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Toward a Fourth Reduction?
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Toward a Fourth Reduction? J O H N P A N T E L E I M O N M A N O U S S A K I S In this essay we attempt a redefining of the phenomenological method as this has been developed mainly through three ‘‘reductions ’’1 represented by three thinkers whose work advanced phenomenological research in novel ways: Edmund Husserl, Martin Heidegger, and Jean-Luc Marion. Our rehearsal of the phenomenological tradition aims at formulating a set of controversial questions: Is it, perhaps, time for a fourth reduction that would better serve the sensibilities of the so-called phenomenology of the apparent? And if so, what might be its guiding principles, its ways of operating, its scope and aim? Such a fourth reduction, we believe, would not seek to overcome or discard the preceding movements of reduction; rather, it would strive to complete them by rehearsing, retrieving, and repeating them. In some sense, a fourth reduction could be a corrective recapitulation of the transcendent, ontological, and dosological2 reductions. In the following pages we will try to flesh out what the basic principles of a fourth reduction might be by clarifying further the definition of the prosopon and its pertinence for a phenomenology of the experience of God. Husserl’s transcendental reduction called for a return ‘‘to the things themselves,’’ where consciousness refocuses on the phenomena as they appear in themselves and by themselves (eidetically), cutting through, as it were, the layers of preassigned signification that common usage has accumulated over them. Heidegger’s ontological 21 reduction guided consciousness’s eye in seeing that phenomena, even before being the manifestation of this or that thing, simply are. This understanding of phenomena as beings led Heidegger’s thought to a retrieval of the difference between beings and the horizon of Being. The dosological reduction disclosed a structure more ulterior than phenomenality and being, that of unconditional givenness. The fourth reduction does not seek to overcome or discard the preceding movements of reduction; rather, it strives to complete them by rehearsing, retrieving, and repeating them. In some sense, the fourth reduction is a corrective recapitulation of the transcendent , ontological, and dosological reductions. What, then, is the fourth reduction? As Richard Kearney has phrased it in the opening essay of this volume, the fourth reduction ‘‘leads us beyond the horizons of ‘essence,’ ‘being,’ and ‘gift’ back to existence, that is, back to the natural world of everyday, embodied life where we may confront once again the Other as prosopon.’’ We will try to flesh out the basic principles of the fourth reduction by clarifying further the definition (discussed elsewhere) of the prosopon and its pertinence for a phenomenology of everyday experience. It could be relatively easy to accuse the fourth reduction of being partial, especially in comparison with the three preceding ones, since it either reduces phenomena to the experience of the Other as prosopon or it excludes phenomena (any other than the Other) by being applicable only in cases where another human being is involved— having little or nothing to say about an entire world of phenomena (things, feelings, events, etc.). Indeed, how does this tree that I see through my window, or this paper that I am writing on, ‘‘fit’’ in such a prosopic reduction? Would it not be absurd, by the very definition of prosopon, to subject this kind of phenomena to the fourth reduction, to the extent that they lack a face (and the capacity of relationship that only a face can offer) and, therefore, can never take the place of the Other? In other words, the fourth reduction is said to reduce the world to the Other as prosopon, who now becomes its privileged (and unique) example. Its partiality, in other words, would have been a humanism, or personalism. As a way of responding to this objection, we need to go back for a moment and reexamine the three previous reductions in the history of phenomenology. What we come to realize is that in all of them (transcendental, ontological, dosological) there is always a predominant ‘‘structure’’ through which and by which each reduction itself 22 John Panteleimon Manoussakis [54.81.185.66] Project MUSE (2024-03-19 03:43 GMT) takes effect and is occasioned. Even a casual reading of Husserl’s work confirms that the operative structure in the transcendental reduction is intentionality. It is the intentional movement of consciousness that seeks and constitutes phenomena as objects...