Heidegger and The Phenomenological Reduction

International Phenomenological Society
Heidegger and the Phenomenological Reduction

Author(s): Francis F. Seeburger
Source: Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, Vol. 36, No. 2 (Dec., 1975), pp. 212-221
Published by: International Phenomenological Society
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HEIDEGGER AND THE PHENOMENOLOGICAL REDUCTION
The explications of the preliminary conception of phenomenology point out that

what is essential to phenomenology does not lie in its being actual as a philo-
sophical "direction." Higher than actuality stands possibility. The understand-
ing of phenomenology lies solely in comprehending it as possibility.1
Ever since the appearance of Sein und Zeit, the question of Mar-
tin Heidegger's relationship to the phenomenology of Edmund Hus-
serl has remained open. Heidegger's own statements on the subject,
both in Sein und Zeit and in his later writings, are ambiguous. Per-
haps the greatest difficulty surrounds the notion of the "phenomeno-
logical reduction."
The reduction occupies a central place in Husserl's developed
conception of phenomenology, and the problem of formulating the
nature and consequences of the reduction as clearly as possible occu-
pied Husserl to the end of his life. Husserl maintained that the re-
duction was the only way in which the "natural standpoint" could
be overcome in order to reveal the intentional structures of experi-
ence. Only through the reduction, according to him, could philosophy
cease to be naive.
On the other hand, references to the phenomenological reduction
in Heidegger's writings are conspicuously lacking. Indeed, after Sein
und Zeit, Heidegger rarely uses even the terms "phenomenology" and
"phenomenological." Those two terms, to be sure, are used centrally
in Sein und Zeit itself; but then there is Husserl's own judgment that
Sein und Zeit never leaves the natural standpoint and is, therefore,
still philosophically naive.
What, then, is Heidegger's relationship to Husserl's phenomenol-
ogy? Is Heidegger simply not a phenomenologist, in any sense which
is significantly related to Husserl's formulations of phenomenology?
Has Heidegger failed to grasp the very starting point of phenomenol-
ogy, the reduction? Does he, as Husserl thought, remain caught in
the prephenomenological natural standpoint? Is he, therefore, a
regressive influence within phenomenology?
One of the few primary sources for Heidegger's views of the
phenomenological reduction is a letter which Heidegger wrote to
Husserl in connection with their collaboration on the preparation of
Husserl's Encyclopedia Brittannica article on phenomenology.2 The
1 Martin Heidegger, Sein und Zeit. Tiibingen: Max Niemeyer, 1927, p. 38. (All
translations from Heidegger are my own.)
2 This letter is published in an appendix to Edmund Husserl, Phanomenologische
Psychologie, Husserliana Band IX. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1968, p. 600 ff.
212
HEIDEGGER AND THE PHENOMENOLOGICAL REDUCTION 213
issue is "transcendental consciousness" and its relationship to the

