world with no knowledge or preconceptions in hand; it is the
experience of astonishment. The "knowing" we have in this experience
stands in stark contrast to the "knowing" we have in our everyday
lives, where we come to the world with theory and "knowledge" in hand,
our minds already made up before we ever engage the world. However, in
the experience of astonishment, our everyday "knowing," when compared
to the "knowing" that we experience in astonishment, is shown up as a
pale epistemological imposter and is reduced to mere opinion by
comparison.
The phenomenological reduction is at once a description and
prescription of a technique that allows one to voluntarily sustain the
awakening force of astonishment so that conceptual cognition can be
carried throughout intentional analysis, thus bringing the "knowing"
of astonishment into our everyday experience. It is by virtue of the
"knowing" perspective generated by the proper performance of the
phenomenological reduction that phenomenology claims to offer such a
radical standpoint on the world phenomenon; indeed, it claims to offer
a perspective that is so radical, it becomes the standard of rigor
whereby every other perspective is judged and by which they are
grounded. In what follows there will be close attention paid to
correctly understanding the rigorous nature of the phenomenological
reduction, the epistemological problem that spawned it, how that
problem is solved by the phenomenological reduction, and the truly
radical nature of the technique itself.
In other words, the phenomenological reduction is properly understood
as a regimen designed to transform a philosopher into a
phenomenologist by virtue of the attainment of a certain perspective
on the world phenomenon. The path to the attainment of this
perspective is a species of meditation, requiring rigorous, persistent
effort and is no mere mental exercise. It is a species of meditation
because, unlike ordinary meditation, which involves only the mind,
this more radical form requires the participation of the entire
individual and initially brings about a radical transformation of the
individual performing it similar to a religious conversion. Husserl
discovered the need for such a regimen once it became clear to him
that the foundation upon which scientific inquiry rested was
compromised by the very framework of science itself and the
psychological assumptions of the scientist; the phenomenological
reduction is the technique whereby the phenomenologist puts him or
herself in a position to provide adequately rigorous grounds for
scientific or any other kind of inquiry.
1. Introduction
The phenomenological reduction is the meditative practice described by
Edmund Husserl, the founder of phenomenology, whereby one, as a
phenomenologist, is able to liberate oneself from the captivation in
which one is held by all that one accepts as being the case. According
to Husserl, once one is liberated from this
captivation-in-an-acceptedness, one is able to view the world as a
world of essences, free from any contamination that presuppositions of
conceptual framework or psyche might contribute. Many have variously
misunderstood the practice of the phenomenological reduction, not in
the sense that what they are doing is wrong, but in the sense that
they do not take what they do far enough; this article will acquaint
the reader with the extent to which Husserl and Fink's original
account intended the performance of the reduction to be taken.
The procedure of the phenomenological reduction emerges in Husserl's
thought as a necessary requirement of the solution he proposed to a
problem that he, himself, had raised with respect to the adequacy of
the foundation upon which scientific inquiry rests. Thus, if we are
ever to achieve an appropriate level of appreciation for the procedure
of the phenomenological reduction, we must begin by acquainting
ourselves with the role that Husserl sees it playing in his overall
project of giving the sciences an adequate epistemological foundation.
This problem of the foundation of scientific inquiry spans Husserl's
entire career from his early to later work; we see its beginning
arguments in Logical Investigations, one of his earlier works, and we
also see it playing a prominent role later in his career as it
dominates one of his latest works, The Crisis of European Sciences and
Transcendental Phenomenology. Accordingly, this article will take as
themes for its major divisions: 1) the historical background of the
phenomenological reduction, 2) Husserl's analysis of the foundation of
scientific inquiry that demonstrates a need for the phenomenological
reduction, and 3) The Structure, Nature, and Performance of the
Phenomenological Reduction.
The section on the historical background of the phenomenological
reduction will serve to show that this procedure does not arrive as "a
bolt out of the blue," as it were; rather, it appears as the logically
required solution to a specific problem. The problem that it addresses
is the problem of the adequacy of the foundations of scientific
inquiry. To illustrate Husserl's misgivings with the foundations of
scientific inquiry, consider the logical relationship between the
axioms of geometry and its theorems and proofs. The point of doing
proofs in geometry is to show that each theorem of geometry is
adequately grounded in the axioms, that which is taken as being
"given" in geometry. In scientific inquiry, what scientists take as
being given is the natural world and the things in that world;
consequently, those things and the world itself are never questioned
but taken to be the logical bedrock upon which the subsequent
scientific investigations are based. In other words, scientists take
the world to be their axioms; and it is this axiomatic status that
Husserl throws into question when he shows that the results of
scientific investigation are a function of both the architectonics of
scientific hypotheses and the psychological coloring of the
investigating scientist. For this reason, Husserl says that if we are
ever to be able to access the pure world so that it can act as a
proper foundation, we must strip away both of these qualifications and
return to the "things themselves" [die Sache selbst]. That is, we must
return to the world as it is before it is contaminated by either the
categories of scientific inquiry or the psychological assumptions of
the scientist. The phenomenological reduction is the technique whereby
this stripping away occurs; and the technique itself has two moments:
the first Husserl names epoché, using the Greek term for abstention,
and the second is referred to as the reduction proper, an inquiring
back into consciousness.
2. Historical Background of the Phenomenological Reduction
a. Husserl's Early Works
Since the main burden of this article lies in the specific area of the
phenomenological reduction, it is not necessary to go into great
detail regarding Husserl's early work beyond noting that it dealt
almost exclusively with mathematics and logic; and that it is the
ground out of which his later thought grew. In his Philosophy of
Arithmetic (1891), Husserl questions the psychological origin of basic
arithmetical concepts such as unity, multiplicity, and number; a
project that he pursues later into the Prolegomena to the Logical
Investigations. In the former work, Husserl gives us an analysis of
the origin of the authentic concept of number, i.e., number to be
conceived intuitionally. It is here that Husserl pays special
attention to the question of the foundation of abstraction for the
basic arithmetical concepts. Thus, we find that Husserl's early
efforts at providing a subjective complement to objective logic led
him to investigate the general a priori of correlation of cognition,
of the sense of cognition and the object of cognition, and led him
also to conceive an absolute science designed as a universal analysis
of constitution in which the origins of objectivity in transcendental
subjectivity are elucidated.
A crucial element of Husserl's early work in the Philosophy of
Arithmetic is his critique of psychologism; it is this critique that
is continued in his Logical Investigations and which sets the stage
for the emancipation of the formal-logical objects and laws from
psychological determinations, as was the then-current view. However,
this liberation was not Husserl's ultimate goal, but merely the
preparatory work for understanding the connection between pure logic
and concrete (psychical, or rather phenomenological) processes of
thinking, between ideal conditions of cognition and temporally
individuated acts of thinking.
b. Husserl's Later Works
It is owing to this goal that Husserl's later work moves quickly away
from the strictly logical and mathematical character of his early work
and takes on the more transcendental character of his later work.
Thus, the trend of Husserl's thought moves from his critique of the
psychologistic account of mathematical and logical objects to
transcendental subjectivity by means of his persistent questioning of
the foundation of knowledge. It is important to note that his
questioning of the foundation of knowledge is not the same as the
quest for certainty that characterizes much of modernist thought—to
which some philosophers believe Husserl's American contemporary, John
Dewey in his The Quest for Certainty, presented successful objections.
Rather, Husserl's quest was not for certainty but for the founding of
the conditions for the possibility of knowledge. That is, he was not
searching for an answer to the question: How do we know the tree is in
the quad? He was seeking an answer to the question: How does it come
about that consciousness can make contact with the tree in the quad?
This is what was meant above when mention was made that Husserl's
ultimate goal was to understand the connection between pure logic and
concrete processes of thinking.
In his dogged pursuit of an answer to this question, Husserl is pushed
from the then current psychological theory to the object; from the
object back to consciousness, and finally all the way back to
transcendental consciousness and the emergence of the "ultimate
question of phenomenology" regarding the phenomenology of
phenomenology. It is this question of the phenomenology of
phenomenology that dominates the inquiry into the nature of the
phenomenological reduction that we find in Sixth Cartesian Mediation
and in the articles that Eugen Fink wrote around 1933 and 1934 in his
attempt to further explain the phenomenological philosophy of Edmund
Husserl. However, what we need is a more finely tuned elucidation of
the epistemological problem that was the initial impetus driving
Husserl's early efforts.
3. The Epistemological Problem the Phenomenological Reduction Aims to Solve
The prevailing epistemology in Husserl's time was a neo-Kantian
position; indeed, it was owing to the criticism brought against
phenomenology by this cadre of philosophers that Eugen Fink was
constrained to publish his very important article, "The
Phenomenological Philosophy of Edmund Husserl and Contemporary
Criticism" in the journal, Kant-Studien; Fink uses the locution
"contemporary criticism" in his title as a euphemism for
"neo-Kantians." Roughly put, the Kantian epistemological model is one
that strives to ameliorate the stark contrast between the position
Descartes put forward and the one brought about by the criticism of
his position in the writings of Locke, Berkeley, and Hume, to name a
few; that is, Kant's position is one that seeks an irenic modulation
between the rationalists and the empiricists. Kant's epistemology,
however conciliatory toward each camp, still leaned heavily on certain
aspects of Descartes' thought; notably, the distinction between
consciousness and object (mind and body), albeit in Kant's terms this
distinction was taken up as a distinction between a noumenal world and
a phenomenal world—a difference that Kant bridged by means of the
categories. The categories themselves were arrived at by asking the
question: what would have to be the case in order for our experience
of the world to be as it is? This question is commonly referred to as
the question determining the conditions for the possibility of
experience and more specifically as the Transcendental Deduction.
