Direct Intuition: Strategies of Knowledge in the Phenomenology of Life, with Reference to the Philosophy of Illumination Olga Louchakova-Schwartz Abstract This article presents phenomenological meta-analysis of Tymieniecka's phenomenology of life with regard to its strategies of knowledge. The novelty of phenomenology of life consists in special orientation of direct intuition of Tymieniecka's insight. The analysis suggests that the positioning of the direct intuition differes from philosopher to philosopher. Even though this perspective pays attention to individual differences in philosophical thinking, this view has to be distinguished froll1 psychologism as criticized by Husser!. and rather, seen as a development of Husserl 's lheory of direct intuition. A framework for such analysis can be also found in Islamic philosophies of Suhrawardi and Ibn 'Arabi, who introduced the concepts of individual predisposition, modes of knowledge, and self-knowledge mediated by knowledge by presence. These concepts can be applied to understanding of the origins of philosophical insight. The paper examines in depth the workings of direct, or presentive, intuition in Tymieniecka's descriptions of the phenomenal field of life, and of life per se as a dynamic object. It demonstrates the dialogical nature of interrogation, and the sentience of logos as a horizon of philosophical inquiry. Finally, the paper introduces the concept of process phenomenology, and suggests directions of future research with regard to phenomenology of imagination. As many have noled, the phenomenology of life introduces not only a new philosophical program but alsu a radical reformulation of the postmodern paradigm. J While the intellectual genealogy of Tymieniecka's thought is in line with both Leibnitz and Husserl, Tymieniecka's vision is unique and fresh. She recreates philosophy in two steps: first is the all-encompassing epoche on preceding philosophical principles, and second is the radiating expanse of new philosophical categories. O. Louchakova-Schwartz (~;]) Visiting Professor, Graduate Theological Union, 2400 Ridge Road, CA 94709, Berkeley e-m<lil: olouchakova@gmail.com A.-T. Tymieniecka (ed.). Phenomena/oR" and the Human Positioning ill the Cosmos: 291 The Life-world, Nature, Earth: Book Olle, Analecta Husserliana 113. DOl 10.1007/978-94-007-4801-9_19, © Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht 2013 292 O. LOllchakova-Schwartz This new intellectual landscape emerges out of an analytic reflection on the intuitions of life. Life is the starting point of Tymieniecka's analysis, the evidence for the scientific philosophical method, and the overarching horizon of phenomenological inquiry. Returning to things themselves in the phenomenology of life consists in the phenomenon of life as primary evidence; it entails an analysis of consciousness, perception, language, body etc. as consequential to life's tendencies, processes, contents, and structures. Tymieniecka approaches life through the philosophical inquiry that she calls interrogation. Direct intuition and reason in her work are neither antagonistic nor working in tandem, in an unusual manner, they serves as a joint, undifferentiated cognitive faculty. I intend to show that interrogation, as uses a combined intuitionreason as a single higher-order faculty, the logos of interrogation. The phenomenology of life provides a resolution for millennia-old aporiae of mind and matter, subject and object, and existence and essence. This philosophy is also effective in addressing the tricky issues of cognition and representation, and the ontology of the particular and the universal. In larger contexts ofTymieniecka 's concept of the unity-of-all-there-is-alive, previously insoluhle contradictions seem to be no more than artifacts of particular discourses, or even evidence of C1YOrS in philosophical judgment. 2 After nearly 3,000 years of a history of philosophical ideas, one would expect that "there is nothing new under the sun.") Nevertheless, Tymieniecka's reformational insight is radical in its originality. A question thus arises: How does this philosopher attain such an insight? Can it be a matter of method? Tymieniecka not only refutes such technicalities but also maintains that the reduction of philosophy to a method have been a cause of misunderstandings and errors.4 Tymieniecka is not averse to limited methodological self-reflections: she self-reflects on the generative synthesis of direct intuition and description, scientific investigation, analysis of transcendental constitution, and traditional ontology in her work.' Although these approaches are present in her work, Tymieniecka's insight comes forth as much more than a result of the formal application of these approaches. Hers is a whole new strategy of knowledge, initiated by the original positioning of Tymieniecka's concept of direct intllition. I have to give this new concept, positioning of the direct intuition, some context. In Western phenomenology, Husser! developed the theory of direct intuition. This theory, even though it acknowledges the various types of intuition, is essentially universalistic, as expressed in the concept of noema-noes;s. I believe that there is not simply one single possibility but rather a number of possibilities in the noesis-l1oema relationship. In order to prove my thesis, I will draw upon a different phenomenological tradition, that of Islamic existentialism, as typology of the modes of knowledge in the twelfth-century Akbarian and illuminationist philosophies gives me the chance to build the necessary analytic framework. Reaching out to twelfth-century Islamic metaphysics for a philosophical framework is not a mattcr of finding some hidden medieval quality in Tymieniecka's thought. On the contrary, her system is informed by the discoveries of the natural sciences and novel even by the standards of postmodernism. 6 Consequently, this possibility of comparisons with Islamic philosophy is a matter Direct Intuition: Strategics of Knowledge in the Phenomenology ... 293 of a certain intellectual affinity that, when recognized, assists in the clarification of thought. As in the case of a figure and its background. the thing itself emerges out of juxtaposition. On the Modes of Knowledge Epistemology traditionally divides knowledge according to origin, structure, or kind. e.g. logical or intuitive knowledge. These are eidetic types, highly abstracted from experience. The downside of categorizing knowledge in such manner consists in a loss of the particular and an overlooking of the typology of knowledge connected with human individual types. By contrast, epistemology in Islamic metaphysics embraces both the universals of knowledge and the particulars of differences in personal constitution. In his famous analysis of the modes of knowlthe Sufi philosopher Ibn 'ArabI examines such differences through phenomenological hermeneutic analyses of stories from the Old Testament. His doctrine of wahdad al-wlIjud (Arabic "unicity of being") establishes the ontological unity of existence as the real and the truth (Arabic al-haq). Reality comes through in 27 modes of knowledge, each of which delivers a specific gestalt of unity depending on the qualities of the individual qualities of the prophet. Since prophets formulate spiritual and moral norms for their communities, the prophetic modes of knowledge (also known as modes of witnessing the real) reflect the predominant type of awareness in their societies. From the Sufi perspective. history is a sequence of the modes of witnessing. This idea resonates with the contemporary view that every paradigm has its leading thinkers who summarize and define main aspects of knowledge. The shift of the starting point of philosophy from consciousness to life presents a fundamental reorientation in the paradigm of knowledge and in the mode of witnessing. A particular mode of knowledge takes on a three-way expression, as works. or activities that manifest noble character traits; as states. or the inner expression of invisible realities; and as knowledge, or direct perception of the modalities of reality. There property of the self that underlies these expressions with of the real is known as predisposition (Arabic isti'd6d).7 It is possible to make a connection between Ibn 'ArabI's notion of predisposition and Suhrawardi's concept of knowledge by presence. In the philosophy of illumination. knowledge by presence is the immediate apprehension through which the mind knows what exists within it eeL Husserl's noesis.) All cognition depends on knowledge by presence, including objectless self-awareness and knowledge of objects. from real objects by their representations in the mind, to purely imaginal or eidetic objects. Ontologically, Suhrawardi maintains that pure consciousness/awareness/knowledge by presence belongs to the same family of manifestations as physical light. Thus, his theory of knowledge by presence examines the transition from subjectivity to the physical world, from pure awareness to the zone where awareness seizes its object and (in Husserlian terms) the noesis becomes the l1oema. In oral Sufism, there are references to the spectrum of states of union related to a fluid positioning 294 O. Louchakova-Schwartz of awareness on the cusp of subject and