-
5. Existential Reduction and the Object of Truth
- Fordham University Press
- Chapter
- Additional Information
This chapter examines Merleau-Ponty's challenge to the Husserlian theory of phenomenological reduction. Unlike Husserl's version, Merleau-Ponty's reduction cannot be operated by consciousness itself, for beginning with consciousness can only return us to consciousness and to an arbitrary transcendental idealism. Instead, Merleau-Ponty proposes a reduction operated not by withdrawal and suspension, but on the contrary, by a saturation of perception. This, Merleau-Ponty concludes, indicates that what can be revealed by a properly understood epoche is only the movement from which the world becomes an object for one. This procedure unmasks the world and the subject as correlative illusions.