Husserl's epistemological insight is that there is no such distinction
between consciousness and object, as had been assumed by Descartes and
subsequently taken up in a slightly different form by Kant. In
Husserl's thought, the terms "noesis" and "noema" do not so much
identify distinct items set over against each other (e.g.
consciousness and object) as much as they provide a linguistic vehicle
to speak about the interpenetration of each by the other as aspects of
a more inclusive whole, the Life-world—understood in its broadest
sense. A key point made by Fink in his article for the neo-Kantians is
that when we think of the world, it is always a world already
containing us thinking it; this fact is overlooked by the Kantian
picture of the world; a picture which assumes a perspective that is
neither consciousness nor world but which sets each over against the
other. For Kant, this imagined perspective is what gives us access to
the distinction between the noumenal and phenomenal worlds;
ironically, it is also this perspective that makes the transcendental
deduction necessary, since the distinction between noumenal and
phenomenal is a state of affairs to which we do not have direct access
and must, of necessity, deduce it.
Husserl constructs his epistemological position by first noticing the
very obvious fact that all consciousness is consciousness of
something; and it is this insight that establishes the relationship
between the noesis and noema. If knowledge is ever to be established
at all, it must be established in consciousness; the epistemological
problem, then, for Husserl is to describe consciousness, since without
consciousness, no knowledge is possible. Or, to put a more Kantian
spin on it, consciousness itself is the condition for the possibility
of knowledge. Furthermore, since we are always already in a world, the
first task of epistemology is to properly and accurately describe what
is already the case; and we can do this only if we begin with a
thorough examination of consciousness itself and carry that
examination all the way back to the "I" in the "I Am." Husserl speaks
of going "back" [ruckfrage] because we must begin where we are; and
where we are includes a sense of self whose identity is temporarily
seated in the sedimented layers of consciousness built up through our
temporal experiences. Hence, if we are to encounter the "I" we must
dig back down through those layers or we must continually present
ourselves with the question: who is "I"? as we consider the great
variety of things with which we have identified. This questioning back
is the method of the phenomenological reduction and aims to lay bare
the "I"—the condition for the possibility of knowledge.
It is important to keep in mind that Husserl's phenomenology did not
arise out of the questioning of an assumption in the same way that
much of the history of thought has progressed; rather, it was
developed, as so many discoveries are, pursuant to a particular
experience, namely, the experience of the world and self that one has
if one determinedly seeks to experience the "I"; and, Hume
notwithstanding, such an experience is possible.
4. The Analysis That Disclosed the Need for the Reduction
Although it is generally conceded that Husserl's thought underwent a
significant transformation from his early interests in logic and
mathematics, as indicated in his "On the Concept of Number" and his
Philosophy of Arithmetic, to his later transcendental interests, as
indicated by The Crisis of European Sciences and Transcendental
Phenomenology, the actual "turning point" is not so generally
accepted. This is due, in part, to the fact that Husserl's work can be
viewed developmentally both according to the chronological appearance
of his work and according to its systematic connections. Thus, the
"development" of his thought can be seen either in terms of his
published work, i.e., chronologically, or in terms of key systematic
methodological concepts. Viewed chronologically, Bernet, Kern, and
Marbach (Bernet, 1989) put the beginning of the split around
1915-1917, the last years Husserl spent at Göttingen, but is only
clearly seen in the early years of Husserl's teaching at Freiburg
(around 1917-1921) (p.1); but considered systematically, they say that
the partition relates to the consistent extension of the research
program of phenomenological philosophy towards a genetic-explanatory
phenomenology as a supplement to the hitherto carried-out
static-descriptive phenomenology (p.1). The terms "static," "genetic,"
and "generative" phenomenology refer to aspects of phenomenology that
come into play after the reduction has been performed; however, they
articulate distinctions that must be kept clearly in mind when
evaluating phenomenological analyses.
In the early phases of his thinking, Husserl was concerned chiefly
with the phenomenological-descriptive analysis of specific types of
experiences and their correlates as well as with describing general
structures of consciousness; he also aimed at the foundation and
elaboration of the corresponding methodology (phenomenological
reflection, reduction, and eidetics) (p.1). Similarly in the later
phases of his thought, there is the attempt by means of genetic
phenomenology to elucidate the concrete unification of experiencing in
the personal ego and in the transcendental community of egos, or
monads, as well as in the constitution of the correlative surrounding
worlds and of the one world common to all (p.2).
For the purposes of tracing the development of the phenomenological
reduction, I take the relevant period of the transformation of
Husserl's thought from early to late to be between 1900 and 1913; the
two volumes of Logical Investigations were published in 1900 and 1901
but it wasn't until the appearance of The Idea of Phenomenology in
1907 that many of the characteristic themes of phenomenology were
explicitly articulated. This little volume was soon followed by the
publication of "Philosophy as Rigorous Science" in 1911; and that by
the publication of Ideas I in 1913, where the most explicit treatment,
up to that time, of the main phenomenological themes is given.
a. The Self-Refutation of the Sciences
In order to grasp the full import of the move that Husserl makes to
phenomenology, we must understand the arguments that motivate that
move; and we get a glimpse of those arguments in his "Philosophy as
Rigorous Science" published in 1911. In that article, Husserl's chief
aim is epistemological and expresses itself first as a critique of the
natural sciences and psychology and then as an adumbration of a
technique that later, in 1913 with the publication of Ideen I, would
be termed the "epoché " or the "reduction."
Husserl begins his critique of the natural sciences by noting certain
absurdities that become evident when such naturalism is adopted in an
effort to "naturalize" consciousness and reason; these absurdities are
both theoretical and practical. Husserl says that when "the
formal-logical principles, the so-called 'laws of thought,' are
interpreted by naturalism as natural laws of thinking," there occurs a
kind of "inevitable" absurdity owing to an inherent inconsistency
involved in the naturalist position. His claim in this article alludes
to the more fully formed argument from volume 1 of his Logical
Investigations (Husserl, 1970), which will be summarized here.
The natural sciences are empirical sciences and, as such, deal only
with empirical facts. Thus, when the formal-logical principles are
subsumed under the "laws of Nature" as "laws of thought," this makes
the "law of thought" just one among many of the empirical laws of
nature. However, Husserl notes that "the only way in which a natural
law can be established and justified, is by induction from the
singular facts of experience" (p.99). Furthermore, induction does not
establish the holding of the law, "only the greater or lesser
probability of its holding; the probability, and not the law, is
justified by insight" (p.99). This means that logical laws must,
without exception, rank as mere probabilities; yet, as he then notes,
"nothing, however, seems plainer than that the laws of 'pure logic'
all have a priori validity" (p.99). That is to say, the laws of 'pure
logic' are established and justified, not by induction, but by
apodictic inner evidence; insight justifies their truth itself. Thus,
as Husserl remarks in "Philosophy as a Rigorous Science" (1965) that
"naturalism refutes itself" (p.80). It is this theoretical absurdity
that leads to a similar absurdity in practice.
The absurdity in practice, says Husserl, becomes apparent when we
notice that the naturalist is "dominated by the purpose of making
scientifically known whatever is genuine truth, the genuinely
beautiful and good; he wants to know how to determine what is its
universal essence and the method by which it is to be obtained in the
particular case" (pp.80-81). Thus, the naturalist believes that
through natural science and through a philosophy based on the same
science the goal has been attained; but, says Husserl, the naturalist
is going on presuppositions; indeed, to the extent that he theorizes
at all, it is just to that extent "that he objectively sets up values
to which value judgments are to correspond, and likewise in setting up
any practical rules according to which each one is to be guided in his
willing and in his conduct" (p.81). It is this state of affairs that
drives Husserl to the observation that the naturalist is "idealist and
objectivist in the way he acts"; since both of these cannot be true at
the same time, the naturalist is involved in an absurdity (p.80).
Husserl claims that the natural scientist is not outwardly aware of
these absurdities owing to the fact that he "naturalizes reason" and,
on this account, is blinded by prejudice. He adds, "One who sees only
empirical science will not be particularly disturbed by absurd
consequences that cannot be proved empirically to contradict facts of
nature" (pp.81-82). This is not to say that Husserl is arguing against
science as such, to the contrary, he says that there is "in all modern
life no more powerfully, more irresistibly progressing idea than that
of science" and that "with regard to its legitimate aims, it is
all-embracing. Looked upon in its ideal perfection, it would be reason
itself, which could have no other authority equal or superior to
itself" (p.82). The problem is that naturalism, which wanted to
establish philosophy both on a basis of strict science and as a strict
science, appears completely discredited along with its method. To this
point in the argument, Husserl has simply shown that the foundation
upon which scientific inquiry rests is self-contradictory and fails to
offer adequate grounding. So, if the natural scientist cannot provide
us with a "rigorous science" then what is needed and to whom can we
look?
b. The Reduction Prefigured
Husserl's idea is that the problems belonging to the domain of a
"strict science," namely, theoretical, axiological, and practical
problems, give us a clue themselves as to the method required for
their solution. He says, "through a clarification of the problems and
through penetration into their pure sense, the methods adequate to
these problems, because demanded by their very essence, must impose
themselves on us" (p.83). It is for this reason that the refutation of
naturalism based on its consequences that he just finished
accomplishes very little for him, what is important is the principiant
critique of the foundations of naturalism; and by this he means that
he wants to direct a critical analysis at the philosophy that believes
"it has definitely attained the rank of an exact science" (p.84). So
what Husserl will be putting to the test is the relative strength of
the term "exact" when it is used in this context. It is not the case
that Husserl thinks that a science of nature does not produce
important results; he thinks it does. The problem, as Husserl sees it,
is that a science of nature is inadequate if it is not ultimately
grounded in a strictly scientific philosophy. Husserl is not
criticizing the results of science (the structural design and dignity
of the house that science built) but only the foundation upon which
those results rest.
