Edmund Husserl’s Transcendental Phenomenology

by Wendell Allan A. Marinay

We remember Edmund Husserl as a philosopher who had a great influence on

known phenomenologists like Max Scheler, Edith Stein, Martin Heidegger, among
others. These abovementioned followers acknowledged their indebtedness to Husserl
despite their being unrecognized by Husserl himself. In fact, Stein, as Husserl’s
“secretary,” was treated like a slave. Husserl considered Scheler’s phenomenology as
fool’s gold. And not only that, Scheler and Heidegger were referred to as antipodes.
Husserl created an opening to Continental philosophy. This opening is called
phenomenology – a work that would eventually take philosophy beyond the older, tired
alternatives of psychologism and formalism, realism and idealism, objectivism and
subjectivism.1 In this paper, I shall attempt to critically expose Husserl’s transcendental
phenomenology and explore some implications to real-life situations.

Phenomenology

For Husserl, phenomenology is foundational for all philosophy (i.e. ‘pre-

philosophical ’). It is a reflexive act that cuts across the normal flow of consciousness to
reveal and delineate its eidetic, or essential, structures, i.e. its intentional nature, as the
subjective condition for the possibility of all thinking whatsoever, especially science. 2
The phenomenological method is necessarily connected to the fundamental idea of
(Kantian) transcendental philosophy that all objects are in principle accessible to
consciousness.3 This goes to say that in phenomenology, consciousness is always
consciousness of. All conscious awarenesses are intentional awarenesses; all
consciousness is consciousness-of-something.4 Phenomenology is the special method of
the eidetic reduction by means of which the phenomena are described. Through the
method of imaginative variation (examples of instantiation and comparative
examination), the invariant or eidetic aspects of a particular phenomenon are explicated. 5
In here, we realize that everything is under the domain of consciousness. In other
words, nothing can get away from consciousness so that all are subject to its activity. But
such consciousness is not operating for its own end. Its function is rather tied to

1
The Essential Husserl: Basic Writings in Transcendental Phenomenology, ed. Donn
Welton (Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indianan University Press, 1999), ix. Hereafter Welton.
2
In his introduction, Kenneth Stikkers indicates the differences between Schelerian and
Husserlian phenomenology. Cf. Max Scheler, Problems of a Sociology of Knowledge trans.
Manfred Frings (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1980), 9. Hereafter Frings.
3
Wolfgang Stegmuller. Main Currents in Contemporary German, British, and American
Philosophy (Dordrecht: D. Reidel Publishing Company, 1969), 128. Hereafter Stegmuller. For
some hints on Hussert’s influence from Kant, see also Hebert Spielgelberg. The
Phenomenological Movement: A Historical Introduction (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1976),
230. Hereafter Spielgelberg.
4
http://www.phenomenologyonline.com/inquiry/orientations-in-
phenomenology/transcendental-phenomenology/.
5
Ibid.
 2

something outside of it. For instance, we do not simply think out of nothing and for
nothing. Otherwise, we are simply fantasizing or daydreaming or becoming insane. We
normally think on something other than our thought. We think of the things before us,
that which appear to us, especially those significant to us. Indeed, thinking presupposes
something.
Husserl’s primary concern was the phenomenological investigation of the
transcendental ego or the ontological question of Being. His preoccupation is on the
questions of method;6 “his entire understanding of Being moves within the contrast
between and the complementarity of transcendent entities and the Being of transcendent
consciousness. In other words, phenomenology is the rigorous science of all conceivable
transcendental phenomena. In itself, it is investigation of horizons.7
We understand here that phenomenology become an important tool of analysis to
knowing the essential characteristics of the things around us. In phenomenology, we
know things not just what they are but how they are appearing to us and how we live
through them. In phenomenology, we are not doing abstraction. Neither do we come up
with abstract realities. Phenomenology gets us involved into the lived-world – a world of
experience that is within our reach. The real world is the point of departure for our
investigation into a deeper reality. True enough, I cannot know what is beyond my
capacity to know. My knowledge is no less what I can know.