object. There is a typology of character involved in the generation of such states." This liminal zone of experience, which is hardly accessible for awareness, is not explored in Western phenomenological philosophy. For such a poorly researched matter. it would be unwise to ignore the data from other knowledge systems that are based on the direct apperception of self-consciousness, even if these systems are not strictly philosophical in a traditional sense. With regard to individual predisposition, the relationship on the cusp of pure awareness and objects is also examined in Buddhism.9 The idea that awareness has a certain positioning. a kind of angle within which it sees things, is also expressed in Carlos Castaneda's series of American Indian-inspired anthropological novels. Both Suhrawardi and Ibn 'ArabI insist awareness has universal aspects and is particularized according to one's mental constitution. lO This particular position of awareness is not optional for the ego but constitutive. With such encouraging evidence, it is possible to trace the influences of individual mental constitution in the formation of phenomenological philosophy.'1 Every philosophical phenomenological system claims universality, but the path to universals, which is direct intuition, is positioned ditlerently from philosopher to philosopher. It is the angle of vision, the positioning of awareness, or. in Sufi terms, the predisposition of the heart that defines which shape the phenomenological landscape will take, and how the real or truth will appear and be articulated by a particular knower. Minds, even enlightened minds, differ in their direct intuitions; were it not so, phenomenological systems would exactly replicate one anothee" The Varieties of Direct Intuition Knowledge in phenomenology is obtained through the awareness of the contents of the mind by means of direct apprehension or apperception of the mental phenomena in the same mind. Husserl's theory of intentionality justified the use of direct intuition as a means of knowledge. In his early work on direct intuition, Husser! did not view the ego pole as essential in the flOClIla-IlOesis relationship. Suhrawardi, on the contrary. incorporates the ego as an agent in any knowledge, arguing that direct intuition-based self-knowledge is a prerequisite of any knowledge. A similar position is taken by Levinas iII his analysis of Husserl's theory: as hc remarked, "a description of the structure of consciousness and of intentionahty cannot overlook the personal character of consciousness."'3 Levinas further argues that the personal character of consciousness is defined by the presence of the ego pole in all intentional acts. Indeed. in the later writings of Husser! ego appears as an irreducible element of conscious life, a center of judgment. attention, assertion, negation. synthesis, and other spontaneous activities. However, the above-mentioned exclusion of the ego pole from the constitution of intentional relations leads to the maximum possible abstraction of relations in the process of knowing: all personal differences will be lost in overreduction. Direct Intuition: Strategies of Knowledge in the Phenomenology ... 295 On the contrary, in the direct intuition-based approach to knowledge in twelfth-century Islamic metaphysics, overreduction is avoided, and the individual predisposition expresses itself in differences in the modes of knowledge. Furthermore, when direct intuition is used as an epistemological tool in philosophical phenomenological inquiry, spontaneous noetic activity undergoes modification. While always present in the background of the mind, noema-noesis relationships should be highlighted in one's awareness in the phenomenological method; this happens only if a change in self-awareness brings these relationship out of anonymity. 14 The subjective experience of direct intuition consists in conscious awareness with regard to the acts of intentional consciousness. The degree of this awareness differs from person to person. It is well known in the practice of Buddhism, Hesychasm, and Sufism that awareness of the internal constitution of the phenomenal field is a tool for self-knowledge and that it can be enhanced by spiritual exercises or meditation training. 15 In other words, the direct intuition of phenomenological method differs in its degree from person to person. Working off the datum of her experience, the phenomenological philosopher uses direct intuition as an instrument applied to the subject of her scientific research, the phenomenal field where she aspires to see things as they are in themselves. Toward a similar goal, natural science aspires to remove the influence of the observer. In the science of phenomenology, such a removal is not possible, as direct intuition is both the essence of the subjective self and the instrument of knowledge. The phenomenological procedures of epoche or reduction serve such a goal of attaining objectivity by minimizing the influence of the mental environment. Epoche frees both prereflective phenomena and direct intuition from the influence of opinions, beliefs and personal history. Both Husser! in his phenomenology and Suhrawardi in his philosophy of illumination demonstrated that direct intuition is both the essence of self-awareness and is pervasive to the whole phenomenal field. Thus, direct intuition is foundational to the functioning of the mind. The mind being a system of relations, it is hard to imagine that the functioning of direct intuition is constitution-free. In an ideal scenario, the personal psychological horizon is bracketed out of disciplined reflection. Further, reduction may extend so far as to eliminate the whole constituted self, with its particular self-awareness and spontaneous foci of attention, memory, and judgment, and its overall temporal and spatial dimensions. The residue of such a reduction is the purified direct intuition, which is the pure essence of consciousness, devoid of any qualities. 16 However, consciousness is hardly ever experienced as pure. In most cases, pure consciousness is an abstract idea, or even an artifact of the method of reduction. 17 The notion of pure consciousness serves well in constructing one's theory of mind but is never the reality of the empirical psyche: the two belong to different orders of being. In the reality of experience, both the intuitive apperception of the phenomenal field and eidetic reduction take place in the context of numerous individual constitutive influences, and the unique individuality of the mind as a whole configures the process. This emphasis on the fact that the direct intuition is not an isolated agent in the ideal mental universe but is always embedded in rich, fluid contexts of the whole mind 296 O. Louchakova-Schwartz has to be distinguished from the position of cognitive relativism. The latter maintai ns that cognition must always be defined by belief or opinion. Different from belief or opinion, which define truth according to cognitive relativism, predispositionwhich influences the properties of direct intuition-is defining cognition more than reflective thinking. Tf belief or opinion can be bracketed out, predisposition cannot be: first, because it is predominantly anonymous and is difficult to access by awareness (see the previous section), and second. because bracketing it out would mean the loss of all self-awareness, and with it of all possibility of knowledge. IK Paraphrasing Heidegger's metaphor of the forest in the spirit of Suhrawardi's illuminationism. one can compare this situation with the light in the forest. The degree and quality of light depend on the positioning of the trees, on the location of the sun in its daily cycle, on overcast conditions, hut above all on the self-luminosity of the sun. If there is no sun, then the forest is in uttcr darkness. Since I am examining the psychological contexts of direct intuition, Husser]'s critique of psychologism has to be mentioned here. Husser! critiques the thesis that essential laws of logic are psychological propcrties, causally connected with prior experience. (Cf. Hanna on epistemic empiricism.)19 However, my argument concerns not logic but, rather, phenomenological direct intuition. Moreover. logic in psychologism is addressed in the natural attitude, whereas both Husser!'s critique and my analysis are both conducted in an attitude of phenomenological reduction. Without epoche, the individual aspects of direct intuition that I am pointing to would be invisible. Direct intuition should be also distinguished from the faculty of intuition as a psychological property and a variable in psychological research.)O The psychological faculty of intuition is identified empirically and studied by means of testing or cognitive experiment. By contrast, direct intuition was neither identified nor studied as such in psychology. The relationship between direct intuition and the psychological faculty of intuition is as follows: the Husserlian noerna-noesis relation, which is the essence of direct intuition, underlies any kind of intuition, including the psychological faculty of intuition. In [dea.1 I, Husser! constantly refers to various kinds of intuition, such as presentive or eidetic. However, he does not address the factors that could be involved in the generation of this or that kind of intuition. In her reflections on Husserl's account, Tymieniecka (see the sections "Interrogation as Dialogue" and "Logos as a Horizon and a Category" below) views the logistics of stages in Hussed's inquiry as guided by the natural logic of interrogation, which is the manifestation of the logos of life. Intrapsychic ally, phenomenological inquiry is a sequence of the modes of knowledge, mediated by direct intuition. While the principal noesis-noemata relations are, of course, sustained throughout the process of knowledge, the structural, content, and temporal mosaic of the modes of knowledge creates the fabric of philosophical insight, which differs from one philosopher to another. Akin to a difference between the prophetic modes of knowledge described by Ibn 'ArabI, the modes of knowledge too differ from one phenomenological philosopher to another. The modes of knowledge connect with the how, under what angle, and in which horizon, the direct intuition of particular thinker brings out of anonymity the invisible or transcendent aspects of the real. 21 Further. the inquiry will depend on Direct Intuition: Strategies 0[Knowledge in the Phenomenology ... 