Excerpt from Husserl's Letter to Lucien Lévy-Bruhl, 1935

"Saying 'I' and 'we,' they find themselves as members of families, of associations, social units, as living 'together,' exerting an influence on and suffering from their world - the world, which has sense and reality for them, through their intentional life, their experiencing, thinking, valuing. Naturally, we have known for a long time that every human being has a 'world-representation', that every nation, that every supranational cultural grouping lives, so to speak, in a distinct world as its own surrounding world, and so again every historical time in its [world]."

'Edmund Husserl's Letter to Lucien Lévy-Bruhl, II March 1935', trans. Dermot Moran and Lukas Steinacher, New Yearbook for Phenomenology and Phenomenological Philosophy Vol. 8 (2008), 349-54, esp. 350.

The Life-world in Husserl's Crisis

"The life-world is the natural world - in the attitude of natural life we are living functioning subjects together in an open circle of other functioning subjects. Everything objective about the life-world is subjective givenness, our possession, mine, the other's, and everyone's together".

Edmund Husserl, "Supplement XIII" in Ideas II, p. 385.

"Pre-scientifically, in everyday sense-experience, the world is given in a subjectively relative way. Each of us has his own appearances; and for each of us they count as that which actually is. In dealing with one another, we have long since become aware of this discrepancy between our various ontic validities. But we do not think that, because of this, there are many worlds. Necessarily, we believe in the world, whose things appear to us differently but are the same." (p. 23)

"Consciously we always live in the life-world; normally there is no reason to make it explicitly thematic for ourselves universally as world." (p. 379)

Edmund Husserl, The Crisis of European Sciences and Transcendental Phenomenology: An Introduction to Phenomenological Philosophy, trans. David Carr (Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 1970).

"It is essentially impossible to find men in any 'pre-worldly' state, because to be human, to be aware of oneself as a man and to exist as a human self, is precisely to live on the basis of a world."

Ludwig Landgrebe, 'The World as a Phenomenological Problem', Philosophy and Phenomenological Research Vol. 1 No. 1 (September 1940), 38-58.

"The concept of the life-world is the antithesis of all objectivism. It is an essentially historical concept, which does not refer to the universe of being, to the 'existent world'... the life-world means something else, namely the whole in which we live as historical creatures."

Hans-Georg Gadamer, Truth and Method, 2nd rev. edn., trans. Joel Weinsheimer and Donald G. Marshall (London: Sheed and Ward, 1989), p. 247.

Philosophical Generativity

"For philosophers of the present day the philosophical past is genuinely motivating. The peculiar modality of the horizon of the philosopher - generations and their works, their thoughts. Every philosopher has his historical horizon, encompassing all the philosophers, who have formed their thoughts in philosophical co-existence, and has worked on new philosophers as entering anew into this co-existence."

Edmund Husserl, "Supplement XXIV" trans. Dermot Moran, found in Krisis, p. 488.

Husserl's Definition of History

"We can now say that history is from the start nothing other than the vital movement of the being-with-one-another and the interweaving of the original formation of meaning and sedimentation of meaning."

Edmund Husserl, "The Origin of Geometry" in The Crisis of European Sciences and Transcendental Phenomenology: An Introduction to Phenomenological Philosophy, trans. David Carr (Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 1970), p. 371.

Husserl on 'Physico-Psychology'

"The natural science of the modern period, establishing itself in physics, has its roots in the consistent abstraction through which it wants to see, in the life-world, only corporeity. Each 'thing' 'has' corporeity even though, if it is (say) a human being or a work of art, it is not merely bodily but is only 'embodied,' like everything real."

Edmund Husserl, The Crisis of European Sciences and Transcendental Phenomenology: An Introduction to Phenomenological Philosophy, trans. David Carr (Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 1970), p. 227.

Husserl on Infinity and Idealization

"But with the appearance of Greek Philosophy and its first formulation, through consistent idealization, of the new sense of infinity, there is accomplished in this respect a thoroughgoing transformation [Umwandlung] which finally draws all ideas of finitude and with them all spiritual culture and [its concept of] mankind into its sphere."

Husserl, C 279; K 325.

"Traditionally, Greek philosophy (e.g. Aristotle) did not accept the idea of an actual infinite. The infinitude or 'limitless' (apeiron) as such was incomplete and hence not actual or real."

Modified translation provided by Dermont Moran in Husserl's Crisis of the European Sciences and Transcendental Phenomenology: An Introduction (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2012), p. 87.

Take Me to Church - A Sermon from October 29th, 2017

Reformation Sunday: Hozier and the state of the Church

Twenty-two-year-old Hozier’s mid-tempo soul song is a powerfully tense expression of waffling and tension. The lyrics move back and forth between lightness and darkness – truth and lies. In many ways it’s surprising that it was a chart topper. The rich and phantasmatic imagery is a testament to the diversity of musical tastes in the popular music sphere, despite the efforts of Max Martin and other Swedish producers to monopolize the pop music industry around familiar formulas that drive sales.[1] As most musically minded people know Max Martin has written more number-one singles than anyone recent musicians, excluding Paul McCartney and John Lennon. So, I believe that the success of a quirky twenty-two-year-old Irish folk singer can give us hope for something beyond the compositions of the Swedes over the past twenty years.

