Simon Cunningham

PhD in phenomenology (Michel Henry). Interested in all things Christian, existential, affective, tangible, embodied. Working on @HolyGroundcom

[Simon Cunningham @simoncunningham]

@CaseySpinks Thanks man

[Simon Cunningham @simoncunningham]

My talk "The Genius and his Flaw: Resolving the Existential Monism of Michel Henry" has been accepted for The American Philosophical Association (APA) - Eastern Division conference in Boston, January 13-16 2027. Looking forward to this one!

[Christopher Satoor​​ @aufgehenderRest]

Frits Thaulow (Christiania, 20 October 1847 – Volendam, 5 November 1906) was a Norwegian Impressionist painter

Night in Diepp

[Simon Cunningham @simoncunningham]

@AimeTim Wahl supervised Michel Henry's PhD "The Essence of Manifestation."

[Simon Cunningham @simoncunningham]

@duncanreyburn Thankfully most Christian theology, especially if grounded in Ressourcement, sidesteps this view simply by being into typological Scripture reading

[Simon Cunningham @simoncunningham]

@duncanreyburn Very much agree! I've come to see that the *majority* of discussions happening today around reality, being, and existence are unwittingly spoken within an exteriorized framework, namely where the subject-relation to being is overlooked or trivialized.

[Simon Cunningham @simoncunningham]

@duncanreyburn That's cool that you're reading that! I love him.

[Simon Cunningham @simoncunningham]

@duncanreyburn Off the cuff, my guess is that when he speaks of sensibility as the "a priori essence," he probably more means sensuality. Unsure if in Barbarism he saw the five senses as exteriorized. He does in Incarnation. He did not in 1949's Philosophy and Phenomenology of the Body

[Marc Porter Magee 🎓 @marcportermagee]

The Economist: “We found that graduates in fields more exposed to AI have suffered markedly worse outcomes.”

[The Art Curator @SeekAfterBeauty]

Loch Lomond (1875), by Gustave Doré

[Hov Nazaretyan @HovhanNaz]

a long-abandoned monastery in Armenia's forrested northeast (Deghdzut)

[Joseph Terry @bktheologian]

Friends, my forthcoming book is now available:

Human, All Too Human: Mariology as Theo-Philosophical Anthropology

A work on the analogical structure of the human person, read through Mary, where nature and grace, being and gift, are held in their paradoxical unity.

https://t.co/Cx0F59Gksp

[Simon Cunningham @simoncunningham]

https://t.co/7zDpiX7SZj

[Simon Cunningham @simoncunningham]

A poem by Wendell Berry:

"Dear Ed,
I dreamed that you and I were sent to Hell.
The place we went to was not fiery
or cold, was not Dante’s Hell or Milton’s,
but was, even so, as true a Hell as any.
It was a place unalterably public
in which crowds of people were rushing
in weary frenzy this way and that,
as when classes change in a university
or at quitting time in a city street,
except that this place was wider far
than we could see, and the crowd as large
as the place. In that crowd every one
was alone. Every one was hurrying.
Nobody was sitting down. Nobody
was standing around. All were rushing
so uniformly frantic, that to average them
would have stood them still."

[continues in link below]

[Simon Cunningham @simoncunningham]

@CaseySpinks I saw him live about 15 years ago. I still remember reading his "Letter to Ed." I can still quotes of it by memory: https://t.co/7zDpiX7SZj

[Simon Cunningham @simoncunningham]

@CaseySpinks Congrats Casey so great

[Simon Cunningham @simoncunningham]

You are right that phenomenology must be metaphysical. And you're right that phenomenology contains a rational dependency. But the relationship between the subject and ontology is more relational than this, and we deny this relationship to our peril. Reality doesn't so much exist via strict hierarchy than in interdependency. This is why Conor Cunningham calls for a "metaphysics of the middle, corresponding to Plato's metaxu, in which reality is generated through patterned relations rather than grounded in an ultimate base." https://t.co/a4g4eL4lTr

[Simon Cunningham @simoncunningham]

"Yet this rendering just as much exposes the placeless 'view from nowhere' of the phenomenological turn: [...] it thereby presumes to stand upon the ground of itself that is simply posited in the activity of its reflexive self-activity, that is, its awareness of itself as the animating agent of cognition."

Man, this is a small view of what phenomenology offers. You're conflating ontology and phenomenology. As an ontology, phenomenology would be exactly as dumb as you say - people somehow have an ability to suspend their entire beliefset (impossible) and describe ultimate reality. But this isn't what the method hopes to achieve. It is an extremely powerful tool that acts as a check against presupposition, namely the great temptation of pure ontologists to get high on their own supply, isolated brains in vats creating huge intricate frameworks in their head that have seemingly perfect math, but which have zero connection to reality (e.g., libertarianism, calvinism, etc). The beauty of phenomenology is it remembers that the experience of (i) a world, (ii) a book in the world, and (iii) an ontology created from a book in the world, only all arrive through the structure of the subject. To trivialize or ignore the subject as the fount of experience is dangerous, because it can presume a pure access (to world, book, idea), and the resultant ontology is prone toward vanity (and like any vain assertion, is subsequently prone to dysfunction, violence, or impotence). In contrast, if the subject is remembered, then it grounds ontological discovery.

Thus you get Michel Henry saying that the goal of phenomenology is not "disqualifying ontology […] but on the contrary of setting it on a sure foundation." Incarnation, pg 28