297 the degree of the transparency of the mind to direct intuition, the engagement of self-awareness and self-knowledge.22 As both a disciplined inquiry and a spontaneous. intuitively conceived process, phenomenological philosophizing is connected not only with streamlined cognitive processes but also with the organic growth of the personal insight of the philosopher, connected with a specific mental predisposition. This kind of reasoning can be expanded toward investigations of the origins of My new knowledge that has connotations of certainty and truth: discoveries spring out of the unique positioning of individual direct intuition. Consequently, the particular strategies of knowledge are rooted in the individual varieties of direct intuition. This creates a framework that I will now apply to Tymieniecka's phenomenology of life. The specifics of direct intuition in this case begin with its choice of subject. which is life as a phenomenal field. The Phenomenal Field of Life Tymieniecka rarely details the process of her analysis, except in her early works. She never deconstructs (that is, she does not engage in stripping away all meaning); she gives us the end result of her insight (that is, her direct insight-apperception of the essential relations within the flow of life). In her voluminous body of writings. the same process can be tracked again and again. First comes the critical suspension of interpretations of the subject by preceding thinkers; then, lightninglike, the holographic gestalt of the phenomenon itself and of the essential relations within it; then the fleshed-out description; and finally. a fully comprehended and articulated essence emerges out of this description, to pave the road to a new wave of recognitions. The internal cohesion of the vast corpus of her works is due to the innate logic of her inquiry and not to some kind of preliminary mental schema. As in Leibniz's work, Tymieniecka's path to her conclusions is not always explicit. Given the combination of Tymieniecka's organic insight, the extreme breadth of her philosophical themes, and an unusual and original categoriL.ing, a meta-analysis of her system is not an easy task However, this situation inspires an additional interpretive freedom, a permission to go beyond the spoken and to develop one's own hypotheses of how this philosophy works. Tymieniecka begins with what first appears to be a self-evident observation: unless there is life. science and philosophy are impossible. Life, a commonsense premise of ancient philosophizing, was rejected by later thinkers in favor of starting points such as consciousness or existence-more sophisticated, more abstracted. or more available to first-person awareness. Tymieniecka's return to the primary realia of life breeds new philosophical discoveries. What appears at first blush to be commonsense reasoning may be in fact a Leibnizian principle of sufficient reason for attaining the truth: that is, there must be a sufficient reason for why things are as they are and not otherwise. If life is at the root of knowledge, then there is something in the nature of life that provides for the intelligent design of the whole: if contemplation begins in such a manner, the signification is already embedded in 298 O. Louchakova-Schwartz life, and not bestowed on it. Designs of I ife lead Tymieniecka to the discovery of the Logos Omnia. The nature-nurture opposition is replaced by a picture of the ontopoietic unfolding of the unity-of-everything-there-is-alive, with the self-ciphering of the emerging logoic possibilities. This kind of insight would be impossible if life were to be treated in the natural, commonsense attitude. Life in this philosophy is subjected to epocht\ which renders it available to direct examination and reinterpretation on its own grounds. Underlying this monumental interpretive shift is a fully developed direct intuition of life- *an innovation in Western phenomenological discourse. This intuition is not the natural-attitude intuition of the Presocratics and of commonsense philosophy. It must also be differentiated from the eidetic intuition of Tymieniecka's predecessors in phenomenology-a fact that she herself reflects upon. Her epoche is conducted on the "lived, experienced 'spectacle' within the human experience, [which is endowed] ... with the inward/outward dimension--the 'within ourselves' replayed without and the without replayed within."2~ This spectacle, which Tymieniecka calls "the phenomenal manifestation of life," includes both the direct intuition and the description of existential manifestations within one's being, such as sentience and the "logoic manifestation," and the overall datum of scientific investigation, traditional ontology, and transcendental constitution. In that. eidetic intuition IS also a part of life; thus, eid themselves are subjected to the intuition of life25 This total datum of life, both conceptual and perceptual, forms the phenomenal field that in the phenomenology of life is the subject of the direct intuition oflife and of further analysis. This view of life in the broadest possible sense creates the possibility of knowing life within the phenomenological dictum of gaining knowledge of things as they are. According to the phenomenology of life, the particular instances of life can be understood only if one views them in relation to the whole oflife. both given in and surpassing the givenness of a particular experience. Following the natural unfolding of these relations through direct intuition constitutes the main strategy of knowledge in this philosophy. When viewed so broadly, as inclusive of all phenomenal manifestations of life. the totality of life is identical with its manifestation, and there is no essence separate from it. This phenomenal manifestation of life is the evidence and the measure of truth and the proof of reality, "one gigantic blueprint of the real."26 Direct Intuition of a Dynamic Life-Object Tymieniecka emphasizes that"7; The crucial point of reflection tilal could claim to be "phenomenological" is the overt or tacit assumption of immediate. direct evidence which lies at the roots of all human experience: direct evidence accompanying states of affairs, objective formation by the mind, emotional complexes, intentional acts ... As we established, this direct evidence in Tymieniecka's approach is the phenomenal field of life. By Tymieniecka's own analysis, none of her predecessors Direct Intuition: Strategies of Knowledge in the Phenomenology ... 299 in the phenomenology of life dissociated eidetic intuition from the intuition of life. 28 She accomplishes this important move with regard to four aspects: intuition acting in the discerning act that separates the intuition of life from other kinds of intuition; the broadly inclusive presentive intuition embracing all manifestations of life; the intuition engaged in identification of the universal structures of life, as a vehicle of Tymieniecka's interrogation; and presentive intuition underling the acts of seeing these unconditionally universal truths, which is another kind of presentive intuition engaged in Tymieniecka's interrogation. The intuition discerning the universal structures of life is analogous to the eidetic intuition with regard to its abstracting quality; but even then, in its abstraction it retains fidelity to its substratum per se, which is life and not the life of ideas. Other types of intuition are unique to Tymieniecka's inquiry. In her earlier writings, Tymieniecka describes analytic steps that appear to engage the above aspects of intuition sequentially; in the later works, she replaces these descriptions by atemporal, synthetic gestalen where historicity is a part of structure. Yet another important feature of her intuition is its focus on the dynamism of life as an intentional objecLln her predecessors, across the hoard, acts of direct intuition tend to capture only what is static29: Given the spontaneous tendency of the speculative mind to seek a point of vantage from which the all-embracing intuition could be obtained, the cognilive Illode of the mind is led to focus on the static. stationary circuits of the artifacts of the Iifeworld that the human mind itself establishes. Tymieniecka's discovery, enabled by the positioning of her direct intuition, is that the phenomena of life only appear static. because of objectification by the mind. Therefore, the correct philosophical procedure. which would resolve countless gnoseological conflicts in philosophy. is to focus on the dynamisms and interrelatedness of "virtual moments" of being. 