epoché (Einklammerung)
Suspending, not doubting, the question whether the world is real, so that things can be described exactly as they are given to pure consciousness.
In lecture order, as Marci Shore presents each view. The time opens that minute of the lecture on YouTube.
The phenomenological reduction jolts us from the natural attitude, where the world's existence is taken for granted, into reflection on consciousness; the reality question is bracketed, suspended rather than doubted.
Put simply Husserl: normally we just assume the world exists, his "natural attitude". The "phenomenological reduction" jolts us out of that into examining our own experience. We set aside, or "bracket", whether things are real, without doubting it.
Phenomenology, both in Husserl's conception and largely in its later development, is more method than theory: an account of how we ought to go about understanding the world.
Put simply Husserl's phenomenology, and mostly what grew from it, is less a set of claims than a method: an account of how we ought to go about understanding the world.
Bracketing reached into Husserl's own life: weeks after the First World War killed his younger son, he wrote to a friend that the war was now bracketed.
Put simply Husserl's habit of "bracketing," setting a question aside, reached into his own life. Weeks after his younger son was killed in the First World War, he wrote to a friend that the war was now bracketed.
In his early Transcendence of the Ego (1937), Sartre rejects Husserl's phenomenological reduction on broadly Heideggerian grounds: always already in a world, we cannot bracket our belief in it.
Put simply In an early work, Sartre rejects Husserl's method of setting aside our belief that the world is real. Following Heidegger, he says we cannot: we are always already caught up in the world.
In the text In The Transcendence of the Ego (1936–37; Williams and Kirkpatrick translation), Sartre applies Husserl's reduction to the ego itself: "the transcendent I must fall before the stroke of phenomenological reduction".
Husserl's reduction brackets whatever may or may not exist, other egos included; only my transcendental ego stays unbracketed. What remains is the sphere of ownness: what is mine.
Put simply Husserl's reduction asks me to put aside every question about what exists, other people included. Only my own "I" stays. What remains is my "sphere of ownness": whatever is given to me as mine.
Shore lines up four versions of one shaking moment: Heidegger's being-toward-death, Shklovsky's estrangement, Husserl's reduction, Levinas's face-to-face. For Levinas the jolt comes from the other, not from death.
Put simply Shore lines up four shaking moments that reveal something fundamental: facing death (Heidegger), seeing the familiar as strange (Shklovsky), setting assumptions aside (Husserl), meeting someone face to face (Levinas). For Levinas, it comes from another person, not death.
2 links between claims that both use the term. Each shows the earlier claim, then the later one that answers it. “Our inference” marks a link Shore does not state outright.
HusserlThe phenomenological reduction jolts us from the natural attitude, where the world's existence is taken for granted, into reflection on consciousness; the reality question is bracketed, suspended rather than doubted. L11 · 30:57
HusserlBracketing reached into Husserl's own life: weeks after the First World War killed his younger son, he wrote to a friend that the war was now bracketed. L11 · 48:53
Shore reports that Husserl applied his own bracketing to his life, writing weeks after his son's death that the war was now bracketed.
HusserlThe phenomenological reduction jolts us from the natural attitude, where the world's existence is taken for granted, into reflection on consciousness; the reality question is bracketed, suspended rather than doubted. L11 · 30:57
SartreIn his early Transcendence of the Ego (1937), Sartre rejects Husserl's phenomenological reduction on broadly Heideggerian grounds: always already in a world, we cannot bracket our belief in it. L13 · 19:10
The reduction is impossible: we cannot suspend belief in a world we are always already in
Throughlines that pass through one of these claims.
Terms that appear in the same claims.