Edmund Husserl held that to study the structure of consciousness, one had to distinguish between an "act of consciousness" and a "phenomenon to which it is directed" (the object to which one refers intentionally, see intentionality). Knowledge about the essence of things and our grasp of them would be possible by "bracketing" all prejudices about the existence of an outside world. This is what Husserl calls Epoché (ἐποχή).
Husserl called his method
"Phenomenological Reduction" or "Eidetic
reduction". Epoché achieves this reduction by suspending or
bracketing everything we think we know about something, reducing it to its pure
appearance as phenomenon. Phenomenological reduction according to
Husserl requires a threefold abstinence from subjective attitudes
(emotional preconceptions, vocabulary, so-called self-evidence), theoretical
presuppositions (formal logic, hypotheses) and finally traditional knowledge
(intersubjectivity, convention, dogmas).
Reduction
back to the things themselves
Husserl's Phenomenological or Eidetic reduction and Epoché lead us to the essence of things as conscious objects (see an explanation of "thing"). Phenomenology regards objects without assumptions or judgments about the actual being or non-being of the contents of consciousness. The world as existing in itself is of no interest to phenomenology, only what we perceive of it can be a basis for meaning.
Phenomenology for Husserl must be able to
answer when and how it is possible for consciousness to refer to
something. From the phenomenological point of view, the object does not
simply exist "outside" nor itself provide clues as to what it is, but
becomes a bundle of perceptual and functional aspects mutually implying the
idea of a particular object or "type". The reality of objects is
not rejected by phenomenology, but is "bracketed" - as a way in which
we look at objects, rather than as a property inherent in the nature of the
object. In order to better understand the world of appearances and things,
phenomenology aims to identify the invariant structures of our ways of
perception and thus provides knowledge about the performing consciousness and
the structures of these performances.
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