world. Heidegger maintains that the phenomenological reduction is
misunderstood if it is interpreted, as Husserl appears to interpret it,
as being a philosophical technique which makes possible the dis-
closure of a pure, absolute transcendental consciousness which re-
quires no relationship to the world in order to be. He argues that
man, the being through whom the transcendental constitution of
meaning occurs, is inescapably in the world, and that the truly im-
portant point for phenomenology concerns the nature of this "being-
in." Man, writes Heidegger, is not "in" the world as one object
present at hand among other objects, but is "in" the world precisely
as that being through which the world first comes to be disclosed as
world. Thus, the phenomenological reduction should not be inter-
preted to mean that the "suspension" or "bracketing" (the "reduc-
tion") of the world reveals a pure, nonworldly transcendental con-
sciousness. The "world" as a collection of objects present at hand
together is, indeed, to be suspended; but the result is not the revela-
tion of worldless subjectivity. The phenomenological reduction is,
rather, a step back from presence at hand to a more primordial,
founding mode of being, through which presence at hand must first
come to be "constituted" in experience. This founding mode of being
is no worldless subjectivity, but is the being (Sein) of the world
itself, as opposed to the manner of being appropriate to beings with-
in the world. Thus, far from revealing a realm of transcendental con-
sciousness wholly independent of the world, the phenomenological
reduction is the philosophical operation which first makes the world
itself available for phenomenological description.
It would be a mistake to conclude from Heidegger's criticism
that, since Husserl's phenomenological reduction is a "suspension"
of the being of the world, and since, for Heidegger, the point of
phenomenology is precisely to reveal the being of the world, Heideg-
ger cannot give the reduction any place in his own thought. In terms
of such a mistaken conclusion, Husserl's characterization of phenom-
enology as "transcendental idealism" would be apt for his own philo-
sophy, but totally inaccurate for Heidegger's, which would be, in-
stead, a "phenomenological realism." In fact, this distinction between
"phenomenological realism" and "phenomenological idealism" only
obscures the real issues involved.
The disagreement between Heidegger and Husserl does not, at
this point, concern the possibility or even the "necessity" of the
phenomenological reduction, but concerns the meaning of the reduc-
214 PHILOSOPHY AND PHENOMENOLOGICAL RESEARCH
tion. There are differences between Heidegger and Husserl here, but
those differences cannot be grasped through a quick contrast of
"idealism" and "realism." Heidegger's supposed "realism" is much
closer to Husserl's professed "idealism" than either is close to any
traditional idealism or realism. The real differences between Hei-
degger and Husserl appear only against a shared rejection of both
traditional positions. To clarify these differences, it will be useful
to discuss briefly Husserl's reduction as a "suspension" of the world.
Basically, Husserl uses the term "world" to designate the totality
of the "real." Since, for him, the notion of an "absolute reality" is a
contradiction in terms,3 philosophers, if they are ever to clarify the
sense of what is called the "real," must suspend their uncritical
acceptance of the "reality" of the world and must inquire into the
transcendental constitution of that meaning or sense which we desig-
nate by the term "reality." The reality of the world is not thereby
either affirmed or denied. At issue is not yet whether the world is
real, but rather the sense or meaning of this "reality" which is to be
affirmed or denied of the world and of objects within the world.
That is, the sense "reality itself" must become a phenomenon avail-
able for description; and that can occur only if the phenomenologist
puts his own everyday acceptance of, and dealings with, the "real"
out of play. He must step back from his own involvement in
"real world," in order for that involvement and its intentional corre-
late (the real world itself) explicitly to emerge as phenomena.
To this point, there is no significant disagreement between Hei-
degger and Husserl. There is, at roost, only a terminological disagree-
ment. Husserl uses the term "world" to designate the totality of
beings. Heidegger makes (at least in Sein und Zeit) the same use of
the same term, only enclosed within quotation marks.4 Both insist
that the phenomenologist must disengage himself from his involve-
ment with the world conceived as the totality of beings. Both insist
that "reality" must be put out of play.
In Sein und Zeit Heidegger argues that by "reality" we have
come to mean the totality of what is present at hand, and that pres-
ence at hand is not a primordial, but a founded, way of being. Accord-
ingly, the task for phenomenology is to lay bare the more primordial
manners of being upon which -the being-sense "presence at hand" is
founded. That is, to use Husserl's terminology, reality must be "brac-
keted," "suspended," "put out of play," or "reduced."
3 See Husserl, Ideen I, Husserliana Band III, p. 134.

