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PART I

SUMMARY AND OTHER SOURCES

Introduction

For me the main theme the paper wants to highlight is the two processes or structure of doing the
phenomenological reduction; especially the epoché and the reduction proper. But before that one must first
review what is phenomenology and the reason why the phenomenological reduction developed.

“The modern founder of phenomenology is the German Philosopher Edmund Husserl (1859-1938),
who sought to make philosophy a ‘rigorous science’ by returning to its attention ‘to the things themselves’
(zu den Sachen selbst).”1 Husserl wanted to have a new approach to knowing the world or a phenomenon
through first-hand experience, without any influence from one’s bias and prejudices. “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.”2 “Phenomenology is the study of structures of consciousness as experienced from the first-
person point of view.”3

This concern of Edmund Husserl in finding meaning in reality through a first-hand experience and bias free
attitude is the reason for the emergence of phenomenological reductionism.

Phenomenological Reductionism

In the paper, phenomenological reduction is described as 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.”4 “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.” 5

Structure of Phenomenological Reductionism

The phenomenological reductionism, or epoché in general, is a suspension of judgments about the


existence or non-existence of the external world.6 Husserl says that is that we are 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 (science
and bias) and return to the “things themselves”.7

For that reason, the phenomenological reducation is the technique whereby this stripping away
occurs; the technique itself has two moments: the first Husserl names epoché, using the Greek term for

1
https://www.brown.edu/Departments/Joukowsky_Institute/courses/architecturebodyperformance/1065.html
(accessed November 9, 2019)
2
https://www.iep.utm.edu/phen-red/#H1
3
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/phenomenology/#WhatPhen (accessed November 5, 2019)
4
https://www.iep.utm.edu/phen-red/#H1
5
https://www.iep.utm.edu/phen-red/#H1
6
https://partiallyexaminedlife.com/2011/12/22/three-types-of-reduction-in-phenomenology/ (accessed November 5,
2019)
7
https://www.iep.utm.edu/phen-red/#H1
abstention, and the second is referred to as the reduction proper, an inquiring back into consciousness. 8 It
must be noted that these two moments or structures must not be understood as “steps” that we do first in an
effort to prepare oneself for another “step”.9

A. Epoché

Husserl developed the method of epoché or “bracketing” around 1906. It may be regarded
as a radicalization of the methodological constraint, already to be found in Logical Investigations,
that any phenomenological description proper is to be performed from a first person point of view,
so as to ensure that the respective item is described exactly as is experienced, or intended, by the
subject.10

Epoche according to the dictionary is the act of refraining from any conclusion for or
against anything as the decisive step for the attainment of ataraxy 11 (calmness). But when one
searches for the meaning of epoche in phenomenology he finds that “epoche is the ‘moment’ in
which we abandon the acceptedness of the world that is holding us captive.”12 By this we mean that
epoche is that instant or that ‘moment’ by which we free ourselves from the framework and the
standard of the world that has influenced us, our biases, our way of thinking and even our
prejudices. It is the “whatever method we use to free ourselves from the captivity of the
unquestioned acceptance of the everyday world.”

One way of understanding something, is by understanding that thing by which it is not.


(This is a method commonly used by my professor in Logic) In order to understand something you
have to present its opposite or the contrasting idea of that thing. “A common misunderstanding in
understanding epoche is its role in the absention of the belief in the world which does not
necessarily mean a denial of the world. The whole point of the epoche is that it is neither an
affirmation nor a denial in the existence in the world.”13 In here one can see that this method is not
some kind of an exclusive method of philosophizing by doing away the existence of the real world.
Nor does it sound like the doctrine of idealism, where idealists reject the existence of matter and
believe only that reality is fundamentally mental and that these reality are eternal things that are
existing in an eternal realm.

B. Reduction Proper

The “reduction proper” was the term coming from the German philosopher Eugen Fink to
describe the second moment of the phenomenological reductionism. 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.14 Epoche
and the action of reduction proper are two internal basic moments of the phenomenological
reduction, mutually required and mutually conditioned. If epoche we understand abstention from
belief, then under the concept of “action of reduction proper” we can understand all the
8
https://www.iep.utm.edu/phen-red/#H1
9
https://www.iep.utm.edu/phen-red/#H1
10
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/husserl/#EpoPerNoeHylTimConPheRed
11
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/epoche (accessed November 22, 2019)
12
https://www.iep.utm.edu/phen-red/#H1
13
https://www.iep.utm.edu/phen-red/#H1
14
https://www.iep.utm.edu/phen-red/#H1
transcendental insights in which we blast open captivation –in-an-acceptedness and first recognize
acceptedness as an acceptedness in the first place.15

PART II

PERSONAL INSIGHT/COMMENTARY

Philosophy is a story.16 It is either a continuation, development, termination of the ideas from the old
principles, and thought or it is a discovery of a new way of thinking. Edmund Husserls phenomenological
reductionism is but another continuation or a discovery of a notion to the continuation of the story of
philosophy. I say that phenomenology is a continuation, simply because there are philosophers who tackled
the same issue and method in finding the truth or essence of a thing by dwelling to the things and seeing
them without a preconceptions or reserved notions of that thing.

“For as long as our mind is influenced by a prejudice, we do not consider it a judgement.”17

15
Eugen Fink, February 2, 1995, Sixth Cartesian Meditation: The Idea of Transcendental Theory of Method
(Indiana University Press ISBN 9780253114228 ) p. 41.
16
Msgr. Tan
17
Hans-Georg Gadamer, Second Edition 2006, Truth and Method (The Tower Building, 80 Maiden Lane 11 York
Road New York, NY 10038. London SEI 7NX) p.298.

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