With respect to the foundation, Husserl says that all natural science
is naïve in regard to its point of departure because the nature that
it investigates "is for it simply there." In other words, the things
that natural science investigates are its foundation because they mark
the point of departure for natural science. These things are simply
taken for granted uncritically as being there and "it is the aim of
natural science to know these unquestioned data in an objectively
valid, strictly scientific manner" (p.85). The same holds true for
psychology in its domain of consciousness. It is the task of
psychology "to explore this psychic element scientifically within the
psychophysical nexus of nature, to determine it in an objectively
valid way, to discover the laws according to which it develops and
changes, comes into being and disappears" (p.86). Even where
psychology, as an empirical science, concerns itself with
determinations of bare events of consciousness and not with
dependencies that are psychophysical, "those events are thought of,
nevertheless, as belonging to nature, that is, as belonging to human
or brute consciousnesses that for their part have an unquestioned and
co-apprehended connection with human and brute organisms" (p.86).
Thus, he states that "every psychological judgment involves the
existential positing of physical nature, whether expressly or not"
(p.86).
This uncritical acceptance is also reflected in the naïveté that
characterizes natural science since at every place in its procedure it
accepts nature as given and relies upon it when it performs
experiments. Thus, ultimately, every method of experiential science
leads back precisely to experience. But isolated experience is of no
worth to science; rather, "it is in the methodical disposition and
connection of experiences, in the interplay of experience and thought
which has its rigid logical laws, that valid experience is
distinguished from invalid, that each experience is accorded its level
of validity, and that objectively valid knowledge as such, knowledge
of nature, is worked out" (p.87). Although this critique of experience
is satisfactory, says Husserl, as long as we remain within natural
science and think according to its point of view, a completely
different critique of experience is still possible and indispensable.
It is a critique that places in question all experience as such as
well as the sort of thinking proper to empirical science (p.87).
For Husserl, this is a critique that raises questions such as: "how
can experience as consciousness give or contact an object? How can
experiences be mutually legitimated or corrected by means of each
other, and not merely replace each other or confirm each other
subjectively? How can the play of a consciousness whose logic is
empirical make objectively valid statements, valid for things that are
in and for themselves? Why are the playing rules, so to speak, of
consciousness not irrelevant for things?" It is by means of these
questions that Husserl hopes to highlight his major concern of how it
is that natural science can be comprehensible in every case, "to the
extent that it pretends at every step to posit and to know a nature
that is in itself—in itself in opposition to the subjective flow of
consciousness" (p.88). He says that these questions become riddles as
soon as reflection upon them becomes serious and that epistemology has
been the traditional discipline to which these questions were
referred, but epistemology has not answered the call in a manner
"scientifically clear, unanimous, and decisive."
To Husserl, this all points to the absurdity of a theory of knowledge
that is based on any psychological theory of knowledge. He punctuates
this claim by noting that if certain riddles are inherent, in
principle, to natural science, then "it is self-evident that the
solution of these riddles according to premises and conclusions in
principle transcends natural science." He adds that "to expect from
natural science itself the solution of any one of the problems
inherent in it as such—thus inhering through and through, from
beginning to end—or even merely to suppose that it could contribute to
the solution of such a problem any premises whatsoever, is to be
involved in a vicious circle" (pp.88-89).
With this being the case, it becomes clear to Husserl that every
scientific, as well as every pre-scientific, application of nature
"must in principle remain excluded in a theory of knowledge that is to
retain its univocal sense. So, too, must all expressions that imply
thetic existential positings of things in the framework of space,
time, causality, etc. This obviously applies also to all existential
positings with regard to the empirical being of the investigator, of
his psychical faculties, and the like" (p.89). It is here, in this
passage, that we see the formal beginnings of what will later be
termed the "epoché " and "reduction" in Ideen I.
Husserl is advocating a theory of knowledge that will investigate the
problems of the relationship between consciousness and being in a way
that excludes, not only the "thetic existential positings of things in
the framework of space, time, causality, etc.," but also the
"existential positings" and "psychical faculties" of the investigator.
In other words, he wants to separate the subject matter he is
investigating from both the theoretical framework of science and the
coloring with which any investigator might qualify it. But to do so,
knowledge theory can have before its eyes "only being as the correlate
of consciousness: as perceived, remembered, expected, represented
pictorially, imagined, identified, distinguished, believed, opined,
evaluated, etc." And for Husserl, this means that the investigation
must be directed "toward a scientific essential knowledge of
consciousness, toward that which consciousness itself 'is' according
to its essence in all its distinguishable forms" (p.89). Husserl also
notes that the investigation must also be directed toward "what
consciousness 'means,' as well as toward the different ways in
which—in accord with the essence of the aforementioned forms—it
intends the objective, now clearly, now obscurely, now by presenting
or by presentifying, now symbolically or pictorially, now simply, now
mediated in thought, now in this or that mode of attention, and so in
countless other forms, and how ultimately it 'demonstrates' the
objective as that which is 'validly,' 'really'" (p.89).
To summarize, what Husserl wants to do is to provide an unshakable
ground for science, so as to make it "rigorous" and "exact." He
dismisses the efforts of both science and psychology to provide such a
ground owing to the fact that the "riddles" inherent in each
necessarily put the solution outside of their reach. He also notes
that the traditional discipline of epistemology has failed to do this
and suggests that what is needed is an investigation that is directed
toward "a scientific essential knowledge of consciousness, toward that
which consciousness itself 'is' according to its essence in all its
distinguishable forms." Furthermore, this can only be done if we
separate the matter in question from the qualifications imposed on it
by either the theoretical framework of science or the existential
"positings" of the investigator. In other words, we must return to the
matters in question, as they are themselves; and the procedure whereby
this is accomplished is phenomenology, specifically, the
phenomenological reduction.
5. The Structure, Nature and Performance of the Phenomenological Reduction
a. The Structure of the Phenomenological Reduction
i. The Two Moments of the Phenomenological Reduction
What actually occurs when one undertakes to perform the reduction can
be discerned by giving careful attention to the things Husserl and
Fink have said about it; but let me first address some terminological
concerns regarding two key concepts. In Sixth Cartesian Meditation
(Fink, 1995), Fink tells us "epoché and the action of the reduction
proper are the two internal basic moments of the phenomenological
reduction, mutually required and mutually conditioned" (p.41). This
passage alerts us to the fact that the locution, phenomenological
reduction, denotes two separate "moments," each of which requires and
conditions the other. Thus, in speaking of "the reduction" one needs
to be careful to specify whether it is the reduction proper, which is
only one of the two moments, that is meant, or whether one means the
entire operation of the phenomenological reduction.
Let me also draw attention to the term "moments" here because, in
order to get an accurate conception and understanding of the
phenomenological reduction, we must see that it is not done it two
"steps." The moments are internal logical moments and do not refer to
two "steps" that one might take to conclude the procedure as one might
do, for example, in waxing a floor: where the first step is to strip
off the old wax and the second step is to apply the new wax; steps
imply a temporal individuation that is not true of the moments of the
phenomenological reduction. Husserl's term, epoché, the negative move
whereby we bracket the world, is not a "step" that we do "first" in an
effort to prepare ourselves for the later "step," reduction proper;
rather, the bracketing and the move whereby we drive the self back
upon itself, the reduction proper, occur together.
There were many during his day who misunderstood what Husserl and Fink
were trying to communicate; and I think part of what might have
contributed to this misunderstanding is that Husserl's readers thought
that the reduction was a "two-step" process conducted wholly within
the realm of the mind or imagination, not requiring any other kind of
bodily participation.
1) The Epoché
Husserl's insight is that we live our lives in what he terms a
"captivation-in-an-acceptedness;" that is to say, we live our lives in
an unquestioning sort of way by being wholly taken up in the unbroken
belief-performance of our customary life in the world. We take for
granted our bodies, the culture, gravity, our everyday language, logic
and a myriad other facets of our existence. All of this together is
present to every individual in every moment and makes up what Fink
terms "human immanence"; everyone accepts it and this acceptance is
what keeps us in captivity. The epoché is a procedure whereby we no
longer accept it. Hence, Fink notes in Sixth Cartesian Meditation:
"This self consciousness develops in that the onlooker that comes to
himself in the epoché reduces 'bracketed' human immanence by explicit
inquiry back behind the acceptednesses in self-apperception that hold
regarding humanness, that is, regarding one's belonging to the world;
and thus he lays bare transcendental experiential life and the
transcendental having of the world" (p.40). Husserl has referred to
this variously as "bracketing" or "putting out of action" but it boils
down to the same thing, we must somehow come to see ourselves as no
longer of this world, where "this world" means to capture all that we
currently accept.
