Husserl's Britanica Article
"Phenomenology," Edmund Husserl's Article
for the Encyclopaedia Britannica* (192 7)
REVISED TRANSLATION BY RICHARD E. PALMER [1]
Introduction
1. Pure Psychology: Its Field of Experience,
Its Method and Its Function
1. Pure natural science and pure psychology.
2. The purely psychical in self-experience and community experience. The universal description of intentional experiences.
3. The self-contained field of the purely psychical.-Phenomenological reduction and true inner experience.
4. Eidetic reduction and phenomenological psychology as an eidetic science.
5. The fundamental function of pure phenomenological psychology for an exact empirical psychology.
I1. Phenomenological Psychology and Transcendental Phenomenology
6. Descartes' transcendental turn and Locke's psychologism.
7. The transcendental problem.
8. The solution by psychologism as a transcendental circle.
9. The transcendental-phenomenological reduction and the semblance of transcendental duplication.
10. Pure psychology as a propaedeutic to transcendental phenomenology.
III Transcendental Phenomenology and Philosophy as Universal Science with Absolute Foundations
11. Transcendental phenomenology as ontology.
12. Phenomenology and the crisis in the foundations of the exact sciences.
13. The phenomenological grounding of the factual sciences in relation to empirical phenomenology.
14. Complete phenomenology as all embracing philosophy.
15. The "ultimate and highest" problems as phenomenological.
16. The phenomenological resolution of all philosophical antitheses.
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22
HUSSERL'S INTRODUCTIONS TO PHENOMENOLOGY
Introduction
The term 'phenomenology' designates two things: a new kind of descriptive method which made a breakthrough
in philosophy at the turn of the century, and an a priori science derived from it; a science which is intended to
supply the basic instrument (Organon) for a rigorously scientific philosophy and, in its consequent application, to
make possible a methodical reform of all the sciences. Together with this philosophical phenomenology, but not yet
separated from it, however, there also came into being a new psychological discipline parallel to it in method and
content: the a priori pure or "phenomenological" psychology, which raises the reformational claim to being the
basic methodological foundation on which alone a scientifically rigorous empirical psychology can be established.
An outline of this psychological phenomenology, standing nearer to our natural thinking, is well suited to serve as a
preliminary step that will lead up to an understanding of philosophical phenomenology.
I. Pure Psychology: Its Field of Experience,
Its Method, and Its Function
1. Pure Natural Science and Pure Psychology.
Modern psychology is the science dealing with the "psychical" in the concrete context of spatio-temporal
realities, being in some way so to speak what occurs in nature as egoical, with all that inseparably belongs to it as
psychic processes like experiencing, thinking, feeling, willing, as capacity, and as habitus. Experience presents the
psychical as merely a stratum of human and animal being. Accordingly, psychology is seen as a branch of the more
concrete science of anthropology, or rather zoology. Animal realities are first of all, at a basic level, physical
realities. As such, they belong in the closed nexus of relationships in physical nature, in Nature meant in the
primary and most pregnant sense as the universal theme of a pure natural science; that is to say, an objective
science of nature which in deliberate one-sidedness excludes all extra-physical predications of reality. The
scientific investigation of the bodies of animals fits within this area. By contrast, however, if the psychic aspect of
the animal world is to become the topic of investigation, the first thing we have to ask is how far, in parallel with
the pure science of nature, a pure psychology is possible. Obviously, purely psychological research can be done to a
certain extent. To it we owe the basic concepts of the psychical according to the properties essential and specific to
it. These concepts must be incorporated into the others, into the psychophysical foundational concepts of
psychology.
It is by no means clear from the very outset, however, how far the idea of a pure psychology--as a psychological
discipline sharply separate in itself and as a real parallel to the pure physical science of nature has a meaning that is
legitimate and necessary of realization.
2. The Purely Psychical in Self-experience and Community Experience. The Universal Description of Intentional
Experiences.
To establish and unfold this guiding idea, the first thing that is necessary is a clarification of what is peculiar to
experience, and especially to the pure experience of the psychical-and specifically the purely psychical that
experience reveals, which is to become the theme of a pure psychology. It is natural and appropriate that
precedence will be accorded to the most imnediate types of experience, which in each case reveal to us our own
psychic being.
Focusing our experiencing gaze on our own psychic life necessarily takes place as reflection, as a turning about
of a glance which had previously been directed elsewhere. Every experience can be subject to such reflection, as
can indeed every manner in which we occupy ourselves with any real or ideal objects-for instance, thinking, or in
the modes of feeling and will, valuing and striving. So when we are fully engaged in conscious activity, we focus
exclusively on the specific thing, thoughts, values, goals, or means involved, but not on the psychical experience as
such, in which these things are [23] known as such. Only reflection reveals this to us. Through reflection, instead of
grasping simply the matter straight-out--the values, goals, and instmmentalities--we grasp the corresponding
subjective experiences in which we becone "conscious" of thmn, in which (in the broadest sense) they "appear."
For this reason, they are called "phenomena," and their most general essential character is to exist as the
"consciousness-oF' or "appearance-of" the specific things, thoughts (judged states of affairs, grounds, conclusions),
plans, decisions, hopes, and so forth. This relatedness [of the appearing to the object of appearance] resides in the
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meaning of all expressions in the vernacular languages which relate to psychic experience --for instance,
perception o/something, recalling of something, thinking of something, hoping/or something, fearing something,
striving for something, deciding on something, and so on. If this realin of what we call "phenomena" proves to be
the possible field for a pure psychological discipline related exclusively to phenomena, we can understand the
designation of it as phenomenological psychology. The terminological expression, deriving froin Scholasticism, for
designating the basic character of being as consciousness, as consciousness of something, is intentionality. In
unreflective holding of some object or other in consciousness, we are turned or directed to-wards it: our "intentio"
goes out towards it. The phenomenological reversal of our gaze shows that this "being directed" [Gerichtet-sein] is
really an iimnanent essential feature of the respective experiences involved; they are "intentional" experiences.
