Phenomenology, Typification, and the World as Taken for Granted

Abstract

Husserl distinguishes between phenomenological psychology and transcendental phenomenology. The former has alliances with and owes allegiance to the natural attitude, the naive horizon through which we as common-sense men live our lives together in our world. Although phenomenological psychology transcends the natural attitude in certain respects, it remains oriented toward naive experience. There are as well different levels of analysis possible to phenomenological psychology, starting from tile empirical domain and moving to a reflexive examination of intentional consciousness. The levels mirror each other in varying degrees of purity and depth. Transcendental phenomenology, on the contrary, is possible only in virtue of a declaration of independence from the presuppositions of the natural attitude. The reflecting ego is no longer one among others in the world of fellow-men but rather a ground of intentional consciousness out of which the alter ego as a transcendental correlate is constituted. In different terms, an eidetic analysis which would justify claims made at the level of phenomenological psychology is both possible and ultimately necessary,whereastranscendental phenomenology already presupposes the eidetic reduction and could not, in principle, be pursued within the mundane sphere.