[Buddha-l] Query about Francisco Varela

[Erik Hoogcarspel]

Vaj schreef:
>
> On Jan 11, 2007, at 6:35 AM, Erik Hoogcarspel wrote:
>
>> Dan Lusthaus schreef:
>>
>>> Thanks, Barnaby, for the explanation of Varela. But what, I wonder, 
>>> is new
>>>
>>> about this, that wasn't, for instance, already thoroughly studied,
>>>
>>> documented and analyzed by Gestalt psychologists in the early 20th 
>>> century
>>>
>>> (Kohler, et al,, not the later Fritz Perls derivative), or 
>>> Merleau-Ponty in
>>>
>>> the early 1940s? They all used the blind spot as an example of our 
>>> mental
>>>
>>> constructions -- Merleau-Ponty carried it into such issues as 
>>> phantom limbs
>>>
>>> (someone who has lost a limb who, at least occasionally, feels it itch,
>>>
>>> etc.).
>>>
>>>
>>> Western Psychology of Perception -- a vast experimental and theoretical
>>>
>>> literature -- has had much in common with Buddhism for over a 
>>> century. It
>>>
>>> should be a required course for anyone attempting to major in Buddhist
>>>
>>> studies.
>>>
>>>
>>>   
>>>
>> The weak point of Varela is precisely his biologism, the illusion 
>> that you can explain human behaviour and even the meaning of life by 
>> means of biological theories. Varela never had any clue of even the 
>> existence of phenomenology and never heard of Husserls and Heideggers 
>> refutation of all kinds of scientism.
>>
>
>
> Are you sure?
>
> See: 
>
> "Three Gestures of Becoming Aware" (p. 2 "The Second Approach: 
> Phenomenology")
>
> http://www.dialogonleadership.org/Varela-2000.pdf
This is the text:

When it comes to the how-to aspect, there are two other traditions that 
triangulate our book. The next one is the tradition in phenomenology, 
which is independent from the introspective tradition. It is a tradition 
that was put into practice especially starting with the founder of 
phenomenology, Edmund Husserl. Husserl was a remarkable guy because he 
actually did it. He was an uncanny and gifted individual. His 
descriptions, his capacity to actually suspend his preconceptions and 
examine the structuring, the layering, and the genesis of his own 
experience was uncanny — he was like a *Mozart of experience*. He knew 
how to do it, and he described it in many ways, but he was less 
interested in giving full details about how to develop that skill as a 
method that can be taught and practiced.

The result has been an interesting evolution within phenomenology, which 
is to say, how do we actually take these insights that Husserl left us 
and use them? Not just repeat what he said, which is what many 
philosophers have done, but actually /redo/ it. The book contains a very 
good paper by Natalie Depraz called “The Phenomenological Reduction as 
Praxis/./” So the second approach revolves around the phenomenological 
tradition.

Having read this brillant analysis I rest my case.

Erik


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