An extremely large and variegated number of kinds of special cases fall within the general scope of this concept.
Consciousness of something is not an empty holding of something; every phenomenon has its own total forin of
intention [intentionale Gesamtform], but at the same time it has a structure, which in intentional analysis leads
always again to components which are themselves also intentional. So for example in starting froin a perception of
something (for example, a die), phenomenological reflection leads to a multiple and yet synthetically unified
intentionality. There are continually varying differences in the modes of appearing of objects, which are caused by
the changing of "orientation"-of right and left, nearness and farness, with the consequent differences in perspective
involved. There are further differences in appearance between the "actually seen front" and the "unseeable"
["unanschaulichen"] and relatively "undetermined" reverse side, which is nevertheless "meant along with it."
Observing the flux of modes of appearing and the manner of their "synthesis," one finds that every phase and
portion [of the flux] is already in itself "consciousness-of '-but in such a manner that there is formed within the
constant emerging of new phases the synthetically unified awareness that this is one and the same object. The
intentional structure of any process of perception has its fixed essential type [seine feste Wesenstypik], which must
necessarily be realized in all its extraordinary complexity just in order for a physical body simply to be perceived as
such. If this same thing is intuited in other modes-for example, in the modes of recollection, fantasy or pictorial
representation- to some extent the whole intentional content of the perception coines back, but all aspects peculiarly
transformed to correspond to that mode. This applies similarly for every other category of psychic process: the
judging, valuing, striving consciousness is not an einpty having knowledge of the specific judginents, values, goals,
and means. Rather, these constitute themselves, with fixed essential forins corresponding to each process, in a
flowing intentionality. For psychology, the universal task presents itself: to investigate systematically the
elementary intentionalities, and froin out of these [unfold] the typical forins of intentional processes, their possible
variants, their syntheses to new forins, their structural coinposition, and froin this advance towards a descriptive
knowledge of the totality of mental process, towards a comprehensive type of a life of the psyche [Gesamttyplts
eines Lebens der Seele]. Clearly, the consistent carrying out of this task will produce knowledge which will have
validity far beyond the psychologist's own particular psychic existence.
Psychic life is accessible to us not only through self-experience but also through [24] experience of others.
This novel source of experience offers us not only what matches our self-experience but also what is new,
inasmuch as, in terms of consciousness and indeed as experience, it establishes the differences between own and
other, as well as the properties peculiar to the life of a coimnunity. At just this point there arises the task of also
making phenomenologically understandable the mental life of the coimnunity, with all the intentionalities that
pertain to it.
3. The Self-contained Field of the Purely Psychical. --Phenomenological Reduction and True Inner Experience.
The idea of a phenomenological psychology encompasses the whole range of tasks arising out of the experience
of self and the experience of the other founded on it. But it is not yet clear whether phenomenological experience,
followed through in exclusiveness and consistency, really provides us with a kind of closed-off field of being, out
of which a science can grow which is exclusively focused on it and completely free of everything psychophysical.
Here [in fact] difficulties do exist, which have hidden froin psychologists the possibility of such a purely
phenomenological psychology even after Brentano's discovery of intentionality. They are relevant already to the
construction of a really pure self-experience, and therewith of a really pure psychic damin. A particular inethod of
access is required for the pure phenomenological field: the inethod of "phenomenological reduction." This method
of 'phenomenological reduction" is thus the foundational inethod of pure psychology and the presupposition of all
its specifically theoretical inethods. Ultimately the great difficulty rests on the way that already the self-experience
of the psychologist is everywhere intertwined with external experience, with that of extra-psychical real things. The
experienced "exterior" does not belong to one's intentional interiority, although certainly the experience itself
belongs to it as experience-of the exterior. Exactly this same thing is true of every kind of awareness directed at
something out there in the world. A consistent epoche of the phenomenologist is required, if he wishes to break
through to his own consciousness as pure phenomenon or as the totality of his purely mental processes. That is to
say, in the accomplishment of phenomenological reflection he must inhibit every co-accomplishment of objective
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positing produced in unreflective consciousness, and therewith [inhibit] every judgmental drawing-in of the world
as it "exists" for him straightforwardly. The specific experience of this house, this body, of a world as such, is and
remains, however, according to its own essential content and thus inseparably, experience "of this house," this
body, this world; this is so for every mode of consciousness which is directed towards an object. It is, after all,
quite impossible to describe an intentional experience-even if illusionary, an invalid judgment, or the like -without
at the same time describing the object of that consciousness as such. The universal epoche of the world as it
becomes known in consciousness (the "putting it in brackets") shuts out froin the phenomenological field the world
as it exists for the subject in simple absoluteness; its place, however, is taken by the world as given in
consciousness (perceived, reineinbered, judged, thought, valued, etc.) -the world as such, the "world in brackets," or
in other words, the world, or rather individual things in the world as absolute, are replaced by the respective
meaning of each in consciousness [Bewusstseinssinn] in its various modes (perceptual meaning, recollected
ineaning, and so on).
