The transcendental phenomenological reductions

pp. 19-46

in: Frederick Kersten, Phenomenological method, Berlin, Springer, 1989

Abstract

The full title of Husserl's book, Ideas Pertaining to a Pure Phenomenology and to a Phenomenological Philosophy, applies to three projected books of which only one, the first, was published during Husserl's lifetime and with the subtitle, General Introduction to Pure Phenomenology (1912).¹ Appended to the First Book was an "Introduction" to all three books which Husserl continued to reprint with the First Book despite his dissatisfaction with the manuscript of the Second and the continued non-existence of the Third Book. Yet the full sense of the fragmented whole of Ideas may be recovered from the "Introduction" in the light of which the title to all three Books may be expressed in these words:²Ideas Pertaining to a Purely Descriptive, Eidetic, Transcendentally Pure or Transcendental Phenomenology and to a Transcendental Phenomenological Philosophy.