The Depth of Experience

• In Event: Politics and Friendship in the Cosmos

Abstract

“We live in a time of dearth,” declares Nathan A. Scott, Jr. We need to regain “a sens eof presence, of some intimacy of relationship with reality.” Empiricism and modern science flatten, narrow, and even erase what it is to experience. As Hilary Putnam puts it, the result is ”a concept of experience that has no room for depth, a conception nof experience as, so to speak, all psychological surface.” Physics treats reality mathematically. Merleau-Ponty points out, “Nature is not itself geometrical” Hence, “The first philosophic act would … be to return to the world of actual experience.”

Author

• Jerry L. Martin, University of Colorado at Boulder