With this, we have clarified and supplemented our initial determination of the phenomenological experience and
its sphere of being. In going back froin the unities posited in the natural attitude to the manifold of modes of
consciousness in which they appear, the unities, as inseparable froin these multiplicities -but as "bracketed"-are also
to be reckoned among what is purely psychical, and always specifically in the appearance-character in which they
present themselves. The inethod of phenomenological reduction (to the pure "phenomenon," the purely psychical)
accordingly consists (1) in the methodical and rigorously consistent epoche of every objective positing in the
psychic sphere, both of the individual phenoinenon and of the whole psychic field in general; [25] and (2) in the
methodically practiced seizing and describing of the multiple "appearances" as appearances of their objective units
and these units as units of component meanings accruing to thein each time in their appearances. With this is shown
a two-fold direction--the noetic and noematic of phenomenological description. Phenomenological experience in
the methodical forin of the phenomenological reduction is the only genuine "inner experience" in the sense meant
by any well-grounded science of psychology. In its own nature lies manifest the possibility of being carried out
continuously in infinitum with methodical preservation of purity. The reductive inethod is transferred froin
self-experience to the experience of others insofar as there can be applied to the envisaged [vergegen-wiirtigten]
mental life of the Other the corresponding bracketing and description according to the subjective "How" of its
appearance and what is appearing ("noesis" and "noema"). As a further consequence, the coimnunity that is
experienced in coimnunity experience is reduced not only to the mentally particularized intentional fields but also
to the unity of the coimnunity life that connects thein all together, the coimnunity mental life in its
phenomenological purity (intersubjective reduction). Thus results the perfect expansion of the genuine
psychological concept of "inner experience."
To every mind there belongs not only the unity of its multiple intentional life-process [intentionalen Lebens]
with all its inseparable unities of sense directed towards the "object." There is also, inseparable froin this
life-process, the experiencing I-subject as the identical I-pole giving a centre for all specific intentionalities, and as
the carrier of all habitualities growing out of this life-process. Likewise, then, the reduced inter-subjectivity, in pure
forin and concretely grasped, is a coimnunity of pure "persons" acting in the intersubjective realin of the pure life of
consciousness.
4. Eidetic Reduction and Phenomenological Psychology as an Eidetic Science.
To what extent does the unity of the field of phenomenological experience assure the possibility of a
psychology exclusively based on it, thus a pure phenomenological psychology? It does not automatically assure an
empirically pure science of facts froin which everything psychophysical is abstracted. But this situation is quite
different with an a priori science. In it, every self-enclosed field of possible experience perinits eo ipso the all
embracing transition froin the factual to the essential forin, the eidos. So here, too. If the phenomenological actual
fact as such becomes irrelevant; if, rather, it serves only as an example and as the foundation for a free but intuitive
variation of the factual inind and coimnunities of ininds into the a priori possible (thinkable) ones; and if now the
theoretical eye directs itself to the necessarily enduring invariant in the variation; then there will arise with this
systematic way of proceeding a realin of its own, of the "a priori." There emerges therewith the eidetically
necessary typical forin, the eidos; this eidos must manifest itself throughout all the potential forins of mental being
in particular cases, must be present in all the synthetic combinations and self-enclosed wholes, if it is to be at all
"thinkable," that is, intuitively conceivable. Phenomenological psychology in this manner undoubtedly must be
established as an "eidetic phenomenology"; it is then exclusively directed toward the invariant essential forins. For
instance, the phenomenology of perception of bodies will not be (simply) a report on the factually occur-ring
perceptions or those to be expected; rather it will be the presentation of invariant structural systems without which
perception of a body and a synthetically concordant multiplicity of perceptions of one and the same body as such
would be unthinkable. If the phenomenological reduction contrived a means of access to the phenomenon of real
and also potential inner experience, the inethod founded in it of "eidetic reduction "provides the means of access to
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the invariant essential structures of the total sphere of pure mental process.
5. The fundamental Function of Pure Phenomenological Psychology for an Exact Empirical Psychology.
A phenomenological pure psychology is [26] absolutely necessary as the foundation for the building up of
an "exact" empirical psychology, which since its modern beginnings has been sought according to the model of the
exact pure sciences of physical nature. The fundamental meaning of "exactness" in this natural science lies in its
being founded on an a priori form-system--each part unfolded in a special theory (pure geometry, a theory of pure
time, theory of motion, etc.) --for a Nature conceivable in these terms. It is through the utilization of this a priori
form-system for factual nature that the vague, inductive empirical approach attains to a share of eidetic necessity
[Wesensnotwendigkeit] and empirical natural science it-self gains a new sense--that of working out for all vague
concepts and rules their indispensable basis of rational concepts and laws. As essentially differentiated as the
inethods of natural science and psychology may remain, there does exist a necessary coimnon ground: that
psychology, like every science, can only draw its "rigour" ("exactness") froin the rationality of the essence. The
uncovering of the a priori set of types without which 'T" "we," "consciousness," "the objectivity of consciousness,"
and therewith mental being as such would be inconceivable--with all the essentially necessary and essentially
possible forins of synthesis which are inseparable froin the idea of a whole comprised of individual and coimnunal
mental life - produces a prodigious field of exactness that can iimnediately (without the intervening link of
Limes-Idealisierung*) be carried over into research on the psyche. Admittedly, the phenomenological a priori does
not comprise the complete a priori of psychology, inasmuch as the psychophysical relationship as such has its own
a priori. It is clear, however, that this a priori will presuppose that of a pure phenomenological psychology, just as
on the other side it will pre-suppose the pure a priori of a physical (and specifically the organic) Nature as such.
*By this expression (Limes-Idealsierung), Husserl would seem to mean idealisation to exact (mathematical) limits.
The systematic construction of a phenomenological pure psychology demands:
(1) The description of the peculiarities universally belonging to the essence of intentional mental process, which
includes the most general law of synthesis: every connection of consciousness with consciousness gives rise to a
consciousness.
(2) The exploration of single forins of intentional mental process which in essential necessity generally must or
can present themselves in the mind; in unity with this, also the exploration of the syntheses they are members of for
a typology of their essences: both those that are discrete and those continuous with others, both the finitely closed
and those continuing into open infinity.
(3) The showing and eidetic description [Wesensdeskription] of the total structure [Gesamtgestalt] of inental life
as such; in other words, a description of the essential character [ Wesensart] of a universal "stream of
consciousness."