At this point it may prove prudent to head off some possible
misunderstandings with respect to the epoché. Perhaps the most
frequent error made with respect to the epoché is made in regards to
its role in the abstention of belief in the world. Here it is
important to realize two things: the first is that withdrawal of
belief in the world is not a denial of the world. It should not be
considered that the abstention of belief in the world's existence is
the same as the denial of its existence; indeed, the whole point of
the epoché is that it is neither an affirmation nor a denial in the
existence of the world. In fact, says Fink, "the misunderstanding that
takes the phenomenological epoché to be a straightforwardly thematic
abstention from belief (instead of understanding it as
transcendentally reflective!) not only has the consequence that we
believe we have to fear the loss of the thematic field, but is also
intimately connected with a misunderstanding of the reductive return
to constituting consciousness" (p.43). The second thing has to do with
who it is that is doing the abstaining and this directly concerns the
moment of the reduction proper.
2) The Reduction Proper
The second moment of the phenomenological reduction is what Fink terms
the "reduction proper;" he says, "under the concept of 'action of
reduction proper' we can understand all the transcendental insights in
which we blast open captivation-in-an-acceptedness and first recognize
the acceptedness as an acceptedness in the first place" (p.41). If the
epoché is the name for whatever method we use to free ourselves from
the captivity of the unquestioned acceptance of the everyday world,
then the reduction is the recognition of that acceptance as an
acceptance. Fink adds, "abstention from belief can only be radical and
universal when that which falls under disconnection by the epoché
comes to be clearly seen precisely as a belief-construct, as an
acceptedness." It is the seeing of the acceptance as an acceptance
that is the indication of having achieved a transcendental insight; it
is transcendental precisely because it is an insight from outside the
acceptedness that is holding us captive. It should be kept in mind
that the "seeing" to which Fink refers is not a "knowing that" we live
in captivation-in-an-acceptedness, since this can be achieved in the
here and now by simply believing that Fink is telling the truth; the
kind of "seeing" to which Fink refers is rather more like the kind of
seeing that occurs when one discovers that the mud on the carpet was
put there by oneself and not by another, as was first suspected.
Thus, as Fink points out, it is through the reductive insight into the
transcendental being-sense of the world as "acceptedness" that "the
radicality of the phenomenological epoché first becomes possible;" but
"on the other hand, the reduction consistently performed and
maintained, first gives methodic certainty to the reductive regress"
(p.41). Taken together, the epoché and the reduction proper comprise
the technique referred to as the phenomenological reduction; since
these two moments cannot occur independently, it is easy to see how
the single term, "reduction," can come to be the term of preference to
denote the whole of the phenomenological reduction.
Fink also brings out a misunderstanding relating to the reduction
proper, which is that it is taken as a species of speculation: "hand
in hand with this misunderstanding of the epoché goes a falsification
of the sense of the action of reduction proper (the move back behind
the self-objectivation of transcendental subjectivity). The latter is
rejected as speculative construction, for instance when one says: in
actuality the phenomenologist has no other theme than human
inwardness" (p.47). To think that there is such reinterpretation or
speculation is to miss the point of the reduction proper, that is, it
is to miss the fact that what it does is interrogate man and the world
and makes them the theme of a transcendental clarification—it is
precisely the world phenomenon, or "being", which is bracketed.
According to Fink and Husserl, the phenomenological reduction consists
in these two "moments" of epoché and reduction proper; epoché is the
"moment" in which we abandon the acceptedness of the world that holds
us captive and the reduction proper indicates the "moment" in which we
come to the transcendental insight that the acceptedness of the world
is an acceptedness and not an absolute. The structure of the
phenomenological reduction has belonging to it the human I standing in
the natural attitude, the transcendental constituting I, and the
transcendental phenomenologizing I, also called the onlooker or
spectator. Fink says that "the reducing I is the phenomenological
onlooker. This means he is, first, the one practicing the epoché and
then the one who reduces, in the strict sense" (p.39).
Thus, it is by means of the epoché and reduction proper that the human
I becomes distinguished from the constituting I; it is by abandoning
our acceptance of the world that we are enabled to see it as
captivating and hold it as a theme. It is from this perspective that
the phenomenologist is able to see the world without the framework of
science or the psychological assumptions of the individual.
b. The Nature of the Phenomenological Reduction
The phenomenological reduction is a radical, rigorous, and
transformative meditative technique. To illustrate this, let me turn
to comments that Fink makes in his "What Does the Phenomenology of
Edmund Husserl Want to Accomplish: The Phenomenological Idea of Laying
a Ground" (Fink, 1966/1972; German/English).
i. Self-Meditation Radicalized
The most important point to be made in reference to the nature of the
phenomenological reduction is that it is a meditative technique and
not a mere mental or imaginative technique. Furthermore, it is a
self-meditation that has been radicalized. Fink introduces this in his
discussion of laying a ground. He says that "the laying-of-a-ground of
a philosophy is the original beginning of the philosopher himself, not
with and for others but for himself alone; it is the disclosing of the
ground which is capable of bearing the totality of a philosophical
interpretation of the world" (p.161/11). In this passage we can
plainly see that the ground of which Fink is speaking is not
considered to be propositions, ideas, or anything else of that sort;
rather the ground is precisely the philosopher him or herself. Thus,
Fink says, "it is a fateful error to suppose that the principles, in
accordance with which a ground-laying of philosophy is to proceed,
would be present—transported, as it were, from the conflict of
philosophers—as a normative ideal prior to and outside of philosophy"
(p.161/11). Hence, regardless of "how such a ground-laying is carried
out—be it as a return to the concealed, a priori law-giving of reason,
or be it as a progression towards essentials, and the like—the
meditation [die Besinnung], in which such a ground-laying is carried
out, is always the first, fundamental decision of a philosophizing"
(p.161/11).
Unless the term "meditation," as Fink uses it in this context, springs
out at one when reading it, the heart of this passage is likely to be
misunderstood. Here there is a clear connection being established
between some meditative practice [Besinnung] and the laying of a
ground for philosophy. It is important to draw attention to this
feature since we typically think of axioms or assumptions when we
assay to discern the foundation of a philosophy; but Fink is making a
clear break with that practice, holding instead that the first,
fundamental decision of a philosophizing is "the meditation, in which
a ground-laying is carried out" ["immer ist die Besinnung, in der sich
eine solche Grundlegung vollzieht, die erste grundsätzliche
Entscheidung eines Philosophierens."] (p.162/11).
Fink adds to this by noting that "the commencement of the idea of
laying-a-ground, which determines a philosophy, is always already the
implicit (and perhaps only obscurely conscious) fore-grasp upon the
system. Thus in embryonic form, the idea of the system is sketched out
in the idea of laying-a-ground" (p.162/11). In other words, the idea
of the ground-laying works itself out in whatever philosophy it
grounds; the philosophy is itself pre-figured in the ground-laying and
reflects it.
He explains this pre-figuring further by saying that, in the case of
the philosophy of Husserl, the idea of the ground-laying working
itself out "can, at first, be made understandable from the pathos of
phenomenology, that is, from the deportment of the human existence
lying at its ground" (p.162/11). Fink allows that this pathos is "in
no way a specifically 'phenomenological' one, but is, rather, the
constant pathos of every philosophy which, when taken seriously in a
particular, inexorable way, must lead to phenomenology itself"
(p.162/11). Indeed, this pathos is "nothing other than the world-wide
storm of the passion of thinking which, extending out into the
totality of entities and grasping it, subjects it to the spirit"
(p.163/11). Fink is saying here that the will, as the pathos of
philosophy, is "resolved to understand the world out of the spirit
[die Welt aus dem Geist zu verstehen]," which does not mean the "naïve
belief in a pre-given and present-at-hand 'spiritual sense' of the
world, but solely the willingness to bring the spirit first to its
realization precisely through the knowledge of the All of entities"
(p.163/12).
Although this passage would seem to indicate the crassest
"intellectualism," since it seems to be saying that knowledge is the
main operative process, Fink is insistent that neither the
"'rationalistically' claimed self-certainty of the spirit" (here read
Descartes), nor "the fascination with chaos" (read Nietzsche) that
"all too easily is transformed into a defeatism of reason," captures
what he means. Rather, he says, "precisely in the face of chaos,
standing fast against it, the philosopher ventures the spiritual
conquering of the entity; he raises the claim of a radical and
universal knowledge of the world" (p.164/12). If we inquire as to how
it is possible that spirit can maintain itself and its claim, or
whether it has itself already become a "ground experience"; whether we
"Know what authentically is 'spirit'" or what the true power of
philosophizing existence is, Fink tells us: "Understanding itself in
the passion of thinking, the pathos of the one who is philosophizing
is cast back upon itself: it radicalizes itself into self-meditation
[Selbstbesinnung], as into the way in which the spirit [der Geist]
experiences itself. The phenomenological philosophy of Husserl lives
in the pathos of that self-realization of the spirit [der Geist] which
takes place in self-meditation" (p.164/13). Indeed, "the idea of the
ground-laying of philosophy peculiar to phenomenology is the idea of
the pure and persistent self meditation [der reinen und konsequenten
Selbstbesinnung]" (p.164/13).
