Phenomenology

Answer : Husserl’s phenomenological reduction parenthesizes existential and ontological commitments to the everyday world and its objects. What remains after the reduction is exacted is the transcendental ego. The transcendental ego is revealed as pure consciousness, which is always and ever directed toward something. Husserl’s critical elaboration of Franz Brentano’s concept of intentionality uncovers the directedness of consciousness. While it is critical that one begins with the transcendental ego, one certainly does not end there. How else can I know anything, unless I am the one that’s doing the perceiving, judging, thinking, and deciding? Husserl’s Cartesian Meditations, which were initially lectures presented in early 1929 at the Sorbonne (Paris), begin with a discussion and furthering of René Descartes’ radical doubt that he actually or adequately knows anything. Husserl goes so far as to say that his method of thought, transcendental

Phenomenology, is a “neo-Cartesianism,” even though “it is obliged and precisely by its radical development of Cartesian motifs to reject nearly all the well-known doctrinal content of the Cartesian philosophy”. The inspiration that Husserl drew from Descartes refers to the necessity of one’s shedding away prejudices, acceptances, and preconceived approaches to reality. Knowledge of the world must arise as “his wisdom, his self-acquired knowledge”. Ultimately, what Descartes and Husserl share is the conviction that self-responsibility ought to be considered as an essential element of what it means to be a human being? So far, we’ve considered the phenomenological project, and its debt owed to Cartesianism. Now Husserl responds to the charge that phenomenology leads one to solipsism. To respond to this question, we need to turn to the Fifth of Husserl’s Cartesian Meditations, where the topic of the “uncovering of the sphere of transcendental

Being as monadological intersubjectivity” is under discussion. He says that the world as existing for me is my world. However, that is not the end of the story. In the world, I encounter another “animate organism” over there, separate from me, which brings about the issue of there vs. here. I see that this object “over there” exhibits similar physical traits as me, so I decide that this “other” is in some way like me. Husserl’s term for this occurrence is “analogue”: the “other” is an analogue, or a mirroring, of my self. This analogical ‘apperception’ is what Husserl coins “appresentation”: the alter ego (other person) is made “co-present” to my ego. Without this “other,” I cannot precisely or adequately know who I am, nor can I learn that the world is larger than my experiences of it. Eventually, Husserl asserts, “I experience the world as an intersubjective world,” full of people similar to and different from me. The objective, intersubjective world is, of course, “experienceable by everyone”. Husserlian phenomenology maintains that I, as transcendental ego, can experience an alter ego, another human individual, as existing “over there,” and separate from my private ego-consciousness. This “experience of someone else” is Husserl’s core definition of “empathy,” a concept that will be taken up in greater detail in Stein’s dissertation. Through empathy, “we project ourselves into the alien cultural community and its culture”. For “the Master,” “the other” is “phenomenological a ‘modification’ of myself”. The world of my ego, when added to the world of your ego and those of other egos is different.

Sartre’s view diverges from Husserl’s on the important issue of the ego. For Sartre, Husserl adopted the view that the subject is a substance with attributes, as a result of his interpretation of Kant’s unity of apperception. Husserl endorsed the Kantian claim that the ‘I think’ must be able to accompany any representation of which I am conscious, but reified this ‘I’ into a transcendental ego. Such a move is not warranted for Sartre, as he explains in The Transcendence of the Ego. Moreover, it leads to the following problems for our phenomenological analysis of consciousness.

The ego would have to feature as an object in all states of consciousness. This would result in its obstructing our conscious access to the world. But this would conflict with the direct nature of this conscious access. Correlatively, consciousness would be divided into consciousness of ego and consciousness of the world. This would however be at odds with the simple, and thus undivided, nature of our access to the world through conscious experience. In other words, when I am conscious of a tree, I am directly conscious of it, and am not myself an object of consciousness. Sartre proposes therefore to view the ego as a unity produced by consciousness.