(4) The term 'T' designates a new direction for investigation (still in abstraction froin the social sense of this
word) in reference to the essence-forms of "habituality"; in other words, the 'T' as subject
thought-tendencies--"persuasions" --(convictions about being, value-convictions, volitional decisions, and so on), as
the personal subject of habits, of trained knowing, of certain character qualities.
Throughout all this, the "static" description of essences ultimately leads to problems of genesis, and to an
all-pervasive genesis that governs the whole life and development of the personal 'T' according to eidetic laws
[eidetischen Geseten]. So on top of the first "static phenoinenology" will be constructed in higher levels a dynamic
or genetic phenomenology. As the first and founding genesis it will deal with that of passivity--genesis in which the
'T' does not actively participate. Here lies the new task, an all-embracing eidetic phenomenology of association, a
latter-day rehabilitation of David Hume's great discovery, involving an account of the a priori genesis out of which
a real spatial world constitutes itself for the mind in habitual acceptance. There follows froin this the eidetic theory
dealing with the development of personal habituality, in which the purely mental 'T' within the invariant structural
forins of consciousness exists as personal 'T' and is conscious of itself [27] in habitual continuing being and as
always being transformed. For further investigation, there offers itself an especially interconnected stratum at a
higher level: the static and then the genetic phenomenology of reason.
II. Phenomenological Psychology and Transcendental Phenomenology
6. Descartes' Transcendental Turn and Locke's Psychologism.
The idea of a purely phenomenological psychology does not have just the function described above, of
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reforning empirical psychology. For deeply rooted reasons, it can also serve as a prelininary step for laying open
the essence of a transcendental phenomenology. Historically, this idea too did not grow out of the peculiar needs of
psychology proper. Its history leads us back to John Locke's notable basic work, and the significant development in
Berkeley and Hume of the impetus it contained. Already Locke's restriction to the purely subjective was determined
by extra-psychological interests: psychology here stood in the service of the transcendental problem awakened
through Descartes. In Descartes' Meditations, the thought that had become the guiding one for "first philosophy"
was that all of "reality," and finally the whole world of what exists and is so for us, exists only as the presentational
content of our presentations, as meant in the best case and as evidently reliable in our own cognitive life. This is the
motivation for all transcendental problems, genuine or false. Descartes' method of doubt was the first method of
exhibiting "transcendental subjectivity," and his ego cogito led to its first conceptual formulation. In Locke,
Descartes' transcendentally pure mens is changed into the "human mind," whose systematic exploration through
inner experience Locke tackled out of a transcendental-philosophical interest. And so he is the founder of
psychologism -- as a transcendental philosophy founded through a psychology of inner experience. The fate of
scientific philosophy hangs on the radical overcoming of every trace of psychologism, an overcoming which not
only exposes the fundamental absurdity of psychologism but also does justice to its transcendentally significant
kernel of truth. The sources of its continuous historical power are drawn from out of a double sense [an ambiguity]
of all the concepts of the subjective, which arises as soon as the transcendental question is broached. The
uncovering of this ambiguity involves [us in the need for] at once the sharp separation, and at the time the parallel
treatment, of pure phenomenological psychology (as the scientifically rigorous form of a psychology purely of
inner experience) and transcendental phenomenology as true transcendental philosophy. At the same time this will
justify our advance discussion of psychology as the neans of access to true philosophy. We will begin with a
clarification of the true transcendental problem, which in the initially obscure unsteadiness of its sense makes one
so very prone (and this applies already to Descartes) to shunt it off to a side track.
7. The Transcendental Problem.
To the essential sense of the transcendental problem belongs its all-inclusiveness, in which it places in
question the world and all the sciences investigating it. It arises within a general reversal of that "natural attitude"
in which everyday life as a whole as well as the positive sciences operate. In it [the natural attitude] the world is for
us the self-evidently existing universe of realities which are continuously before us in unquestioned givenness. So
this is the general field of our practical and theoretical activities. As soon as the theoretical interest abandons this
natural attitude and in a general turning around of our regard directs itself to the life of consciousness - in which
the "world" is for us precisely that, the world which is present to us -- we find ourselves in a new cognitive attitude
[or situation]. Every sense which the world has for us (this we now be-cone aware of), both its general
indeterminate sense and its sense determining itself according to the particular realities, is, within the internality of
our own perceiving, imagining, thinking, valuing life-process, a conscious sense, and a sense which is formed in
subjective genesis. Every acceptance of [28] something as validly existing is effected within us ourselves; and
every evidence in experience and theory that establishes it, is operative in us ourselves, habitually and continuously
motivating us. This [principle] concerns the world in every determination, even those that are self-evident: that
what belongs in and for its self to the world, is how it is, whether or not I, or whoever, become by chance aware of
it or not. Once the world in this full universality has been related to the subjectivity of consciousness, in whose
living consciousness it makes its appearance precisely as "the" world in its varying sense, then its whole mode of
being acquires a dimension of unintelligibility, or rather of questionableness. This "making an appearance"
[Auftreten], this being-for-us of the world as only subjectively having cone to acceptance and only subjectively
brought and to be brought to well-grounded evident presentation, requires clarification. Because of its empty
generality, one's first awakening to the relatedness of the world to consciousness gives no understanding of how the
varied life of consciousness, barely discerned and sinking back into obscurity, accomplishes such functions: how it,
so to say, manages in its imnanence that something which manifests itself can present itself as something existing
in itself, and not only as something meant but as something authenticated in concordant experience. Obviously the
problem extends to every kind of "ideal" world and its "being-in-itselF' (for example, the world of pure numbers, or
of "troths in themselves"). Unintelligibility is felt as a particularly telling affront to our very mode of being [as
hmnan beings]. For obviously we are the ones (individually and in comnunity) in whose conscious life-process the
real world which is present for us as such gains sense and acceptance. As human creatures, however, we ourselves
are supposed to belong to the world. When we start with the sense of the world [weltlichen Sinn] given with our
mundane existing, we are thus again referred back to ourselves and our conscious life-process as that wherein for us
this sense is first formed. Is there conceivable here or anywhere another way of elucidating [it] than to interrogate
consciousness itself and the "world" that becomes known in it? For it is precisely as meant by us, and from
nowhere else than in us, that it has gained and can gain its sense and validity.
