Abstract

In my paper I argue that the need for the phenomenological reduction in Husserl is based upon a

distinction between the spontaneous and simultaneous act of thought/ recognition, and knowledge

(Erkenntnis und Wissenschaften; cf. Husserl) that can be said to prefigure or carry over, depending on

how one narrates history, the distinction between knowing and truth (Savoir et Vérité; cf. Badiou). Said

otherwise, Husserl’s notion of phenomenology as Erkenntniskritik and as an eidetische Wissenschaft at

once offers a critique of the presumed theoretical or natural attitude, while further instantiating a core

dualism of said attitude, namely, between the natural engagement with the murky horizon of the world

(nebelhafte und nie voll Horizont) and the more phenomenologically basic cognition by consciousness of

pre-ontological moments of validity (Geltungseinheiten). As such, the notion of consciousness that is

given in phenomenological descriptions takes on a grounding function, even if this is not Husserl’s direct

intention. The fallout of this pattern of thinking appears then in the concept of fundamental ontology by

Heidegger, and more recently in the notion of the pure given (pur donnée) by Jean-Luc Marion. This

grounding function opens, I argue, the way for subsequent critiques of phenomenology by Theodor

Adorno, Emmanuel Levinas, and Enrique Dussel, all of which align phenomenology with a reductionist

thinking that is still ontology, and thus, incapable of helping human beings think that which is beyond the

horizon of the world – i.e., hope, revelation. By focusing on the basic function of the phenomenological

reduction, and by extension the overarching concept of phenomenology, my paper thus opens the door for

more detailed engagements with both subsequent favourable receptions of the phenomenological method

and said criticisms of reductionism to the status quo of what is.

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