Although, as Fink notes, in the subjective mode of self-meditation,
every philosophy carries out the business of laying a ground;
"phenomenology is also materially grounded exclusively on
self-meditation [gründet auch sachlich ausschließlich auf
Selbstbesinnung]" (p.164/13). What Fink means here by using the term
"exclusively" is that "from the very beginning phenomenology foregoes
ever abandoning the deportment of pure self-meditation in favor of an
objective deportment. It wants to be grounded solely upon the results
of a radical and persistent self-meditation and to establish upon them
the entirety of its philosophical system" (p. 164/13). Hence, for
phenomenology, self-meditation is not a "mere subjective method for
disclosing, as the ground and basis of the philosophical
interpretation of the world, an objectivity sketched out in our
spirit, for example, the objective essence of reason; rather it
re-delineates the sole fundamental realm in which the philosophical
problem of the world can arise" (p.164/13). Thus, in phenomenology
"the concept of 'ground,' in return to which the philosophical
grasping of the world realizes itself, has lost its usual 'objective'
sense precisely through the persistent adherence to self-meditation,
carried out with a certain radicalism of 'purity,' as the exclusive
thematic source of philosophy" (p.165/13). Fink adds: "The ground,
posited in the phenomenological idea of laying-a-ground, is the 'self'
which uncovers itself only in pure self-meditation" (p.165/13-14).
The general logical form of this argument will reappear in 1954 with
the publishing of The Crisis of European Sciences and Transcendental
Phenomenology. There the argument is made that the sciences not only
take the everyday life-world for granted, the everyday life-world is
actually the ground for all that the sciences do because it is from
there that they take their starting point. In a similar move of
reasoning, the argument in this article is aimed at drawing attention
to the obvious fact that the philosopher is always the real ground for
any philosophy; and that if we wish, as it were, to ground that
ground, we must embark on a procedure of self-meditation—indeed, if
rigor is to be maintained, we are required to undertake such a course
of action.
Of course, a number of questions immediately surround the suggestion
of "self-meditation," all of which derive from "the naïve and
familiar, pre-given concept of 'self-meditation'"; but it is precisely
this concept that must be transformed, says Fink: "the dimension of
philosophy can be attained only in the radical change of
self-meditation from the indeterminateness of the preliminary, still
unclarified concept into the determined phenomenological setting"
(p.165/14). Thus, the former questions are now transformed into
questions such as: How can this change be accomplished, and what must
the nature of self-meditation be, such that, precisely in the
thematization of the self, the question of the totality of entities is
included and traced out in its fundamental solution? Fink's response
is that to this there is only one answer: "the transformation of the
idea of the common self-meditation happens eo ipso in an extremely
intensified taking of self-meditation seriously. The seriousness
demanded here wants nothing less than to expose the spirit to a
ground-experience which will bring it back into the power of the
essence that is purely proper to it. In the self-meditation
radicalized into the 'phenomenological reduction,' the spirit should
accomplish a movement towards itself, should come unto itself"
(p.165/14). But in what sense is this self-meditation radical?
ii. Radical, Rigorous, and Transformative
Some today have misunderstood the phenomenological reduction and it is
probable that this failure to grasp what Husserl has discovered is
partly owing to the radical nature of Husserl's project being
completely missed. Fink pieces together the very analysis of the
reduction that is wanted here if we are ever to disabuse ourselves of
the view that the reduction is nothing more than a mere incantation or
formal condition—a mental exercise.
This type of misunderstanding of the nature of phenomenology is not
something new; Fink himself made explicit reference to its breadth,
even as late as 1934 when this article was originally published,
saying: "The contemporary judgment of the phenomenological philosophy
of Husserl fails, almost without exception, to recognize its true
meaning" (Accomplish, p. 6). He then cites examples, noting that
"Husserl is judged, admired and reproached sometimes as an eidetician
and logician, at other times as a theoretician of knowledge, on the
one hand, as an ontologist giving word to the 'matters themselves,'
and, on the other hand, as an 'Idealist.' Thereby, every such
Interpretation is capable, with moderate violence, of 'proving' itself
from his writings. The authentic and central meaning of Edmund
Husserl's philosophy is today still unknown" (p. 6). Fink attributes
this lack of authentic understanding, not to a lack of willingness to
understand on the part of the community of readers, but, to the
essence of phenomenology itself. So, the important question is: what
is it about the essence of phenomenology that makes it so difficult
for the devotee to come away with an authentic understanding of it?
According to Fink, we find the answer to this question by considering
the fact that the appropriation of the true meaning of phenomenology
"cannot at all come about within the horizon of our natural deportment
of knowledge. Access to phenomenology demands a radical reversal of
our total existence reaching into our depths, a change of every
pre-scientifically-immediate comportment to world and things as well
as of the disposition of our life lying at the basis of all scientific
and traditionally-philosophical attitudes of knowledge" (p. 6).
Nearly everyone, who has had even a casual acquaintance with Husserl's
writings, has read something akin to this passage somewhere, claiming
the radicality of what phenomenology attempts. Husserl is continually
drawing our attention to the radical nature of phenomenology and how
it affects all of our scientific knowledge and understanding; indeed,
emphasizing how it grounds that very knowledge and understanding. The
important thing to notice in regards to such passages, however, is
that the misunderstanding of phenomenology arises precisely because
the notions of the term "radical," which are employed by the would-be
readers as a hermeneutical guide in their efforts to come to an
authentic appreciation of the practice of phenomenology, fail to
capture all that Husserl intends by his use of it—and this in spite of
the fact that he, time and again, tells us that his use of the term
"radical" is new.
Consider, for instance, Husserl's introduction to the Cartesian
Meditations where he expounds on the need for a "radical new
beginning" of philosophy saying, "to renew with greater intensity the
radicalness of their spirit, the radicalness of self-responsibility,
to make that radicalness true for the first time by enhancing it to
the last degree…" (Cartesian Meditations, p. 6). Husserl's emphatic
demand that the radicalness become true "for the first time" indicates
that his sense of "radical" is much more radical than might ordinarily
be thought. Again, in Sixth Cartesian Meditation we read, "This is the
problem of the proper methodological character of the phenomenological
fore-knowledge that first makes it possible to pose the radical
questions—in a new sense of 'radical'—, to provide the motive for
performing the phenomenological reduction" (Sixth, p. 36). Here we see
an explicit mention of the fact that the term "radical" is being
employed in a "new" sense.
Thus, when some of misunderstand the reduction, they, most probably,
are not taking seriously Husserl's claim of radicality, i.e., they
have not understood exactly how extreme Husserl's sense of the term
is. If they, however, take a close look at Fink's development and
analysis of phenomenology in this article and by pay close attention
to the intensity of the language he uses in relation to it, we can
remedy this deficiency quite easily; but not without also considering
the rigor required to perform the phenomenological reduction.
One important feature of the way Fink sets up his discussion of the
ground and his illustration of the rigor required in the performance
of the phenomenological reduction is his dramatic use of Plato's
allegory of the cave. He says, "the violence, tension and struggle of
the accomplishment of philosophizing symbolized in this allegory also
determines the phenomenological philosophy of Edmund Husserl"
(Accomplish, p. 160/9). If there is any doubt as to how we should
understand the terms "violence" and "struggle," as he uses them in
this context, Fink dispatches it immediately with the following: "The
philosophical 'unchaining,' the tearing oneself free from the power of
one's naïve submission to the world, the stepping-forth from out of
that familiarity with entities which always provides us with security,
in one word, the phenomenological 'epoché,' is anything but a
noncommittal, 'merely' theoretical, intellectual act; it is rather a
spiritual movement of one's self encompassing the entire man and, as
an attack upon the 'state-of-motionlessness' supporting us in our
depths, the pain of a fundamental transformation down to our roots"
(p. 160-1/9). It should be clear that Fink's use of terms such as
"violence," "struggle," "unchaining," "pain," and "fundamental
transformation" indicate a much more rigorous project than armchair
philosophy has been wont to allow up to this point. But what is it
that makes it so rigorous; what is it that we do when we perform the
phenomenological reduction?
We get a preliminary description of what is required from Fink: "Our
era can really attain to Husserl's philosophy, which down to today is
still unknown and ungrasped, only by ascending out of the cave of
world-constraint, by passing through the pain of self-releasement—and
not through 'critiques' that are thoroughly bound to the naïve
understanding of the world, enslaved to the natural thought-habits and
entangled in the pre-constituted word-meanings of the everyday and
scientific language" (p. 161/10). Here, again, we find familiar
language; language that might have been encountered in any number of
Husserl's other writings, but what is of interest to us in this
passage is the picture of what it is we are "ascending out of." In
this regard, it is helpful to recall the phrase used in Sixth
Cartesian Meditation to describe the same thing, namely,
"captivation-in-an-acceptedness." The situation Fink is describing is
this: the lives that we live in our everyday world are lived in toto
with that world, i.e., the world, as we understand it, is part of what
makes us who we think we are; and, conversely, the world is only what
it is (what we think it is) by virtue of having us in it, because when
we think of the totality of the world, we must remember that it is a
totality already containing us thinking it. Hence, we (the world and
ourselves) hold each other mutually captive by virtue of what we
accept—the acceptednesses—to be true. This reflexive containment is
part of what Fink means when he says, "To know the world by returning
to a 'transcendence' which once again contains the world within it
signifies the realization of a transcendental knowledge of the world.