In other words, he adds to the Humean picture of the self as a bundle of perceptions, an account of its unity. This unity of the ego is a product of conscious activity. As a result, the traditional Cartesian view that self-consciousness is the consciousness the ego has of itself no longer holds, since the ego is not given but created by consciousness.

What model does Sartre propose for our understanding of self-consciousness and the production of the ego through conscious activity? The key to answering the first part of the question lies in Sartre’s introduction of a pre-reflective level, while the second can then be addressed by examining conscious activity at the other level, i.e. that of reflection. An example of pre-reflective consciousness is the seeing of a house. This type of consciousness is directed to a transcendent object, but this does not involve my focusing upon it, i.e. it does not require that an ego be involved in a conscious relation to the object. For Sartre, this pre-reflective consciousness is thus impersonal: there is no place for an ‘I’ at this level. Importantly, Sartre insists that self-consciousness is involved in any such state of consciousness: it is the consciousness this state has of itself. This accounts for the phenomenology of ‘seeing’, which is such that the subject is clearly aware of her pre-reflective consciousness of the house. This awareness does not have an ego as its object, but it is rather the awareness that there is an act of ‘seeing’.

Reflective consciousness is the type of state of consciousness involved in my looking at a house. For Sartre, the cogito emerges as a result of consciousness’s being directed upon the pre-reflectively conscious. In so doing, reflective consciousness takes the pre-reflectively conscious as being mine. It thus reveals an ego insofar as an ‘I’ is brought into focus: the pre-reflective consciousness which is objectified is viewed as mine. This ‘I’ is the correlate of the unity that I impose upon the pre-reflective states of consciousness through my reflection upon them. To account for the prevalence of the Cartesian picture, Sartre argues that we are prone to the illusion that this ‘I’ was in fact already present prior to the reflective conscious act, i.e. present at the pre-reflective level. By substituting his model of a two-tiered consciousness for this traditional picture, Sartre provides an account of self-consciousness that does not rely upon a pre-existing ego, and shows how an ego is constructed in reflection.

Answer : An externalist reading (or rational reconstruction) of Husserl’s theory of content might, however, be taken to conflict with the methodological constraints posed by the phenomenological epoché, which — together with the dynamic method and eidetic reduction — builds the essential core of the transcendental-phenomenological method introduced in Ideas. 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. Now from a first-person point of view, one cannot, of course, decide whether in a case of what one takes to be, say, an act of perception one is currently performing, there actually is an object that one is perceptually confronted with.

For instance, it is well possible that one is hallucinating. From a first-person point of view, there is no difference to be made out between the veridical and the non-veridical case — for the simple reason that one cannot at the same time fall victim to and detect a perceptual error or misrepresentation. In the non-veridical case, too, a transcendent object appears to “constitute itself” in consciousness. It is for such reasons that Husserl demanded that in a phenomenological description proper the existence of the object(s) (if any) satisfying the content of the intentional act described must be “bracketed”. That is to say, the phenomenological description of a given act and, in particular, the phenomenological specification of its intentional content, must not rely upon the correctness of any existence assumption concerning the object(s) (if any) the respective act is about. Thus, the epoché has us focus on those aspects of our intentional acts and their contents that do not depend on the existence of a represented object out there in the extra-mental world. On closer inspection, however, Husserl actually draws upon two different versions of the epoché in Ideas (as elsewhere), which versions he does not separate as clearly as one might have hoped: the “universal epoché” on the one hand, and a much weaker “local epoché” (as one could label it) on the other. The former version requires the phenomenologist to put all his existence assumptions regarding the external world into brackets at once, whereas the weaker version merely requires him to bracket particular existence assumptions, depending on the respective “transcendental guide’”, i.e., on the issue to be clarified phenomenologically.

