Some Principles of Phenomenological Hermeneutics

6. In phenomenology, it might be said that speech (the particular signifying act) precedes writing (the field of signifying possibility); there is always a self-presence before there is signification, and there is always something of our being-in-the-world beyond its signification. This is opposed to structural and deconstructionist senses that writing (the 'system' of meaning, which is also the operation of difference), precedes speech, or self-presence. In the structural/deconstruction tradition, the surplus of meaning is in the play of signs, not in the surplus of being.

i am not sure how strawberry flavour works. Strawberry flavour doesn't taste like strawberries. It tastes like strawberry flavour. It always tastes like strawberry flavour, at least it always has. i've had strawberry flavoured yoghurt, soya milk, cows milk, hard candy, breakfast cereal, soft candy, fruit drink and it has always tasted like strawberry flavour. i have never been able to buy strawberry flavour. i can buy strawberry flavoured things but i have never seen, for sale, strawberry flavour so that i can bake something strawberry flavoured. i am not sure if things that are not red taste like strawberry flavour. i have never tried un-coloured strawberry flavoured cordial - i have seen it for sale.

You can replace the word 'strawberry' for 'lime' i think. Or orange, or raspberry. Although i haven't eaten a whole lot of raspberries so may be wrong.

Some Principles of Phenomenological Hermeneutics

5. While experience is present to us through signification, experience is not just language, or signifying systems generally; experience pre-exists signification at the same time as signification brings it into meaning. While signification makes experience become itself, there is an excess meaning to being, what phenomenology calls the 'noema', which excess escapes articulation even as it is shaped by it, and so there is always an almost-said, a demand for metaphor, image, narrative, nuance, polysemy. We are 'being-in-the-world" as Heidegger said; this is a complex and many-faceted phenomenon, but the world is always 'left over', not exhausted by its symbolisation. This surplus of meaning may remind one of the surplus of meaning one finds in deconstruction, but phenomenological hermeneutics tends to locate more richness of surplus meaning in self-presence or being-in-the-world then in signs, although is not wholly comprehensible in itself. (Copyright 1996 by John Lye)

In 1968 Mick Jagger sang "cause summer's here and the time is right for for fighting in the streets". It's the second line of Street Fighting Man. i heard it on the radio yesterday. The Rolling Stones are playing in Auckland this weekend.

i quite like Street Fighting Man. It is nice to be reminded that The Rolling Stones were a dangerous band. When i heard the line yesterday i thought maybe i had mis-heard it but when i had a look around i found more than one person had noticed that this line is a take-off on Martha and the Vandella's Dancing in the Streets. Mick Jagger covered Dancing in the Streets with David Bowie in 1985. An event which prompted the hissing disrespect of youth in me for both Jagger and Bowie. "Fools" i thought "Old Fools". Irony was not big in 1985. At least not with me. i was fifteen years old, just driving, just about to leave school, just too smart for my own good.

i don't think Mick Jagger has regained much in my opinion (they have just played a Rolling Stones' song from the album they released last year) but like i say, it is nice to be reminded The Rolling Stones were a dangerous band and that maybe he knew more than i did when i was fifteen and he was ... older.

Some Principles of Phenomenological Hermeneutics

4. Our symbolic world is not separate from our beings, especially in regard to language: we 'are' language, in that what distinguishes us as persons is that we are beings who are conscious of themselves, that is, can know themselves symbolically and self-reflexively. As Heidegger remarked, "Language speaks man." We are not beings who 'use' symbols, but beings who are constituted by their use. It follows that all experience is articulatable in principle; although it is not reducilble to its articulation, it is brought into being for us through its symbolic representation. As Paul Ricoeur remarks in "Phenomenology and Hermeneutics", "To bring [experience] into language is not to change it into something else, but, in articulating and developing it, to make it become itself." It also follows that being and meaning are taken, by humans, to be as good as the same, although signification does not exhaust expereine (see next point). (Copyright 1996 by John Lye)