Hozier’s tune seems to resonate with people. The fact that it topped the charts in 12 countries and spent 23 consecutive weeks at the top of the US Hot Rock Songs chart is a testament to that fact (it tied the record for the longest-running # 1 song in the history of that chart). As the song opens we hear this big E-minor chord – it’s a traditionally dark rock n’ roll key. But then the song immediately moves to G-major which is a happy pop-song key. Pop music loves G-major. So, from the outset we get this tension. It’s a disorienting beginning that sets us up for the rest of the song. He’s waffling back and forth harmonically in a way that mirrors his disillusionment with his faith. Hozier, like all good song writers, writes music that parallels and illuminates the message he inscribes on our souls in his lyrics. The music is itself full of the very thing he’s singing about and that’s precisely what makes this song so powerful. And it’s probably just me, but this song reminds me a lot of Leonard Cohen’s “Hallelujah” - or, perhaps, just the Jeff Buckley cover that I'm fond of. Maybe it’s just the parallels in speaking about sex and religion in the same song, or maybe there’s something deeper in the music itself. Someone with a deeper knowledge of music could probably analyze that better than me.

But I think that this song can be an appropriate one to analyze on Reformation Sunday. It’s been five hundred years since Martin Luther nailed his Ninety-Five Theses to the door of the Wittenberg Chapel – an action that condemned the Catholic Church and initiated the Protestant Reformation. So, it’s not without a parallel in mind that I decided to open today’s sermon with Hozier’s “Take Me to Church”. This song is also an indictment, an amazingly deep call to empathize not only with the experiences of our gay brothers and sisters, but all those who struggle with pains that the church may have heaped on them at some point.

This song wasn’t a hit just because it pointed to many of the terrifying and violent experiences of gay people throughout Ireland and much of the world. Yes, the music video displays a rather brutal scene of vigilantes murdering a gay man and Hozier is himself gay, but the song seems to resonate because it is intentionally vague. When you listen to it, you it doesn’t speak to that issue alone. You have to know that background information ahead of time to realize that.

I think that this song was successful precisely because it hit a nerve – it diagnosed a central and undeniable element of Western culture. Affluent Westerners haven’t given up on spirituality or even belief in vague type of monotheism. Sociologists and missiologists have been noting the dominance of Moralistic Therapeutic Deism[2] for quite some time now (since 2005), but this is not the same thing as Christianity, nor is it the same as religious practice. And I wouldn’t say that Hozier’s song represents this worldview necessarily, I actually think that his honesty and self-awareness go a bit deeper. However, I do think that the Moralistic Therapeutic Deism we see around us rests in a similar type of tension and disillusionment.

Five-hundred years ago Martin Luther indicted the church for its corruption and faithlessness. As the reformation went on, the reformers took up a motto that was meant to be a reminder of sorts – “reformed, but always reforming.” As Protestants, we reformed Christianity, but we should never think that this task is finished. We need to learn from our predecessors and traditions, for if we fail to do that we’ll lose sight of the lessons of the past and a sense of identity, but we should also work to remind ourselves that God is still speaking. God doesn’t stop speaking precisely because God is still at work. Christians are not deists precisely because they believe in an active and present God who works and moves within creation both to effect salvation and redemption, but also to effect healing and restoration. And in order to do that, God often uses his people – the Church – to bring Good News and hope to places where it seems absent.

And perhaps that’s what Hozier is addressing. Maybe that is what has led to a time where large swaths of our society have embraced moralistic therapeutic deism. The Christ they’ve been shown may not have had room for them. That seems to be Hozier’s message. He seems to believe and yet he also seems to believe that a fundamental aspect of his humanity has been cast aside. So, while Martin Luther may have given us theological reasons to be wary of indulgences or the idea that we could earn our salvation, Hozier seems to present us with a personal encounter with Roman Catholicism that speaks to the heart. But I don’t think that we should take this to be a problem confined to Roman Catholicism. Protestantism has been just as guilty when it comes to failing to meet the example of Jesus. And that’s why I think we need to remind ourselves that we’re not done changing. We’re not done moving. And We’re not done learning. God is still working to mold us into better people – into more faithful people capable of better expressing the love that God has for us.

That’s what grace does. God is faithful not only insofar as came to suffer and die for us, but also in the manner that God helps us grow in our faith. We all struggle. I struggle with my faith! That’s natural and that’s why we can all relate to Hozier. But God is also faithful in his work to help us grow and change as people, because we all need to become more like Jesus. We all need to reform such that we can come together in ways that better illustrate the kinds of things we heard in this morning’s scripture – love of God and love of each other. So, I want to close with one more scripture. This one comes from 1 John 4:7-9:

“Beloved, let us love one another, because love is from God; everyone who loves is born of God and knows God. Whoever does not love does not know God, for God is love. God’s love was revealed among us in this way: God sent his only Son into the world so that we might live through him.”

Amen.

---

[1] Max Martin has written and produced for The Backstreet Boys, Britney Spears, NSYNC, Katy Perry, Maroon 5, The Weeknd, Lana Del Ray, Kelly Clarkson, P!nk, Taylor Swift, Ariana Grande, Demi Lovato, Hilary Duff, Adele, and Denniz Pop.

[2] Moralistic Therapeutic Deism is defined with the following criterion, which appeared behind me as I preached: 1) a god exists who created and ordered the world and watches over human life on earth. 2) God wants people to be good, nice, and fair to each other, as taught in the Bible and most world religions. 3) The central goal of life is to be happy and to feel good about oneself. 4) God does not need to be particularly involved in one’s life except when God is needed to resolve a problem. 5) Good people go to heaven when they die.

Galileo on Geometry and the Idealization of Nature

"Philosophy is written in this grand book, the universe... It is written in the language of mathematics, and its characters are triangles, circles, and other geometric figures. Without such means, it is impossible for us humans to understand a word of it, and to be without them is to wander around in vain through a dark labyrinth."

Galileo Galilei, The Assayer, trans. Stillman Drake in Drake, ed., Discoveries and opinions of Galileo (New York: Anchor Books, 1957), pp. 237-238.