhaps be called construction, a kind of stepping beyond the given and projecting what, in a certain good sense, one might call metaphysical over-arching guidelines. Now unlike the steps in a stairway, these stages are not simply left behind while one is climbing up, but they rather resemble M. E. Escher's never-ending stairways, where the uppermost step is at the same time the lowest one, and hence the end becomes a new beginning (like his 1960s lithograph "Ascending and Descending"). The present essay is largely confined to the second stage, i.e., to scholarship.

Cited authors

Embree Lester