Page 38 - Contribution To Phenomenology

REFLECTION ON THE CULTURAL DISCIPLINES 31

within the intentive process seems best called awareness and, as intimated,
includes species that are presentational (perceiving, remembering,
expecting) and representational (e.g., awareness of objects as depicted on
the basis of the perceiving of depictions). If the awkwardness be
tolerated, there are thus modes of "awaring" correlative to objects that
are, in general, "awared." Specifically, the awared needs to be described,
according to the case, as perceived, as remembered, as depicted, etc., just
as awareness needs to be specified as perceptual, memorial, etc. In
contrast with awareness in the concrete practice or process there are also
thetic or positional strata, which include the doxic believing, the pathic or
axiotic valuing, and the praxic willing and, correlatively, objects as
believed in, valued, and willed, all of which have also been referred to
in previous parts of the present essay.
If being thus descriptive and reflective defines what it is to be
phenomenological, something still needs to be said about how phenomeno-
logy can be philosophical. This is necessary because there are phenomeno-
logical tendencies, intra-disciphnary criticism included, within many of the
cultural sciences.^ It is here proposed that phenomenology is philosophi-
cal when it seeks not merely knowledge in a particular region but general
and ultimate justification. Justification begins the move toward ultimacy
when it goes beyond the limits of all individual and even all the species
of discipline, i.e., when it is quite general in scope. Beyond this, a
broadly realistic ultimate justification would involve the grounding of all
positions in the widest objective context. Alternatively, an ultimately
transcendental justification would involve the grounding of all objects in
an intersubjectivity whose insertion in the world has provisionally been
suspended to avoid absurdities. These strategies evolved in Ancient and
Modern philosophy respectively and both have been pursued in phenome-
nology. Whichever is pursued, the aim is clearly philosophical.
If the foregoing is sufficient to distinguish the phenomenology that is
philosophical from scientific phenomenology, then it can now be asked
how, in general, the phenomenological philosophy of the cultural
disciplines approaches its subject matter. As intimated, cultural matters
can be approached in a direct fashion and with the highest purposes, but,
because the matters approached are so complex and confusing, there is
great danger of arbitrariness and floundering in that case. The oblique

^ E.g., Richard L. Lanigan, The Human Science of Communicology (Pittsburgh:
Duquesne University Press, 1992).