This is supposed to enable the phenomenologist to make explicit his reasons for the bracketed existence assumptions, or for assumptions based upon them, such as, e.g., the presupposition that a given creature is a subject undergoing such-an-such an experience. Only the universal epoché seems to conflict with our externalist reading: if no extra-mental existence assumptions whatsoever are admitted, then phenomenologically there cannot be object-dependent intentional contents, as externalism would have it. By contrast, there may be some such contents, even many of them, without intentional content generally having to be dependent on a particular extra-mental object which leaves enough room for the method of local epoché to apply to any given particular case..Now the only function of the universal epoché is to establish the residuum thesis, which holds that the realm of (empirical) consciousness is “absolute” in that it does not depend on the existence of an external, spatio-temporal world. But Husserl’s argument for this thesis fails: it is invalid. As a consequence, the universal epoché does not serve to establish what it was solely designed to show, namely the residuum thesis.

Answer : Some years after the publication of his main work, the Logical Investigations, Husserl made some key discoveries leading him to make the assertion that phenomenology is the “science of all sciences”; in order to study the structure of consciousness, one would have to distinguish between the act of consciousness, the noesis, and the phenomena at which it is directed, the noemata. Only “bracketing” all assumptions about the existence of an external world would lead to real knowledge. This procedure he called epoché. Husserl conceived phenomenology as the “science of all sciences” in contradistinction to sciences of all kinds. In Husserl’s analyses, sciences are naïve in the sense that they are built upon certain presuppositions which are simply taken for granted. Phenomenology, on the other hand, is built upon a rigorous self-examination of one’s point of departure and the justification of one’s thought processes. Husserl characterized phenomenology as the self-grounding discipline built upon rigorous self-examination. He defined phenomenology as the science that can ground and justify all other sciences. One of Husserl’s major concerns were Psychologism, a position which considers that all phenomena can be reduced to psychic events in the human mind, since our mind is what offers access to all phenomena.

Historicism on the other hand holds the position that all phenomena can be conceived as and reducible to historical events. Husserl criticized the relativism and skepticism inherent to these two forms of reductionism from the objectivist perspective of truth and knowledge. Husserl’s focus on essence, that is, his essentialism, went parallel to his objectivist endeavor. Husserl concentrated on the ideal, essential structures of consciousness. The metaphysical problem of establishing the material reality of what we perceive was of little interest to Husserl, except when he had to repeatedly defend his position of transcendental idealism, which did not at any point, propose that there were no real material objects.

Husserl proposed that the world of objects and ways in which we direct ourselves toward and perceive those objects is normally conceived of in what he called the “natural attitude,” which is characterized by a belief that objects materially exist and exhibit properties that we see as emanating from them. Husserl proposed a radical new, phenomenological way of looking at objects by examining how we, in our many ways of being intentionally directed toward them, actually “constitute” them. This is to be distinguished from materially creating objects or objects merely being figments of the imagination. In the phenomenological attitude, the object ceases to be something simply “external” and ceases to be seen as providing indicators about what it is and becomes a grouping of perceptual and functional aspects that imply one another under the idea of a particular object or “type.” A way of looking that is most explicitly delineated by the natural sciences. The notion of objects as real is not expelled by phenomenology, but “bracketed” as a way in which we regard objects instead of a feature that inheres in an object’s essence, founded in the relation between the object and the perceiver. In order to better understand the world of appearances and objects, phenomenology attempts to identify the invariant features of how objects are perceived and pushes attributions of reality into their role as an attribution about the things we perceive, or an assumption underlying how we perceive objects.

Answer : Edmund Husserl’s Ideas, General Introduction to Pure Phenomenology defines phenomenology as a descriptive analysis of the essence of pure consciousness. Husserl defines pure or transcendental phenomenology as an a priori (or eidectic) science, i.e. as a science of essential Being. Husserl distinguishes between pure phenomenology and empirical psychology (and between transcendental and psychological subjectivity), saying that phenomenology is a science of essences, while psychology is a science of the facts of experience. Husserl criticizes “psychologism” (the theory that psychological analysis may be used as a method of resolving philosophical problems), saying that only an a priori science can define the essential nature of Being.He describes how phenomenological reduction may be used as a method of philosophical inquiry. Husserl distinguishes between phenomenology as a science of pure consciousness and psychology as a science of empirical facts. For Husserl, the realm of pure consciousness is distinct from the realm of real experience. Husserl explains that phenomenology is a theory of pure phenomena, and that it is not a theory of actual experiences (or of actual facts or realities). According to Husserl, essential Being must be distinguished from actual existence, just as the pure Ego must be distinguished from the psychological Ego. Essences are non-real, while facts are real. The realm of transcendentally reduced phenomena is non-real, while the realm of actual experience is real.

