Absorption & Reflection (part 2: or, On the prospects for moral phenomenology)

Perhaps my previous post (see below) was too hasty. There I characterized 'absorption' as an experiential modality. This means that absorption is a property of experiences rather than a property of the objects of experience. Thus, when I see this black cheese grater here on my desk, I do not say that my experience is black--rather, the cheese grater is black. My experience is visual, and thus an experiential property rather than a worldly property. So, to use Heidegger's familiar example, hammering a nail does not "have" the property of absorption. Rather, absorption is a property of the experience of hammering a nail. In this case I am not reflecting on my activity, I am simply absorbed by it. (Experiential properties presuppose a subject of experience).
I also characterized absorption as dangerous. Of course, I did not intend for this to be a blanket characterization--that is, there's certainly nothing wrong with being absorbed in hammering, or playing music for that matter; in fact, absorption may be a better experiential modality for these sorts of things. When I said that absorption could be dangerous, I meant that experience which rules out reflection is prone to violating other subjects. While driving to the hoop in a game of pick-up basketball, absorbed in my activity, the bodies and limbs of my opponents are merely things inhibiting my purposeful activity. (The reflective attitude of basketball is thus embodied by the referee, whose task it is to not become absorbed in the game and to remain detached from it). One can see how venerating an experiential modality that rules out reflection could have dehumanizing consequences. The subjectivity of others is not acknowledged. Persons become bodies. Lives become means to the telos guiding my absorbed activity. (Yes, this is all very loose, but its a blog--ah, I'm reflecting!)
But what I may have overlooked in my last post was the possibility of a modality of experience that could be called absorption, but with the modification of being an absorption-like modality specifically oriented to the subjectivity of others. This would mean a direct, intuitive, noninferential awareness of foreign subjectivities that would be more than just empathy (for that is what empathy is) in that it would include an additional experiential-property-aspect that we might describe as 'moral attunement'. I believe Levinas approaches ethics in a manner along these lines. For him, the experience of the other--the experience and not the other himself--grounds the first and foremost ethical principle not to violate the other. In Levinas' colorful prose, the "face" of the other "calls out" to me, demanding moral recognition.
If there is to be such a thing as moral phenomenology it would undoubtedly have to address this issue of a moral experiential modality. Regardless, the difficulty still remains as to whether this would be moral philosophy proper and not merely a descriptive treatment of moral experience.


  1. In your first post you said, "As we are increasingly able to step back to reflect, we are increasingly moral." This strikes me as at once true and deeply problematic, and I think the attempt in your second post to introduce a modality of being in which absorption is not purely self-centered is a fascinating thought.

    I'm inclined to think that the play between them is necessary, that requires morality needs not just self-awareness and distance but also engagement with the world on its own terms, by which I mean physical interaction with the land and with other people.

    Further, it seems that the barrier between the two is quite fluid. I can be absorbed in swinging a pickaxe but still be aware enough not to hit anyone with it. It is impossible to kill a chicken or anything else in my experience in a state of pure absorption. I think the act is so visceral that it paradoxically forces reflection on the other. As an aside, this is why I suspect slaughterhouses are evil. It is not something that should be done without reflection and awareness in the moment, let alone turned into a (dis)assembly line.

  2. Thanks for the thoughtful comment.
    Suppose someone was born who lacked this sort of other-awareness, would that exempt her from the demands of morality? Would we see how she remains absorbed in her own world--everything IS insofar as it IS-for-her--and thus acknowledge the impossibility of her being moral? Or, at least of OUR morality applying to her situation? Or more far-fetched, aliens land on earth who have a totally different sensory apparatus. Their modalities of consciousness are so far removed from ours that relating to them is extremely difficult if not impossible. Do they demand moral recognition? These are the sorts of questions that lead me away from any 'naturalized' morality and toward Kantian transcendental philosophy.
    Your Heideggarian description of ethical experience rings true, but as I ended the last post, I wonder if phenomenology can really serve as a foundation for ethics and not merely a description. Surely we could imagine other ways of recognizing the other as morally significant that are completely foreign to our modalities of consciousness- and these other ways would nonetheless count as moral.