30 Neither is it the case that "a statement of fact or state of affairs ever remains completely enclosed within itself, [but itl refers always with necessity to some factor or factors needed for further completion ... and ... to its 'possible' but not definitely indicated continuation ... "3l The positioning of Tymieniecka's intuition is such that it captures the process-that is, the constant evolution-of the field of life. Besides the general horizon of life, and besides the ongoing changes within it, she intuits and follows life's growth cone, its ontopoietic front-that is, the fine clearing in which the new "virtualities" are born. Even though experientially these virtualities can appear as deployed from the "Ground of Being" of transcendental subjectivity. their origin is not in pure transcendental consciousness but within the Logos of every preceding stage of the unfolding life.'2 One might say that Tymieniecka's dialogue with Logos is conducted with a high degree of intimacy; she is always connected to the spectacle in which life creates its never-ending arabesques. Several vistas appear to he present in this tracking of the Logos of Life. Think of how one perceives calligraphy: stepping back, one can appreciate the whole completed piece, but one can also closely follow the pen of the calligrapher as the design is created, or one can track the 100 O. Louchakova-Schwartz lines of the calligraphy in their developing motion. The perspective one takes depends on one's personal cognitive style. In Tymieniecka's inquiry, her attention is on all three aspects-but then, as a master artist, she penetrates down to the alchemy governing the very flow of the ink. It is clear that insights into these dynamic structures happen very quickly for Tymieniecka, the moment she "looks." Because she goes directly to this end result in her description of the functioning of her direct intuition, and because she does not have an introspectionist agenda of letting us into the inner mechanics of her mind, her insight may not be convincing at its face. The reader herself has to develop that "gift of the gods," direct intuition, in order to follow Tymieniecka's philosophy effectively, which otherwise may appear to be merely a set of mentally derived schemata or pure metaphors.}3 Tymieniecka's philosophy is phenomenology, so the mastering of one's own direct intuition plays a very important role in developing an understanding of her. One has either to turn inward and develop the same direction of phenomenological intuition or else to give up and disregard her phenomenology as a mere set of abstractions. But they are not abstractions; quite the contrary: they are descriptions. Direct intuition is always central to her method. The horizon of her intuition is different from the horizons of preceding thinkers not only with regard to life being her object of focus and the su bject matter of her research, or with regard to her ability to register the dynamisms of life, but in particular with regard to her capacity of capturing the very process of emergence. I refer to this quality of her intuition as an "ontopoietic intuition.")4 This intuition seizes upon the novum, the emergence as it happens through the deployment of the virtualities of life-that is, the warp and woof of that very creative matrix that Tymieniecka describes in a variety of ways in her writings. In the history of insight, this is a unique positioning of awareness, even by the high standards of Sufism.') Instances of such awareness are described only in the Hindu metaphysics of Kundalini Tantra, where one can find a set of meditations on the dynamic origins of things.'6 Psychological changes leading to the rise of a similar kind of developmental awareness take place in the psychological process of spiritual emergence. J7 Both in spiritual emergence and in the processes described in Kundalini Tantra, the emergence of new perceptions has to be accompanied by the rise of new meanings. As new energies appear. life has to give rise to new rationalities as well; otherwise, there is existential or cognitive conflict. The coherence of the self depends on that simultaneous transformation of being and of understanding. In her own philosophical way, Tymieniecka discovers the larger ontological underpinnings of this individualized process of becoming3~ Neither pure eidetic essentialism nor the opposing philosophical stance, the constructivist orientation toward individual mastery of experience, provides a ground for adequate insight into this process. It is only in Tymieniecka's idea of ciphering that the emergence of new meaning, within life and out of life's own creative depth, is adequately captured: "[W]e dwell in ciphering itself.")9 A human being endows every cmergence from the life-matrix (i.e., life's "dynamic flux [that] articulates itself')40 with a significance uniquely its own. In this scheme of things, Tymieniecka's intuition Direct Intuition: Strategies of Knowledge in the Phenomenology ... 301 serves as a medium for logoic self-interrogation, as Logos both posits and reflects, via Tymieniecka's awareness in her human condition, life's dynamic flux. Tymieniecka's intuition and logos are interconnected. in the cognitive realm as well as in concrete becoming. Interrogation as Dialogue Out of all the possibilities available in the phenomenal field, at every given moment direct intuition highlights a certain horizon, creates a new clearing. One can imagine a scenic drive with shifting vistas. 41 In systematic phenomenological investigations, the spontaneous flux of these horizons is intentionally controlled to meet the demands of research agenda. In the case of the phenomenology of life, the sequencing of those vistas and the direction of the intuitional grasping of the phenomena obey the naturally unfolding self-articulation of life through the mind of the philosopher. Tymieniecka's second philosophical category, the ontopoietic Logos of Life, reflects the quality of these transactions as alive, and their sui-generis unfolding combined with logically intelligible self-ordering. Perhaps in the messiness of experience life may appear chaotic. Therefore, logoic self-ordering has to be discerned through the logical interconnectedness of emerging themes, in dialectical relations between ontological and epistemological foci of inquiry, and in the repetitive cycles of epoche, examination of prereflective data, reflective conclusions, and further epoche. According to Tymieniecka, a somewhat similar intelligence guides Husserl's thinking: for example, his assumed intentional shift from ontology to epistemology is not deliberate but is invariable by the innate logic of his inquiry. Themes are not derived theoretically but are intuited in the prerefiective horizon; this can be traced in any philosophy that uses the epistemology of direct intuition, be it the twelfth-century illuminationism of Suhrawardi or the twentieth-century phenomenology of Husser! or of Merleau-Ponty. Thus the interrogation appears logical, because there is an implicit logic (logos) embedded in direct intuition of the prerefiective.42 The filum Ariadnae that leads Tymieniecka through the labyrinth of life is linked to this implicit logic: sustained attention to life's phenomena in their fullness, with inward and outward expanses, brings the logos of life to full visibility. I have already mentioned that the notion of sentience is another key factor in Tymieniecka's recategorizing of philosophy. To my understanding, the term "sentience" points to the simultaneity and sameness of knowing and being in its experiential referent, which is available both as a property of subjective experience and in observations of the networks of life.4' Phenomenologically the same faculty of conscious experience is captured in the notion of "presence" in Suhrawardi, or the notion of noesis in Husser!: that is, the percipient quality of experience per se. The conflation of traditionally separate ontological and epistemological aspects of inquiry in Tymieniecka's metaphysics is not theoretical but immediate. This existential unity leads her to the discovery of the principle of the unity-of-all-thcre-is-alive 302 O. Louchakova-Schwartz and to the recognition of the cardinal feature of life. individuation in the human condition. 44 Because sentience is found on both sides of the human subject/phenomenal field of life duet, the interrogation is indeed a dialogue. Tymieniecka's terminology reflects the live dialogical quality of this inquiry in such usages as "self-articulation" (of life or logos) and "interrogation," as opposed to terms such as "examination," "reflection," or "analysis." In Husserl's noesis-noema schema, awareness is on the subject side of the phenomenal field; according to the idea of intentional consciousness, there is always a directedness of awareness. The phenomenal field can be experienced as both actively seen and passively received. 