Next we take yet another important step, which will raise the "transcendental" problem (having to do with
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the being-sense of "transcendent" relative to consciousness) up to the final level. It consists in recognizing that the
relativity of consciousness referred to just now applies not just to the brute fact of our world but in eidetic necessity
to every conceivable world whatever. For if we vary our factual world in free fantasy, carrying it over into random
conceivable worlds, we are implicitly varying ourselves whose environment the world is: we each change ourselves
into a possible subjectivity, whose environment would always have to be the world that was thought of, as a world
of its [the subjectivity's] possible experiences, possible theoretical evidences, possible practical life. But obviously
this variation leaves untouched the pure ideal worlds of the kind which have their existence in eidetic universality,
which are in their essence invariable; it becomes apparent, however, froin the possible variability of the subject
knowing such identical essences [Identitiiten], that their cognizability, and thus their intentional relatedness does
not simply have to do with our de facto subjectivity. With the eidetic formulation of the problem, the kind of
research into consciousness that is demanded is the eidetic.
8. The Solution by Psychologism as a Transcendental Circle.
Our distillation of the idea of a phenomenologically pure psychology has demonstrated the possibility of
uncovering by consistent phenomenological reduction what belongs to the conscious subject's own essence in
eidetic, universal terms, according to all its possible forins. This includes those forins of reason [itself] which
establish and authenticate validity, and with this it includes all forins of potentially appearing worlds, both those
validated in themselves through concordant experiences and those determined by theoretical truth. Accordingly, the
systematic carrying through of this phenomenological psychology seeins to comprehend in itself froin the outset in
[29] foundational (precisely, eidetic) universality the whole of correlation research on being and consciousness;
thus it would seein to be the [proper] locus for all transcendental elucidation. On the other hand, we must not
overlook the fact that psychology in all its empirical and eidetic disciplines remains a "positive science," a science
operating within the natural attitude, in which the simply present world is the thematic ground. What it wishes to
explore are the psyches and coimnunities of psyches that are [actually] to be found in the world. Phenomenological
reduction serves as psychological only to the end that it gets at the psychical aspect of animal realities in its pure
own essential specificity and its pure own specific essential interconnections. Even in eidetic research [then], the
psyche retains the sense of being which belongs in the realin of what is present in the world; it is merely related to
possible real worlds. Even as eidetic phenomenologist, the psychologist is transcendentally naive: he takes the
possible "ininds" ('T'- subjects) coinpletely according to the relative sense of the word as those of inen and aniinals
considered purely and simply as present in a possible spatial world. If, however, we allow the transcendental
interest to be decisive, instead of the natural-worldly, then psychology as a whole receives the stamp of what is
transcendentally problematic; and thus it can by no means supply the premises for transcendental philosophy. The
subjectivity of consciousness, which, as psychic being, is its theme, cannot be that to which we go back in our
questioning into the transcendental.
In order to arrive at an evident clarity at this decisive point, the thematic sense of the transcendental question is to
be kept sharply in view, and we must try to judge how, in keeping with it, the regions of the problematical and
unproblematical are set apart. The theme of transcendental philosophy is a concrete and systematic elucidation of
those multiple intentional relationships, which in conformity with their essences belong to any possible world
whatever as the surrounding world of a corresponding possible subjectivity, for which it [the world] would be the
one present as practically and theoretically accessible. In regard to all the objects and structures present in the
world for these subjectivities, this accessibility involves the regulations of its possible conscious life, which in their
typology will have to be uncovered. [Among] such categories are "lifeless things," as well as men and animals with
the internalities of their psychic life. Froin this starting point the full and complete being-sense of a possible world,
in general and in regard to all its constitutive categories, shall be elucidated. Like every meaningful question, this
transcendental question presupposes a ground of unquestioned being, in which all means of solution must be
contained. This ground is here the [anonyinous] subjectivity of that kind of conscious life in which a possible
world, of whatever kind, is constituted as present. However, a self-evident basic requirement of any rational inethod
is that this ground presupposed as beyond question is not confused with what the transcendental question, in its
universality, puts into question. Hence the realin of this questionability includes the whole realin of the
transcendenrally naive and therefore every possible world simply claimed in the natural attitude. Accordingly, all
possible sciences, including all their various areas of objects, are transcendentally to be subjected to an epoche. So
also psychology, and the entirety of what is considered the psychical in its sense. It would therefore be circular, a
transcendental circle, to base the answer to the transcendental question on psychology, be it empirical or
eidetic-phenomenological. We face at this point the paradoxical ambiguity: the subjectivity and consciousness to
which the transcendental question recurs can thus really not be the subjectivity and consciousness with which
psychology deals.
