The Genesis of Research Problems and their Methodological Implications,

The Genesis of Research Problems and their Methodological Implications. 



One of the things that Meykandar makes abundantly clear and which constitutes his most significant contribution to world philosophy is that as long as the seeing of man remains cloistered to physicalistic and refuses to open itself for the hermeneutic, man will fail to encounter not only the psychical but also the spiritual, the world of the archetypes. He will be lost in the infinities of the spatio-temporal, cannot encounter the totalities and through that reach the metaphysical grounds where live the archetypes - the gods. The man who refuses to see beyond the physicalistic condemns himself to an existence where there is no escaping from births and deaths and hence existence that is essentially nihilistic. 

This methodological concern is not unrelated to the current debates between the positivists and hermeneuts, even though not all hermeneuts can be said to move along Heidegger let alone Meykandar. 

However when we examine the research activities of both these two groups of researchers, it appears that in their conception of the problem itself, the methodology appropriate to solving it is already implicit. The hermeneuts are in fact formulating research methodologies appropriate to solving problems that are distinctive and BEYOND the research of the positivists. 

The positivists have a WAY OF SEEING and hence a way of Being within which numerous problems that are worth researching are NOT SIGHTED and even when sighted gets grossly DISTORTED by their methodological prejudices that sustain their positivistic orientations or ways of seeing and hence Being. We cannot overcome this conflict unless we unearth the GENESIS of research problems themselves and how unknown to the researchers themselves orient them methodologically. 

Otto Apel notes that there is a living engagement in life and all knowledge arises from this engagement, that every theory-formation be it positivistic or hermeneutic is primarily knowledge through reflection. The form of knowledge developed has as its apriori a type of living engagement in the form of a specific cognitive interest. It is this interest, the form and structure of it that determines the methodology (Apel, 1980. pp 49). This notion of cognitive interest, against the background of the existential analytics of Heidegger and Meykandar, appears to be too cognitive. It tends to exclude the emotional and the feeling oriented crises in life that are also instrumental for personal metamophorses, as research worthy. Furthermore such a way of seeing of the genesis of research problems does not seem to explicate the methodology with Temporal Analytics that has emerged as central in the hermeneutic sciences. 

So instead of talking of a living cognitive-anthropological involvement with life, we shall say existential involvement with life and note research problems not arising because of some specific cognitive-interestt but something deeper that we shall call ENIGMAS that emerge and grip the researcher compelling him to undertake a research to liberate himself from that enigma. The enigma that grips and forces him to search, to investigate is not simply a problem, a cognitive dissonance, a psychological maladjustment, a pathological condition and so forth; it is something deeper and for which men are prepared to sacrifice enormously. The enigmas are existential and touches the very heart of his way of Being in the world and which because of it, holds the possibility of changing it, transforming it. 




Dr Loganathan Krishnan @ Ullaganar