4 Heidegger, Sein und Zeit, p. 65.
For both Husserl and Heidegger reality must be put out of play,
precisely because the phenomenological desideratum is to reveal the
phenomenal being-sense of reality itself. The disagreement, to repeat,
is not about whether reality can be suspended in this way, but about
the meaning and consequences of such suspension; and the point
of Heidegger's criticism of Husserl's formulations is that the pheno-
menological reduction should not be interpreted as a philosophical
operation which yields access to a pure, worldless, constituting sub-
jectivity. Instead, according to Heidegger, the reduction is to be re-
garded as an attempt to interpret the relationship of man to his
world from within that relationship itself. To use the language of
Sein und Zeit, the "world" (the totality of the present at hand) must
be put out of play, so that the world (i.e., the foundation for the
being-sense of the "world"-what Heidegger calls "die Weltlichkeit
der Welt," "the worldhood of the world")5 itself can become a pheno-
menon available for description. If man is always "in" the world
(in the sense explained above), then no reduction will ever make it
possible for man to step outside his own relationship to the world,
into some worldless subjectivity. To step back from reality is not
*to withdraw beyond the world, but to step back from one relation-
ship to the world into another, more foundational relationship.
For these reasons, Heidegger emphasizes in Sein und Zeit that
phenomenology should be understood as "hermeneutics." That is,
phenomenology cannot be philosophy "without presuppositions,"
since all philosophy, as a way in which man develops his relationship
to the world, "presupposes" man's definitive involvement "in" the
world. Phenomenology can be only the self-explication of man's own
being in the world; phenomenology can never escape the "hermeneu-
tical circle."6 Accordingly, insofar as Husserl claims to provide a
"presuppositionless" philosophy through the phenomenological de-
scription of the "absolute being" of pure, transcendental, worldless
subjectivity, Heidegger must part company with him.
For Husserl, pure transcendental consciousness is the ineluctable
context for the emergence of all meaning. For Heidegger, because he
rejects the possibility of basing phenomenology on any worldless
subjectivity, that context must be provided by man's being in the
world itself. All of Heidegger's descriptions of phenomenal structures
must be understood in terms of that context.
5 Ibid.
6 See Ibid., p. 7 f., 37 f., 310 ff.
As Heidegger argues in Sein und Zeit, man (Dasein) is that being

for which its own being (Sein) is an issue. Correlatively, man is that
being which always already has an "understanding of being" ("Seins-
verstdndnis"), whether that understanding is expressly taken up as a
theme, or left in the background as the foundation for the emergence
of whatever else does explicitly occupy man. Therefore, phenomenol-
ogy, as hermeneutics, is no more than the thematic development of
an understanding which is already definitive of man himself. Fur-
thermore, the act whereby the phenomenologist puts the totality of
beings out of play, in order that the being of beings -may be revealed
for description (the act which Husserl calls the "phenomenological
reduction"), is nothing but the making explicit of the fundamental
concern of man, insofar as man is that being for whom there can
first be a world and beings within the world.7
On this point, at least, Heidegger is very close to the position
taken by Max Scheler towards the end of his life. Scheler maintained
that the uniqueness of man lies in his capacity to oppose reality with
"an emphatic 'No.' " Man, he held, is the being who can "de-actual-
ize" or "de-realize" reality; and such "de-realization" is the necessary
condition for the appearance of "objects" ("Gegenstdnde") which
stand opposite man himself. Thus, the "de-realization" of reality is
what first makes possible the emergence of objective truth, science,
philosophy, culture, and whatever else is distinctively human.8
Viewed from such a perspective, Husserl's phenomenologicall
reduction" is no new philosophical "technique," but is the definitive
event in the history of man. Mqn emerges only through the event
whereby reality is "de-realized," and phenomenology is nothing but
the express attempt to explicate that event. To return to Heidegger's
terminology, phenomenology is the hermeneutics of being in the
world.
Through man's being in the world, the context of significance
which is the world itself (as "worldhood") is first disclosed; and
whatever comes to be manifest in experience must occur within
context. Furthermore, since man's way of being is precisely being
in the world, the hermeneutics of man is already also the hermeneu-
tics of the being both of the world, and of innerworldly beings. That
is why Heidegger, from Sein und Zeit on, insists that the "question
of being" ("Seinsf rage") is always already the question of man, that
7 See Ibid., p. 32 ff., 61 f.

