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83 3 Some Methodological Problems Arising in Husserl’s Late Reflections on the Phenomenological Reduction Introduction For some years now the phenomenological reduction has enjoyed a significant popularity both in phenomenological circles and within other philosophical orientations inspired by phenomenology. This is largely attributable , at least initially, to interest coming out of France, but which in the meantime has affected philosophers in other countries, an impulse affecting philosophers who explicitly subscribe to the “phenomenological movement” or those who have only a vague relationship to phenomenology of the classical variety.1 It is due to this reconsideration that the founding father of phenomenology is also again being given more attention . Some hundred or more years ago he was, after all, the initiator not only of phenomenology but above all of the method of phenomenological reduction as a particular mode of access to philosophy in a decidedly transcendental form. Husserl’s philosophy is often virtually identified with his method of reduction, and it is thus rightly believed that by a reconstruction of this procedure one can grasp phenomenology as a whole. Indeed , the reduction can be said to have been phenomenology’s “primary institution” (Urstiftung) as a transcendental enterprise. Husserl is of interest for contemporary philosophizing in general for reasons other than just the reduction. Yet the problems which arise particularly in his late work only become comprehensible when one has gained an understanding of the method of reduction, a method which for him is invariably connected with the paradigm of a philosophy of reflection and subjectivity.2 In the difficulties which confronted Husserl, the fundamental problems—and also the limits—of a philosophy oriented in this manner can be seen. Not so long ago one might have received the impression that postmodernity and all forms of “post-isms” had outstripped Husserlian phenomenology; yet, more than seventy 84 H U S S E R L years after his death (and after the subsiding of Heidegger mania), it is widely recognized that Husserl can in no way be filed into the archives.3 It is precisely the increasing publication of his Nachlass that has allowed a total picture of Husserl to emerge, one infinitely richer than the one known solely through his published writings.4 The assessment of the phenomenological reduction and its philosophical meaning has also shifted, both in taking up Husserl and in going beyond him; for contemporary phenomenological efforts have not always expressly based themselves on Husserl—to the contrary. Often the (new) approaches to and reconsiderations on the theme of “reduction” were formulated precisely as a critique of Husserl. While one might emphatically welcome Husserl’s efforts toward a “reduction” as a grounding of a new philosophical method and a new philosophical-scientific ethos on the basis of subjectivity, one might in the same breath also criticize him by saying that he did not carry out this idealradically enough.5 Further, one might claim that because of his prejudices which, despite all the efforts of the epoché were nevertheless present, he remained trapped within unexamined paradigms. So went the tendency, to some extent, to carry out always newer and more radical reductions, in order to push forward into spheres which, because of Husserl’s fixation on evidence and intuitability (Anschaulichkeit), necessarily had to remain hidden from him. Yet, in the focus on always more radical regions made accessible through the reduction, it was seldom askedwhat “reduction” even means, and if “reduction” can even be methodologically appropriate for such operations of thought (if, that is, one is still within the realm of thought). The meaning of “reduction” is either taken as self-evident or is generalized in a way which has very little to do with Husserl’s original idea— but which also, thereby, does not contradict it. Moreover, the obvious question as to whether it is even possible to detach the method of reduction from Husserl’s basic orientation focused and dependent on his theory of subjectivity is not addressed. The methodology of reduction is neglected in favor of a thematization of that to which one reduces (and can reduce). Husserl’s philosophy of the phenomenological reduction is taken to be a method—and only this—while in his last years it gained for him a far more universal meaning and is directly connected with his “metaphysical” standpoint. He viewed it as the most important component of his phenomenology as a whole, and the latter’s success depended for him first and foremost on a correct execution and...

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