Husserl’s phenomenological method

In this text, we aim to introduce in a generic way the phenomenological method proposed by Edmund Husserl (1859-1938), having as specific objects the definition and description of epoche husserliana, as well as its developments and consequences in relation to the construction of a new science and also a new philosophy.

Husserl defines his new way of philosophizing as a science related to the intentional object, which must be stripped of its relationship with experience. The central concern of Husserlian phenomenology is to build a philosophy linked to immediate and undeniable data to later use them as a basis for the construction of theories. As a motto, there is the “return to things themselves”, that is, “to look for manifest things, phenomena so evident that they cannot be denied” (REALE, 2007, p. 554).

Therefore, one must bear in mind the need to describe the phenomena that appear to consciousness after performing the epoche (or phenomenological reduction) – act of placing our philosophical convictions, scientific results and convictions arising from our natural attitude (which imposes beliefs on us) in parentheses. It is therefore essential to suspend judgments about what is not evident and incontrovertible in order to obtain data that remain after the epoche🇧🇷

During the epoche, the phenomenological residue is found: the existence of consciousness is immediately evident. Given the evidence of the existence of consciousness, the phenomenologist’s task is to describe the typical ways – eidetic essences – in which facts and things present themselves to consciousness. Thus, phenomenology is defined as the science of essences focused on their description and analysis:

“Essences that become the object of study if the researcher, establishing himself in the attitude of a disinterested spectator, frees himself from preconceived opinions and, without letting himself be involved by banality and the obvious, knows how to see and manage to intuit (and describe) that universal whereby a fact is that and not something else” (REALE, 2007, p. 555).

Therefore, as an object, the phenomenologist has universal ideas, the essences of which can only be reached through successive stages of the phenomenological method.

For Husserl, consciousness is intentional because it is consciousness of something that presents itself in a typical way. As a function of this new science, we have the analysis of these typical modes, we have the questioning about what the transcendental consciousness conceives as the essence of a certain object. By returning to the things themselves, as Husserl proposes, the phenomenologist is faced with the unique reality, the transcendental consciousness (“transcendental” as what is in consciousness without depending on experience) which does not need anything to exist and which makes up the meaning actions, things, institutions and also the meaning of the world.

According to our author, there are two types of propositions: universal and necessary propositions, and propositions arising inductively from experience. The first are conditions for the construction of a theory. In order to distinguish the intuition of a given fact from the intuition of an essence, Husserl uses both types of proposition as a basis.

Knowledge begins with the experience of facts and continually supplies us with factual data – science also has them as objects. The fact is seen as something contingent, however, when presented to consciousness, together with it, it captures an essence. It is in this way that the individual is announced to consciousness through a universal: “When consciousness grasps a fact here and now, it also grasps the essence, quid of that particular and contingent fact that is the particular case” (REALE, 2007, p. 560).

In this way, the essence is conceived as a typical way of appearing of phenomena. The knowledge of this is achieved by eidetic intuition, that is, it is a knowledge different from the knowledge of the fact, since the particular facts are understood as cases of the eidetic essences. However, it must be made clear that the particular facts are real and that the universals are concepts, ideal objects that enable the classification, distinction and recognition of the particular facts presented to consciousness. Thus, phenomenology has as its objects the essences of the data actually intuited by consciousness, when they are presented to it. The eidetic reduction is therefore the intuition of essences.

The important thing, according to Husserlian’s view, is to describe what is given to consciousness, what manifests itself in it and the limits of such manifestation, namely, the phenomenon. Thus, there is the “principle of all principles” of the phenomenological method: every intuition that presents something originally is a source of knowledge; and everything that presents itself originally in intuition must be taken as it appears and within the limits in which it presents itself. Therefore, aiming to find solid and unquestionable points, manifest, apodictic and undoubted things, he launches the proposal of the phenomenological method: the epoche or phenomenological reduction.

This method consists, in its first step, in the suspension of judgments in relation to our preconceptions, in relation to those of philosophical doctrines, in relation to the affirmations of the sciences and, finally, in relation to the natural attitude, since they cannot be undoubted starting points of a rigorous science: “Husserl’s phenomenological method proposes to establish a safe basis, free of presuppositions, for all sciences and, in a special way, for philosophy” (BOCHENSKI, 1968, p. 2) .