8 See Max Scheler, Man's Place in Nature, trans. Hans Meyerhoff. Boston: Beacon
Press, 1961, pp. 52 ff.
the question of man is always already the question of being, and that
to talk of either being or man is always already to talk about the
relationship of being to man, man to being. Indeed, the phenomenon
proper to phenomenology, the real issue for thought (what Heidegger
in some of his later writings calls "die Sache des Denkens") is pre-
cisely being (Sein) as this relationship, wherein the world is dis-
closed, providing the context of significance within which inner-
worldly beings come to be manifest.
A difficulty arises at this point in Heidegger's thought. It is
essentially the same difficulty which Sartre mentions towards the
end of The Transcendence of the Ego. Sartre argues that the pheno-
menological reduction, insofar as it is a specific action performed by
the phenomenologist, can never be "pure." All actions occur, accord-
ing to him, at the reflective level of experience, the only level at
which it becomes possible to speak of purposive, motivated behavior.
Yet the goal of phenomenology is nothing less than to reveal, through
the reduction, the structures of prereflective intentional experience.
Insofar as the reduction is an action which the phenomenologist him-
self performs for complex, philosophically technical, but nevertheless
specific reasons, these reasons and motives will always color and
distort any phenomenological descriptions. Therefore, the reduction,
as a motivated action, can never be pure. Sartre remarks that the
reduction could be pure if it ceased to be a specific action on the
phenomenologist's part and became, instead, an event which hap-
pened to him. The reduction could be pure only if it occurred spon-
taneously, absolutely without motivation.9
According to Heidegger, phenomenology aims at describing from
within man's relationship to the world. The initial, self-conscious
motivation behind such description is the desire to disclose the foun-
dation upon which all of man's worldly activities, including, especial-
ly, those activities which constitute science and philosophy them-
selves, rest. To accomplish this task, the phenomenologist must dis-
engage himself from his own worldly activities. Such disengagement,
however, remains motivated by the phenomenologist's own involve-
ment in the world; and all attempts at disengagement and descrip-
tion remain colored by that involvement. Thus, the phenomenologist.
who sets out to provide a description of the foundation for all world-
ly activity, finds his descriptions always partially vitiated by his
own worldly motivations.
9 Jean-Paul Sartre, The Transcendence of the Ego, trans. William Kirkpatrick and
Forrest Williams. New York: Noonday Press, 1957, pp. 91 f.
If, however, the phenomenologist begins seriously to consider

the nature and limitations of phenomenology itself, he also begins
to comprehend that his own phenomenological purposes, motives,
and actions rest on the very same foundation which he aims to reveal
as the meaning-context for all other worldly'purposes, motives, and
actions. Accordingly, the phenomenological reduction and phenomen-
ological description can stand revealed as concrete possibilities for
man only insofar as something in man's contemporary being in the
world calls for such phenomenological responses from man. The
self-conscious attempt to perform the- phenomenological reduction
is founded upon, and derives its sense from, that aspect of man's
relationship to the world which elicits such an attempt.
A phenomenological response, in turn, can be elicited only if
some basic change in man's prephenomenological being in the world
has already announced itself. As early as Sein und Zeit, Heidegger
was concerned to point out that, in order for any philosophical ques-
tions even to arise, man's concernful preoccupation with his every-
day affairs must somehow be broken. Some event within such every-
day involvement in the world must bring man up short, casting him
out of the familiar context of his concerns.10 So, also, if philosophy
is today to become phenomenology, if any phenomenological ques-
tions are even to arise some event within the circuit of man's con-
temporary involvement in the world-an involvement inseparable
from the always more or less explicit background provided in large
part by philosophy itself-must break that circuit, again casting man
into an unfamiliar context.
Heidegger himself has observed that there is a "turn" in his
thought ("eine Wendung in meinem Denken"), but he has also insist-
ed that this "turn" does not involve any -change.of "standpoint," or
any rejection of his earlier thinking. Rather, he maintains, the turn
in his thought is a response to a fundamental turn in the very issue
(Sache) of thinking itself.'1 Hopefully, the sense of this remark can
now be clarified, at least with regard to the phenomenological reduc-
tion and the meaning of phenomenology.
Pursuing the goal of phenomenology through the reduction, the
phenomenologist eventually becomes aware of a reversal in his
understanding of phenomenology and its task. Initially, the reduction
appears tobe a specific technique employed by the philosopher in
order to lay bare, in a supposedly unadulterated fashion, an other-
10 See Heidegger, Sein und Zeit, p. 72 ff.