This is the sole sense in which phenomenology is to be considered as a
'transcendental philosophy'" (Criticism, p. 100).
With this statement we finally arrive at the core of what Fink means
to communicate; the phenomenological reduction is self-meditation
radicalized. On its face, his statement may seem to involve the
presupposition that the self is already estranged from its own
essence; however, as Fink points out, "phenomenology does not begin
with a 'presupposition'; rather, by an extreme enhancement and
transformation of the natural self-meditation, it leads to the
ground-experience which opens-up not only the concealed-authentic
essence of the spirit, but also the authentic sense of the natural
sphere from out of which self-meditation comes forth" (Accomplish, p.
166/14-15). The ground-experience, furthermore, can succeed "only
when, with the most extreme sharpness and consequence, every naïve
claiming of the mundane-ontological self-understanding is cut off,
when the spirit is forced back upon itself to Interpret itself purely
as that 'self' which is the bearer and accomplisher of the valuation
of every natural 'self-understanding'" (p. 169/17-18). This view is
already made explicit in direct connection with the phenomenological
onlooker in Fink's discussion in Sixth Cartesian Meditation (pp.
39-40). The meditation does not bring the reducing "I" into being; the
reducing "I" is disclosed once the shrouding cover of human being is
removed. That is, by un-humanizing ourselves we discover the reducing
"I"—the phenomenological onlooker who is the one practicing the
epoché.
Now we can more clearly grasp the meaning of Fink's statement; when he
speaks of spirit being "forced back upon itself," the "itself" is the
phenomenological onlooker—spirit; and the radicalization of
self-meditation is the procedure whereby we discover what Husserl
earlier referred to as "I am, this life is." This is "radicalization"
precisely because it is to be done without any reference to the
mundane. Let me explain, the world is familiarly and horizonally
pre-given to us in its totality; furthermore, we are pre-given in it.
So, the mundane-ontological self-interpretedness of the spirit is a
moment in the totality of the pre-givenness of the world. Hence, if we
use any element of the mundane-ontological interpretedness of the
world, we have not exercised a "radical" shift. In order for the shift
to be truly radical in Husserl's sense, no element of the mundane can
enter into either the motivation for self-meditation or into the
ground of it—in the sense of an understanding of the essence of spirit
prior to the ground-experience that brings spirit to itself. What we
want to accomplish is a radical shift in which the spirit
(phenomenological onlooker) is forced back upon itself to interpret
itself purely as that "self" that is the bearer (as the human ego) and
accomplisher (transcendental constituting ego) of the valuation of the
entirety of the mundane-ontological self-interpretedness.
The radical nature of the phenomenological reduction seems to have
been greatly underdetermined by some and that we can only get a truly
accurate picture of what Husserl means by taking seriously his claim
that, not only is the reduction radical, but it is radical in a "new"
sense of that term; this "new" radicality is linked directly to
self-meditation that has been radicalized—radicalized, that is,
insofar as it is a self-meditation that is "forced back upon itself to
Interpret itself purely as that 'self' which is the bearer and
accomplisher of the valuation of every natural 'self-understanding.'"
One practical way to grasp what it means for the self to be "forced
back upon itself to interpret itself purely as that 'self' which is
the bearer and accomplisher of the valuation of every natural
'self-understanding,'" is to understand this 'self' as the "I" in "I
am." Let us now take a closer look at exactly how this technique is
performed.
c. The Performance of the Phenomenological Reduction
Husserl criticizes scientific inquiry on the grounds that it does not
have a philosophically rigorous foundation. The reason it does not
have a philosophically rigorous foundation is because it has failed to
take into consideration the fact that both the framework of its own
inquiry (that is, the assumptions of time, space, causality, etc.) and
the psychological assumptions of the individual scientist act to color
its findings. Since there has to be a way that consciousness can
contact the objective world, then the rigorous philosophical grounding
that is wanted must be disclosed in this relationship. Hence, what is
needed is a way to examine consciousness as it is in itself, free from
the scientific framework and psychological assumptions. This procedure
is the phenomenological reduction and the term "reduction" is a term
that Husserl uses to indicate a reflective inquiring back into
consciousness; it is an interrogation conducted by consciousness into
itself. In the idiom of our own everyday parlance, we might phrase
this inquiry as an exercise in determining who the "I" is whenever we
say "I AM." Indeed, the path that we naturally follow in seeking an
answer to this question leads precisely to the kind of interrogation
of the self by the self that Husserl and Fink both claim to be
ingredient in the performance of the reduction.
i. Self-Meditation
Phrases such as "resolved to understand the world out of the spirit,"
"spiritual movement," "religious conversion," "fundamental
transformation," "ground experience," "un-humanize," and "meditation"
are all leading clues as to how this technique should be understood
and performed. We know that the technique is similar to the ordinary
self-meditation, only radicalized; we know that it requires strenuous
effort and, once completed, brings a transformation similar to a
religious conversion. We also know that in the process we are
"un-humanized" yet have the "entire man" encompassed. These leading
clues not only direct our steps in the performance of the technique,
but also give us criteria by which to judge our attempts. For
instance, if we think we have performed the reduction, then we should
feel as though we have experienced a religious transformation; if we
do not feel that way, then chances are our technique was faulty and we
did not perform it after all.
If we are to build up a picture of this technique we must begin by
assuming that Husserl and Fink have an authentic discovery that they
are trying to communicate and that their choice of terms to describe
this experience is not careless. The title of Fink's article gives us
the framework we need to complete this task. He tells us right away
that he is interested in the idea of laying a ground. Laying a ground
is another way of saying that preparation is being made; indeed, the
ground that is laid is preparing the way for the phenomenological
philosophy of Edmund Husserl; and the ground in question is the
philosopher. Fink is telling us that the philosopher is the ground for
phenomenology and that the philosopher, as ground, needs preparation.
What is it that prepares the philosopher to be the ground for
phenomenology? It is the phenomenological reduction. The
phenomenological reduction prepares the philosopher to be a
phenomenologist in the same way that the experience associated with
religious conversion prepares the devotee to live the religious life.
Husserl says in the Crisis: "the total phenomenological attitude and
the epoché belonging to it are destined in essence to effect…a
complete personal transformation, comparable in the beginning to a
religious conversion, which then, however, over and above this, bears
within itself the significance of the greatest existential
transformation which is assigned as a task to mankind as such"
(p.137).
The phenomenological reduction is properly understood as a regimen
designed to transform a philosopher into a phenomenologist by virtue
of the attainment of a certain perspective on the world phenomenon.
The path to the attainment of this perspective is a species of
meditation, requiring rigorous and persistent effort. It is a species
of meditation because, unlike ordinary meditation, which involves only
the mind, this more radical form requires the participation of the
entire individual, including, as Fink says, "the pathos of the one who
is philosophizing." However, because it is a species of meditation,
one can assume the basic starting point of stilling the body, mind,
and emotions while sitting in a comfortable position, having made
provisions not to be disturbed. What is aimed at with these outward
preparations is the goal of taking as much of the world "out of play"
as possible, leaving only the meditative task to occupy one's
attention.
Once settled in this comfort, the "inquiring back" into consciousness
may begin; it is the having of the self as the only object of
meditation that makes this a self-meditation. Since what we are after
is a self-meditation, the focus of attention is on the self and the
radicalization of this meditation consists in one relentlessly pushing
back and forcing the self onto itself. This can be done by repeatedly
affirming, not merely saying, "I am" to oneself while trying to
experience or "catch" the "I" in the present instead of remembering
it. In the attempt to experience the "I" in the present, one will be
forced to feel the I-ness of it; this is why Fink says the performance
of the technique encompasses the "entire man" and speaks of the
"pathos of the one who is philosophizing."
In the course of this practice, one will become aware of the three
"I"s: the human ego, the constituting ego, and the onlooker, or
spectator. It is unlikely that much progress will be made on the first
attempt; however, each try makes the return easier until there will
come a day when you feel your consciousness rising (or yourself
sinking) and the brightness of the world around you seems to be
increasing. At that point you will know "I AM" and your perspective on
the world will be the one that Husserl has promised—you will be a
phenomenologist and will never be the same again. Indeed, Fink says
that "the phenomenological 'epoché,' is anything but a noncommittal,
'merely' theoretical, intellectual act; it is rather a spiritual
[geistig] movement of one's self encompassing the entire man and, as
an attack upon the 'state-of-motionlessness' supporting us in our
depths, the pain of a fundamental transformation down to our roots"
(Accomplish, p. 9). Adding that in the epoché "the transcendental
tendency that awakens in man and drives him to inhibit all
acceptednesses nullifies man himself; man un-humanizes [entmenscht]
himself" (Sixth, 40). It should be clear from these passages that
whatever is involved in the epoché, it is certainly no mere mental
exercise; and if we take Fink and Husserl at their word, it is a
"spiritual movement of one's self encompassing the entire man," which
would indicate a far more radical effort than seems indicated by some
who treat the phenomenological reduction as something no more
strenuous than exercising the imagination or reciting an incantation.
