The Baroque Formulation of Consciousness - Bridging the "Unbridgeable Gap" through Indicational Representation
Creative and innovative phenomenological research projects are rare and do not appear frequently among contemporary philosophical and sociological investigations. Fred Kersten's opus Galileo and the Invention' of Opera, A Study in the Phenomenology of Consciousness presents without any doubt a challenging and thrilling research program. He develops an original, innova? tive phenomenological project with roots in Edmund Husserl's phenomenol? ogy, in particular following concepts developed by Alfred Schutz and Aron Gurwitsch; Kersten combines Schutz's theory of "multiple realities" with Gur? witsch's reflections on "formulations of consciousness" in order to analyze the "invention" of Baroque phenomena such as "modern sciences" and "opera" on the basis of a specific Baroque formulation of consciousness. The author himself has a specific, amusing baroque style of scientific analysis and with his bizarre writing style, adorned with flourishes, he transfers the reader into a Baroque world of the arts, music, painting, modern sciences, philosophy and above all, the world of everyday life. Kersten tells us what Galileo has in common with Monteverdi and Kepler and Copernicus with Rossini and Descartes, and why all of them are related to Rilke 's Nikolai Kusmitch and the everyday life of a lonesome Harley-Davidson rider (who is supposedly represented by the author himself).