The transcendent and the transcendental

Since the distinction between the transcendent and the transcendental is the
ultimate conceptual framework for Husserl, the most elemental set of categories in his
thought,8 we should therefore present here their being essentially together. As Caputo
points out, “the transcendencies are always constituted in and for transcendental
consciousness; they rise up for and are given shape in the transcendental. The
transcendental, on the other hand, is what it is only in the exercise of the life of the
transcendental synthesis by which it constitutes the world of transcendencies.” 9 He
elaborates,

The transcendent is that which transcends our consciousness. It is the

plenum which, being other than consciousness, never gives itself up to
consciousness; an inexhaustible otherness and fullness which
consciousness apprehends now this way, now that; is what always
manages to escape consciousness, to overflow it, to be too much for it at
any one time. Transcendencies are mundane, empirical realities which
give themselves to subjectivity in a complex of presence and absence, of
partly filled and partly empty intentions.

6
Frings and Funk present this contention by contrasting Scheler’s phenomenology to
Husserl’s. Cf. Max Scheler, Formalism in Ethics and Non-Formal Ethics of Values: A New
Attempt toward the Foundation of an Ethical Personalism trans. Manfred Frings & Roger Funk
(Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1973), xiv. Hereafter Frings and Funk.
7
Caputo, 206.
8
Caputo, 206.
9
Ibid.
 3

Meanwhile, the transcendental does not belong to the world at all. It is

not mundane […] or empirical, but instead ‘transcends’ the world; does
not transcend the world in a manner of metaphysics, in the sense of
belonging to a second, totally other, nonempirical world; is “prior” to the
world, providing the ultimate subjectivity before which the world rises
up as a phenomenon; it is in the face of which all objectivity takes shape;
is not anything in the world, not anything above the world, but the
condition of possibility prior to the world which lets the world be; the
center around which the world groups itself, the subject for which the
world is object.10

We are presented here with a complex reality that our limited mind is confronting
with. Nonetheless, phenomenology facilitates in understanding the complexity of this
reality. The reality may not be that easy to understand, but through phenomenology we
are in turn made aware of the process that we are going through. This speaks of the
vastness of life. Sometimes, we are at a lost despite our efforts to know what we should
do. Yet we continue on searching for the truth; we trust the process that one day, we will
arrive to the goal we are desiring.

Transcendental-phenomenological reduction

Phenomenology, as philosophic discipline, describes its objects instead of

constructing explanations. It begins only after the “transcendental-phenomenological
reduction.” 11 Descriptions not preceded by this “reduction” are not phenomenological.
This goes to say that understanding the Husserlian transcendental phenomenology and
employing the phenomenological method is to first understand and practice the
transcendental-phenomenological reduction.12 Ricoeur asserts that “the
phenomenological ‘reduction’ is presented as the explication of the method practiced in
the description of phenomena and simultaneously as the elaboration of a transcendental
philosophy implying a genuine metaphysical decision concerning the ontological status
of these phenomena” and “is ultimately concerning the reference of a consciousness to a
transcendence.”13 Further, “the transcendental reduction entails the eidetic reduction,
beginning from the point where consciousness is treated as the field for a seeing, for an

10
Caputo, 205-206.
11
There are different ways of approaching this reduction, in either way, one is led to the
question of what had previously seemed self-evident: may follow the Cartesian road of total
doubt (wherein we are led to question all presuppositions of human experience) or, may examine
one of the traditional philosophic disciplines of logic (by which the presuppositions of judging, of
validity and truth become questionable. Cf. Richard Schmitt, “Husserl’s Transcendental-
Phenomenological Reduction” in Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, vol20, no2, 1959,
238-245 accessed in
http://www.jstor.org/discover/10.2307/2104360?uid=3738824&uid=2129&uid=2&uid=70&uid=
4&sid=21102570933167. Hereafter Schmitt.
12
Ibid.
13
Ricoeur, 9.
 4

intuitive experiencing. If the transcendental can be looked at, seen, and described, then
this intuiting must grasp the transcendental fact in essence. This is why it brings the
‘fiction’ into play, causes the datum of consciousness to vary imaginatively, and develops
experiences in the mode of ‘as if.’ The ‘fiction’ is the path from the fact to the eidos of
the experienced ‘reality,’ and it permits our grasping a consciouness as an a priori
possibility.”14
This means that we are not putting reality into a box like confining it, classifying
it, or putting it under an all-encompassing category. Description is different from
definition. This is just like telling our own stories. We normally do the describing of our
life rather than defining it. This is so because we are unable to completely remember
past events and perfectly picture out what had actually happened. However, when we
tell stories in a new way, it does mean we fabricate it (unless we intentionally do so). For
an honest to goodness storytelling, it is still the same story but we present it anew.

