The word purists suddenly veered
my memograph ( that’s what I called my visual memory at times, at times I also
called it as neurograph) took me to the days of my Phd at the Harvard
University, where I used shuttle between the Dept. of Contemporary Philosophy
& Neuro Psychology and my conversations with Prof. Bernstein, my guide from the Dept. of
Contemporary Philosophy. Bernstein and I shared a unique relationship , over a period of time we had erased all the lines that separated the Student, the
learner, the researcher and the mentor and guide, we were adversaries, enemies,
admirers who sometimes loathed each other and at times fell over each other to
express our sense of adoration for each others brilliance or the lack of it. We often had so many
arguments, some lame, some profound, some banal and some bordering on the brilliant – today as i reflected about those days I shook my head wondering why I couldn't record any of those numerous conversations even as I suddenly I remembered one such conversation where I was going all out to condemn Freud ,
Jung and all the Psychoanalyst gang on one side ( to which he was quite happy
since he thought not much about his colleagues from the Neuro Sciences, he
called them psycho babblers) and in the
same breath expressed my awe of their ability to arrive at what seemed bizarre
inferences but highly corroborated beliefs of today.
My train of thoughts continued to roam the haloed halls of Harvard and my animated conversations with Prof. Carl Bernstein. Our favorite hunting hound was
Immanuel Kant, Prof. Bernstein felt Kant and his ilk and all their treatise were all weak and they were not even worth a research, instead Carl preferred
Husserl, Stumpf, Brentano and Nietzsche, he thought they still held enough juice in them.
But for me the idea of Priori and the
Apriori held tremendous mystique, the idea of morality, study of the idea of evil bored me
no end when seen through the prism of theology but they fascinated me equally no end when seen through the prism of Phenomenology.
Once during one of those
conversations he had inferred “I think
the world probably under estimates Brentano, Stumpf and Husserl, their collective contribution to the world, Phenomenology” the Prof. waited for me to acknowledge his train of thought , I
nodded and indicated that he had my attention, having got his confirmation the
Prof. continued - glad I offered him my instant attention - “for me Husserl’s role in creating the Nazi Racial Manual, seems like a natural
causal output coming from a mind that had erased all notions of evil as utter
rubbish when viewed through the prism of Phenomenology, so for Husserl the Nazi Reich was but an extension of his own Noema seen through his Noesis, but what I'm appalled and pained at is not Husserl or his eventual decadence but the very act, a blatant transgression ? throwing the human race into an intellectual hell created by his own Solus Ipse? Carl shrieked the least part of his query through clenched teeth, I continued looking at him impassively, he continued, but the human race is
still so very naïve and even innocent like a turkey" he continued after a pause for effect and to see if i caught his deliberate pun "as long as Politics remains in the hands
of a few who are adept at exploiting the Archaic and the Archetypal Universals
and as long as the race depends on manipulated democracy for Governance, civilian Social Behavior and notions of evil will remain naive judgments of
minds that are forcibly manipulated to ideate only in Black or White” – that’s when I rose to
protest I called him an elitist, a hypocrite and went on - even if i noticed he had put on an expression of mock consternation - using all the animation available I told him how utterly disgusting his thinking was and how
he was himself the cause of Contemporary philosophy not breaking new ground –
Carl, though initially acted shocked at my sudden outburst, later simply laughed almost content as he
would when his child would have reacted taking on some ethical point and then getting justifiably angry over an issue that was clearly meant to provoke exactly such a reaction - I realised Carl's vicarious objective a bit late , then stopped my rant, midway, glared at him and left the session in
a huff.
As the scene unfolded within the film of my mind, I paused as a wry smile shaped my face.
This story that’s unfolding out
here is in a way a living biography of a kind of Phenomenology. My own personal
life’s phenomenology – call it contemporary Phenomenology. I know the purists
will hate it me when I say it.
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