11 Heidegger, "Vorwort" to William J. Richardson, Heidegger: Through Phenome-
nology to Thought. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1963, pp. xvii ff.
wise unavailable dimension for philosophical description-the dimen-

sion of pure phenomenality. However, as the meaning and the conse-
quences of the application of this technique become clear, and as the
phenomenologist becomes aware of the essentially historical deter-
minants of his own phenomenological endeavors, it also becomes
increasingly apparent that the phenomenological technique of reduc-
tion is itself a response to, and, in effect, at the service of, an already
emergent change in man's relationship to the world. Accordingly,
phenomenology can no longer be defined in terms of the reduction
as a self-consciously applied technique, but must instead be defined
in terms of the relationship of phenomenology to this change in
man's being in the world, a change which is not brought about by
phenomenology itself, but which precedes any explicit application of
phenomenologicAl techniques and elicits such application in order to
work itself out through phenomenology. An analogy may be helpful
here.
Galileo and the other fathers of modern science certainly did
not pursue their work in order to provide the foundation for con-
temporary technology. Nevertheless, their work did provide that
foundation. The mathematical projection of nature which modern
science accomplished and which first made possible the development
of modern technology was the working out of a change in man's
relationship to nature herself. Galileo and the other classical scien-
tists, however, were no more aware of, and expressly aiming at, that
change, that they were aware of, and aiming at, modern technology,
through which that change was eventually to work itself out. Galileo
and the whole of modern science and technology derive meaning
from, and are at the service of, a "turn" in man's being in the
world."2
It is of basic significance that in one of his most explicit criti-
cisms of Husserl, Heidegger does not refer to the phenomenological
reduction or even to "transcendental idealism," but takes Husserl
to task for failing to recognize what is essentially historical in being
("die Wesentlichkeit des Geschichtlichen im Sein" ).13 That is, Hei-
degger accuses Husserl of overlooking the most important conse-
quence of Husserl's own phenomenology: the consequence that philo-
sophy can no longer lay legitimate claim to any absolute knowledge,
any "truth in itself," any "being in itself" independent of the con-
crete, historical disclosure of being (Sein) through man.
12 See Heidegger, Die Technik und die Kehre. Pfullingen: Neske, 1962, p. 21 ff.
13 See Heidegger, Wegmarken. Frankfurt: Klostermann, 1967, p. 170.
Since Husserl fails to see the importance of history (Geschichte)

and characterizes phenomenology in terms of the discovery of abso-
lute, constituting, transcendental subjectivity, he continues, as Hei-
degger sees it,' to make the same fundamental mistake which has
been made since the beginning of Western philosophy: He confuses
being with beings, insofar as he clings to the assumption that the
structures of being (Sein) must be grounded in some being (Seien-
des). It is because of this that Heidegger must reject Husserl's talk
of "transcendental idealism" (and not, to repeat a point made earli-
er, because Heidegger opts for some form of "realism"). Since Hus-
serl attempts to ground all structures of meaning and being (Sein)
in transcendental subjectivity, which remains, after all, a being (ein
Seiendes), he does, indeed, deserve to be classified as an "idealist,"
for he shares the fundamental confusion which is at the root of all
traditional idealism (as well as all traditional realism).
It is reasonable, therefore, for Heidegger to attempt to avoid
misunderstandings by granting the legitimacy of Husserl's prior
claim to the title "phenomenology" and by letting his own thought
remain "nameless."114 Heidegger does not thereby reject either
phenomenology or his own phenomenological basis. Indeed, as was
pointed out above, Heidegger's criticism of Husserl boils down to the
claim that Husserl himself did not clearly see the consequences of
his own thought, and that Heidegger's own apparent "revisions" of
phenomenology are really clarifications or just those consequences.
Thus, besides Husserl's obvious prior right to the term "phenomenol-
ogy," there is a deeper, substantive reason for Heidegger's ceasing
to use that term for his own thought: The further Heidegger pushed
into phenomenological territory, the more apparent it became to him
that the very meaning of phenomenology had altered. This alteration,
this "turn" in the "thing itself," is the real key to Heidegger's rela-
tionship to phenomenology and, in particular to the phenomenologi-
cal reduction.
- To the extent that, as Husserl himself repeatedly insisted, phe-
nomenology must be 'self-critical, it must come to recognize that its
own meaning as possibility lies not in the reduction conceived as a
self-consciously, purposively implemented technique, but in an event
within man's being in the world, an event which is prior to, and first
reveals the possibility of, any actual phenomenological activity. This
event which bestows meaning on phenomenology is ultimately noth-
14 See Heidegger, Unterwegs zur Sprache. Pfu]lingen: Neske, 1959, p. 121.
ing less than the "pure," "unmotivated" reduction which Sartre