The Ministry of Fisheries suggest drowning crabs and lobsters in fresh water before cooking them. The Ministry of Fisheries' primary purpose is "to ensure that fisheries are sustainably used within a healthy aquatic ecosystem". What this means is they are responsible for conserving the resource they are promoting the exploitation of. So drown your lobsters in fresh water before you cook them.

i have several lemonade ice blocks in my freezer. i think about four. i bought them in a box of maybe ten. i am pretty sure i have only eaten three of them but selling anything in a box of seven seems a bit unlikely. Although it is Holy Week. Tomorrow is Ash Wednesday. Part of me thinks maybe i should save the rest of the lemonade ice blocks until Sunday but i think i will probably eat one this afternoon. It is possible that someone else ate some of them, but it seems unlikely that someone else would have eaten three. Three is kind of a lot but not spread over a few days, like a week or so, that wouldn't be that many. i will write five cards this afternoon congratulating ten people for giving birth to children and eat one of the lemonade ice blocks, and maybe check the box to see how the numbers are playing out.

Some Principles of Phenomenological Hermeneutics

3. We share reality through common signs. We cannot share anyone else's reality except through the mediation of our symbolic world -- that is, through a 'text' of some sort, which text has a context -- in fact, many contexts. On the other hand, as Gadamer says in Truth and Method, "Thanks to the linguistic nature of all interpretation every interpretation includes the possibility of a relationship with others. There can be no speech that does not bind the speaker and the person spoken to." When one 'understands' another, one assimilates what is said to the point that it becomes one's own,lives as much as possible in the person's contexts and symbols. (Copyright 1996 by John Lye)

Casual Friday is not as casual as you might expect. But everyone gets to show off the person they are - well, the person they would be, if they were the person they are and their job was their favourite band. i think it is a ploy to get people to buy more clothes. One set for Monday to Thursday, one set for Friday, and then one set for the weekend. In some of the women's clothing stores they have a section called "Corporate Casual" - i think this is for Monday to Thursday - but i think you could use it for Friday as well and maybe a particularly dressed up Saturday brunch or something. Men often complain that women get away for less corporate clothing at work. i am not sure why men wear ties, or jackets, or belts, i think it might be something to do with instinctual Alpha Male-type wrangling. Or maybe they just really like ties, or taking the off at the end of the day, like Superman, i mean Clark Kent. Glasses with one hand tie with the other.

Some Principles of Phenomenological Hermeneutics

2. Our existence as beings includes: our situation; our tools-to-hand with and through which we manipulate and articulate the world; and our fore-understandings of the world. (Copyright 1996 John Lye)

My situation:

i'm not dying but i am taking care of some things as if i was. Like you do sometimes.

My tools-at-hand:

Blood test, bank, Public Trust to sign my Will and organise some life insurance.

The woman at the blood clinic said my name and then "There you go." When she had finished. i said "Those are cool." Meaning the tubes, that fit into the needle, that collect the blood. The woman at the bank said "We will be sad to loose you as a client." i think she was speaking on behalf of the bank as a whole not the people that work there. The man next to me says he is "always open" when the teller asks him if he would like some information on the bank's latest accounts. i said "i've been with you since i was five". The next man next to me says "There isn't enough money going into it." When the teller asks if there are anything he would like to change about the account he has. In the end i open a no-fees online account. Debbie at the Public Trust said that the fact i am not married but have had a civil union does make a difference and she had to print out the Will again. She said it was no big deal. i said we might be able to get life insurance somewhere else and she said there is no fee for unpdating your Will.

My fore-understanding of the world:

The blood clinic place is full of sick people whose doctors have no idea what is wrong with them. i know what's wrong with me but i don't have a doctor. In banks now they sell you stuff. They have large white boards out the back, sometimes you can see them, with headings written on them, next to the headings are numbers, quite big numbers. i think i would quite like to work in the Public Trust. There is a lot of sitting at desks and typing - i think they get to fill out a lot of forms and put papers in folders and envelopes and files. i think they get to do a lot of filing and be tidy a lot.

