Phenomenological reduction

In a natural setting, things are given to me as existing outside my consciousness, in space and time. I see them not as images in my mind, but as physical reality transcendental to my mind. Moving from the perception of the world (in a natural setting ) to focusing on the very experiences of consciousness (in reflection ), we will get the possibility of a phenomenological reduction .

Reflection is “a turn of the gaze - from something conscious to consciousness of it”: from the object perceived in the natural setting to the act of perception (that is, from the object located there in space to the object as the perception of the object in consciousness) ^[3] , from what is judged in the judgment, to the meaning of this judgment in the logical sense ^[4] , etc. Thus, in reflection, the experience of consciousness itself becomes an intentional object.

Reflection is immanently directed acts, that is, such that “their intentional objects ... belong to the same stream of experiences that they themselves” ^[5] .

Performing a phenomenological and psychological reduction, we turn off the natural installation : as if we bracket the world, things in a natural installation, refrain from judging their physical, "spatio-temporal existence here", "from making decisions about the existence or non-existence of the world" ^{[6 ]} - and we turn our eyes not to the perceived, but to the perception itself (phenomenon, experience of consciousness). There is a reduction of the transcendental “to the purely mental”; "Is not the [external] world or part of it, but the" meaning of the "world" ^[7] . If in a natural attitude an intentional object, a transcendent act was realized, now attention is shifted to the act in which it appears. We do not live in intentional acts, do not dissolve in them, but reflect on them. Now, “real existence” does not matter, that is, whether the observable will turn out to be a hallucination, an illusion, etc. — the phenomenological composition of perception does not depend on this. We consider the perception of red, and not this transcendental perceived color inherent in the real thing. ^[eight]

In other words, we are making a phenomenological epoch (epoch is abstinence from judgment, which is “combined with unshakable or even unshakable - for obvious - conviction” of its truth). We do not discard the inherent in the phenomenon (experience of consciousness) indication of the existence of a real thing, but only refrain from judging about it and confine ourselves to the phenomenon itself, and we consider this indication as part of it ^[9] .

I look at everything as if in a dream, in a dream: there is no external spatio-temporal world, there are only experiences as facts of my consciousness, “the“ state ”of such and such human“ I ”, in the change of which the identical mental properties of a person express themselves”. That is, I continue to exist as a concrete soul, an empirical subject, in the consciousness of which specific experiences causally related to each other take place (as concrete facts, and not as entities ), although as if in the absence of an external world, and therefore, even lack of own body.

In the implementation of the phenomenological and psychological reduction, all sciences of nature, as well as sciences of the spirit (since they are also based on a natural attitude, are also subject to “shutdown”.

Eidetic reduction is the purification of the phenomena of consciousness from factuality ^[10] . Carrying out the phenomenological and psychological reduction cleared the phenomena of external reality, turning them into experiences of consciousness, but they remained facts of consciousness, realities of consciousness. In the mode of eidetic reduction, “we can neglect the factual side of our phenomena and use them only as“ examples “” ^[7] . In other words, the experiences of consciousness are not taken as given concrete phenomena existing at a given moment of time, but as such , as timeless entities , “simply as an example of a certain ground for ideation ” ^[11] . “Phenomenological reduction opens up the phenomena of truly inner experience; eidetic reduction - the essential forms of the sphere of mental being ” ^[7] . “A typical feature of any psychic fact becomes apparent” ^[7] .

So, eidetic reduction is a transition when considering the experiences of consciousness from existence to essence, from facts to their essences (eidos), seen in ideation ^[12] .

Pure phenomenology “deals exclusively with experiences comprehended in intuition and analyzed in pure essential universality, but not with empirical appercepted experiences as real facts, that is, the experiences of experiencing people or animals in the world that is posited as a fact of experience” ^[13] .

See also: Idea (philosophy)

After the phenomenological and psychological reduction, which “turned off” the natural installation , the external world is no longer for us, we are limited by the internal experience, the field of consciousness, it has become our “reality”. Now it is necessary to make consciousness itself (cogito), its content, the subject of research: the amazing fact that I am aware of something, experience it, even regardless of whether a certain reality corresponds to these experiences. Now it is necessary to do with consciousness itself (as the consciousness of an empirical subject) the same as previously with the natural external world. ^[14] .