6. How the Reduction Solves the Epistemological Problem
a. The Problem of Constitution
I have already noted that in his Philosophy of Arithmetic Husserl
found serious fault with psychologism in his efforts to emancipate
ideal objects from psychology and demonstrate their independence. With
this critique, however, came the following question: How do the ideal
objects come to be given? This is simply the question concerning the
correlation of subject and object noted above with respect to the tree
and the quad. In his "The Decisive Phases in the Development of
Husserl's Philosophy," Walter Biemel addresses this very concern and
brings his considerable familiarity with Husserl's works to bear upon
it. He offers the following quotation from the Nachlass (F I 36,
B1.19a f.) for consideration: "When it is made evident that ideal
objects, despite the fact that they are formed in consciousness, have
their own being in themselves, there still remains an enormous task
which has never been seriously viewed or taken up, namely, the task of
making this unique correlation between the ideal objects which belong
to the sphere of pure logic and the subjective psychical experience
conceived as a formative activity a theme for investigation. When a
psychical subject such as I, this thinking being, performs certain
(and surely not arbitrary but quite specifically structured) psychical
activities in my own psychical life, then a successive formation and
production of meaning is enacted according to which the number-form in
question, the truth in question, or the conclusion and proof in
question…emerges as the successively developing product."
Biemel uses this quotation to make the point that in it Husserl
expresses his real concern and the real theme of his phenomenology;
Biemel draws our attention to the parenthetical phrase concerning
psychical activities, namely, "(and surely not arbitrary but quite
specifically structured)," to make the point that "the subject cannot
arbitrarily constitute (and surely the issue here is that of
constitution) any meaning whatsoever; rather are the constitutive acts
dependent upon the essence of the objects in question." In other
words, if we are to consider the essence of the number three, for
example, it is not the case that the essence of that number, contra
psychologism, is dependent upon what psychical activities are required
in order to form the number; rather, in order to understand the
meaning of the number three, "we must perform determinate acts of
collective connecting, otherwise the meaning of 3 in general will
remain entirely closed to us. There is something like the number three
for us when we can perform the collecting-unifying activity in which
three become capable of being presented." This does not mean that the
essence of the number three would be arbitrarily determined by this
activity so that the number would in each case change according to the
manner in which one constitutes it. "Either I perform the acts which
disclose the essence of the number three, with the result that for me
there is something like three, or I do not perform them and then there
is no 3 except for those who have performed this activity." This
"collecting-unifying activity" is the activity of constitution.
Biemel reminds us that the problem of constitution is the source of
many a misunderstanding and adds, "the ordinary use of 'constitution'
equates it with any kind of production, but 'constitution' in the
strong sense is more of a 'restitution' than a constitution insofar as
the subject 'restores' what is already there, but this, however,
requires the performance of certain activities." Citing a letter from
Husserl to Hocking dated January 25, 1903, Biemel drives his point
home: "Regarding the meaning of the concept of constitution employed
in the Logical Investigations Husserl states: 'The recurring
expression that 'objects are constituted' in an act always signifies
the property of an act which makes the object present (vorstellig):
not 'constitution' in the usual sense.'" Hence, the best way to
discuss the concept of constitution, says Biemel, is to discuss it as
the-becoming-present-of-an-object; and the acts which make this
becoming-present possible, which set it in motion, are the
constituting acts. Or, as Husserl would put it in his Formal and
Transcendental Logic, "This manner of givenness—givenness as something
coming from such original activity—is nothing other than the way of
their being 'perceived' which uniquely belongs to them."
This problem of constitution first appears in the Logical
Investigations and continues to be one of the basic problems of
phenomenology; however, the interest in it here is that constitution
figures prominently in the resolution of the epistemological problem.
b. The Reduction and the Theme of Philosophy
In his "The Problem of the Phenomenology of Edmund Husserl," Fink
allows that access to the fundamental problem of Husserl's
phenomenology is uncertain owing to the fact that the fundamental
problem of any philosophy is often not identical with the particular
questions with which its literature begins. Indeed, the fundamental
problem may often even await a proper formulation; one that can emerge
only after the philosopher's later stages of the development of his or
her own thought are reworked. And although Husserl's thought started
with the sense-formation of mathematics and logic, these interests do
not comprise what Fink terms the genuine problem or theme of
phenomenology.
This very zigzag process of moving back and forth from one stage to
the whole and back again within which the formulation of the genuine
problem occurs discloses a distinction between two types of knowing.
The first type is one in which we are engaged in a developmental
process that will answer certain formulatable questions; that is, it
is an expecting-to-know that is characterized chiefly by the fact that
it advances an already established body of knowledge—in short, it is a
knowing about knowledge that is lacking. For instance, in archaeology
we might plan digs in areas surrounding certain cities expecting to
add to our stock of knowledge about the ancient life in that setting
in order to fill in known gaps in our accounts. This is knowledge of
what is lacking.
This type of knowing is not, however, the type of knowing that emerges
in the zigzag process to which I just referred. The type of knowing
prevalent in the zigzag process is one in which what is obvious
becomes questionable; not in the sense of creating arbitrary doubts or
from the mere mistrust of the human mind; rather, questionable
because, as Fink says, "philosophy is an experience that man has of
himself and the existent;" and it is owing to this that the origin of
philosophical problems is wonder. This means that "problem" in the
philosophical sense is not an expecting-to-know on the basis of a path
to knowledge but rather the formation of an expecting-to-know.
Philosophy is, therefore, the shaking of the ground which bears human
familiarity with the existent; it is the shaking of the basis which
forms the presupposition for the progressive augmentation of
knowledge, i.e., the shaking of the basis of expecting-to-know of the
first type. It is the very unsettling of the foundations of knowledge
and the questioning of the existent qua existent as well as the
questioning of the nature of truth.
The astonishment in question is just the very experience that man has
of himself and the existent that is the foundation needed for
epistemology; because it is in this wonder that the "unsettling idea
of a genuine mode of knowing the existent suddenly emerges from
beneath the ordered, familiar world in which we are at home and about
which we have fixed meanings concerning things, man and God, meanings
which make certainty in life possible." It is a "genuine mode"
precisely because it is not already decided what the nature of the
existent and the nature of truth are; after all, it cannot be original
if the original formation of the ideas of "existent" and "truth" has
already occurred; whether it is decided through a lengthy effort
belonging to the past of human spirit or through the inconspicuous
obviousness of the natural world-view. In other words, the only
"knowing" that is original is the "knowing" that properly belongs to
astonishment; because it is only in astonishment that man experiences
the complete collapse of his traditional knowledge and
pre-acquaintance with the world and with things; a collapse that is
due entirely to a new confronting of the existent and a new projection
of the senses of "being" and "truth." We should be sensitive to Fink's
use of the term "original" here because the way he uses it in this
passage heralds the sense of "founding" invoked in the way
phenomenology provides a ground for epistemology.
Fink has told us that the astonishment in which philosophy begins is
in no way "merely a 'disposition,' a feeling." Rather, "it is the
fundamental disposition of pure thought; it is original theory." What
Fink means to communicate with this is that in astonishment a change
and transformation of knowing occurs such that what we already know is
reduced to mere opinion and that even the very nature of knowing is
altered. In other words, Fink marks a distinction between the
"knowing" that stands in need of a foundation and the "knowing" that
does the founding. The knowing that does the founding is the original
knowing of astonishment; it is original precisely because it does not
come to the existent and truth with conceptions in hand, having
already decided their nature; and the door to sustained astonishment
is opened by the rigorous performance of the phenomenological
reduction.
It should not be inferred from this passage that there is anything
whimsical about the way astonishment proclaims the existent; as
though, for example, that being and truth are presented as mere
conventions. Rather, what is wanted is the ability to, as Fink says,
sustain and develop astonishment "by the awakening force of conceptual
cognition" because it is the extent of the creative force of wonder
that ultimately determines the rank and achievement of a philosophy.
It is precisely this burden that is borne by the phenomenological
reduction, which aims at voluntarily awakening the force of conceptual
cognition and sustaining it throughout intentional analysis. Thus, it
is borne out as was noted above that philosophy does not begin with an
assumption but an experience; namely, the experience of having
performed the phenomenological reduction. This experience is the
astonishment in which original knowing occurs; and it is upon original
knowing that the "knowing" of the existent, or epistemology, is
grounded.