45 It appears that in Tymieniecka's modus of philosophizing, engagement with the phenomenal field of life is more than a receptive or active process of an ego. The philosopher is in dialogue with the senticnt Other, a pervasive presence that inspires every motion in the interrogation. The logos of life-that is, the sentience, impetus, and internal logiclintelligence/meaning al the core of manifold patterns of life-attains its self-articulation through this dialogue. Since logos totally informs the phenomenal manifestation of life, there is nothing outside its domain.46 Philosophical interrogation becomes a part of its self-articulation via the human condition, as an intrapsychic manifestation. (See the section "A Meditation on Sentience: Entering One's Own Logoic Manifestation," below.) In this view, empirical life is nO! a set of particular existences thar are separate from their metaphysical essence but is a manifestation identical with its essence. As long as one can make oneself present to the flow of life, the inquiry can partner with Logos itself. The inquiry is then taken over by Logos as the process of its selfdisclosure, conceived within the logoic scheme of things. Tymieniecka's interrogation is both dialogical with and a manifestation of the Logos of Life, an intrapsychic manifestation.47 This dialogical quality is enhanced by Tymieniecka's constant reflection on the process. In theory, systematic phenomenology has to attend to the prereflective level of consciousness. However, the actual practice of inquiry involves shifts from prereflective data to reflective data, to logical conclusions, to synthesis, and then back to the prereflective data of experience. This hermeneutics in phenomenological inquiry is frequently taken for granted. In contrast, Tymieniecka constantly identifies the procedures she engages in and the horizons she navigates.48 As she states. "Through the embodiment of beingness. the logos of life performs the crucial operation of life-its p()sitioning."4~ While navigating the constantly switching vistas of life, she always takes her bearings. This self-reflection is also one of the features of her interrogation that contributes to its radical nature. The fact that consciousness constantly switches its horizons is well known in phenomenology; however, the generative aspect of this shifting has not previously been satisfyingly examined. Nor has satisfying examination been done in regard to the systemic contexts of the horizons of inquiry. Tymieniecka's interrogation pays special attention to the positioning of the locus of her inquiry. Says Tymieniecka: "[Tlbe acquired findings of today's philosophy lack universal significance because it is still necessary to verify them as being part and parcel of the vast context to which they belong and in which they find grounding.";o This fidelity to the substratum of Direct Intuition: Strategies of Knowledge in the Phenomenology ... 303 her interrogation makes phenomenology of life adequate to things themselves, more so than in any of the preceding systems. Thus, engaging in philosophical enterprise, for Tymieniecka, becomes a constant act of receptivity to logos as the latter releases its prompts. Because of this need for attention to larger, systemic contexts, the logic of this interrogation is not the dialectical of pure ideas but takes place within the complexity of the onlopoietic, self-creative activity of logos-which includes but is not limited to the dynamics of ideas. This complexity leads to specific distinctions: for example, the thematization of life, as opposed to the thematization of being or knowing, assumes an ongoing integration rather than a focus on dichotomies. Another key feature is transcending the aporia between the "fleetingness of being and its essence," or between the logic of essences and the logic of contradiction. 51 This unifying. holistic impulse. where the philosopher's presence does not deconstruct the fabric of perception but rather restores the wholeness of living through the process of inquiry, is characteristic of Tymieniecka's philosophy. Receptivity is a distinctive feature of her presence. She functions as a receptacle for what already is, reversing the pathos of philosophy from the agency of focused inquiry to the receptivity of open awareness toward the acts of being-which are, at the same time, acts of knowing. Her epistemology and her ontology are indivisible, as the "known" replaces the "knowing." This receptivity, and the subordination of agency to presence, helps Tymieniecka to accomplish the phenomenological reduction of phenomenology itself called for by Husser\. By letting the phenomenological inquiry guide itself from the inside out, Tymieniecka uncovers the logic of the inward/outward articulation of the networks of self-cognizing life. Logos as a Horizon and a Category Tymieniecka makes logos into a major presence in her philosophy. In a sense, all of her philosophy is about logos.52 Logos for her is the Logos Omnia. the main player in the continuum of the world, the self and the sacred. My task in this review is to explicate, or at least to bring to partial visibility, the strategy of knowledge by which Tymicniecka attains this recognition. Her logos is not an abstract formation of the mind but a described intuition whereby Logos is the main horizon of her direct explorations of the phenomenal field of life. Her interpretation of Logos in some aspects overlaps with Husserl's and Merleau-Ponty's understanding of it. which is logos as a logic of inquiry, or logic in the temporal dimension of phenomenal flow. However, in Tymieniecka's work. logos is not used in this rather narrow sense, nor it is replanted into her philosophy from ancient mystical or philosophical contexts. Derived from sentience, her notion of logos is inclusive of both intuitjon and logic; it is not a thing but a dynamism; and it is responsible for the ordering of life-in other words, her logos is indeed the "verb unifying and discriminating."l' Not a property of the mind bestowed on the inert nature in the move of signification, this logos is inseparable from life and is an essential principle in life 304 O. Louchakova-Schwartz receiving its full expression in the human condition. Thus. the recognition of this unified intelligence is the means of overcoming the philosophical crisis of reason. In order to clarify the distinctions between the principle of logos in the phenomenology oflife and the concept of reason in prior philosophy. I will refer to Husserl's distinction between logic as understood in the framework of logical psychologism [a position in philosophy of logic which derives the facts oflogic from psychologicallifel and logic as understood in his account of pure logic. The properties of pure logic are not found in the physical, spatiotemporal world, and cannot be experienced or captured by experimental methods. "Pure logic is uniquely characterizable in terms of a set of special nonnatural or ideal kinds to which LP has no ontological access (since LP has access only to the physicaL spatiotemporal world) or explanatory access."54In Tymieniecka's view. there are various types of intelligence that spring forth in ontopoietic sequences of life. Life has its own logic of sequencing and positioning these rationalities among its other potentialities. Based on the fact that life is inherently intelligent, albeit not in an ordinary reason's ways. it is possible to infer that both natural logic and pure logic will be instances in the manifestations ofhfe's intelligence, pure logic emerging in the human condition. Since Tymieniecka views sciences and scientific discoveries as a part of the overall phenomenal field of life, the multiple forms of intelligence found in scientific experiments will be the expressions of logos. Contrasted with logic as means of knowledge, direct intuition cannot be differentiated with regard to its "natural" or "ideal" properties. In Suhrawardi's account, knowledge by presence ontologically precedes logic (which he proves logically), which leads to elimination of the distinction between ideal and natural, essential and lived. Instead, what is manifested and lived is identical with essential and ideal, as the latter is apparent in manifestation. The only difference between these principles will be in the orders of apparew:y. Tymieniecka goes even further in this, since for her the essence is identical with manifestations. They will be distinct only in the ways of how, when, and where these modes can be intuited, but they will be the same in their ontological status. Ideal and natural are separate in their positioning, degree, and proportion in life. but unified in Logos Omnium. The logos of life unfolds in ontopoietic time. Time is the form for logoic selfarticulation; life is the field for logoic onropoietic expression. Like a dance that can be only semiotically separated from the dancer, logos can be only semioticaily separated from life and ontologically remains in identity with it. Logos is embedded in the patterns of life and cannot be conceived as separate from it. cannot be viewed as some kind of transcendental principle in its unreachable abode. Nor is it a power beyond the reach of reason. Even though one may overlook its manifest significance. the process of the ontopoietic expression of Logos is revealing rather than concealing.55 Whether or not the logoic designs are available to description depends on whether the intuition of a given think.er can be in touch with the horizon of logoic self-articulation. Logos is found-brought out of anonymity-within one's own logoic manifestation first; then one's intuition has to enter the circuits of bios. zoe, and kosmos progressively and regressively encircling it, and then lastly enter into the inner workings Direct Inmition: Strategies of Knowledge in the Phenomenology ... 