In this way, the method consists in showing and clarifying what is immediately given to consciousness – that is, the object. The purpose of epoche it is the unveiling of the meaning and purpose of the world first for me and then for all other subjects. The only thing that undoubtedly resists the epoche it is the existence of consciousness – the transcendental I, or even the phenomenological residue-, just as the cogito resists Cartesian methodical doubt.

Furthermore, Husserl takes consciousness as an absolute reality: it is a reality nulla re indiget ad Existendum. It is she who constitutes the world. In order to extract all the characteristics related to the experience of the intentional object, the phenomenologist elaborates the phenomenological reduction. It is through this principle that Husserlian phenomenology tries to base itself as a rigorous science whose objects are things as they are.

One of the most important statutes that Husserl attributes to his phenomenology is that of reducing any aspect of objective reality that objectifies consciousness, which enables the phenomenological investigation of cogitating and also of the thinker as a thinker. The cogito must, therefore, be maintained as such, without being linked to experiences.

As the philosopher states, in empirical investigations, experience exerts a great influence on our beliefs, which cannot happen in phenomenological investigation due to the fact that it is linked to pure reflection. This implies that, in phenomenological investigation, experience has no function. Therefore, the investigator is concerned only with the phenomenon of experience as it is in itself, which can be reached by pure reflection. The phenomenological description, as can be seen, is carried out according to the first-person perspective to ensure that the object of consciousness is described as it is experienced by the subject.

For the phenomenological description of the object to be adequate and complete, we have the second step, namely the eidetic reduction. The existence of the object – provoked by the persuasion of our natural attitude – must be placed between parentheses: “In this way, the epoche it focuses only on aspects relevant to our intentional acts and their contents that do not depend on the spatio-temporal existence of a particular represented object” (FATTURI, 2011, p. 27).

It is evident that there is a double determination regarding the epochegiven that, in the first place, epoche localized (or eidetic reduction) and, secondly, the epoche universal (or transcendental reduction). As we noted, in eidetic reduction there is the suspension of a particular object. In the transcendental reduction (whose basis is the doctrine of intentionality), the phenomenologist must bracket the whole world, or rather the existence of all concrete objects external to consciousness: “As a result of this last reduction, nothing remains of the object but of what is given to the subject” (BOCHENSKI, 1968, p. 3-4). Transcendental reduction is therefore the application of the phenomenological method to the subject and his acts.

Intentional experiences – experiences of an object – are awareness of something and are intentionally related to the thing. By applying the phenomenological reduction to intentional experiences: We arrive, on the one hand, at capturing consciousness as a pure center of reference of intentionality, to which the intentional object is given, and, on the other hand, we arrive at an object that, after the reduction, has no other existence than that of being intentionally given to this subject. “In the experience itself, the pure act is considered, which seems to be, simply, the intentional reference of pure consciousness to the intentional object” (BOCHENSKI, 1968, p. 4).

The attitude of the natural world is the passive and captive acceptance of the world around us, so that we don’t question the way our world is, we don’t question our beliefs about our perception of the world. We have our bodies, culture, diverse beliefs and logic as guarantees – what is immanent to the human being, since it is accepted by all.

Faced with this attitude, the epoche it is the act of consciousness in which this immanence is no longer accepted. The content that remains in every act of experience and which is the object of this new science is the substratum of all experience (which does not need to be updated), remaining as an object of consciousness in real experiences and in hallucinations: this is the noema, essence eidetic. This is the transcendental part of perceptual experience, it is the constant foundation in every act of consciousness.

The phenomenological reduction is necessary, because, in order to reach the noeme of the phenomena, considering that the reduction of the contents of natural acceptance of the world and its determinations is a condition sine qua non for the intentional object of consciousness to be contemplated by the subject: “To reach its proper object, the eidosphenomenology must practice not the Cartesian doubt, but the so-called epoche🇧🇷 This means that phenomenology ‘puts in parentheses’ certain data elements and is not interested in them” (BOCHENSKI 1968, p. 3); with the aim of returning to the things themselves.

references

BOCHENSKI, MJ Edmund Husserl’s Phenomenology🇧🇷 Translation: Antônio Pinto de Carvalho, in Contemporary Western PhilosophyHerder, 1968.

FATTURI, A. History of Philosophy V: textbook. Palhoça: UnisulVirtual,

2011.

REALE, G. History of Philosophy: Of…