Phenomenology and Existentialism by Grossman Reinhardt;

Author:Grossman, Reinhardt;
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 1461193
Publisher: Taylor and Francis

(2) Eidetic reduction

Eidetic reflection, that is, reflection on essences and their connections, is of course of the essence of Phenomenology. This reflection requires what Husserl calls ‘eidetic reduction’. In perception, individual things and their properties are presented to us, but these properties, as we noted earlier, are instances rather than universals. (We know that the story is really more complicated than this, for the instances are only known through their aspects. But we must simplify in order to have manageable examples.) What you see when you see Oscar’s color, is an instance of the essence yellow. Now, in order to get acquainted, not with an instance, but with the essence, you must perform a shift in mental attitude, you must perform what Husserl calls an ‘eidetic reduction’. You must pay attention, not to the perceived instance, but to the essence of which it is an instance. After this shift has taken place, you will ‘see’ the essence yellow just as directly as you earlier saw (the aspects of!) the instance yellow. But this is not all. With this mental set, through eidetic reflection, you also ‘perceive’ connections among essences. You discern, for example, that yellow is lighter than midnight blue, or that the essence triangle necessitates having inner angles adding up to two right angles, or that the essence mental act requires that all acts have objects. Eidetic reduction thus reveals to us truths about essences. Phenomenology, as we may now try to define it, inquires into the structures formed by essences. Its method, tentatively speaking, is eidetic reduction.

But Husserl also speaks of ‘phenomenological reduction’. He claims that there is more to Phenomenology than the reflection on essences. At this point, the explanation gets to be rather murky. It is not hard to see why Husserl would make the claim. An inspection of connections among essences cannot be unique to Phenomenology, for it occurs presumably also in mathematics, geometry, and other fields. How, then, is Phenomenology distinguished from these other inquiries into the nature of essences? Husserl must answer this question. In answer, he points at phenomenological reduction.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.