Modal Truths

We talked in class tonight about avoiding dualisms through a phenomenological strategy inherited from Heidegger--thinking about different aspects of an experience as related--but distinct--modalities of Being. 

Heidegger’s classic example is truth (ἀλήθεια), which he views as an uncovering of that which has been covered over by age and example. The “opposite” of truth is not falsity, but the hiddenness of that which is potentially present. Uncovering and hiding are not opposites, but different modalities of truth that we can experience.

Viewing the world this way helps us understand that opposites are actually connected by sharing a common root--that opposites are manifestations of different modalities from the same root of Being.

To take another example, this time from Van Manen, silence can be seen as the “opposite” of speech. But there are different modalities of silence, just as there are different modalities of speech. Some types of silence are “empty” modalities (the literal absence of speech), whereas other types of silences are best understood as the fulfillment of speech--such as the silences we lapse into when we have had a good conversation, or when we look into the eyes of our beloved.

Throughout class, we have tried to navigate the dualisms of phenomenological inquiry--universality and particularity, parts and whole, modern and postmodern, description and interpretation. The point here, as I stressed in class, is not to choose one or the other. Rather, it is to see these as related modalities.

Put another way, one I started to explain near the end of class:

We live our lives in between the “yes” of our desire and the “no” of authority’s prohibition. Theorists such as Bakhtin locate meaning and subjectivity as emerging out of this dialogue between the centrifugal and centripetal moments of our existence.

When I was young, I saw life as a great struggle between my own “yes” and my parents’ (and my church’s,  my teachers’, my society’s) “no.” 

As I have gotten older, I have seen the dialogue in more nuanced terms, between my own “yes, but” and society’s “no, but.”

Personally, I think phenomenology would have us dwell within the land of “yes, but.” 

Our freedom is always bounded, limited. We never quite find ourselves in situations as we imagined them, as we originally desired them (the world always pushes back!). As Heidegger says, we are constantly “thrown” by life, and like a tennis player returning serve, we cope from this reactive posture as best we can.

So while our freedom is bounded, it is nonetheless the case that affirmation, from within this space, seems to me our best bet for wise and rich living. 

Our life, our work, and our research texts are, therefore, never simply true/false, or valid/invalid. They are, rather, “yes, but.” That “but” means that there is always more to be said, always more that can be learned, always another dialogue to be had.