9. The Transcendental-Phenomenological Reduction and the Semblance of Transcendental Duplication.
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Are we then supposed to be dual beings -- psychological, as human objectivities in the world, the subjects of
psychic life, and at the same time transcendental, as the subjects of a transcendental, world-constituting
life-process? This duality can be clarified through being demonstrated with [30] self-evidence. The psychic
subjectivity, the concretely grasped 'T' and "we" of ordinary conversation, is experienced in its pure psychic
ownness through the inethod of phenomenological-psycho logical reduction. Modified into eidetic forin it provides
the ground for pure phenomenological psychology. Transcendental subjectivity, which is inquired into in the
transcendental problem, and which subjectivity is presupposed in it as an existing basis, is none other than again "I
myself" and "we ourselves"; not, however, as found in the natural attitude of everyday or of positive science; i.e.,
apperceived as components of the objectively present world before us, but rather as subjects of conscious life, in
which this world and all that is present--for "us"--"makes" itself through certain apperceptions. As men, mentally as
well as bodily present in the world, we are for "ourselves"; we are appearances standing within an extremely
variegated intentional life-process, "our" life, in which this being on hand constitutes it-self "for us" apperceptively,
with its entire sense-content. The (apperceived) I and we on hand presuppose an (apperceiving) I and we, for which
they are on hand, which, however, is not itself present again in the same sense. To this transcendental subjectivity
we have direct access through a transcendental experience. Just as the psychic experience requires a reductive
inethod for purity, so does the transcendental.
We would like to proceed here by introducing the transcendental reduction as built on the psychological
reduction--as an additional part of the purification which can be performed on it any time, a purification that is once
more by means of a certain epoche. This is merely a consequence of the all-embracing epoche which belongs to the
sense of the transcendental question. If the transcendental relativity of every possible world demands an
all-embracing bracketing, it also postulates the bracketing of pure psyches and the pure phenomenological
psychology related to thein. Through this bracketing they are transformed into transcendental phenomena. Thus,
while the psychologist, operating within what for him is the naturally accepted world, reduces to pure psychic
subjectivity the subjectivity occurring there (but still within the world), the transcendental phenomenologist,
through his absolutely all-embracing epoche, reduces this psychologically pure element to transcendental pure
subjectivity, [i.e.,] to that which performs and posits within itself the apperception of the world and therein the
objectivating apperception of a "psyche [belonging to] animal realities." For example, my actual current mental
processes of pure perception, fantasy, and so forth, are, in the attitude of positivity, psychological givens [or data]
of psychological inner experience. They are transmuted into my transcendental mental processes if through a
radical epoche I posit as mere phenomena the world, including my own human existence, and now follow up the
intentional life-process wherein the entire apperception "off the world, and in particular the apperception of my
mind, my psychologically real perception-processes, and so forth, are formed. The content of these processes, what
is included in their own essences, remains in this fully preserved, although it is now visible as the core of an
apperception practiced again and again psychologically but not previously considered. For the transcendental
philosopher, who through a previous all-inclusive resolve of his will has instituted in himself the firin habituality of
the transcendental "bracketing," even this "mundanization" [Verweltlichung, treating everything as part of the
world] of consciousness which is oinnipresent in the natural attitude is inhibited once and for all. Accordingly, the
consistent reflection on consciousness yields him time after time transcendentally pure data, and more particularly
it is intuitive in the mode of a new kind of experience, transcendental "inner" experience. Arisen out of the
methodical transcendental epoche, this new kind of "inner" experience opens up the limitless transcendental field
of being. This field of being is the parallel to the limitless psychological field, and the inethod of access [to its data]
is the parallel to the purely psychological one, i.e., to the psychological-phenomenological reduction. And again,
the transcendental I [or ego] and the [31] transcendental coimnunity of egos, conceived in the full concretion of
transcendental life are the transcendental parallel to the I and we in the customary and psychological sense,
concretely conceived as mind and coimnunity of minds, with the psychological life of consciousness that pertains
to thein. My transcendental ego is thus evidently "different" froin the natural ego, but by no means as a second, as
one separated horn it in the natural sense of the word, just as on the contrary it is by no means bound up with it or
inter- twined with it, in the usual sense of these words. It is just the field of transcendental self-experience
(conceived in full concrete-ness) which in every case can, through mere alteration of attitude, be changed into
psychological self-experience. In this transition, an identity of the I is necessarily brought about; in transcendental
reflection on this transition the psychological Objectivation becomes visible as self-objectivation of the
transcendental I, and so it is as if in every moment of the natural attitude the I finds itself with an apperception
imposed upon it. If the parallelism of the transcendental and psychological experience-spheres has become
comprehensible out of a mere alter- ation of attitude, as a kind of identity of the complex interpenetration of senses
of being, then there also becomes intelligible the con-sequence that results froin it, namely the same parallelism and
the interpenetration of transcendental and psychological phenomenology implied in that interpenetration, whose
whole theme is pure intersubjectivity, in its dual sense. Only that in this case it has to be taken into account that the
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purely psy-chic intersubjectivity, as soon as the it is subjected to the transcendental epoche, also leads to its
parallel, that is, to transcendental intersubjectivity. Manifestly this parallel-ism spells nothing less than theoretical
equivalence. Transcendental intersubjectivity is the concretely autonomous absolute existing basis [Seinsboden]
out of which everything transcendent (and, with it, every-thing that belongs to the real world) obtains its existential
sense as that of something which only in a relative and therewith in-complete sense is an existing thing, namely as
being an intentional unity which in truth exists froin out of transcendental bestowal of sense, of harmonious
confirmation, and froin an habituality of lasting conviction that belongs to it by essential necessity.
10. Pure Psychology as Propaedeutic to Transcendental Phenomenology.
Through the elucidation of the essentially dual meaning of the subjectivity of consciousness, and also a
clarification of the eidetic science to be directed to it, we begin to understand on very deep grounds the historical
insurmoumability of psychologism. Its power lies in an essential transcendental semblance which [because]
undisclosed had to remain effective. Also froin the clarification we have gained we begin to understand on the one
hand the independence of the idea of a transcendental phenomenology, and the systematic developing of it, froin
the idea of a phenomenological pure psychology; and yet on the other hand the propaedeutic usefulness of the
preliminary protect of a pure psychology for an ascent to transcendental phenomenology, a useful- ness which has
guided our present discussion here. As regards this point {i.e., the in- dependence of the idea of transcendental
phenoinenology froin a phenoinenological pure psychology}, clearly the phenoinenological and eidetic reduction
allows of being iimnediately connected to the disclosing of transcendental relativity, and in this way transcendental
phenomenology springs directly out of the transcendental intuition. In point of fact, this direct path was the
historical path it took. Pure phenomenological psychology as eidetic science in positivity was simply not available.