Thus, phenomenological reduction leads from knowledge of the essentially real to knowledge of the essentially non-real. Husserl explains that phenomenological reduction is the process of defining the pure essence of a psychological phenomenon. Phenomenological reduction is a process whereby empirical subjectivity is suspended, so that pure consciousness may be defined in its essential and absolute Being. This is accomplished by a method of “bracketing” empirical data away from consideration. “Bracketing” empirical data away from further investigation leaves pure consciousness, pure phenomena, and the pure Ego as the residue of phenomenological reduction.

Phenomenological reduction is also a method of bracketing empirical intuitions away from philosophical inquiry, by refraining from making judgments upon them. Husserl uses the term epoche (Greek, for “a cessation”) to refer to this suspension of judgment regarding the true nature of reality. Bracketed judgment is an epoche or suspension of inquiry, which places in brackets whatever facts belong to essential Being. Husserl argues that bracketing is a neutralization of belief. Doxic positing (i.e. the positing of belief) may be actual or potential. According to Husserl, facts or realities are the objective data of empirical intution, while essences are the objective data of essential intuition. Empirical intuition may lead to essential intuition (or essential insight), which may be adequate or inadequate in terms of its clearness and distinctness. Empirical or non-empirical objects may have varying degrees of intuitability, and empirical or non-empirical intuitions may vary in their clarity and distinctness. Non-empirical intuitions may apprehend objects which are produced by fantasy or imagination. Husserl explains that consciousness is intentional insofar as it refers to, or is directed at, an object. Intentionality is a property of directedness toward an object. Consciousness may have intentional and non-intentional phases, but intentionality is what gives consciousness its objective meaning. According to Husserl, the cogito (“I think”) is the principle of the pure Ego.

The pure Ego performs acts of consciousness, which may be immanently or transcendently directed. Immanently directed acts of consciousness refer to objects which are within the same Ego, or which belong to the same stream of consciousness. Transcendently directed acts of consciousness refer to objects which are outside the Ego, or which belong to another stream of consciousness. The objects of consciousness are the embodied or unembodied things which are perceived or consciously experienced. Husserl argues that the difference between immanent and transcendent perception corresponds to the difference between being as Experience and Being as Thing.1 Things as they exist in themselves cannot be perceived immanently, and can only be perceived transcendently.

The difference between immanent and transcendent perception also reflects the difference in the way in which things are given or presented to consciousness. Givenness may be adequate or inadequate in terms of its clearness and distinctness, and in terms of its intuitability. Husserl also explains that immanently-perceived objects have an absolute Being, in that their existence is logically necessary. The existence of transcendently-perceived objects is not logically necessary, in that their existence is not proved by the Being of consciousness itself. Consciousness itself is absolute Being, while the spatio-temporal world is merely phenomenal Being. Husserl emphasizes that phenomenology is concerned with the essence of what is immanent in consciousness, and that it is concerned with describing immanent essences. To confuse the essences of things with the mental representations of these essences is to confuse the aims of phenomenology and psychology. Phenomenology is a descriptive analysis of being as Consciousness, while psychology is a descriptive analysis of being as Reality. The difference between Being as Consciousness and Being as Reality is the difference between transcendental and transcendent being. Husserl asserts that every actual cogito has an intentional object (i.e. it is a consciousness of something). The cogito may itself become a cogitatum, if the principle that “I think” becomes an object of consciousness. In the cogito, the act of thinking is itself an intentional object.