305 of the primeval Logos, dynamic, self-constitutive, and self-directed. To reiterate, there are three steps to her understanding of Logos: first, the intrapsychic discovery of logoic manifestation-sentience56-second, the tracking of the works of logos in life, in many unfolding networks, which gives rise to what I call Tymieniecka's "process phenomenology"; and third, penetration into the process of creation, the primeval Logos, lmaginatio Creatrix. These three vistas create the horizon of Logos in Tymieniecka's thought. In the remainder of this article, I will attempt to give a more detailed overview of all three. A Meditation on Sentience: Entering One's Own Logoic Manifestation Tymieniecka points to the act of entering one's own logoic manifestation but does not elaborate on it. This absence of detailing on the internal procedure appears to be within philosophical tradition: that's how Husser! and other phenomenologists treat their own inquiries. For example, they describe their epoche, or the first-person process of analytic reflection, but do not specify how exactly they did it: that is, what intrapsychic operations the procedure implied. Generally, these procedures are quite accessible to a reader and easily available to direct intuition. By comparison, because of the shift in the positioning of the direct intuition characteristic of the phenomenology of life, these procedures are not always self-evident and require additional deciphering. The clues Tymieniecka does give indicate that this internal manifestation of Logos is not that of being distilled of its adjuncts. in spite of the fact that this or that conception of being is a frequent ground for ontological insights.~7 For comparison, I have again to tum to philosophies that maintain an intimate relationship with full potentialities of experience, as such an approach is charac teristic of Tymieniecka's own work. For example, in the experiential religious philosophy of Advaita Vedanta, unqualified pure being has to be discovered within one's own experience, as the result of a specific type of reduction away from the phenomena and toward the subject-ego.58 Thereupon, the experience of being is turned into a metaphysical principle of unitive being. However, this is a result of mental reflection and not a state of affairs within the given.59 Tymienieckian Logos also has its experiential manifestation: sentience. Sentience is embedded within the natural experience and is realized through the advancement of discrimination based on direct intuition. It is not reduced to the ego pole, but rather it is evenly distributed throughout the sphere of awareness without any intentional vector inherent to it. Intuitively realized as a faculty of life, sentience is a protocapacity of both reason and intuition, the basic "known" of life. Logos, derived from sentience in its multifold manifestations, is intuition and reason in one, or, metaphorically, the intelligence of mind and heart united. In the human condition, sentience is by what one naturally apperceives and apprehends. In philosophical interrogation aimed at the general principles of life, reason and intuition function as one integrative faculty. By comparison, Islamic 306 O. Louchakova-Schwartz existential philosophy embraces a principle of the unification of all the faculties of knowledge for a philosophy propec similar unification is found in early Husserl, who grounds logic in the direct intuition. 60 Consequently, the logoic intelligence of life, and sentience, are the two sides of one coin, one principle available in direct intuition but viewed in different contexts. Sentience is a logoic sentience; logos is a sentient Logos. By entering one's own logoic manifestation and tracing it through the phenomenal field, one can experientially recognize the absolute simulLaneity of sentience, experience, and meaning. Possibly this simultaneity contributes to Tymieniecka's understanding of the unity of being and knowing in experience. One may conclude that direct, immediate apperception of sentience unmodified by any reflection indeed composes the foundation of Tymieniecka's understanding of Logos. Sentience is fully experiential, but it is not an experience of pure being (as described above) or of pure awareness-and those two are easily separated from each other via the mental exercises involved in any reduction-based path.61 Logos is realized not in the distillation of aspects of experience hut in a discerning recognition of the intrinsic self-radiance of experience. The apperception of sentience as a radiance inherent to all phenomena is not a feature of altered perception but is the substance and real nature of any perception.62 One may also propose that, for Tymieniecka, the contents of her experience are constituted of logoic sentience, whence her receptive welcoming of all modalities of life. Direct awareness of this self-radiance of logos in life appears to be what leads Tymieniecka to her articulation of Logos as sentient, to her ontology, and [0 her disputing Kant's and Husserl's theory of knowledge, which is limited to subject-object intentionality. From the vantage point of all-pervasive logoic sentience, the entire domain of life carries the potential for knowledge. It is the expression of logoic sentience as consciousness that occupies a particular horizon in which the subject and the object are matched in a manner prompted by the rest of life's network.61 Thus, one's own logoic manifestation relates to the intrapsychic presence of a sentient principle that exceeds the limits of individuality. This Logos is convincing also because Tymieniecka traces its functioning in the emergence of scientific data, which operate as evidence and are not contradictory to metaphysics. Logos, pervasive in all expressions of life, actualizes itself through countless avenues in the enormous diversity of life.64 Correctly understood, these two categories, life and Logos, initiate the formulation of a framework that resolves a tension between metaphysics and science. From sentience per se, Tymieniecka expands attention to the functional, structural, generative, and phenomenal levels of logoic self-actualizaton-all of which are vistas for her direct intuition.65 This wholeness is not of the all-embracing eidetic kind; rather, it is determined via intuition of the logoic manifestation: that is, it includes all the possibilities of awareness available in the human condition. Her categorizing is phenomenologically descriptive: "We reach that lcore of the deployment of logoic force in life's dynamic flux] through the phenomenological investigations pursued by Husserl and his numerous distinct followers. Phenomenology, as the most probing philosophical inquiry in history, has brought us to the heart of the logos itself."66 Direct Intuition: Strategies of Knowledge in the Phenomenology ... 307 Process Phenomenology: Logos in the Dynamic Flux of Life In the next round of examination, the focus is on how logos actualizes itself in life's ongoing self-creation and self-constitution. It is from this apparent relationship between life and logos, that the rest of the vision in the phenomenology of life develops. For example, in regard to the categories of unity and differentiation, Tymieniecka states: "We must seek the differentiation of living beings not in their participation in the world, but in their ontopoietic process as much as their integrating or gathering reach."67 The articulation of the sentience of Logos at the very outset in her philosophical system sets up the focus on the ever-present ontopoiesis of life in its developmental dynamics and for uncovering the connections between life's different modes. There emerges a sensible system from what seem to be chaotic modalities of life. Ontopoiesis, another central category in Tymieniecka's philosophy, is the selfarticulating and creative activity of life, expressed in its ongoing logoic orderly self-constitution. It provides for the relationship between the manifestation (life) and its inherent ordering principle (Logos). The generating matrix of life supports the vital networks that unfold into the stages of sharing-in-life and other constitutive phases. Tymieniecka uncovers different modalities in the forces that orchestrate the stages of life, such as gathering, distribution, discrimination, conjoining, bringing into integration, and so forth, that accomplish the purposes of each particular stage.68 She describes both the concrete points of the matrix and the entire spread of the originating order. She also delineates the main lines of investigation into life's ordering, such as the discovery of life's individuating beingness, the creative