WHAT IS THE HUMAN EXPERIENCE
The Return. Photo by Serhii Forkosh
THE DIFFICULT PATH
They say that we should learn from our mistakes and thus accumulate experience. If we fail to learn from a mistake, we are likely to repeat it in the future. In other words, experience, as conscious awareness, adjusts our position regarding the situations that arise. For example, if we have taken a forest path and found it difficult to traverse, we learn from this and will seek a more accessible route next time.
The experience of overcoming a problematic path has already changed us. That is why they also say that without trying (without experiencing), you cannot honestly know, meaning that for knowledge, for true knowledge (the acquisition of experience), we must encounter the road itself. In other words, we need to step onto the path, and only by meeting and fully experiencing both expected and unexpected obstacles will we be able to learn the way.
This approach to knowledge is contrasted with a hollow understanding, a kind of theorizing. For example, instead of stepping onto the path, I watch a video about it or read a book about what the author experienced while overcoming the path.
Of course, I would gain some understanding or knowledge of the path and, therefore, some experience, but it would still be incomplete, secondary, and only valid for specific purposes. In any case, such expertise is unlikely to transform our perspective on future situations.
However, we should not think that only physical involvement in something is the criterion for genuine experience. Here, we must recall the usual distinction between internal and external experience. One cannot exist without the other, yet each place’s emphasis is different: in one case, it is on the subjective, and in the other, it is on the objective.
When overcoming a difficult forest path, objective experience shapes the subjective, and this is considered genuine. However, authentic experience can also be the kind that takes place on this side of the world, and in this case, the criteria we apply to external experience do not apply. For example, if we are thinking about a concept and wish to uncover its definition, we are moving in the realm of internal experience (but not arbitrary).
If we think in accordance with the essence of thought itself, we achieve or realize the experience of thought, which is independent and complete, just like the experience of overcoming a forest path. The path of thought and the forest path are two distinct journeys, and problems only arise when one tries to overcome the forest path merely through thought (imagination) or, conversely, when people complain that, by thinking concepts, they are dealing with abstraction because they cannot fully (physically) immerse themselves in the process of thought.
The fact that thought participates in overcoming the forest path and the body participates in thought is not of concern to us here. Thinking is not a detachment from reality but reality itself, just as the bodily experience of the world is not something passive or devoid of spirit.
In this example, we see that each type of experience emphasizes boundaries differently, yet crossing over, overcoming, and returning remain essential elements in the formation of experience.
THE MEETING POINT
A discussion about experience is a discussion about something fundamental, something that defines us but cannot itself be defined. However, experience manifests in different ways. For example, the experience of being in the world is hidden from us, while the experience of navigating space is evident. The experience of making decisions is clear, but the experience of our finiteness is concealed. One could say that experience defines us and provides specific knowledge of this definition. This means we can speak both about the concept of experience and the experience of concept or understanding.
The concept of experience has various meanings. First and foremost, experience is understood as a lived experience, that is, as the fundamental dimension of a person’s presence in the world. However, experience is also spoken of in the more familiar sense, namely, as accumulated knowledge.
We say an experienced person is someone who, having been engaged in a particular activity for a long time, has managed to extract knowledge from that activity — special knowledge that has been confirmed and tested and is, therefore, trustworthy.
We can also make another distinction and divide experience into internal and external. Internal experience refers to the understanding of the inner life of thought, emotion, or feeling, while external experience can be defined as knowledge (or experience) formed through perception and the senses.
A form of external experience, for instance, would be observing natural events. A form of internal expertise, on the other hand, would be the study of one’s memories.
We can briefly conclude by saying that experience is the event of an encounter (between the subject and the object or the subject with themselves). Still, it is also the foundation for this encounter.
Experience is the meeting point, the encounter itself, but also the transformative influence of that encounter. In this sense, experience contains or conceals a fundamental boundary (as is common in transcendental idealism, for example, the boundary between the ideal and the real).
The realization of experience implies that something emerges within it that was not initially present. We can generalize by saying that the core of experience is the act of transcendence, a continual process of moving beyond. A movement «from» something, relying on «something», and striving «toward» something.
However, this movement also implies a return, but not to what once was but to something new that emerged as a result of this departure. The departure and return are necessarily non-identical. In experience, only the differences repeat themselves.
This raises the question: is a connection possible between the subjective variable and the objectively given, between the external and the internal, and between the subject and the object?
OBJECTIVITY OF THE OBJECT
Experience operates or is realized in such a way that it conceals itself, meaning it hides its concept. Not all experience is consciously extracted. The most fundamental experiences may be, in fact, intractable and can only be pointed to. Put differently, experience conceals the conditions of its possibility.
As a result, we are always already within experience — we are already, and primarily, experiencing ourselves, the world, and things, but we are not always aware of our determinability. This happens because, first, experience is constantly being renewed, filling us with new perceptions (which we often miss, relying on them as self-evident). Secondly, we rarely encounter disruptions or breakdowns in the flow of events, which would otherwise indicate the boundaries of a given experience or perception, thereby revealing its constitutive nature for us.
But what if we ask about the conditions under which experience itself becomes possible? How is experience possible? In other words, we would not be concerned with what is already happening within something involving us but rather with how it came to be that we are involved in that something in the first place.
The boundaries of an experience and the conditions of its possibility are interconnected. If boundaries primarily indicate that experience «exists» — that is, the experience itself becomes thematized and emerges from the shadows — then the conditions of its possibility compel us to seek certain causes or foundations that made the experience itself possible.
If we look closely, we can see that everything given to us presents itself as something before us, as something we encounter as this. Before us stands an object. Therefore, when we inquire about experience, we are essentially asking how the object is possible — that is, we are asking about the objectivity of the object. Framing the question this way, we find ourselves in the midst of a web of accompanying questions, each of which can serve as a starting point. Namely, the object is given, so we must ask about the ways in which the object is presented; further, the object is provided as a «what», prompting us to inquire about the relationship between the ways of givenness and the «what» of that givenness.
It is clear that this connection (what Husserl calls correlation) is something fundamental, not derived from experience itself. This correlation is precisely what makes experience possible. Or, to put it another way, in every act of experience, we can find this a priori structure — whether it’s in the experience of thought, perception, or imagination. However, for such a discovery to be possible, we must examine experience, which is always already given and manifested in some way as meaning, which in turn is woven into the natural functioning of that experience at the level where it first emerged — on the level of primary meaning-formation. Access to this level is only possible if we manage to suspend or neutralize the ingrained meanings of the experience being investigated. This would reveal to us the field where experience arises.
It is precisely at this transcendental level of the investigation of experience that it becomes clear that the subjective and the objective, the external and the internal, are derivative rather than fundamental. This means that such distinctions, when it comes to the essence of experience, remain necessarily conditional.
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