This relation, in which a physical experience is the condition for the
possibility of thought, is not new to philosophy; logical analysis
crucially depends upon one having the ability (experience) to be aware
of logical connections; absent this ability, as Wittgenstein has also
noticed, there is nothing we can do to atone for it in the
individual—the individual either sees the logical connections or does
not. It is the experience of being aware of, and noticing, logical
connections that really grounds logical analysis. So, too, with the
phenomenological reduction; without the experience of astonishment
granted by having successfully performed the phenomenological
reduction, no epistemology can be truly grounded because every
epistemological claim must sometime trace itself back to the original
knowledge; and the original knowledge can be had only in astonishment,
the very fruit of accurately performing the phenomenological
reduction. In other words, the ground for epistemology is, in the
final analysis, the philosopher's own astonishment; if this
astonishment is voluntarily taken up and sustained, as in the
performance of the phenomenological reduction, then the report of what
is disclosed in that experience can be entered into the stock of human
knowledge as an epistemological datum. And, in the same way that the
validity of any logical argument is verified by each individual at
every step by seeing for him or herself whether each step follows
logically from the previous step by invoking one's own ability to
recognize logical connections, every epistemological datum must be
similarly verified by the phenomenologist returning to astonishment
through the phenomenological reduction and comparing the results
achieved with those at hand. What is needed to assure consistent
results and the scientific rigor Husserl said properly belonged to
phenomenology is a more careful adherence to the rigorous conditions
of performing the phenomenological reduction by phenomenologists so
that it does not deteriorate into the psychologistic practice of free
association or mere mental exercise; it is, after all, a rigorous
meditative exercise requiring the struggle of the whole person.
7. References and Further Reading
* Berger, Gaston. The Cogito in Husserl's Philosophy. Translated
by Kathleen McLaughlin. Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1972.
* Bernet, Rudolf. "Phenomenological Reduction and the Double Life
of the Subject." In Reading Heidegger from the Start: Essays in His
Earliest Thought, eds. Theodore Kisiel and John van Buren, Albany:
SUNY Press, 1994.
* Bernet, Rudolf, Iso Kern, and Eduard Marbach. An Introduction to
Husserlian Phenomenology. Evanston: Northwestern University Press,
1993.
* Biemel, Walter. "Les Phases decisive dans le development de la
philosophie de Husserl." In Husserl: Cahiers de Royaumont, no III.
Paris: Minuit, 1959.
* Bochiniski, I.M. Contemporary European Philosophy. Translated by
Donald Nicholl and Karl Aschenbrenner. Berkeley: University of
California Press, 1966.
* Boehm, Rudolf. "Basic Reflections on Husserl's Phenomenological
Reduction." International Philosophical Quarterly 5 (1965): 183-202.
* Boehm, Rudolf. "Les Ambiguités des Concepts Husserliens
d''immanence' et de 'transcendence.'" Revue Philosophique de la France
et de l'Etranger 149 (1959): 481-526.
* Boehm, Rudolf. Vom Gesichtspunkt der Phänomenologie. Den Haag:
Martinus Nijhoff, 1968.
* Boehm, Rudolf. Vom Gesichtspunkt der Phänomenologie II. Den
Haag: Martinus Nijhoff, 1981.
* Bruzina, Ronald. "Construction in Phenomenology." In The Reach
of Reflection: Issues for Phenomenology's Second Century, eds. Steven
Crowell, Lester Embree, and Samuel J. Julian (Electron Press, October
2001), 46-71.
* Bruzina, Ronald. Edmund Husserl and Eugen Fink: Beginnings and
Ends in Phenomenology 1928-1938. New Haven: Yale University Press,
2004.
* Carr, David. "The 'Fifth Meditation' and Husserl's
Cartesianism." Philosophy and Phenomenological Research. 34:14-35,
1973.
* Carr, David. The Paradox of Subjectivity: The Self in the
Transcendental Tradition. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999.
* Depraz, Natalie, and Marc Richir, eds. Eugen Fink: Actes Du
Colloque de Cerisy-la-Salle 23-30 Juillet 1994. Atlanta: Rodopi, 1997.
* Elveton, R. O., ed. The Phenomenology of Husserl: Selected
Readings. Chicago:Quadrangle Books, 1970.
* Farber, Marvin. The Aims of Phenomenology: The Motives, Methods,
and Impact of Husserl's Thought. New York: Harper Torchbooks, 1966.
* Farber, Marvin. The Foundation of Phenomenology: Edmund Husserl
and the Quest for a Rigorous Science of Philosophy. Albany: SUNY
Press, 1943.
* Fink, Eugen. "L'Analyse intentionnelle et le probleme de la
pensee speculative." In Problemes actuels de la phenomenologie, 54-87.
Brussels: Desclee de Brower, 1952.
* Fink, Eugen. "The Phenomenological Philosophy of Edmund Husserl
and Contemporary Criticism." In The Phenomenology of Husserl, 73-147.
Chicago: Quadrangle Books, 1970.
* Fink, Eugen. Sixth Cartesian Meditation: The Idea of a
Transcendental Theory of Method. Translated by Ronald Bruzina.
Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1995.
* Fink, Eugen . "Was Will Die Phänomenologie Edmund Husserls," in
Studien zur Phänomenologie 1930-1939 (Den Haag: Martinus Nijhoff,
1966).
* Fink, Eugen. "What Does the Phenomenology of Edmund Husserl Want
to Accomplish?" Translated by Arthur Grugan. Research in Phenomenology
2, (1972): 5-27.
* Hopkins, Burt C. "Husserl's Account of Phenomenological
Reflection and Four Paradoxes of Reflexivity." Research in
Phenomenology 19, (1989): 180-194.
* Husserl, Edmund. Analyses Concerning Passive and Active
Synthesis: Lectures on Transcendental Logic. Translated by Anthony J.
Steinbock. Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 2001.
* Husserl, Edmund. Cartesian Meditations. Translated by Dorion
Cairns. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1977.
* Husserl, Edmund. The Crisis of European Sciences and
Transcendental Phenomenology. Translated by David Carr. Evanston:
Northwestern University Press, 1970.
* Husserl, Edmund. Husserliana Vol. VIII. Erste Philosophie
(1923/24), II. Edited by Rudolf Boehm. Haag: Martinus Nijhoff, 1959.
* Husserl, Edmund. Experience and Judgment. Translated by James S.
Churchill and Karl Ameriks. Evanston: Northwestern University Press,
1973.
* Husserl, Edmund. Formal and Transcendental Logic. Translated by
Dorion Cairns. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1969.
* Husserl, Edmund. The Idea of Phenomenology. Translated by
William P. Alston and George Nakhnikian. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff,
1973.
* Husserl, Edmund. The Idea of Phenomenology. Translated by Lee
Hardy. Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1999.
* Husserl, Edmund. Ideas Pertaining to a Pure Phenomenology and to
a Phenomenological Philosophy: First Book. Translated by F. Kersten.
Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1998.
* Husserl, Edmund. Ideas Pertaining to a Pure Phenomenology and to
a Phenomenological Philosophy: Second Book. Translated by R. Rojcewicz
and A. Schuwer. Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1989.
* Husserl, Edmund. Ideas: General Introduction to Pure
Phenomenology. Translated by W. F. Boyce Gibson. New York: Collier
Books, 1962.
* Husserl, Edmund. Logical Investigations. Translated by J. N.
Findlay. 2Vols. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1970.
* Husserl, Edmund. Phenomenology and the Crisis of Philosophy.
Translated by Quentin Lauer. New York: Harper Torchbooks, 1965.
* Husserl, Edmund. The Phenomenology of Internal
Time-consciousness. Translated by James S. Churchill. Bloomington:
Indiana University Press, 1964.
* Kearney, Richard and Mara Rainwater, eds. The Continental
Philosophy Reader. London: Routledge, 1998.
* Kersten, Fred. "Notes From Underground: Merleau-Ponty and
Husserl's Sixth Cartesian Meditation." In The Prism of the Self, ed.
Steven Crowell. Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers, no date.
* Kockelmans, Joseph J, ed. Phenomenology: The Philosophy of
Edmund Husserl and Its Interpretation. Garden City, New York:
Doubleday, 1967.
* Lauer, Quentin. Phenomenology: Its Genesis and Prospect. New
York: Harper Torchbooks, 1965.
* Lawlor, Leonard. Derrida and Husserl: The Basic Problem of
Phenomenology. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2002.
* McKenna, William, Robert M. Harlan and Laurence E. Winters, eds.
Apriori and World: European Contributions to Husserlian Phenomenology.
The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1981.
* Natanson, Maurice. Edmund Husserl: Philosopher of Infinite
Tasks. Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1973.
* Ricoeur, Paul. "Husserl's Fifth Cartesian Meditation." In
Husserl: An Analysis of His Phenomenology. Translated by Edward G.
Ballard and Lester Embree. Evanston: Northwestern University Press,
1967.
* Ricoeur, Paul. "A Study of Husserl's Cartesian Meditations
I-IV." In Husserl An Analysis of His Phenomenology. Translated by
Edward G. Ballard and Lester Embree. Evanston: Northwestern University
Press, 1967.
* Sokolowski, Robert. Husserlian Meditations. Evanston:
Northwestern University Press, 1974.
* Souche-Daques, S. "La Lecture Husserlienne de Sein und Zeit."
Philosophie 21 (1989): 7-36.
* Stapleton, Timothy J. "The 'Logic' of Husserl's Transcendental
Reduction." Man and World 15 (1982): 369-382.
* Welton, Donn, ed. The Essential Husserl: Basic Writings in
Transcendental Phenomenology. Bloomington: Indiana University Press,
1999.
* Welton, Donn, ed. The New Husserl: A Critical Reader.
Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2003.
* Zahavi, Dan. Husserl and Transcendental Intersubjectivity.
Translated by Elizabeth A. Behnke. Athens, Ohio: Ohio University
Press, 2001.
* Zahavi, Dan. Husserl's Phenomenology. Stanford: Stanford
University Press, 2003.
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