12

INTRODUCTION

This requirement in turn led Husserl to develop the methodological technique of the phenomenological reduction, first detailed in five introductory lectures to a course on the perception of material things in space. 1 9 Reminiscent of the universal Cartesian doubt, it is nevertheless different therefrom. Whereas the distinguishing characteristic of Cartesian doubt is that it annuls the positing of an objects existence or the validity of a judgment, the distinguishing characteristic of the phenomenological reduction is that it refuses to understand this annulment as the opposite of the positing of the existence of objects and the general validity of experience that characterizes our natural experience a positing Husserl calls the general thesis of the natural attitude (Hua 3, 30). The phenomenological reduction, in other words, is not the negation of the general positing characteristic of our ordinary experience. The content is not negated, but our affirmation is withheld. In the performance of the phenomenological reduction, we attempt to call the universal positing characteristic of ordinary experience into question, to hold it reflectively before ourselves as a positing whose validity is to be examined. Our participation in the affirmation characteristic of ordinary experience is suspend ed , and the objectivities given in experience are not lost to our reflection but are instead considered only as presumed existents. They remain available for reflection just insofar as they are experienced; the index attaching to them, however, has changed, and their sta tus as obje cts of experience has been modified so that they are now viewed exclusively in their b eing as objects of that experience in which they are po sited . It is no t, therefore, as it was for D escartes, the object that is disconnected in the performance of the reduction; it is the philosophers participation in the positings that characterize the ordinary experiences of the natural attitude. The reduction is a change in attitude that leads our attention back to the subjective achievements in which the object as experienced is disclosed in a determinate manner and to the achievements in which we realize the evidence appropriate to confirming or disconfirming our natural experiences. These achievements have a certain k ind o f p rio rity o ve r the o b je c t th a t th e y disclose in a determinate manner, and the investigation of them reveals how it is that we come to experience the objects in tho se determ inate manners; ho w our different experiences are related to one another; and, therefore, how the different kinds and levels of objectivity are related; and, finally, how our experience confirms or disconfirms in fulfilling intentions what was merely emptily intended or mistakenly intended. The fact that I can be certain even having performed the reductionthat an object appears to me in a determinate manner opens the door to a critique of knowledge focused on the intentional correlation b etween the act of exp erience (the exp eriencing) and the o b ject just as experienced. T his discussion of the reduction connects with the earlier discussion of meaning