Robert Sokolowski once wrote: “phenomenology is reason’s self-discovery in the presence of intelligible objects.” This pointed definition hits the target of the celebrated Delphic injunction: Know thyself—which is itself the first principle of true philosophy.
is it right to say, “through phenomenology, you learn that “self” and “world” are not separate parts or pieces of a whole that includes them both, but rather moments or members of it? you can’t coherently separate a moment or member from its context without that moment or member ceasing to be what it was.
I think that argument has been made, and it's actually a premodern notion too.
What I have in mind—though I'm not an expert in the subject—is the Platonist and Vedic cosmologies, which posit that the cosmos has three strata or tiers: the bodily, the psychic, and the intelligible. Similarly man, understood qua microcosm, stands in the face of this tripartite world as body, soul/reason, and spirit/intellect. In the classical sense "cosmos" is the opposite of "chaos," so true cosmology sees the macrocosm as a Whole Ordered Being: and in like fashion the microcosm is himself a Whole Ordered Being.
There is, granted, a sense in which each ontic tier of the human person participates in the corresponding tier of the respective ontic tiers of the macrocosm—i.e., the body occupies space, the soul reasons and emotes in time, and the spiritual intellect beholds perennial Truth in communion with the intelligible or "aeviternal" stratum. The body is certainly a "part" of the corporeal, spatio-temporal world; but I don't know necessarily whether the intellect can be considered a part of the intelligible, aeviternal world.
Regarding the latter: In the phenomenological attitude, I'd say the focal point is the transcendental ego—what Robert Sokolowski calls the "agent of truth"—which might be one and the same with the intellective faculty. And it is this in particular, and most identical, aspect of the "self" that stands as "moment" to the world.
is it right to say, “through phenomenology, you learn that “self” and “world” are not separate parts or pieces of a whole that includes them both, but rather moments or members of it? you can’t coherently separate a moment or member from its context without that moment or member ceasing to be what it was.
I think that argument has been made, and it's actually a premodern notion too.
What I have in mind—though I'm not an expert in the subject—is the Platonist and Vedic cosmologies, which posit that the cosmos has three strata or tiers: the bodily, the psychic, and the intelligible. Similarly man, understood qua microcosm, stands in the face of this tripartite world as body, soul/reason, and spirit/intellect. In the classical sense "cosmos" is the opposite of "chaos," so true cosmology sees the macrocosm as a Whole Ordered Being: and in like fashion the microcosm is himself a Whole Ordered Being.
There is, granted, a sense in which each ontic tier of the human person participates in the corresponding tier of the respective ontic tiers of the macrocosm—i.e., the body occupies space, the soul reasons and emotes in time, and the spiritual intellect beholds perennial Truth in communion with the intelligible or "aeviternal" stratum. The body is certainly a "part" of the corporeal, spatio-temporal world; but I don't know necessarily whether the intellect can be considered a part of the intelligible, aeviternal world.
Regarding the latter: In the phenomenological attitude, I'd say the focal point is the transcendental ego—what Robert Sokolowski calls the "agent of truth"—which might be one and the same with the intellective faculty. And it is this in particular, and most identical, aspect of the "self" that stands as "moment" to the world.
Maybe.