Phenomenological and psychological reduction, even with eidetic reduction, is still limited by the real world (as the semantic horizon of the subject’s “internal” experience, since the subject of mental life is still thought of as part of this world). Transcendental reduction (alternative terms: transcendental-phenomenological reduction; transcendental epoch) poses the question of what is consciousness in general and the real world, "manifesting" in consciousness. This question also covers the being of any ideal world (the world of essences ) and its “being-for-us”. ^[15] Entities, although they are not part of reality perceived in a natural setting, are nonetheless alien, transcendental to the direct composition of consciousness, as well as real things ^[16] .

The facts of inner experience and the “psychological self” left after the phenomenological and psychological reduction also turn out to be part of the world transcendental to the transcendental self ^[17] . Now we turn off not only the external world, but also the internal, that is, empirical subjectivity.

“Transcendental reduction can be seen as a continuation of the reduction of psychological experience. The universal is now reaching the next stage. From now on, “bracketing” applies not only to the world, but also to the sphere of “mental”. The psychologist reduces the habitual stable world to the subjectivity of the “soul”, which itself is part of the world in which it lives. ^{[18] A} transcendental phenomenologist reduces the psychologically refined subjectivity to transcendental, that is, to that universal subjectivity that constitutes the world and the layer of “mental” in it. ”

- Husserl E. Phenomenology: [Article in the British Encyclopedia]. §3

Transcendental reduction reveals not only “disembodied”, but also “soulless” consciousness, that is, it does not constitute an “empirical“ me-subject ”in the same way that material experiences constitute intentional objects ^[19] . Consciousness is now taken not as the psychic experiences of a certain living being, “components of a person’s spiritual life”, ““ states ”of such and such human“ I ”, when changed, the identical psychic properties of a person express themselves, but as“ absolute ”,“ pure experiences ”,“ Pure, or transcendental ”(absolute, transcendentally pure) consciousness - consciousness in itself, completely purified from reality ^[20] . There remains a “pure experience of the act” and a pure “I” - there is a transition from an empirical consciousness and an empirical “I” to a pure consciousness and a pure “I” ^[21] . The existence of a transcendental ego and its cogitationes (taken, of course, as essence) is an apodictic evidence that could not be detected before transcendental reduction, since it is not part of the objective world ^[22] . “Thus, in reality, the natural being of the world - the one that I only lead and can talk about - as a more primary being in itself is preceded by the being of a pure ego and its cogitationes . The natural soil of being is secondary in its existential significance, it always assumes transcendental " ^[23] .

Thus, transcendental reduction reveals the noetic - noematic structure of consciousness. In the place of the world perceived in the natural setting, now - in a pure consciousness - its meaning (noem) remains. “Transcendental reduction makes εποχή with respect to reality - however, to the fact that it preserves from reality, belong noemas with the noematic unity enclosed in them, and thereby the way in which the real in consciousness is recognized and in a specific sense” ^[24] .

Carrying out a phenomenological reduction, we “turn off” everything that is transcendental with respect to pure consciousness, with the exception of some entities and a pure “I” ^[25] .

Transcendental to consciousness:

• The natural world, nature (including everything in the world that is endowed with value and practical characteristics - and, accordingly, culture , science ). Turning them off is the main reduction ^[26] .
• God (God, says Husserl, is absolute in a different sense than consciousness, and transcendent in a different sense than the world).
• Entities (because they “are not really acquired in it [consciousness]” ^[27] , the content of consciousness is only “indicative cases” of entities ^[28] ). All entities should not be turned off, otherwise a pure consciousness will remain, but there will be no science about it.
• Pure "I" ("a kind of transcendence, - in a certain sense not constituted, - transcendence within the limits of immanence "). We have no right to turn off the pure "I", since it plays "an essential role in every cogitatio."

• Husserl E. Ideas for pure phenomenology and phenomenological philosophy. T. 1. [1] (unavailable link from 12-05-2013 [2265 days]) M .: DIK, 1999.
• Husserl E. Cartesian reflections (inaccessible link from 12-05-2013 [2265 days]) / Per. with him. D.V. Sklyadneva. St. Petersburg: Science, 2001.
• Prekhtl P. Introduction to Husserl's phenomenology (inaccessible link from 12-05-2013 [2265 days]) . Tomsk: Aquarius, 1999.

• “Reduction” (article from the “Phenomenological Dictionary” by I. S. Shkuratov)
• “Phenomenological reduction” (article by V. N. Semenova from the encyclopedia “History of Philosophy” edited by A. A. Gritsanov (Mn., 2002))
• The phenomenological reduction of E. Husserl and the existential dialectic of N. Berdyaev as a historical-philosophical parallel (M. V. Silantyeva)