A Big Pile of Paper
Saturday April 7, 2007
Here’s a photograph of my desk (suitably tidied for the camera!), on which you can see a Big Pile of Paper. Given that I spend my life writing stuff, there is nothing that unusual about having Big Piles of Paper lying around all over the place; but this particular pile is different: it is the very first draft, newly hatched, of my PhD. I now have two months before the final deadline to hand in my work, and yesterday I printed out the whole thing, introduction, conclusion, rambling footnotes, obscure references and all. So whilst it is not finished, for the first time in four an half years it is looking like it is capable of being finished.
I had wanted to give the PhD a sexy title, but the demands of academic respectability got in the way, so it is now called, “Naive Phenomenology: Thinking Ethics Through Stories”. Snappy, eh? Hardly one to make the New York Times bestseller list…
As for what the whole damn thing is about, very roughly speaking, the PhD looks at the long philosophical dream of finding absolute foundations for knowledge and for ethics, in particular at one of the more recent manifestations of this dream in the form of the phenomenology of Edmund Husserl and his followers. My argument – I’ll make this brief to spare you all too much agony – is that phenomenology utterly fails in this attempt to provide any such foundations. But then, instead of attempting to find an alternative foundation, I go on to call into question this very aspiration towards foundations and certainty, particularly in matters of ethics. This leaves me free to suggest that a different kind of phenomenology – the telling of stories – in fact succeeds in communicating our knowledge and our ethics, but without needing for this knowledge and this ethics to be rooted on firm foundations. So the second half of the PhD allows me to have fun using storytelling both as a method and as an object of study, to explore how it might be possible to think without thinking in terms of foundations at all. All of this is related to some of the concerns I have posted here on the blog in the past: matters such as my unease with moral certainty, my sense that all too often the very thing that causes the problems is ethics itself, and my hunch (although I don’t mention him in the PhD) that Nagarjuna’s concern with emptiness as the undermining of all our foundations is, in the end, an ethical concern.
Anyway, there is something satisfying about that Big Pile of Paper, even if there is a way to go before it is transformed into a fully finished, polished thesis. I’ll be leaving it on one side for a week or so before I meet my two supervisors, at which meeting, all being well, they will subject it to merciless scrutiny precipitating a minor crisis followed by a much improved rewrite…
#3 · Anthony
7 April 2007
As one who has himself produced a big pile of paper, I salute your diligence!
I’m inclined to agree with you about the futility of the search for foundations in ethics, as long as it doesn’t lead to moral relativism, a view as facile and downright irritating as any self-righteous certainty.
Good luck with the viva!
#5 · Jonah
11 April 2007
Congatulations at arriving near the finishing post!
I am embarking on an MA in Religious Studies later this year and have begun pre-reading. The first text I read concerns phenomenology.
As you are at the finishing post – I am lurching over the first hurdle :)
#6 · jt
11 April 2007
The idea that scriptures are a “living” thing has been always present. The foundation is the experience of Love in the spiritual sense, not the moral principle or ethical laws that regulate our perception of Love in the physical world. Ethics are subject to impermenence based on cultural environment and spritual relativity.
I agree that stories/parables provide a way for this understanding to be past on in ways that are meaningful and illicit a higher probabilty of, therefore, being experinced by a listener and, consiquently, finding them their Path and Peace.
I salute anyone who spends the time truly contemplating such things. You should be proud and I would be interested to hear some specific and fresh ideas as I enjoy the material on your site.
The “Right Way” is “Your Way” to experincing Love. In light of this experience , ethics mean nothing but ink on paper.
#7 · Peter Clothier
11 April 2007
Congratulations on the dissertation! I remember the sweat I pored over mine, along with the increasing desperate boredom with the whole damn thing. I trust you had a lot more fun than I did, and that the rest of this particular academic path will prove easy and uneventful. Good luck with the completion.
#9 · Will
13 April 2007
Agreed, Anthony! I’ll write something more about this in a future post. Thanks everybody else for commenting as well. Curiously, I’ve had a load of fun with writing this beast, Peter.
As for why call it a PhD, I’m not sure I understand the reason for the puzzlement. As I’m registered for a PhD, and this is the PhD thesis that will be submitted for the exam, it seems a reasonable thing to call it. Perhaps to be strictly accurate, I could say “dissertation that, once I have ironed out the wrinkles over the coming weeks, I really hope will be get me a PhD”, but that would be long winded…
Best wishes,
Will
#1 · Richard
7 April 2007
I have to say I share your uneasiness with moral certainty. I have always thought that it seemed to be more about the hegemony getting and maintaining control rather than genuine morality.