As regards the second point, i.e., the propaedeutic preference of the indirect approach to transcendental
phenomenology through pure psychology, [it must be remembered that] the transcendental attitude involves a
change of focus froin one's entire forin of life-style, one which goes so completely beyond all previous experiencing
of life, that it must, in vir-tue of its absolute strangeness, needs be difficult to understand. This is also true of a
transcendental science. Phenomenological psychology, although also relatively new, [32] and in its inethod of
intentional analysis completely novel, still has the accessibility which is possessed by all positive sciences. Once
this psychology has become clear, at least according to its sharply defined idea, then only the clarification of the
true sense of the transcendental-philosophical field of problems and of the transcendental reduction is required in
order for it to come into possession of transcendental phenomenology as a mere reversal of its doctrinal content
into transcendental terms. The basic difficulties for penetrating into the terrain of the new phenomenology fall into
these two stages, namely that of understanding the me inethod of "inner experience," which already belongs to
making possible an "ex-act" psychology as rational science of facts, and that of understanding the distinctive
character of the transcendental inethods and questioning. True, simply regarded in itself, an interest in the
transcendental is the highest and ultimate scientific interest, and so it is entirely the right thing (it has been so
historically and should continue) for transcendental theories to be cultivated in the autonomous, absolute system of
transcendental philosophy; and to place before us, through showing the characteristic features of the natural in
contrast to the transcendental attitude, the possibility within transcendental philosophy itself of reinterpreting all
transcendental phenomenological doctrine [or theory] into doctrine [or theory] in the realin of natural positivity.
III. Transcendental Phenomenology and Philosophy as Universal Science with Absolute Foundations
11. Transcendental Phenomenology as Ontology.
Remarkable consequences arise when one weighs the significance of transcendental phenomenology. In its
systematic development, it brings to realization the Leibnizian idea of a universal ontology as the systematic unity
of all conceivable a priori sciences, but on a new foundation which overcomes "dogmatism" through the use of the
transcendental phenomenological inethod. Phenomenology as the science of all conceivable transcendental
phenomena and especially the synthetic total structures in which alone they are concretely possible--those of the
transcendental single subjects bound to coimnunities of subjects is eo ipso the a priori science of all conceivable
beings. But [it is the science] then not merely of the Totality of objectively existing beings, and certainly not in an
attitude of natural positivity; rather, in the full concretion of being in general which derives its sense of being and
its validity froin the correlative intentional constitution. This also comprises the being of transcendental
subjectivity itself, whose nature it is demonstrably to be constituted transcendentally in and for itself. Accordingly,
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a phenomenology properly carried through is the truly universal ontology, as over against the only illusory
all-embracing ontology in positivity -- and precisely for this reason it overcomes the dogmatic one-sidedness and
hence unintelligibility of the latter, while at the same time it comprises within itself the truly legitimate content [of
an ontology in positivity] as grounded originally in intentional constitution.
12. Phenomenology and the Crisis in the foundations of the Exact Sciences.
If we consider the how of this inclusion, we find that what is meant is that every apriori is ultimately prescribed
in its validity of being precisely as a transcendental achievement; i.e., it is together with the essential structures of
its constitution, with the kinds and levels of its givenness and confirmation of itself, and with the appertaining
habitualities. This implies that in and through the establishment of the a priori the subjective inethod of this
establishing is itself made transparent, and that for the a priori disciplines which are founded within
phenoinenology (for exainple, as inatheinatical sciences) there can be no "paradoxes" and no "crises of the
foundations." The con-sequence that arises [froin all this] with reference to the a priori sciences that have come into
being historically and in transcendental nai'vete is that only a radical, phenomenological grounding can transform
thein into true, methodical, fully self-justifying sciences. But precisely by this they will cease to [33] be positive
(doginatic) sciences and becoine dependent branches of the one phenoinenology as all-encoinpassing eidetic
ontology.
13. The Phenomenological Grounding of the Factual Sciences in Relation to Empirical Phenomenology.
The unending task of presenting the complete universe of the a priori in its transcendental
relatedness-back-to-itself [or self-reference], and thus in its self-sufficiency and perfect methodological clarity, is
itself a function of the inethod for realization of an all-embracing and hence fully grounded science of empirical
fact. Within [the realin of] positive reality [Positivitiit], genuine (relatively genuine) empirical science demands the
methodical establishing-of-a-foundation [Fundamentierung] through a corresponding a priori science. If we take
the universe of all possible empirical sciences whatever and demand a radical grounding that will be free froin all
"foundation crises," then we are led to the all-embracing a priori of the radical and that is [and must be]
phenomenological grounding. The genuine forin of an all-embracing science of fact is thus the phenomenological
[forin], and as this it is the universal science of the factual transcendental intersubjectivity, [resting] on the
methodical foundation of eidetic phenomenology as knowledge applying to any possible transcendental subjectivity
whatever. Hence the idea of an empirical phenomenology which follows after the eidetic is understood and
justified. It is identical with the complete systematic universe of the positive sciences, provided that we think of
thein froin the beginning as absolutely grounded methodologically through eidetic phenomenology.
14. Complete Phenomenology as All-embracing Philosophy.
Precisely through this is restored the most primordial concept of philosophy--as all-embracing science based on
radical self-justification, which is alone [truly] science in the ancient Platonic and again in the Cartesian sense.
