Husserl’s method of reduction: Sebastian Luft

The term “reduction” functions as the key term for Husserl’s method of gaining access to the sphere of phenomenological research. What is to be introduced and established with this method is phenomenology as a descriptive and eidetic science of transcendental subjectivity as intersubjectivity. This chapter will be devoted to the methodological problem of entering this peculiar sphere of Husserl’s novel philosophical enterprise. The reduction marks a significant rupture within Husserl’s thought and stands forthe establishment of phenomenology as a transcendental philosophy in the tradition of Kant. According to the mature Husserl, phenomenology is an enterprise committed to philosophy as transcendental idealism. Pre-transcendental phenomenology – prior to the reduction – can be characterized as a form of realism consciously employing an anti-metaphysical and anti-transcendental method of “simply” describing mental phenomena in their givenness to consciousness. The early Husserl was also committed to this stance, which he later considered naive. Husserl did not rescind his commitments to phenomenology as a method of description; but he did overcome the anti-transcendental standpoint he inherited from his teacher Franz Brentano. Phenomenology as transcendental idealism asserts that the world must be construed as constituted in transcendental consciousness. Transcendental consciousness (or subjectivity) is the absolute to which every worldly entity is relative. The reduction is the method of leading back (from the Latin reducere) to this sphere of origin. “The reduction,” then, may be seen as Husserl’s version of the Copernican Turn in the phenomenological context. Given this radical shift in Husserl’s development, it is no surprise that the reductionhas been the stumbling block for thinkers in Husserl’s aftermath, who rejected any “metaphysical” baggage the transcendental turn seemed to entail. To them, phenomenology was precisely a liberation from this tradition. At the same time, others applauded Husserl for the reduction in that he finally joined the ranks of a Kantian form of philosophy. Indeed, in the latter case, Husserl is considered part of the “transcendental tradition” (Carr 1999) starting with Kant; or, Husserl is seen asdelivering, with a rigorous scientific method, on the promises of Kantianism, for which Kant himself, the German Idealists, and his contemporary Neo-Kantians sought in vain. The top-down deductive approach of Kant was supplemented by a bottom-up method that concretely worked up to the “facts” Kant and the Kantians took for granted. The controversy over whether or not phenomenology ought to be a transcendentalenterprise continues to this day, however, in different guises. For instance, somebody committed to the project of “naturalization” of consciousness will presumably reject the transcendental turn established by the reduction. Conversely, those going along with the project of transcendental phenomenology will consider any naturalistic inclinations as a fallback to a pre-Kantian naivete, which enters the downward path of skepticism or relativism. The controversy over the reduction, then, turns on the question whether or notphenomenology needs to be, or should eschew, transcendental philosophy. Since the function of the reduction is to establish phenomenology as transcendental philosophy, the question then becomes to what extent the reduction modifies traditional forms of transcendental philosophy. This question indicates what is at stake with the reduction. The reduction as the entryway to Husserl’s peculiar form of transcendental philosophy influences the way in which this very enterprise is set on its track. The reduction, then, is more than merely a question of access, but sets the stage to what Husserl considered a radically novel form of scientific philosophy. In Husserl’s mind, phenomenology combines the best elements of transcendental idealism, realistic empiricism, and descriptive psychology. The reduction is the crucible for phenomenology as such. Regardless of how Husserl’s readers have interpreted the reduction over the years, this much is clear: for him the reduction was the most important element of his entire philosophy. Despite its central importance, the reduction was the title for a problem throughoutHusserl’s lifetime. Husserl already performed methodological steps that might be described as a “reduction” prior to his explicitly finding and adhering to the term. And once he had officially established it as the method to enter phenomenology as of his programmatic work, Ideas Pertaining to a Pure Phenomenology and Phenomenological Philosophy, Book I, of 1913 (Ideas I, Husserl 1983), he continued to rework and refine this method. At the end of his life, the bulk of his research manuscripts consisted of reflections on various aspects of the reduction. Rather than being a method that was once developed and could henceforth simply be applied, “the reduction” becomes the title for an ongoing reflection upon what remained, to Husserl, a problematic topic posing ever-new questions. The following exposition, thus, cannot sketch the meandering development of this problem, but will treat it in its mature form from the standpoint of the late Husserl. One will not find one definitive systematic exposition of the reduction in Husserl’s oeuvre. Part of the confusion this method causes to this day lies in the fact that Husserl never (to his dismay) produced a comprehensive and completely satisfying account of his central methodological tenet. In the following section (“The basic problem: overcoming the ‘natural attitude’”),the basic problem of the reduction and to what it responds, will be sketched. Next, the paths into the reduction will be presented (“The Paths into the reduction:Cartesian, psychological, and via the lifeworld”), after which the reduction will be portrayed as Husserl’s path to his peculiar form of transcendental idealism (“The reduction and phenomenology as transcendental idealism”). The final part (“Reception and influence”) will highlight the influences of Husserl’s method of the reduction.