However, in contrast to the Cartesian principle that “I think, therefore I am” (cogito ergo sum), the phenomenologically reduced cogito is a suspension of judgment about whether or not “I am,” or whether or not “I exist.” The phenomenologically reduced cogito is a suspension of judgment about the question of whether or not thinking implies existence. Thus, phenomenology examines the cogito as a pure intuition, and as an act of pure consciousness. Husserl describes noesis and noema as two aspects of intentionality. Noesis is the process of cogitation, while the noemata (or cogitata) are that which is cogitated. Every intentional experience has a noetic (real) phase and a noematic (non-real) phase. Every noetic phase of consciousness corresponds to a noematic phase of consciousness. Noesis is a process of reasoning, which assigns meaning to intentional objects. Noesis and noema may both be a means to explain objective meaning. The noetic meaning of transcendent objects is discoverable by reason, while the noematic meaning of immanent objects is discoverable by pure intuition. Noetic meaning is transcendent, while noematic meaning is immanent. Thus, noesis and noema correspond respectively to experience and essence.

Answer : Husserl’s Concept of Reason and his Presuppositionlessness of Philosophy as Basic Motives for Transcendental Phenomenology. Edmund Husserl pursued philosophical inquiry in the groundwork for mathematics and then for logic also. Husserl was concerned with the ultimate justification of philosophies and sciences as the central theme of his questioning search. And this ultimate justification is pursued through Reason’s self reflection on itself. It was the ultimate justification for all knowledge and meaning of the world from the transcendental ego by its immediate self reflective intuitive grasp of itself. Even in the transcendental use of Reason, certainly there is a difference between Kant’s conception of Reason as the faculty of logical inference and Husserl’s conception of Reason as the faculty of intuitive self reflection. And yet, from the above investigation, it is quite obvious that Husserl literally uncritically inherited the notion of Reason from Parmenides/Anaxagoras/Socrates/Plato/Aristotle all the way through the contemporary philosophers including Descartes, Locke, Berkeley, Hume, Kant and even Fichte.

As long as Husserl based his methodology on Reason as self reflection on itself, the historically loaded concept of Reason was used in order to pursue phenomenological analyses and descriptions. Whether it is the principle of separation and knowledge, or the faculty of knowing the genuine reality, or the faculty to develop the scientific system of the authentic reality, as long as Reason is the principle of self consciousness, Husserl’s fundamental motive to pursue the ultimate justification of all meaning and knowledge of reality could not help but presuppose the long honorable tradition of Western philosophy concerning the notion of Reason. And Husserl in fact did so. This is the attitude to reject all the tradition and all the preceding philosophies, and all the prejudices and preconceived concepts are to be “bracketed” following Descartes’ universal doubt so that we have a fresh, completely new start of philosophy to approach directly to fact itself. This presuppositionless approach to fact itself and Husserl’s use of Reason as self reflection on itself by the transcendental ego are, as extensively revealed above, seem mutually incompatible. To explore and ultimately justify the meaning of the world by means of the transcendental ego is not to elucidate reality as it really is, but to conceal it by means of traditionally loaded meanings of Western Reason.

In other words, to discover the teleological meaning of European Reason in Husserl’s transcendental phenomenology has the function to project the entire history of Western philosophy into the meaning of the world supposedly disclosed by Husserl’s transcendental philosophy. The problem of the anonymity of the functioning ego, the question of the streaming present, the discovery of configurations in the prepredicative experience, etc., are some of the indications of this dilemma. Even though this criticism of Husserl is appropriate, this does by no mans make the greatness and truthfulness of Husserl’s intentional analyses and his descriptions less meaningful.

Answer : By The term ‘phenomenology’ Husserl designates two things: a new kind of descriptive method which made a breakthrough in phi­losophy at the turn of the century, and an a priori science derived from it; a science which is intended to supply the basic instru­ment (Organon) for a rigorously scientific philosophy and, in its consequent applica­tion, to make possible a methodical reform of all the sciences. Modern psychology is the science dealing with the “psychical” in the concrete context of spatio‑temporal realities, being in some way so to speak what occurs in nature as ego­ical, with all that inseparably belongs to it as psychic processes like experiencing, think­ing, feeling, willing, as capacity, and as habitus. Experience presents the psychical as merely a stratum of human and animal be­ing.