Phenomenology rigorously and systematically carried out, phenomenology in the broadened sense [which we have
explained] above, is identical with this philosophy which encompasses all genuine knowledge. It is divided into
eidetic phenoinenology (or all-einbracing ontology) as first philosophy, and as second philosophy, [it is] the science
of the universe of facta, or of the transcendental intersubjectivity that synthetically comprises all facta. First
philosophy is the universe of inethods for the second, and is related back into itself for its methodological
grounding.
15. The "Ultimate and Highest" Problems as Phenomenological.
In phenomenology all rational problems have their place, and thus also those that traditionally are in some
special sense or other philosophically significant. For out of the absolute sources of transcendental experience, or
eidetic intuiting, they first [are able to] obtain their genuine formulation and feasible means for their solution. In its
universal relatedness-back-to-itself, phenomenology recognizes its particular function within a possible life of
mankind [Menschheitsleben] at the transcendental level. It recognizes the absolute norins which are to be picked
out intuitively froin it [life of mankind], and also its primordial teleo-logical-tendential structure in a directedness
towards disclosure of these norins and their conscious practical operation. It recognizes itself as a function of the
all- embracing reflective meditation of (transcendental) humanity, [a self-examination] in the service of an
all-inclusive praxis of reason; that is, in the service of striving towards the universal ideal of absolute perfection
which lies in infinity, [a striving] which becoines free through [the process of] disclosure. Or, in different words it
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is a striving in the direction of the idea (lying in infinity) of a humanness which in action and through- out would
live and move [be, exist] in truth and genuineness. It recognizes its self- reflective function [of self-examination]
for the relative realization of the correlative practical idea of a genuine human life [Menschheitsleben] in the
second sense (whose structural forins of being and whose practical norins it is to investigate), namely as one [that
is] consciously and purposively [34] directed towards this absolute idea. In short, the metaphysically teleological,
the ethical, and the problems of philosophy of history, no less than, obviously, the problems of judging reason, lie
within its boundary, no differently froin all significant problems whatever, and all [of thein] in their inmost
synthetic unity and order as [being] of transcendental spirituality [Geistigkeit].
16. The Phenomenological Resolution of All Philosophical Antitheses.
In the systematic work of phenomenology, which progresses froin intuitively given[concrete] data to heights of
abstraction, the old traditional ambiguous antitheses of the philosophical standpoint are resolved--by themselves
and without the arts of an argumentative dialectic, and without weak efforts and compromises: oppositions such as
between rationalisin (Platonisin) and einpiricisin, relativisin and absolutisin, subjectivisin and objectivisin,
ontologism and transcendentalism, psychologism and anti-psychologism, positivism and metaphysics, or the
teleological versus the causal interpretation of the world. Throughout all of these,[one finds] justified motives, but
through-out also half-truths or impermissible absolutizing of only relatively and abstractively legitimate
one-sidednesses.
Subjectivisin can only be overcoine by the inost all-einbracing and consistent subjectivisin (the transcendental).
In this [latter] forin it is at the same time objectivism [of a deeper sort], in that it represents the claims of whatever
objectivity is to be demonstrated through concordant experience, but admittedly [this is an objectivism which] also
brings out its full and genuine sense, against which [sense] the supposedly realistic objectivism sins by its failure to
understand transcendental constitution. Relativism can only be overcome through the most all-embracing
relativism, that of transcendental phenomenology, which makes intelligible the relativity of all "objective" being [or
existence] as transcendentally constituted; but at one with this [it makes intelligible] the most radical relativity, the
relatedness of the transcendental subjectivity to itself. But just this [relatedness, subjectivity] proves its identity to
be the only possible sense of [the term] "absolute" being--over against all "objective" being that is relative to
it--namely, as the "for-itself"--being of transcendental subjectivity. Likewise: Empiricism can only be overcome by
the most universal and consistent empiricism, which puts in place of the restricted [term] "experience" of the
empiricists the necessarily broadened concept of experience [inclusive] of intuition which offers original data, an
intuition which in all its forins (intuition of eidos, apodictic self-evidence, phenomenological intuition of essence,
etc.) shows the manner and forin of its legitimation through phenomenological clarification. Phenomenology as
eidetic is, on the other hand, rationalistic: it overcomes restrictive and dogmatic rationalism, however, through the
most universal rationalism of inquiry into essences, which is related uniformly to transcendental subjectivity, to the
I, consciousness, and conscious objectivity. And it is the same in reference to the other antitheses bound up with
thein. The tracing back of all being to the transcendental subjectivity and its constitutive intentional functions
leaves open, to mention one more thing, no other way of contemplating the world than the teleological. And yet
phenomenology also acknowledges a kernel of truth in naturalism (or rather sensationism). That is, by revealing
associations as intentional phenomena, indeed as a whole basic typology of forins of passive intentional synthesis
with transcendental and purely passive genesis based on essential laws, phenomenology shows Humean
fictionalism to contain anticipatory discoveries; particularly in his doctrine of the origin of such fictions as thing,
persisting existence, causality-anticipatory discoveries all shrouded in absurd theories. Phenomenological
philosophy regards it-self in its whole inethod as a pure outcome of methodical intentions which already animated
Greek philosophy froin its beginnings; above all, however, [it continues] the still vital intentions which reach, in the
two lines of rationalism and empiricism, froin Descartes through Kant and German ideal-ism into our confused
present day. A pure outcome of methodical intentions means [35] real inethod which allows the problems to be
taken in hand and completed --In the way of true science this path is endless. Accordingly, phenomenology
demands that the phenomenologist foreswear the ideal of a philosophic system and yet as a humble worker in
coimnunity with others, live for a perennial philosophy [philosophia perennis].
[1] Reprinted from Journal of the British Society for Phenomenology 2 (1971): 77-90; in Husserl's Shorter Works, pp.21-35.
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