Epoché and reduction proper

The phenomenological reduction consists in these two “moments” of epoché and

reduction proper. The moments are internal logical moments and do not refer to two
“steps” that one might take to conclude the procedure as one might do, for example, in
waxing a floor: where the first step is to strip off the old wax and the second step is to
apply the new wax; steps imply a temporal individuation that is not true of the moments
of the phenomenological reduction. Husserl’s term, epoché, the negative move whereby
we bracket the world, is not a “step” that we do “first” in an effort to prepare ourselves
for the later “step,” reduction proper; rather, the bracketing and the move whereby we
drive the self back upon itself, the reduction proper, occur together. Taken together, the
epoché and the reduction proper comprise the phenomenological reduction since these
two moments cannot occur independently.15
Caputo contends that Husserl introduces transcendental consciousness by means
of the epoché or ‘parenthesizing’ of the objective world. Stated from the side of the
object, the epoché means that the actuality of the world is ‘bracketed’ and we are left
only with a world which claims to be real, claims to be objective and actual, but which in
fact has been reduced, for the phenomenologist, to a phenomenon. Stated from the side of
the subject, epoché means that our ‘belief’ in the reality of the world is ‘suspended.’ We
‘abstain’ from this belief, no longer participate in it. The effect of the epoché is in one
sense nothing and in another everything. In one sense, nothing is changed. The world
continues to appear precisely as before, and our belief in the world remains in the manner
of an act which can be investigated.16
By epoche, we mean trying to do away our own biases and prejudices about the
world around us. This method has something to do with our objective consideration to
things themselves. Normally, our knowledge of things clouds our new experiences. For
example, if I happen to meet a person from Mindanao, my bias would bring me to a
conclusion that the person is a Muslim. But then, it does not necessarily follow. If I
would not allow myself to talk to the person and know the facts about him or her, then I

14
Ricoeur, 91.
15
http://www.iep.utm.edu/phen-red/#SH5a.
16
Caputo, 206-207.
 5

might only be getting an impression about him or her, a false reality about the person. In
effect, I will be missing the truth of his or her person.
Meanwhile, who it is that is doing the abstaining directly concerns the moment of
the reduction proper. If the epoché is the name for whatever method we use to free
ourselves from the captivity of the unquestioned acceptance of the everyday world, then
the reduction is the recognition of that acceptance as an acceptance. It is the seeing of the
acceptance as an acceptance that is the indication of having achieved a transcendental
insight; it is transcendental precisely because it is an insight from outside the
acceptedness that is holding us captive. “Seeing” refers not a “knowing that” we live in
captivation-in-an-acceptedness, but is rather more like the kind of seeing that occurs
when one discovers that the mud on the carpet was put there by oneself and not by
another, as was first suspected.17
In connection to the example given above, we realize here that the person is from
Mindanao but may not be a Muslim. We acknowledge here that not all those from
Mindanao are Muslims, although they can also be. At least, we are certain that we are
not sure about the person’s religious affiliation. We are able here to distinguish prudently
that the person is from Mindanao and maybe or probably be a Muslim.

As is quite clear, Husserlian phenomenology, particularly the transcendental

phenomenology, constitutes the following characteristics:

 In phenomenology, consciousness is always consciousness of.

All conscious awarenesses are intentional awarenesses; all consciousness is
consciousness-of-something.18 Phenomenology is the special method of the eidetic
reduction by means of which the phenomena are described. Through the method of
imaginative variation (examples of instantiation and comparative examination), the
invariant or eidetic aspects of a particular phenomenon are explicated. 19 For this reason,
a direct contact of the knower to “the things themselves” is essential but not sufficient in
itself. 20

 Transcendence and transcendental belong essentially together.

Transcendencies are always constituted in and for transcendental consciousness;
they rise up for and are given shape in the transcendental.21 On the one hand, the
transcendent is that which transcends our consciousness. It is an inexhaustible otherness
and fullness which consciousness apprehends now this way, now that. It is what always
manages to escape consciousness, to overflow it, to be too much for it at any one time.
Transcendencies are mundane, empirical realities which give themselves to subjectivity
in a complex of presence and absence, of partly filled and partly empty intentions.” On
the other, the transcendental does not belong to the world at all. It is not mundane or

