Philosophy Now Forum

Raymond Tallis has some thoughts about intentionality.

https://philosophynow.org/issues/132/About_Aboutness

Philosophy Now

Raymond Tallis has some thoughts about intentionality.

To understand this issue, you have to read Husserl. A tall order. Read his Cartesian Meditations, then read his Ideas. I recently read a terrific book by John Caputo called "Radical Hermeneutics" and here he traces aboutness from Kirkegaard through Derrida. Knowing something: is it all about interpretation, or is there something of the world removed from the noemata and noeses that constitute the aboutness of things that is "present" in some absolute sense that makes its way through? Can one ever make sense of the world beyond our intuitions and concepts, to put in Kantian terms?

The answer appears to be yes and no, for me. No, because knowing cannot be conceived apart from justification, and justification lies in the act of apprehending a thing. It being a thing is always already in "the house of language". Apprehending things is not a singular event, but a gathering of background ideas against which the occurent conditions play against. Meanings are never stand alone and affirmations of anything are all contextual.

On the other hand, the concept 'Being' has a dimension of actuality that cannot be ignored, though many try. My view is that it is in value, the caring that accompanies knowing (always and already), where the mystery of Being finds its essence. When we care, when we suffer horribly, say, here is where the world announces its actuality. A plain apprehension of things conceived as such, is simply an abstraction from the real, concreteness of a full bodied experience.