emergencies of ontopoiesis, the human creative condition-that is, the capacity to endow with significance and act upon initiative-the emergence of self-awareness in the agency of life, the emergence of the self-directing and all-overseeing mind, and all the phases of the human condition, such as gathering, transformation, radiation, and so on. Hence she conceives "the ontopoietic design, [whereby 1 we avoid the reduction of one type ofrationality to another."69 The orientation toward the process, toward ongoing origin and development, follows the thread of sentience in all instances of life and influences Tymienieckian understanding of logos: in contrast to the predominance of static categories in philosophy after the ancients, Tymieniecka's categorical apparatus captures what is dynamic.70 As the "immovable mover," the "prime cause" and an entelechial principle, the logos in Tymieniecka's philosophy is close to the theas of ancient Greek philosophers. By the same token, logos is in effect a principle of activity rather than a noun principle of thingness. Logos's facticity is in action and relation, not in just being there, so its self-predicating semiotics is verblike. The logoic focus at the core of Tymieniecka's interrogation instructs her to state thaCI it is indispensable to envisage [life] from two perspectives: one may take in its surface phenomenal manifestation in its formal, structural, constitutive fashion, or one may peer into the depths of energies, forces, dynamisms that carry it relentlessly onward. 3U8 0, Lnuchakova-Sch ... anl We can see how these two perspectives are actualized in the latter two stages of logole expression, logos in its unfolding in life and the primeval Logos of creative imagination. In the ongoing processes of life, logos is intuited in its surface phenomenal manifestation; and in the analysis of imagination, Tymicniecka penetrates into the depths of the energies that carry it forward. This (irst domain. the overall surface-process orientation. can be identilled as "process phenomenology" emerging out of the verblike. self-predicating semiotics of the Logos. In a process-phenomenological analysis, intuition captures life as a dynamic force of its own that prompts its continuing advance. The focus of intuition and interrogation differentiates and expands to include both the structural or constitutive horizon and the dynamk of energies and forces. following the sentient logos through the palterns of life, Tymieniecka tinds that "[allthough we apprehend and predicate the status of life by the relatively static form it lakes. it is in the energies and play of forces that it takes ilS shape ill the flux of beeomlng."n Thus philosophy faces a difl1cul! manifold task, as "the givenness of life, which in its manifestation extends over mUltiple spheres of significance, [cannot] be brought adequately to disclosure and clarified in underslanding by anyone procedure of philosophical enquiry."7] The method of inquiry, therefore. cannot be limited to this or thal type of logic. which would "inevitahly meet a dead end,"" Logic. whic:h is limited by its situatedness in life. cannot gru::.p all life as fhe latter expands in all directions and ''refracts its modalities and their apparatus into innumerable rays thai flow concurrently onwards:'7~ The dynamic engagement of direct intuition of the constantly shifting forms and horizons of life IS the most adequate method. This process-orientation permits Tymieniecka not only to identify the structures persisting in this dynamic expanse but 10 track the positioning of the human condition in the ontopoietic cycle of life. The cycle of interrogation begins with life, whicb is discovered to be self-individualizing. This lead.., to a realization that the of life is engaged in ontopoiesis, self-ereative activity, giving rise to different spheres of self-individualization, such as the spheres of energies and shaping, out of which transcendence of the natural order in the virtuality of the soul emerges. The soul articulates the outward/inward expanse or the nature of life and engages in the differentiation of self from Other and the emergence of a new virtuality, the spirit. Then the spirit begins its descent, presencing the spheres of energies and shaping, presencing the circles of ontopoiesis, prl:!sencing the very Logos of Life, and. finally, pn;~senclng the self-individualizing life. Thus the cycle is completed, as Tymieniecka both follows the Iogoic flow in analysis and breaks free from it by establishing herself as a locus of logoie self-reflection. The nonreducible presence of the world, and self as the differentiating principle, define the scope of the analysis. The driving force of this prOces~ phenomenology on the "surface level," as a motivator in the human mind that pn:lVides the mediumistic agency for the inquiry, is the search for truth. The natural belief of a human being. our basic existential trust. consists of our mllll: !lummi conviction of the indubitable l'O}1Stant background of our realit~ insofar as our life-indlviduali,ing proce,s is simultaneously crystallizing the "('U1ward" frlllUcwork of our existence "'Ilhin the world and manifesting "inwardly" the enlire spread of alit vital. existential and .::reattVc virtualities as Ihcy may unfold. Direct Intuition: Strategies of Knowledge in the Phenomenology ... 309 Further analysis leads Tymieniecka to recognize that '"the search for truth is the constructive device intrinsic to the logos' ontopoietic manifestation in life."n Thus, the basic drive pushing the search for knowledge inherent to the human condition is discovered to be visible inwardly within this condition as a search for truth and outwardly in the larger scheme of things as a logoic ontopoietic manifestation. The completing brushstroke in this sketch of Tymieniecka's strategies of knowledge must take us into the thicket of life's self-poiesis, into the intuition of logoic imagination. Intuition of Imagination Although the metaphysical, phenomenological and existential aspects ofTymieniecka's concept of imagination have been analyzed by Mardas,78 the methodological aspects ofTymieniecka's treatment of this feature of Logos merit further analysis. Imaginario Creatrix is the most enticing and esoteric (in the Straussian sense) principle in Tymieniecka's thought. Tymieniecka's conception of imagination plays a crucial role in her understanding of two spheres of life, the overall generative activity of Logos as Imaginatio Crealrix and the emergence of the human condition. In the latter, imagination is given a role more important than that of reason-which distinguishes Tymieniecka's phenomenology from the rest of Western philosophy. Tymieniecka views imagination as the process by which the novum manifests in the phenomenal field in different ways. Imagination in its inward aspect is a psychological quality in the human condition and transpires in its outward aspects as Imaginatio Crearrix, the principle of imagination that provides for the emergence of the novum out of the otherwise linear unfOlding of the entelechial momentum of life. Logoic imagination is the very medium that brings about the actual fabric of life out of "nonlife," brings the human condition out of bios, mediates ciphering, and provides for the presence of the human condition within the bounds of life. Imagination is connected with the very creation of the fabric of life in the same way that a spider creates a spider's web out of its living body. In phenomenological studies in general, imagination has been poorly researched, as the intrapsychic workings of imagination do not surrender easily to the grasp of direct intuition. In Buddhist meditation, which is by far the most advanced introspective enterprise in human history, creative imagination is viewed as the function that is both the most difficult to control and the most difficult to "see through" in the pursuit of truth. 79 The same is true of the perspective on imagination in Islamic metaphysics.80 And even when the generative aspect of imagination can be taken under some level of conscious control, by the most advanced meditators, the process of imagining-that is. the generative act of consciousness-remains hidden to direct intuition. To account for this fact, I suggest that direct intuition per se may have a phenomenal nature. This implies that direct intuition, when it is used in the phenomenological method in the ways I described in the analysis above, is a faculty pertaining to the human condition only. As such, direct intuition itself can be viewed 310 n Louchakova-Schwartz as a product of the generative aspect of imagination. or a faculty ontogenetically posterior to the logoic Imaginatio Creatrix, or both. If this is so. any attempt to capture the origin of direct intuition by means of direct intuition is somewhat like an attempt to touch the surface of water in order to feel how smooth it is: though available to visual perception up to that point, the smoothness of the sUliace disappears upon being touched. The act of examination alters the natural picture. In order to phenomenologically capture the ontological aspects of imagination, Tymieniecka first situates imagination within the lOgOlC scheme. Then she examines it through its relationships. She approaches imagination through the clearings created by all other orders of life. from its relation to the biological apparatus ofthe organic brain to its relations to will, action, reason, and other virtualities of the human condition. Imagination both sets forth the new virtualities and rationalities of life and serves as a cognitive organ, a vehicle by which Logos can see its own potentialities. Says Tymieniecka: "In entering the very workings of the Logos through creative acts that participate in them. we discover the very language of the Logos in action, along with the new set of semantic categories that it reveals."