17
http://www.iep.utm.edu/phen-red/#SH5a.
18
http://www.phenomenologyonline.com/inquiry/orientations-in-
phenomenology/transcendental-phenomenology/.
19
Ibid.
20
Florentino Hornedo, “Phenomenology; Knowing with the Whole Self”
21
John D. Caputo, “Transcendence and the Transcendental in Husserl’s Phenomenology”
in Philosophy Today, Fall, 1979, 206. Hereafter, Caputo.
 6

empirical, but instead ‘transcends’ the world. It is “prior” to the world, providing the
ultimate subjectivity before which the world rises up as a phenomenon; it is in the face of
which all objectivity takes shape. The transcendental is not anything in the world, not
anything above the world, but the condition of possibility prior to the world which lets
the world be. It is the center around which the world groups itself, the subject for which
the world is object.22

 Phenomenology is the rigorous science of all conceivable transcendental

phenomena.
All knowledge should be based on absolutely certain insights. But the rigor of the
method of phenomenology is interpreted philosophically rather than in terms of any
elaborate, objective procedures of the physical and natural sciences.23 The natural
sciences start from a complex set of presuppositions, frameworks and perspectives of
knowledge, but these are not questioned by the sciences themselves. For Husserl,
phenomenology is a rigorous, human science precisely because it investigates the way
that knowledge comes into being and clarifies the assumptions upon which all human
understandings are grounded.24

 Phenomenology begins only after the transcendental phenomenological

reduction.
Phenomenology, as philosophic discipline, describes its objects instead of
constructing explanations. Descriptions not preceded by this “reduction” are not
phenomenological. This goes to say that understanding the Husserlian transcendental
phenomenology and employing the phenomenological method is to first understand and
practice the transcendental-phenomenological reduction.25

 Transcendental phenomenological reduction is ultimately concerning the

reference of a consciousness to a transcendence.
Transcendental phenomenological reduction is the process that “leads me back
to,” and enables me to see, my stream of consciousness as transcendental, and the world
as a transcendental phenomenon.26 The phenomenological “reduction” is presented as
the explication of the method practiced in the description of phenomena and

22
Caputo, 205-206.
23
http://www.phenomenologyonline.com/inquiry/orientations-in-
phenomenology/transcendental-phenomenology/. Similarly, Edward Ballad, in the translator’s
foreword, contends of a “more critical awareness of the presupposition of the finality of the
scientific ideal of rigor and objectivity.” Cf. Paul Ricoeur’s Husserl: An Analysis of His
Phenomenology (Illinois: Northwestern University Press, 1967), xx. Hereafter Ricoeur.
24
http://www.phenomenologyonline.com/inquiry/orientations-in-
phenomenology/transcendental-phenomenology/.
25
Richard Schmitt, “Husserl’s Transcendental-Phenomenological Reduction” in
Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, vol20, no2, 1959, 238-245 accessed in
http://www.jstor.org/discover/10.2307/2104360?uid=3738824&uid=2129&uid=2&uid=70&uid=
4&sid=21102570933167.
26
A History of Philosophical Systems ed. Vergilius Ferm (New York: The Philosophical
Library, Inc., 1950), 360.
 7

simultaneously as the elaboration of a transcendental philosophy implying a genuine

metaphysical decision concerning the ontological status of these phenomena. 27 Further,
the transcendental reduction entails the eidetic reduction, beginning from the point where
consciousness is treated as the field for a seeing, for an intuitive experiencing. If the
transcendental can be looked at, seen, and described, then this intuiting must grasp the
transcendental fact in essence. This is why it brings the ‘fiction’ into play, causes the
datum of consciousness to vary imaginatively, and develops experiences in the mode of
“as if.” The “fiction” is the path from the fact to the eidos of the experienced “reality,”
and it permits our grasping a consciousness as an a priori possibility. 28

 The phenomenological reduction consists two “moments” of epoché and

reduction proper.
Husserl introduces transcendental consciousness by means of the epoché or
“parenthesizing” of the objective world. Stated from the side of the object, the epoché
means that the actuality of the world is “bracketed” and we are left only with a world
which claims to be real, claims to be objective and actual, but which in fact has been
reduced, for the phenomenologist, to a phenomenon. Stated from the side of the subject,
epoché means that our “belief” in the reality of the world is “suspended.” We “abstain”
from this belief, no longer participate in it. The effect of the epoché is in one sense
nothing and in another everything. In one sense, nothing is changed. The world
continues to appear precisely as before, and our belief in the world remains in the manner
of an act which can be investigated.29 Meanwhile, if the epoché is the name for whatever
method we use to free ourselves from the captivity of the unquestioned acceptance of the
everyday world, then the reduction is the recognition of that acceptance as an acceptance.
It is the seeing of the acceptance as an acceptance that is the indication of having
achieved a transcendental insight; it is transcendental precisely because it is an insight
from outside the acceptedness that is holding us captive.30

