4.2 The Method: Looking at the Thing Itself
🇩🇪 Deutsche Version: 4.2 Die Methode: Auf die Sache selbst schauen
Before we begin, a word about method. Philosophy is not merely thinking about thoughts. It is thinking about reality. That sounds banal, but it is not. For many philosophical debates now revolve around nothing but positions, theories, and their history. People ask: What did Kant say? What does Singer think? What does the analytic tradition say? And amid all this, the real question is forgotten: What is actually the case?
In this chapter we take a different path. We try to look directly at the thing. When we ask what a person is, we do not first ask: What do the philosophers say? But rather: What shows itself when we look carefully?
In technical language this method is called “phenomenological”. That simply means: one lets the thing itself have its say, instead of pressing it into a preconceived scheme. One takes seriously what shows itself — even if it does not fit the currently fashionable worldview.
This does not mean that we dispense with the great thinkers. On the contrary: we draw on insights that Aristotle, Thomas Aquinas, Boethius, and many others have already formulated. Not because they said it, but because what they said is true — and we can see it for ourselves.
One more thing is important: some truths cannot be proved like a mathematical theorem. They can only be shown. One can lead someone to the place where the insight becomes possible — but one cannot force it. Whoever closes his eyes will not see the light. But he cannot then claim that it is dark.
Our procedure is therefore: we look at what is. We try to distinguish the essential from the inessential. We test whether our insights are necessary — whether, that is, things cannot be otherwise than as we see them to be. And where we come upon something necessary, we have firm ground under our feet.