Where is done thinking
Here's a puzzling paragraph:
It is misleading then to talk of thinking as of a
mental activity. We may say that thinking is essentially the activity of operating with signs. This activity is performed by the hand, when we think by writing; by the mouth and larynx, when we think by speaking; and if we think by imagining signs of pictures, I can give you no agent that thinks. If then you say that in such cases the mind thinks, I would only draw your attention to the fact that you are using a metaphor, that here the mind is an agent in a different sense from that in which the hand can be said to be the agent in writing.
The puzzling bit is really the first three sentences, I guess; when I read it the first time I was more than a little taken aback by the expression "think by writing" (more so than "think by speaking"). But I recall that when my arm was in a cast last year I felt extremely hampered in my ability to get work done, not in typing, but in reading, since it was a lot of effort to make little notes or even underline in a book (and even now the very act of underlining often seems to be the primary point of underlining a passage; the benefit that, when I return later to the same text, I'll have my attention drawn to those passages is secondary at best (sometimes, of course, it's no benefit at all, as when I underline something stupidly)). And the demand to actually articulate something as proof of its being understood is not so uncommon—just a few weeks ago I said to someone that I'd never believe anyone's claim to be able to division without being able to see him or her not just give the correct answer to, but actually write out, a division problem. (This other someone was making some sort of argument against teaching long division that I don't claim to have followed well.) (And the volume of Husserl's writing apparently owes to his proceeding in his thinking by writing out similar texts repeatedly, with modifications where he encountered problems.)
In this I'd like to say that I'm really fond of the word äußern. People learning a language and getting all caught up in various neat-seeming "possibilities" that language affords are really insufferable, aren't they? I mean, how can you live like that? On an earlier version of this blog—in the very first post, I believe—I claimed that the conception was always better, in principle, than the realization, because the realization is always prey to flaws. (This fallen world, and all that.) But now I seem to be nearer to the idea that if the conception isn't flawed, it's only because, until, and insofar as not, externalized, it's empty.
Comments
on 2007-03-22 15:35:35.0, Adam Kotsko commented:
Reading parts of Phenomenology of Spirit today, I find my understanding hampered by the fact that I already underlined the last time I read -- the physical act of underlining is crucial. Of course, there are intrinsic features of the text that further hamper comprehension.
and, further, on 2007-08-18 15:46:49.0, Patrick commented:
If you have the time, I would be interested in knowing where you found out about Husserl "proceeding in his thinking by writing out similar texts repeatedly, with modifications where he encountered problems" and what exactly you mean by it ("similar texts" meaning his own writing or the writing of others?).
Thanks,
and, further, on 2007-08-18 15:58:57.0, ben wolfson commented:
Dagfinn Føllesdal, who has read significant portions of Husserl's Nachlass, said so. "Similar texts" means his own writing; as I recall Dagfinn said that he would basically write the same damn thing that was in progress over and over again with modifications, making reading his unpublished material kind of a chore: you get many repeated passages as he worked something over.