Abstract

In the first edition of Husserl’s 5th Logical Investigation we find a relatively unknown reductive method, which Husserl identifies retrospectively in the second edition as a ,Reduktion auf den reellen Bestand‘. In the 1913 version of the Logical Investigations the descriptions of this first reduction are nearly completely obscured by Husserl’s tendency to see them as tentative hints to his transcendental reduction. In this paper I will delineate the aims and the methodical context, but also the shortcomings, of Husserl’s first attempt at a reduction, taking into account also the problems of the sense and the motivation of transcendental reduction. This first reduction seems strongly steeped in the methods and presuppositions of empiricism, a stance that was highly problematic already in the phenomenology of the first edition. Thus the present investigation opens up some new ways of understanding the formation of the method of reduction in phenomenology