Continuing the inquiry

We began with a box whose hidden side could surprise us: the same thing could remain before us while our understanding of it changed. By the end, other people can question the description, change its terms and ask for something to be done. Their correction may leave a familiar object where it was while changing what we understand about our relation to it. These questions stay alive because another encounter can unsettle an account we thought we knew.

You need not leave with an allegiance to phenomenology. You may judge that Husserl identifies a demanding standard of justification without securing the foundation he seeks, or that Merleau-Ponty clarifies situated life without establishing all the philosophical conclusions he draws. You may also find their ambitions more persuasive than those criticisms allow. The useful disagreement is one that can show where an argument succeeds, where a further premise enters and what could count against it.

If you want to return to the primary texts, the source guide identifies the passages on which this study rests. The conclusion of Husserl’s Cartesian Meditations and the discussion following Merleau-Ponty’s address are possible places to begin: in each, an ambition becomes clearer beside the difficulty it must answer. There is no required sequel. Heidegger remains one optional comparison, and another philosophical tradition may give these questions a different shape. Those possibilities can remain open without assigning you another course or prescribing what to read next.

The exhibition committee in lesson 09 can change its description and still owe its visitors a change in the room. A reader can change a philosophical judgment without having settled every question about knowledge or being. In both cases, acknowledging what remains open is compatible with giving reasons, making a decision and remaining answerable to those whom the decision concerns.