 Transcendental phenomenology is reflexive act as well as philosophically

reflective act.
While phenomenology is reflexive act that cuts across the normal flow of
consciousness to reveal and delineate its eidetic, or essential structures, i.e. its intentional
nature, as the subjective condition for the possibility of all thinking whatsoever,
especially science,31 it is also a reflective observational analysis of transcendental
consciousness, particularly with respect to its intentionality and its intentional objects,
e.g., the transcendental phenomenon.32 With this idea of reflection, we realize that
epoché is not enough. We are introduced into a kind of egology, presenting a two-tiered

27
Ricoeur, 9.
28
Ricoeur, 91.
29
Caputo, 206-207.
30
http://www.iep.utm.edu/phen-red/#SH5a.
31
In his introduction, Kenneth Stikkers indicates the differences between Schelerian and
Husserlian phenomenology. Cf. Max Scheler, Problems of a Sociology of Knowledge trans.
Manfred Frings (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1980), 9. Hereafter Frings.
32
A History of Philosophical Systems ed. Vergilius Ferm (New York: The Philosophical
Library, Inc., 1950), 361.
 8

ego, i.e., only one ego which is capable of two different kinds of acts: one is empirical
and the other is transcendental. The former is portrayed as always living in belief while
the other is portrayed as extricating itself from belief, as withdrawing itself from the life
which the empirical ego lives. This phenomenologically reflective act sets up the ego
which reflects, i.e., ego which performs the epoché or the reflecting ego, on a higher – or
transcendental – level than the ego reflected upon, i.e., ego which does not perform the
epoché or the pre-reflective ego. If the sphere of transcendental consciousness is attained
by epoché, the transcendental sphere is attained only in reflection.33

Conclusion

Husserl is not so much concerned of “defining” things themselves. His

phenomenology, as a method, proceeds by “describing” reality in its “fullest” sense. The
descriptive manner of phenomenological analysis provides us a notion of the a priori, the
givenness of things, their essence – a general characteristic of phenomenology. This
rigor that is evidently involved in the phenomenological project serves well in its purpose
to decipher what lies beneath, behind, beyond the realities of things themselves. True
enough, “from what rests on the surface one is led into the depths.” 34 In this approach,
we are embarking on a modest position in our inquiry or investigation towards things.
We are not too ambitious to really arrive at the very core of what lies beyond our
capabilities.
Contrary to scientific obsessive tendency to objectify and ascertain and defining
things, Husserl described phenomenology as the rigorous science of all conceivable
transcendental phenomena. All knowledge should be based on absolutely certain
insights. But the rigor of the method of phenomenology is interpreted philosophically
rather than in terms of any elaborate, objective procedures of the physical and natural
sciences. The natural sciences start from a complex set of presuppositions, frameworks
and perspectives of knowledge, but these are not questioned by the sciences themselves.
For Husserl, phenomenology is a rigorous, human science precisely because it
investigates the way that knowledge comes into being and clarifies the assumptions upon
which all human understandings are grounded. 35 Paul Ricoeur would also assert that the
transcendental phenomenology is a radicalization of the Cartesian discovery on doubt and
cogito as well as the continuation of the struggle against objectivism.36 This is also
affirmed by Edward Ballad who, in the translator’s foreword, contends of a “more critical
awareness of the presupposition of the finality of the scientific ideal of rigor and
objectivity.”37 The phenomenological method assumes a nobler purpose of combating
the arrogance of scientific inquiry. Even in the olden times, we are already given a hint

33
Caputo, 207.
34
Edmund Husserl, The Crisis of European Sciences and Transcendental
Phenomenology: An Introduction to Phenomenological Philosophy trans. David Carr (Evanston,
III.: Northwestern University Press, 1970, p.355. Hereafter Husserl.
35
http://www.phenomenologyonline.com/inquiry/orientations-in-
phenomenology/transcendental-phenomenology/.
36
Ricoeur, 161.
37
Ricoeur, xx.
 9

that science and its framework failed. We remember the earth-centered universe which
later on was proven to be false.