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Experience and being;: Prolegomena to a future ontology
Book by Schrag, Calvin O
290 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1969
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Displaying 1 of 1 review
September 8, 2012
(3.5 stars, rounded down)
I read this as part of a series of books selected to broaden my conception of phenomenology, and it did that, although it has also reinforced certain presuppositions regarding the limitations of phenomenology as a means for providing a basis for an ontology of human experience. Schrag is well situated within the phenomenological movement to provide such an attempt, which endeavors to retain what is living in Husserl, Merleau-Ponty, and Heidegger while extruding those elements that many have considered to be problematic, or informed by residual influences of a modern subjectivity (Husserl's egology, Merleau-Ponty's primacy of perception, and Heidegger's quietism).
What Schrag gains in the breadth of his approach is lost in his apparent inability to fathom the depths of the Heideggerian critique of subjectivity. As a result, his ontology strikes me as little more than a rehashing of Heidegger (substituting his "experiencing-figure-with-background" for Heidegger's Being-in-the-world and Existenz for Dasein), without the bite of Heidegger's sustained destruction of Western ontology, as evidenced in his lectures in the late '20s and '30s and in Being and Time itself when read in the context of these works and through the (refracted) lens of the poststructuralist critiques of Western metaphysics. Schrag's use of "experience" is a nodal point in this connection (Cf. his critique of Heidegger, n.265), and might merit closer scrutiny.
In short, Schrag's book provides more of a synthesis of phenomenological approaches geared toward a particular objective than a substantive contribution to the field, an objective that Heidegger abandoned for apparently good reasons. This is both a strength and a limitation. Its strength is the way in which Schrag diagnoses the broader problems and situates them in relation to a distinctly hermeneutical phenomenology, one that recognizes that there is no description without interpretation, and every interpretation occurs within a context in which some sense of the historical is already in force (31). The vista reveals confluences and divergent streams, and states the case well, albeit somewhat awkwardly (which is something of the nature of the beast). More importantly, however, it appears that Schrag's critical efforts to "prune" the insights of his predecessors has left this reader wondering about the limitations of his own approach, the merits of which I would regard as more heuristic than constitutive.
I read this as part of a series of books selected to broaden my conception of phenomenology, and it did that, although it has also reinforced certain presuppositions regarding the limitations of phenomenology as a means for providing a basis for an ontology of human experience. Schrag is well situated within the phenomenological movement to provide such an attempt, which endeavors to retain what is living in Husserl, Merleau-Ponty, and Heidegger while extruding those elements that many have considered to be problematic, or informed by residual influences of a modern subjectivity (Husserl's egology, Merleau-Ponty's primacy of perception, and Heidegger's quietism).
What Schrag gains in the breadth of his approach is lost in his apparent inability to fathom the depths of the Heideggerian critique of subjectivity. As a result, his ontology strikes me as little more than a rehashing of Heidegger (substituting his "experiencing-figure-with-background" for Heidegger's Being-in-the-world and Existenz for Dasein), without the bite of Heidegger's sustained destruction of Western ontology, as evidenced in his lectures in the late '20s and '30s and in Being and Time itself when read in the context of these works and through the (refracted) lens of the poststructuralist critiques of Western metaphysics. Schrag's use of "experience" is a nodal point in this connection (Cf. his critique of Heidegger, n.265), and might merit closer scrutiny.
In short, Schrag's book provides more of a synthesis of phenomenological approaches geared toward a particular objective than a substantive contribution to the field, an objective that Heidegger abandoned for apparently good reasons. This is both a strength and a limitation. Its strength is the way in which Schrag diagnoses the broader problems and situates them in relation to a distinctly hermeneutical phenomenology, one that recognizes that there is no description without interpretation, and every interpretation occurs within a context in which some sense of the historical is already in force (31). The vista reveals confluences and divergent streams, and states the case well, albeit somewhat awkwardly (which is something of the nature of the beast). More importantly, however, it appears that Schrag's critical efforts to "prune" the insights of his predecessors has left this reader wondering about the limitations of his own approach, the merits of which I would regard as more heuristic than constitutive.
Displaying 1 of 1 review