To the essential sense of the transcendental problem belongs its all-inclusiveness, in which it places in question the world and all the sciences investigating it. It arises within a general reversal of that “natural attitude” in which everyday life as a whole as well as the positive sciences operate. In it (the natural attitude) the world is for us the self-evidently existing universe of realities which are continuously before us in unquestioned givenness. Are we then supposed to be dual beings — psychological, as human objectivities in the world, the subjects of psychic life, and at the same time transcendental, as the subjects of a transcendental, world-constituting life-process? This duality can be clarified through being demonstrated with self-evidence. The psychic subjectivity, the concretely grasped “I” and “we” of ordinary conversation, is experienced in its pure psychic ownness through the method of phenomenological-psycho logical reduction. Modified into eidetic form it provides the ground for pure phenomenological psychology.

Transcendental subjectivity, which is inquired into in the transcendental problem, and which subjectivity is presupposed in it as an existing basis, is none other than again “I myself” and “we ourselves”; not, however, as found in the natural attitude of everyday or of positive science; i.e., apperceived as components of the objectively present world before us, but rather as subjects of conscious life, in which this world and all that is present—for “us”—”makes” itself through certain apperceptions. The (apperceived) I and we on hand presuppose an (apperceiving) I and we, for whom they are on hand, which, however, is not itself present again in the same sense.

To this transcendental subjectivity we have direct access through a transcendental experience. If we consider the how of this inclusion, we find that what is meant is that every apriori is ultimately prescribed in its validity of being precisely as a transcendental achievement; i.e., it is together with the essential structures of its constitution, with the kinds and levels of its givenness and confirmation of itself, and with the appertaining habitualities. This implies that in and through the establishment of the a priori the subjective method of this establishing is itself made transparent, and that for the a priori disciplines which are founded within phenomenology (for example, as mathematical sciences) there can be no “paradoxes” and no “crises of the foundations.” The unending task of presenting the complete universe of the a priori in its transcendental relatedness-back-to-itself (or self-reference), and thus in its self-sufficiency and perfect methodological clarity, is itself a function of the method for realization of an all-embracing and hence fully grounded science of empirical fact. Within (the realm of) positive reality), genuine (relatively genuine) empirical science demands the methodical establishing-of-a-foundation through a corresponding a priori science.

Hence the idea of an empirical phenomenology which follows after the eidetic is understood and justified. It is identical with the complete systematic universe of the positive sciences, provided that we think of them from the beginning as absolutely grounded methodologically through eidetic phenomenology. Precisely through this is restored the most primordial concept of philosophy—as all-embracing science based on radical self-justification, which is alone [truly] science in the ancient Platonic and again in the Cartesian sense. Phenomenology rigorously and systematically carried out, phenomenology in the broadened sense (which we have explained) above, is identical with this philosophy which encompasses all genuine knowledge. It is divided into eidetic phenomenology (or all-embracing ontology) as first philosophy, and as second philosophy, [it is] the science of the transcendental intersubjectivity. First philosophy is the universe of methods for the second, and is related back into itself for its methodological grounding. In phenomenology all rational problems have their place, and thus also those that traditionally are in some special sense or other philosophically significant. For out of the absolute sources of transcendental experience, or eidetic intuiting, they first [are able to] obtain their genuine formulation and feasible means for their solution.

In its universal relatedness-back-to-itself, phenomenology recognizes its particular function within a possible life of mankind at the transcendental level. It recognizes the absolute norms which are to be picked out intuitively from it (life of mankind), and also its primordial teleo-logical-tendential structure in a directedness towards disclosure of these norms and their conscious practical operation. It recognizes itself as a function of the all- embracing reflective meditation of (transcendental) humanity, (a self-examination) in the service of an all-inclusive praxis of reason; that is, in the service of striving towards the universal ideal of absolute perfection which lies in infinity, (a striving] which becomes free through (the process of) disclosure. Or, in different words it is a striving in the direction of the idea (lying in infinity) of a humanness which in action and through- out would live and move (be, exist) in truth and genuineness.

