Heidegger and the Phenomenological Reductions in Husserl

At least after 1907, Husserl recognized that in the Phenomenology of the LI (1901), i.e., in Eidetic Descriptive or Pure Eidetic Psychology, elements that were silently presupposed were actually in need of phenomenological clarification and reconsideration. This was also the case with regard to the problematic ontological status of the world, as it is experienced in the natural attitude. In order to overcome this difficulty, Husserl invents the method of transcendental reduction and, on its basis, transforms the Eidetic Phenomenological Psychology of the LI into the Transcendental Phenomenology, which, in a systematic form, is first expounded in the Ideas I (1913). The transcendental reduction is conceived of as a widening and a radicalization in comparison to the possibilities of the psychological reduction that was already at work, albeit silently, in the LI. [...] Despite this, as Husserl repeatedly complained, the meaning of Transcendental Phenomenology was never completely understood by even his closest disciples and collaborators. This is no surprise. As we know, the series of difficulties one must face in the effort to appropriate Husserl’s Phenomenology, let alone the passing from the LI to the Ideas I, are disheartening, if not totally repelling. In Chap. 2, we have already seen and confronted various difficulties in the exposition of the teaching of the reduction, as well as some representative recent misappropriations of the meaning of the transcendental reduction. We have done the same with regard to the specific confusions related to the—notorious—notion of “unintelligibility.” In the present chapter, we will focus on another misappropriation of Husserl’s phenomenological method, the one for which Heidegger himself was responsible, and which the Heideggerians continue to follow unquestioningly.