Experience in the West

Subjectivity, “Saving the Phenomena,” and Genealogies of Experience

For the layers of impossibility to share anybody’s experience see Thomas Nagel, “What Is It Like to Be a Bat?” in The Philosophical Review 83/4 (1974) 435 – 450.

For the history and importance of the exhortation to save the phenomena see the classic account by Pierre Duhem, To save the phenomena, an essay on the idea of physical theory from Plato to Galileo, Chicago: University of Chicago Press 1969.

For an overview over Western philosophical approaches to experience see Martin Jay, Songs of Experience. Modern American and European Variations on a Universal Theme., Berkeley: University of California Press 2005. Jay’s valuable and extremely well researched and structured account is exclusively focused on Western philosophical concepts. Andrea Tagliapietra, Esperienza. Filosofia e storia di un’ idea, Milano: Raffaello Cortina 2017 is especially interesting when he discusses the ancient Greek antecedents of the modern problem of experience, as well as the relation of experience to narrative and he, too ends with William James, though he does not discuss non-Western ideas of experience. Both Jay and Tagliapietra have chapters on Walter Benjamin. For an analysis of Benjamin’s position – and of the role of experience in “revolutionary” philosophies in the shadow of the Great War – see Peter Fenves, “Pure Knowledge and the Continuity of Experience” in P. F., The Messianic Reduction. Walter Benjamin and the Shape of Time, Stanford: Stanford University Press 2011, 152 – 186. 

From Physics to Metaphysics: Aristotelian Origins and the Newton–Leibniz Dispute

For the transition from physics to metaphysics in Aristotle’s Physics see Walter Bröcker, Aristoteles, Frankfurt / M.: Klostermann 1987, 272 – 280. For the Leibniz – Clarke (Newton) correspondence see Ezio Vailati, Leibniz and Clarke: A Study of Their Correspondence, Oxford: Oxford University Press 1997, esp. 165 – 192.

Empiricism, Fiction, and the Mathematization of Nature

For a most ‘optimistic’ interpretation of David Hume, see Gilles Deleuze, Empiricism and Subjectivity, New York City: Columbia University Press 2001. Deleuze emphasizes the role fiction plays in the constitution of subjectivity, much like Nāgārjuna, as we will see later. The lovely phrase “ghosts of departed quantities” is from George Berkeley’s assault on what he believed to be the trickery of infinitesimal calculus in The Analyst (1734)< https://www.maths.tcd.ie/pub/HistMath/People/Berkeley/Analyst/Analyst.pdf>, 18. For the emergence of mathematical certainty in physical science – the possibility of which Kant thought he had to demonstrate – see Alan Shapiro, “Experiment and Mathematics in Newton’s Theory of Color,” in Newton. Texts, Backgrounds, Commentaries (ed. I.B. Cohen, Richard Westfall), New York / London: Norton 1995, 191 – 202. The progressive mathematization of physics coincides with the rise and ultimate supremacy of Newtonian science; see Peter Dear, “Mathematics challenges Philosophy: Galileo, Kepler, and the Mathematical Practitioners” in P.D., Revolutionizing the Sciences, Princeton: Princeton University Press 2009, 64 – 78.

The Quest for Certainty: Scientific Revolution, Phenomenology, and Romantic Countercurrents

Certainty has been the subject of some of the most celebrated works in the history of science, notably Alexandre Koyré’s From the Closed World to the Infinite Universe, Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press 1968, and Hans Blumenberg, The Genesis of the Copernican World, Cambridge: MIT Press 1989. Philosophically, it formed the core of concerns for the development of Edmund Husserl’s phenomenology in The Crisis of European Sciences and Transcendental Philosophy, Evanston: Northwestern University Press 1970 and of John Dewey’s pragmatism in The Quest for Certainty, New York: Minton 1929. For Newton’s theory and practice of experiments see Newton, 147 – 164. The great opponent of Newton’s experiments was Johann Wolfgang Goethe, who went so far as to liken Newton’s ‘crucial’ experiments (experimentum crucis) to the crucifixion of nature; see Joel Lande, “Acquaintance with Color: Prolegomena to a Study of Goethe’s Theory of Color” in Goethe Yearbook 23 (2016), 143 – 169.

