What is the epoché/phenomenological reduction and what does Husserl hope to achieve by performing it?

The “epoché”  is an Ancient Greek word, referring to the suspending of judgement regarding the existence of a “metaphysically real”  world. It is now most associated with the work of Edmund Husserl, where it played a crucial role in his phenomenological philosophy, to ‘bracket’ our experiences and analyse them. This essay will discuss the rationale behind this creation, and the details of its execution.

Over the course of his career, Husserl became increasingly concerned that the sciences, and indeed philosophy itself, had lost their way. They lacked an absolute base for the knowledge they were seeking; a solid foundation on which further developments could be usefully made. For Husserl, this base must be apodictic, i.e. a concept where the alternative is is inherently unthinkable, in contrast to an assertive truth. 'All bachelors are married’ is undeniably true as the opposite is fundamentally impossible, in a way that doesn’t hold for 'all bachelors like football’. Another problem Husserl identified in contemporary philosophy was the growing preference (which continues this day) for the analytic branch, which prefers engaging with problems and 'getting down in the dirt’ of the world, so to speak. In their rush to reach a 'real’ world empirically separate from the 'self’, such thinkers oversimplified or even completely overlooked the road that took us there, i.e. human experience. Husserl’s project is to take a step back and rectify this glaring omission, by examining the structure and content of human experience in all of its complexity and diversity. In this way, phenomenology is called the “science of transcendental subjectivity”, i.e. a formal study of the world as we experience it.

Husserl described phenomenology as the “one truth path of philosophy”, but he was far from the first to seek a stronger foundation for science. Philosophers of Ancient Greece began the project, but arguably the most famous attempt was by Rene Descartes. He based his metaphysics on the indubitable “I” (“cogito ergo sum”, and 'God’. However, Husserl considers this flawed for two main reasons. The Cartesian “I” is unhelpfully empty, telling us nothing further about the world than its own existence. Also, it is “a nonsens”  to attempt (as Descartes does) to prove the existence of an 'outer world’ through such a narrow, inner experience. Instead, Husserl is trying to find an “infinite realm of a new kind” , by carrying his reflexive position to philosophically radical new ends. What benefit does this give us? We can now avoid the assumptions of what he called the “natural attitude” , i.e. our full compliment of unreliable, non-apodictic beliefs about the world around us. This allows us to enter a new realm and ask new questions, such as “what structure must experience have to be experience?”  Such answers can only be found through phenomenological inquiry.

Answering the first part of the question, an explanation of the epoché, is difficult. The best method for explaining the intricacies seems to be practising it, which I will attempt below. Before beginning, a few conventions should be outlined, given the divergence from now commonplace analytical philosophy. Firstly, there is no place for the objective third-person perspective favoured by the sciences. Husserl is interested in the “structure of human experience” , of which I can only fully access my own, so the first-person is the correct perspective to take. Secondly, unlike for the majority of analytical philosophers, the “veridical nature”  (or otherwise) or the world is of very little interest. When contrasting between the direct sense perception of a grey African elephant, or a hallucination of the same creature in a decidedly unusual hue, most philosophers (and indeed most of the general public) would draw an obvious distinction. Surely the veridical experience has more merit, with the hallucination being mainly of interest to doctors and psychologists? For Husserl, primarily concerned with how we experience the world, the distinction is largely meaningless. The 'perceptual content’, i.e. 'noema’ will exist, even for a non-veridical perception, as long as the 'existential assumption’ is met. This merely requires that if the object being perceived were veridical, the perception we have gained would correctly represent it. We are concerned here with the value of my perceiving pink elephants, rather than the existence (or otherwise) of such a creature.

With that in mind, what truth can we rely on? As mentioned, Husserl searches particularly for truth of the apodictic variety, and he finds this in his conception of the “Ego”. 'Experience presupposes an experiencer’, and the opposite is unthinkable, so we have found a foundational element. This sounds similar to the Cartesian project we earlier discussed, but crucially differs on the location of the ego. For Husserl, the experiential world is “presupposed by”  the existence of an Ego, so it must exist on a transcendental plane to allow experience. However, we are also beings of the world, so have an empirical ego. The two egos are not separate, but different perspectives on the same existence. Of course, this brings up the 'Paradox of Subjectivity’, i.e. how does a transcendental ego, why is presupposed by the intelligibility of the world, experience itself as a thing in the world? The possibility of “splitting the ego”  to look upon itself is certainly controversial, and this question has yet to be satisfactorily answered.

With these issues noted, we should attempt an epoché. This asks us to take an  experience, and 'bracket’ it, which removes our concern with the correctness of our “urdoxa”  (belief in the world) and allows us to examine the experience 'as is’. If we consider a can of Coca-Cola, a scientist might tell us that it is made of recycled aluminium,  and contains a water and sugar-dominated liquid. However, as phenomenologists, we can attempt to say something about the structure of experience from this can. Early in our attempt, a common question is raised, regarding the “methodological dilemma” . This asks how we can enter the transcendental state of epoché, free from worldly assumptions and concerns, while simultaneously experiencing an object in a decidedly empirical realm? The main responses to this are to shift the temporal state of the experience by utilising our memory, or discarding the sense perception altogether. This involves the “phantasy”  of Husserl’s work, the mere intuitive imagination. As with hallucinations, imagining our can is no less valuable than perceiving the 'real’ deal, as it still activates the “individual notions” , i.e. the mental filing system of our epoché.

With our assumptions put to one side, what are we left with? We have the “cogito”, our act of perceiving as the “noetic”, and the “cogitatum”, the can as perceived in the “noematic” . On this latter side, our first realisation should be that our experience of the can has very little, paradoxically enough, with our direct sense perception. Our eyes 'see’ images of an actuality, a 2D picture redrawn multiple times a second and given depth through our binocular vision. But in our minds, the experience is radically different. For example, we perceive the can as a tube, even as we can only see a fraction of its full surface area. This understanding comes from previous experience with such items, and we are mentally 'walking around’ the can even as we view its singular self. With a little more thought, we might realise that we are mentally crushing the can, or opening, or scratching the paint off; our mind running through the gamut of  permutations. Husserl called these the “possibilities” of an object, which form the “horizon” of its phenomenological existence. Possibilities are hung on an “object pole”, from which we get our fuller sense of the can’s being. All of these various appearances are melded together through synthesis, which combines them into true “objects”. The noetic side has a similarly functioning synthesis, to provide an order for our sense perception.

But why doesn’t this synthesis become incredibly messy, as so many possibilities are combined into one object? Our sanity is saved by its 'deep’ or 'micro’ structure : time-consciousness. We are not atemporal beings, but order our thoughts in a successive fashion through internal time. When in the epoché, we have 'retention’, i.e. the experience just past. If the can had just been placed on a table, this forms part of its new existence. 'Original impressions’ describe the current experience we are perceiving or considering, through sense data or imagination. Looking forward, we have 'protentions’ about the future, involving our expectations of what will happen next. If an anvil is falling on the can, this again informs our perception of it. The “complete noema of perception”  must include all three categories of intentional content.

With the can considered under the epoché, when do we remove the brackets and discover whether it really exists? For Husserl, the answer is never, as we should be concerned with searching for “existence-sense” rather than existence. Husserl isn’t a Berkeleian idealist, for whom the world is constituted in our minds. Our ego doesn’t give the world its existence, but our consciousness does  "constitute" existence. This is the 'transcendental insight’ , that in an important way I am giving the world the intelligibility and sense I find in it. To return to worrying about the existential status of the can would be to ignore this important transcendental move.