Basic Reflections on Husserl’s Phenomenological Reduction

The article traces out the history of the evolution in meaning of the phenomenological reduction in husserl's writings. The starting point is husserl's conviction that what is lacking most to philosophy as well as to science is a truly rigorous scientific method. Already in the "logical investigations" (1901) the phenomenological reduction is presented as the core of this method. But here this reduction is understood as a deliberate restriction or limitation of the mind to what is adequately perceived in an "adequately fulfilling intuition" within the immanence of consciousness, Excluding any transcendence. In his lectures on "the idea of phenomenology" a significant expansion of the notion of reduction begins to appear. There is still the insistence on the absolutely given, But this now begins to include a certain "real transcendence" extending beyond the sphere of "real immanence to consciousness." this change appears first in his published works in the "ideas" of 1913