phenomenological reduction

English edit

Noun edit

phenomenological reduction (plural phenomenological reductions)

  1. (philosophy) In the phenomenology of Edmund Husserl (1859-1938) and his followers, a philosophical procedure intended to reveal the objects of consciousness as pure phenomena independently of any considerations of the existence of those objects and without the influence of inferential knowledge.
    • 1955, Aron Gurwitsch, “The Phenomenological and the Psychological Approach to Consciousness”, in Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, volume 15, number 3, page 306:
      The phenomenological reduction may be considered as a methodological device resorted to for the sake of arriving at radical and radically justified philosophical knowledge.