In the systematic work of phenomenology, which progresses from intuitively given (concrete) data to heights of abstraction, the old traditional ambiguous antitheses of the philosophical standpoint are resolved by themselves and without the arts of an argumentative dialectic, and without weak efforts and compromises: oppositions such as between rationalism (Platonism) and empiricism, relativism and absolutism, subjectivism and objectivism, ontologism and transcendentalism, psychologism and anti-psychologism, positivism and metaphysics, or the teleological versus the causal interpretation of the world. Subjectivism can only be overcome by the most all-embracing and consistent subjectivism (the transcendental).

In this (latter) form it is at the same time objectivism (of a deeper sort), in that it represents the claims of whatever objectivity is to be demonstrated through concordant experience, but admittedly (this is an objectivism which) also brings out its full and genuine sense, against which (sense) the supposedly realistic objectivism sins by its failure to understand transcendental constitution. Relativism can only be overcome through the most all-embracing relativism, that of transcendental phenomenology, which makes intelligible the relativity of all “objective” being (or existence) as transcendentally constituted; but at one with this (it makes intelligible) the most radical relativity, the relatedness of the transcendental subjectivity to itself. Phenomenology as eidetic is, on the other hand, rationalistic: it overcomes restrictive and dogmatic rationalism, however, through the most universal rationalism of inquiry into essences, which is related uniformly to transcendental subjectivity, to the ‘I’, consciousness, and conscious objectivity. And it is the same in reference to the other antitheses bound up with them. Accordingly, phenomenology demands that the phenomenologist foreswear the ideal of a philosophic system and yet as a humble worker in community with others, live for a perennial philosophy.

Answer : Edmund Husserl’s Ideas, General Introduction to Pure Phenomenology defines phenomenology as a descriptive analysis of the essence of pure consciousness. Husserl defines pure or transcendental phenomenology as an a priori (or eidectic) science, i.e. as a science of essential Being. Husserl distinguishes between pure phenomenology and empirical psychology (and between transcendental and psychological subjectivity), saying that phenomenology is a science of essences, while psychology is a science of the facts of experience. Husserl criticizes “psychologism” (the theory that psychological analysis may be used as a method of resolving philosophical problems), saying that only an a priori science can define the essential nature of Being. He describes how phenomenological reduction may be used as a method of philosophical inquiry.

Husserl distinguishes between phenomenology as a science of pure consciousness and psychology as a science of empirical facts. For Husserl, the realm of pure consciousness is distinct from the realm of real experience. Husserl explains that phenomenology is a theory of pure phenomena, and that it is not a theory of actual experiences (or of actual facts or realities). According to Husserl, essential Being must be distinguished from actual existence, just as the pure Ego must be distinguished from the psychological Ego. Essences are non-real, while facts are real. The realm of transcendentally reduced phenomena is non-real, while the realm of actual experience is real. Thus, phenomenological reduction leads from knowledge of the essentially real to knowledge of the essentially non-real. Husserl explains that phenomenological reduction is the process of defining the pure essence of a psychological phenomenon. Phenomenological reduction is a process whereby empirical subjectivity is suspended, so that pure consciousness may be defined in its essential and absolute Being. This is accomplished by a method of “bracketing” empirical data away from consideration. “Bracketing” empirical data away from further investigation leaves pure consciousness, pure phenomena, and the pure Ego as the residue of phenomenological reduction. Phenomenological reduction is also a method of bracketing empirical intuitions away from philosophical inquiry, by refraining from making judgments upon them.

Husserl uses the term epoche (Greek, for “a cessation”) to refer to this suspension of judgment regarding the true nature of reality. Bracketed judgment is an epoche or suspension of inquiry, which places in brackets whatever facts belong to essential Being.Husserl argues that bracketing is a neutralization of belief. Doxic positing (i.e. the positing of belief) may be actual or potential.