Kant and the Middle Way: Transcendental Dialectic in Cross-Cultural Perspective

For the similarities between Kant’s Transcendental Dialectics and the Buddha’s refusal to address unanswerable questions see “Translators’ Introduction” in Introduction to the Middle Way. Chandrakirti’s Madhyamakāvatāra with Commentary by Jamgön Mipham. Boulder: Shambala Publications 2004, 5 – 12.   Kant’s Transcendental Deduction and its ‘highest point’ can be found in Immanuel Kant, Critique of pure reason (ed. & transl. Paul Guyer and Alan Wood), Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 1998, 246 (B 132) and 247 fn. A classic account of Kant’s arguments for the transcendental anchoring of knowledge is given by Henry Allison, Kant’s Transcendental Idealism. An Interpretation and Defense, New Haven: Yale University Press 1983, especially 81 – 114, and, on the other end of the spectrum, by Gilles Deleuze, Kant’s Critical Philosophy: The Doctrine of the Faculties, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press 1985.

Psychology Without Introspection: Kant’s Empirical Observations and Critique of Rational Psychology

Kant’s aversion to psychological introspection is directed not against the tradition of Montaigne but against so-called ‘rational’ psychologists who tried to demonstrate the immortality of the soul from concepts; see Gary Hatfield, “Empirical, rational, and transcendental psychology: Psychology as science and as philosophy” in Paul Guyer (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Kant, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 1992, 200 – 227. Kant’s popular and late writings are full of psychological wisdom and curious observations. His The Conflict of the Faculties (New York City: Abaris 1979, 199) contains self-observations, for example “On Pathological Feelings that Come from Thinking at Unsuitable Times,” that would fit right into Tibetan meditation manuals.

German Idealism in Motion: Construction, Deconstruction, and Systemic Rivalries (1790–1820)

For the transition from Kant to Fichte to Schelling to Hegel see Eckart Förster’s The Twenty-Five Years of Philosophy, Cambridge: Harvard University Press 2017; for the rapid succession of antagonistic systems from the early 1790s to the 1820s see Rolf Peter Horstmann, “The early philosophy of Fichte and Schelling,” in Karl Ameriks (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to German idealism, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 2000, 117 – 140. The editor’s introduction to this volume (1 – 17) is extremely valuable. Schelling’s surprising use of “Deconstruktion” is in Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph von Schelling, „Darstellung meines Systems der Philosophie,” in Manfred Schröter (ed.), Schellings Werke, Munich: Beck 1927, vol. 3, 66.

Experience, Modernity, and the “Middlemost” Path: Hegel, Industrial Time, and Nietzsche’s Emersonian Turn

For Hegel’s concept of experience see Martin Heidegger, Hegel’s Concept of Experience, London: HarperCollins 1989. For an overview over Hegel’s project see Robert Pippin, Hegel’s Idealism: The Satisfaction of Self-Consciousness, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 1989 (and everything else Pippin has written about Hegel); for a lucid guide through the Phenomenology see Terry Pinkard, Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit (Oxford Guides to Philosophy), Oxford: Oxford University Press 2023. For the importance of German Universities for the US see Louis Menand, Paul Reitter, Chad Wellmon (eds.) The Rise of the Research University. A Sourcebook, Chicago: University of Chicago Press 2017. A famous case study of the collective change of experience in the industrial age is Wolfgang Schivelbusch, The Railway Journey. The Industrialization of Time and Space in the Nineteenth Century, Berkeley: University of California Press 2014. For Nietzsche’s acquaintance with Emerson, see Benedetta Zavatta, Individuality and Beyond: Nietzsche reads Emerson, Oxford: Oxford University Press 2019, xiii – xx. The Sanskrit word for middle (and waist) is mādhya, the syllable ma indicates the elative (ka is the adjective ending); mādhyamaka thus means ‘middlemost,’ itself a typically self-effacing concept.