Some Principles of Phenomenological Hermeneutics

1. We live in the world: in history, in concretion: we do not live any where else, and all meaning is only meaning in relation to particular, concrete, historical existence. (Copyright 1996 John Lye)

If i had been smarter i would have taken Philosophy. i am not sure if i mean smarter "intelligent" or smarter "more aware of the consequences of my choices and actions".

Or, if i had been smarter i would have surrounded myself with people who had taken Philosophy. By smarter i mean "more efficient, being able to get the most possible result out of the least possible work".

i'm not smarter.

i'm not smarter than the world: in history, concretion: in which i am living. By smarter i mean "able to illicit meaning in the context of any where else".

When do i know that i am experiencing the experience? This is the question that is supposed to be concerning me at the moment. Its the question she left with me, i am supposed to be musing on this. i don't understand the question. If i had been smarter i would have asked what the question meant, by smarter i mean "more humble".

i have watched Martha Stewart two days straight. If i had been smarter i would have made better use of the time. Martha Stewart made slime yesterday and a living Easter Basket the day before. Martha Stewart keeps saying "Wouldn't you love this?". People in the audience at Martha Stewart shout "Yeah!". i wouldn't like it - not the slime or the living Easter basket (with growing moss). Martha Stewart doesn't mention being in jail. In the Martha Stewart Cooking School they did poaching yesterday and braising the day before that. They were going to poach fruit i think yesterday because they had "done so much meat" lately. Poaching is totally submerging something in water and gentle cooking it. Kind of like a spa pool. Or when you get a lobster and put it in cold water and slowly raise the temperature so it doesn't know it's being cooked. Lobsters scream when you cook them. i think it is just their shells lifting up but they do make a whistling scratching kind of sound and if you raise the temperature too quickly they will try to escape out of the pot. When they do that they make a scratching kind of noise. Martha Stewart Cooking School poached fruit. Which doesn't scratch or scratch. It kind of just sits there and goes soft and warm.

There is probably a moral in there somewhere. Not sure where though.

While living in the world: in history, in concretion: and do not live anywhere else, what happens if someone lives in another world, like sentimentally, oh no hang on, that is easy, they are living in the world with a historical understanding of what it is to be a person in the world with a sentimental outlook of another world. Kind of like Happy Days. Happy Days is a 1970's 1950's. It isn't the 1950's 1950's. The Fonz isn't Marlon Brando. that's the important thing to take from this i think.

Do i know how Joan of Arc felt?

Everybody sounds like The Smiths to me. i know it is a sign of age and very sounds-like-Stelly-Dan-esk, but i really have noticed that a lot of stuff i have been listening to sounds a lot like The Smiths. Which is good.

i am fully open to the idea that i am going through some odd existential glitch but have checked with others and they have confirmed my suspicions. So i went back to The Smiths - just to check out i wasn't listening through some kind of false memory filter and well, they do and they don't - sound like The Smiths. Nothing except The Smiths actually sounds like The Smiths. That's the result of my research. So i am comfortable with this and i put my Smiths albums away and carry on. Until the next time i hear something that sounds like The Smiths.

The television company that was going to screen the South Park episode in a month screened it last night, to get everything over and done with. This made me feel happy. The something on families group held a vigil outside the television station studio and sung "Ave Maria" - not well. The representative person (man) from the family thingee-me-bobby organisation has seen the episode now. i think his wife might have taped it for him while he was singing. He was on the radio this morning and kept using the menstrual and menstruating and menstrual blood. i think i am starting to understand where he is coming from. He also talked a bit about truth, as opposed to um, now what was the word he used um, "filth" maybe - i might be mis-representing the representative person. Anyway all boils down they got a lot of press, even one of those closely framed photos on the cover of the paper, the ones that make it look like there are lots of people somewhere when there aren't because half of them are at home taping a TV show for the other half who can't set their videotaping machinery properly because maybe they can't read instructions or maybe the instructions are too hard to follow or maybe they have a core belief that videotaping companies make the instructions too hard to follow so that they all can't protest and videotape the programme at the same time.

i think it's safe to say it's all over now. Until the next time.