mentions. Just for that reason, this event is no longer properly called
a "reduction," since, as Sartre saw, this term applies to actions,
which are motivated, purposive responses.
Just as, whether they were aware of it or not, Galileo and the
other early modern scientists responded to an emerging change'in
man's relationship to the world and thereby prepared the ground
for the eventual unfolding of that change, so, according to Heidegger,
the phenomenologist, whether he is aware of it or not, is responding
to a new emerging change, for the eventual unfolding of which he is
preparing the ground. What the details or even the outlines of the
world which will develop are, the phenomenologist can no more
know in advance than Galileo could have known in advance that his
work would help pave the way for the development of modern tech-
nology; Nor can the phenomenologist, thinking, perhaps, that he can
see some of the features of the future world, decide to plan out his
activities in such a way as to force events either to confirm or to
negate his vision. Man may hold sway over things he encounters
within the world, and he may be able to dispose of such things as he
pleases; but he can never hold sway over, or dispose of, his own
being in the world, since that being itself is the indisposable founda-
tion for all human activity aimed at controlling or ordering what
appears within the world. Nevertheless, the unfolding of a change
in man's relationship to the world does not occur over his head, or
behind his back, or at all "despite" man's activity. It works itself out
through the activities of men, endowing those activities with mean-
ing.
The meaning of phenomenology, for Heidegger, does not lie in
the consciousness of the phenomenologist himself, but in the "thing
itself": the turn in man's relationship to things, others, and himself;
and, finally, this "turn" itself is nothing "new," but is, as Heidegger
puts it, "the oldest of the old.""5 The turn in man's being in the world
is man's return to himself, in that the definitive event through which
both man and world emerge is precisely the "de-realization," "sus-
pension," or "stepping-back" which, in phenomenology, becomes an
explicit concern.
FRANCIS F. SEEBURGER.
UNIVERSITY OF DENVER.
15 Heidegger, Zur Sache des Denkens. TUbingen: Niemeyer, 1969, p. 25.

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International Phenomenological Society

Heidegger and the Phenomenological Reduction

International Phenomenological Society is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve

The explications of the preliminary conception of phenomenology point out that

issue is "transcendental consciousness" and its relationship to the

3 See Husserl, Ideen I, Husserliana Band III, p. 134.

As Heidegger argues in Sein und Zeit, man (Dasein) is that being

7 See Ibid., p. 32 ff., 61 f.

If, however, the phenomenologist begins seriously to consider

10 See Heidegger, Sein und Zeit, p. 72 ff.

wise unavailable dimension for philosophical description-the dimen-

Since Husserl fails to see the importance of history (Geschichte)

14 See Heidegger, Unterwegs zur Sprache. Pfu]lingen: Neske, 1959, p. 121.

ing less than the "pure," "unmotivated" reduction which Sartre

15 Heidegger, Zur Sache des Denkens. TUbingen: Niemeyer, 1969, p. 25.

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