The Paradox of the Phenomenological Method

Abstract

The phenomenological paradox,1 which Husserl expounds in his Crisis, poses a methodological circle of transcendental subjectivity over against the world, and of incarnated subjectivity; on the one side of the circle we find the transcendental subjectivity as an absolute point of departure which can only be established by suspending the acceptance as being of the world; and on the other side of the circle the psychophysical subjectivity that presupposes the acceptance as being of the world. It is characteristic of the circle, that the constituting transcendental subjectivity is outside of the world, whereas the constituted subjectivity is in the world, and that—nevertheless—these two, as subjectivity are identical. In order to solve this paradox we must regard one of the two subjectivities as necessarily derived from the other. According to Husserl, to philosophize means to search for the act that is the absolute starting point and to derive all knowledge from that. For Husserl, transcendental consciousness is and remains that starting point. Therefore in order to resolve the paradox of the two subjectivities — the one outside us and the other in the world — we must follow the route of deriving incarnated subjectivity from transcendental subjectivity. The key to that is intersubjective reduction. For it is only through this reduction that the pre-given life-world can be philosophically grounded. After grounding this lite-world, phenomenology turns to genetic investigation of the cultural, intellectual world.