A note on the phenomenological epoché
One of Tom Sparrow’s arguments in The End of Phenomenology (Edinburgh University Press, 2014) is that the phenomenological reduction as a methodological limitation of phenomenological analysis inevitably leads to idealism or anti-realism. This is because of the first step of the reduction, namely the epoché. Sparrow seems to think that the performance of the epoché means a conscious suspension of all ontological concerns or commitments, as if phenomenological analysis were indifferent to the question of existence. But this would be a misunderstanding, one which Robert Sokolowski and Dan Zahavi have attempted to address in detail in their respective works. See especially Zahavi, Husserl’s Phenomenology (2003) and Husserl’s Legacy (2017).
It is also worth making the following clarification. The goal of the epoché is to accomplish a shift in the focus of the researcher from the natural attitude to the phenomenological or transcendental attitude so that the phenomenological reduction can be performed. One way in which Husserl proposes this be done is precisely by means of the “bracketing” or the “suspension” of the “general thesis of the natural attitude,” viz. the thesis that the world exists objectively, i.e. that it is “simply there for me,” independently of consciousness. This is roughly what he proposes in Ideas I. But this “Cartesian way” into the phenomenological attitude is not the only way proposed by Husserl, as Robert Sokolowski emphasizes (Introduction to Phenomenology, 51ff.). For example, there is also the “ontological way” which Husserl develops in his Crisis. In general, phenomenology is in principle open to any proposed method for the epoché so long as it succeeds in effecting the transition from the natural to the phenomenological attitude. Phenomenology is not tied down to doing this in only one way.
In my dissertation, I propose a different way into the phenomenological attitude than the “Cartesian” way with which most persons might be familiar. I begin with the recognition that what appears in conscious experience is never simply an individual object, but always the whole of being and all at once. I never see just a cat, but always a particular cat at some point in time, in a particular space populated by any number of other objects which also appear to me, under certain specifiable conditions, and so on. Moreover, from the fact that what appears is all of being and all once, it follows that I am also a contributor to the total appearance. I contribute very much to my experience, from the flurry of thoughts and feelings that is always going on in the background and which may occasionally capture my attention away from the things outside me, to the positioning of my body and the way in which it interacts with the environment (for example, things look blurry to me unless I have my glasses on, etc.), to my own habits of interpreting and understanding things which may influence what stands out to me and what does not. Once I am able to recognize that what appears in consciousness is not first and foremost the individual object, but rather all of being, myself included, and all at once, that everything, myself included, makes a contribution to the total appearance, then my focus is shifted onto the entirety of the conscious experience and I am able to analyze it carefully and in detail so as to attain to a better appreciation of what is actually given and how. The individual appearing object is now put in correlation with me and with everything else. All this is to say that I have managed to accede to the phenomenological attitude. There is no need of any suspension of ontological commitments or concerns, neither is there need of any magical or quasi-mystical adjustment of consciousness. It is enough to say that what appears to me is all of being, myself included, and all at once.