~1 Direct intuition appears to glimpse Imaginatio Crealrix only in relations and indirectly through its fruits; on some level, imagination retains its mysterious character, Conclusions I am completing the analysis of mental operations, which are engaged in Tymienieeka's jouruey of knowledge. with a sense of internal stillness and gratitude. Perhaps the above set of mental acts can be viewed as an algorithm of philosophical knowledge. 1he technical aspects of the meJllOd are nonexistent in Tymieniecka's case, but her general gnoseological stance is distinct and unique: it is the nOVrlnl of direct inlUition. In my analysis of Tymieniecka's use of direct intuition, I made use of the noemanoesis theory of intentional consciousness. However, as I mentioned in the discussion above, Tymieniecka herself extensively criticizes that theory's claims to universal applicability; Tymieniecka's broad contextualizing eliminates any doubt that imagination as a cognitive function and as Imaginatia Crealrix is much more prevalent in life than the intentional acts of consciousness. Therefore I have to establish a delimiter to my own analysis: positioning direct intuition within the conceptual network of intentional consciousness limits the possibilities for understanding the former and semantically narrows the clearing within which imagination can be fully understood as part of one's own logoic manifestation. Juxtaposed with the fact that Tymieniecka's discovery of the crucial role of imagination in ontopoietic networks is direct-intuition-based-What else could it be'!~these points lead me to believe that the very framework for the analysis of direct intuition needs to be eventually revised, It is possible that our concept of direct intuition. which is the major vehicle of Tymieniecka's insight. itself needs further clarification in order for us to understand Tymieniecka's method in her discovery of the role of imagination, Direct Intuition: Strategies of Knowledge in the Phenomenology .. 31l Notes I, Louchakova-Schwartz 20tta. 2. For the unity-of-everything-there-is-alive. see Tymieniecka 1998a. 3. Ecclesiastes J :9. 4. Torjussen et al. 2008. 5. Tymieniecka 2009. 6. Icor more on the phenomenology of life in postmodernism. see Louchakova-Schwartz 20 II a. 7. For more on prophetic modes of knowledge. see Chittick 1997; Burckhardt 1975. 1980. For more on predisposition (Arabic isti'dad), see Ibn 'Arab 1975: 2\. 8. References to unitive states of experience emerging out of fluid awareness on the cusp of sUbject and object were made in conversation,. with Sheikh Yanni, ToussuJis. of the Malamalia order. throughou11997. For more on unitive states. see Yazdi 1992. For more on unitive states vs. character. see Niffar 1935. 9. Ajan Amaro. pers. comm., 1995. 10. Suhrawardi 1999. II. For the individual psychological features of philosophers influencing philosophy. see Gopnik and Schwitzge\:lel 1998. 12. For the similarities between different minds, see al-Jili 1983: xxv: "Each individual of the human species contains the others entirely, without any lack, his [or her] own limitation being but accidental. ... For as far as the accidental conditions do not intervene. individuals are, then, like opposing mirrors, in which one fully reflects the other." 13. Levinas 1973: 50. 14. Louchakova 2006b. 15. For more on spiritual practices that develop direct intuition. see Louchakova 2006b, 2007b, c. 16. Husserl 1983 (Ideas I). n. For further critique of the idea of pure consciousness, and states of the experience of pure consciousness, see Louchakova-Schwartz 20 I lb. 18. For more 011 the difficulties in seeing one's predisposition. see Ibn 'ArabI J 975: 20-25. 19. Cf. Hanna 2008 on epistemic empiricism. 20. For psychological studies of intuition as a psychological faculty, see Sinclair 2011: DePaul and Ramsey 1998 21. Louchakova-Schwarrz, forthcoming. 22. Lou.:hakova 2005. 23. Leibniz 1996. 24. Tvmieniecka 2009. For more on the formation of the inward/outward dimension, see the section õ the doxographic Greeks in LOllchakova-Schwartz 2011 b. 25. Cf. Levinas', analysis of ontological connotations in Husserl's theory of direct intuition: LevlOas 1973: 50 26. Tymieniecka 2009: 70. Tymieniecka's affirmation of unity of essence and manife:;tation, and further of existence and knowledge. can be compared to that in Suhra\Vardi's notion of lighr! being as fully "apparent" as an immanent e,sence. See further Yazdi 1992: 89. 27. Tymieniecka 1998b: xii. 28. Tymieniecka 2009: 73. 29. Tymieniecka 2000: 22. 30. Tymieniecka 2004: xxi. 31. Tymieniecka 2009: 12. 32. For an experience-based description of the process of deployment as seen by people in the process of spiritual emergence. see Louchakova 2007a. 33. For direct intuition in phenomenological method, see Tymieniecka 2002a: 8. The misreading of phenomenologically derived descriptions as metaphors or mental >chemata happens especially often in interpretations of mysticism, as is discussed in Louchakova and Warner 2003. 312 O. Louchakova-Schwartz 34. For more on the habitual fixation of attention on the "stages;' see Tymieniecka 2009: 34. 35. One can find referenccs to the dynamism of unity in ProcJus; however, these are not philosophically developed. For more on Proclus, see Corbin 1976: see also Chinick 1994. Another philosopher paying attention to dynamic aspects of reality is Whitehead; the comparative analysis of his philosophy with Tymieniecka's phenomenology of life has yet to be done. 36. Singh 1979. For more on intentional consciousness in Kundalini Yoga, see Louchakova 2004: 88 n. 220. 37. For more on ontopoietic intuition in spiritual emergence, see Louchakova 2007a. 38. For more on the ontology of becoming. see Tymieniecka 2004. 39. Tymieniecka 2000: 19. 40. Tymieniecka 200Y: 16. 41. The metaphor of shifting vistas captures the dynamic quality of Tymieniecka's philosophy. This term appears for the first time in Louchakova 2007a. 42. Cf. Husserl 1983: 39 (Ideas 1, para. 21): "[T]here is something such as pure intuiting as a kind of givenness in which essences are given ordinarily as objects entirely in the same way that individual realities are given in experiential intuition; it is not recognized that every judging process olseeing such as in particular, seeing unconditionally universal truths, likewise falls under the concept ol presentive intuition, nhich has many differentiations, above all, those that run parallel to the logical categories." 43. Cf. Yazdi 1992: 88, the principle of identity between "knowing" the self through knowledge by presence and the "being" of the actual reality of the self. 44. Cf. the unity of being and knowledge in other philosophies. For Husscr!. see Levinas 1973; for Merleau-Ponty, see Dillon 1988. For unity in Shrawardi, see Yazdi I Yn. 45. For phenomenological reduction as a praxis. see Depraz 1999. 46. Tymieniecka 2009: xxvi. 47. Cf. the Islamic notion of the intuition of existence as a dialogical process involving the selfdisclosure of God: Chillick 1998; al-Attas 1990. 48. Cf. analogous attention to states and stagt!s of experience in Sufi sm: al-Attas 1990. 49. Tymienieeka 2009: xxviii. 50. Tymieniecka 2004: xiii. 51. Tymieniecka 1998b: viii. 52. See, for example, Tymieniecka 2009. 5::1. Cf. "Of the Divine Wisdom [al-Iukmat al-'ilahiyah] in the Word of Adam," Ibn 'ArabI1975: 8-9. 54. Hanna 2008: 31. 55. Tymieniecka 2004. 56. There are two configurations of self-awareness that need to be considered in this intrapsychic self-exploration, the cgological and the nonegologicaL For more on the distinction between the two, see Louchakova 2006a: 168 n. 238; Zahavi 2005. 57. For a refutation of the value of experience in the judgment of being, see Tymieniecka 2004. 58. For an example of an analysis describing the gestalt of pure being, see Shankara's commentaries differentiating pure "is-l1ess/am-ness/we-ness" from phenomena: Warrier 1983. 59. For a critique of reduction, set! Louchakova-Schwartz 2011 b. 60. For the analogous lInity of intuition and reason, see el-BiLri 2008. 61. For a description of how the process of redllctiol1leads to pure awarCI1CSS, see LouchakovaSchwartz 2011 b, 62. To extend the analogy to metaphysical philosophy, in Rizvi's analysis of Mulla Sadra there is an indication [hat Mulla Sadra's thought constItutes the contents of .\1ulla Sadra's experience: Rizvi 2009. 63. Tymieniecka 2009: 136. 64. For a discussion of the insufficiency of general analysis of the structures of life for penetration into its core operations and an argument that the phenomenological mcthod is the only kind of inquiry that can uncover the works of logic unfolding, see Tymieniecka 2009: 11-23. 65. Tymieniecka 2009: 95. 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