III.

Method:

Method consists of reduction i.e. going to the origins of particular

objects/experiences
Method consists of epoch or bracketing or putting aside
assumptions/ prejudices and the like.

Why method?
To get back zu den Sachen or the essences or phenomena.
Phenomena are the intentional structures of consciousness
that underlie everyday experiences.
Method brings about a shift from presuppositions to thinking
without presuppositions or prejudices.
To bring about a shift from the naturalistic attitude to a
transcendental phenomenological attitude.
The method is meant to isolate the essence of intentional
consciousness. Thus, both the act of consciousness and its
object will be unearthed from the essential point of view.
One has to do something in order to move beyond the
naturalistic attitude of taking facts for granted.
The method prescribes a procedure
It urges human beings to do something: expressed in
imperatives
Effects a transformation

Husserls method has influences:

Epoche derived from Greek and means abstaining from judgement.
But Husserl did not advocate a withdrawal from the world like
Greek skeptics
Rather epoche for him consisted in not taking a stance-suspending
judgment till one is sure (like Descartes and Kant)
Testing ones judgment whereby one can be sure that it
lies on a firm foundation
Husserlian reduction and positivist reduction: Difference
Husserls reduction comes from the Latin verb reducere which
means to turn to the origins: underlying all particular experiences
are universal structures of intentional consciousness.
Against, this positivist reduction goes from the universal to the
particular by analyzing the whole into parts. For example,
reducing an object to sense data.

Various Reductions:

1. Eidetic Reduction: from particular to universals (eidos)

Although one perceives individual objects, one needs to reflect on

its univesal dimension or eidetic dimension. This is a shift in
mental attitude where instead of the particular we pay heed to
essences. Here on brackets or does an epoche on the particular
dimension:
although it remains what it is in itself, we put it out of action,
we exclude it, we bracket it. It is still there, like the bracketed
matter inside a pair of parenthesesbut we make no use of it. We
put out of action the entire ontological commitment that belongs to
the essence of the natural attitude. We place in brackets whatever it
includes with respect to being
(Ideas: 32/p 111)
Husserl urges the bracketing of all social, ontological,
metaphysical, religious commitments. Indeed, existence itself
should be put into brackets: so that instead of turning outwards to
figure out whether one is representing an object correctly, one
turns in wards to examine ones own conscious structure.
Natural sciences study the naturalistic attitude
Mathematics studies eidetic attitude
2. Transcendental Reduction:

Here we reflect on the act rather than the object. One pays heed to
how while becoming aware of the essence there are three
dimensions:
The structuring experience in the act: noesis
The correlated structure given in the act: noema
The filling/constraining experiences: hyle
Thus, in transcendental reduction there is a change in focus from
an object-directed attitude to an act directed attitude.
Here we turn to subjectivity: the activities and achievements of
consciousness which is the origin of meaning

The transcendental ego is also a point of attention at this stage: it is

an awareness that one experiences while studying ones own
mental stages, but it is absent when one studies objects in the
physical world. The realm of transcendental consciousness is in a
quite definite sense a realm of absolute being. It is the original
category of being as suchin which all other regions of being
have their roots

Ego: Not a substance, not a psychological self, but a transcendental

unity of acts: past, present, future; a sense of belonging
Cogito: all intentional acts (conscious)
Cogitata: noemata/intentional objects

Metaphysics studies transcendental reduction

3. Phenomenological Reduction:

This is an integration of the eidetic and transcendental reduction.

Phenomenology is a study of the phenomenological reduction

4. Free Imaginative Variation:

We try to ensure that the essential knowledge we have obtained is

objective. Take the essence at hand and vary aspects of it to see
whether it retains its identity. Do the variations affect the identity
of the thing? Do they not affect its identity? In the former case, one
would have to revise ones essential knowledge.

5. Intuition of Essences:

General essences are intuited: one can arrive at such an intuition

only after free imaginative variation.

Some critical remarks:

As David Bell observes the whole point of reduction is to show

how particularity is grounded in universality or eidos or essence.

But it is still inadequate: Even if imagination is necessary for

arriving at an understanding of a concept, it is not a necessary
condition. Husserl does not ensure that imagination is exercised in
an impartial manner. As the later Wittgenstein puts it, the main
cause of philosophical disease a one-sided diet: one nourishes
ones thinking with only one kind of example.

Husserl also aims at the wrong result:

The essence (eidos) is a new sort of objectthe datum of
essential intuition is a pure essenceEssential insight is still an
intuition; just as the eidetic object is still an objectEssential
intuition is the consciousness of something, of an object, a
something towards which its glance is directed.
But can scientific understanding be brought about by simply
looking at an object. Theory, concepts, evaluative evidence are all
necessary for scientific understanding; all of these are more
complex than a gaze.

Methodologically phenomenology aims at a pure description of

transcendentally pure consciousness in the light of pure intuition
(Husserl Ideas 24); the decisive factor lies, above all, in the
absolutely faithful description of what is actually present in
phenomenological purity, and in keeping at a distance all
interpretations that transcend the given(Husserl Ideas 92)
As David Bell puts it, the problem is not that (a) pure data is
accepted nor (b)that one unique description of this data is possible
nor (c)that such a description determines a rigorously scientific
theory. Rather the problem is that phenomenology begins and ends
with the given: it does not transcend it or transform it. Hence the
extent to which it can successfully address the crisis in science is
dubious.

Reading:
Bell, David. Husserl (Secondary source)
Follesdal, Dagfinn 2006. Husserls Reductions and the Role they
play in his Phenomenology in A Companion to Phenomenology
and Existentialism Ed. Hubert L. Dreyfus and Mark A.Wrathall.
Blackwell, Malden
Husserl, Edmund. Ideas (Primary source)
Spiegelberg, Herbert The Phenomenological Movement
(Chapter on Husserl)