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T HE M ETAMORPHOSES OF P HENOMENOLOGICAL R EDUCTION The Aquinas Lecture, 2004 T HE M ETAMORPHOSES OF P HENOMENOLOGICAL R EDUCTION Jacques Taminiaux Under the auspices of the Wisconsin-Alpha Chapter of Phi Sigma Tau Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Taminiaux, Jacques, 1928- The metamorphoses of phenomenological reduction / by Jacques Taminiaux.— 1st ed. p. cm. — (The Aquinas lecture ; 2004) Includes bibliographical references. 1. Phenomenology—History. 2. Methodology— History. I. Title. II. Series. B829.5.T29 2004 142’.7—dc22 2003027872 All rights reserved. © 2004 Marquette University Press Printed in the United States of America Prefatory The Wisconsin-Alpha Chapter of Phi Sigma Tau, the International Honor Society for Philosophy at Marquette University, each year invites a scholar to deliver a lecture in honor of St. Thomas Aqui- nas. The 2004 Aquinas Lecture, The Metamorpho- ses of Phenomenological Reduction, was delivered on Sunday, February 22, 2004, by Jacques Tamin- iaux, Professor of Philosophy at Boston College. Jacques Taminiaux was educated at the Uni- versity of Louvain, where he earned a B.A. in Phi- losophy in 1948, Doctor Juris in 1950, a Licentiate in Philosophy in 1951, a Ph.D. in Philosophy in 1954, and a Maître agrégé in Philosophy in 1967, with the dissertation, “La nostalgie de la Grèce à l’aube de l’Idéalisme allemand.” Professor Taminiaux has been professor of philosophy at Boston College since 1989. Prior to that he was professor of philosophy at Lou- vain-la-Neuve. He was also visiting professor at Universidad Federal, Rio de Janeiro, in 1980, at Université Laval in 1970, and at Boston College, every other year from 1968 to 1990. Professor Taminiaux’s publications include the following books: Naissance de la philosophie Hégélienne de l’état: Commentaire et traduction 6 Jacques Taminiaux de la Realphilosophie d’Iéna (1805-1806), Paris, 1984; Dialectic and Difference: Finitude in Modern Thought, London, 1985; Lectures de l’ontologie fon- damentale: Essais sur Heidegger, Grenoble, 1989; La fille de Thrace et le penseur professionel: Arendt et Heidegger; Paris, 1992; Poetics, Speculation, and Judgment: The Shadow of the Work of Art from Kant to Phenomenology, Albany, 1993; Le Théâtre des philosophes: La tragédie, l’être, l’action, Grenoble, 1995, and Sillages phénoménologiques / Auditeurs et lecteurs de Heidegger, Brussels, 2002. He has also published well over one hundred articles and has delivered many invited lectures. In 1977 Professor Taminiaux received the Prix Francqui, which is awarded annually by the King of Belgium to the nation’s outstanding scholar. He is a member of the Academie Royale de Belgique, the Institut International de Philosophie, and of the Academia Europaea, Cambridge, U.K. He was awarded a medal by the National Foundation for Scientific Research, Belgium, in 1990, and received an honorary degree from the Pontificia Universita Catolica del Peru, Lima, in 1996. To Professor Taminiaux’s distinguished list of publications, Phi Sigma Tau is pleased to add: The Metamorphoses of Phenomenological Reduction. The Metamorphoses of Phenomenological Reduction by Jacques Taminiaux The title I have announced is: “The Metamorpho- ses of Phenomenological Reduction.” The word “metamorphosis” belongs to ordinary language; it means a change of form or of character by development. The word “reduction” is a technical word which designates the principal methodological rule of phenomenology. Hence, the title of my lecture is meant to suggest that in the development of the phenomenological movement the methodological procedure called “reduction” underwent several changes of character. In order to analyze and elucidate those changes, I have decided to focus primarily on two topics, the body and the mind, because the way the found- ers of the phenomenological movement—Husserl first, then Heidegger—dealt with those two topics makes intelligible the metamorphoses at stake, i.e., not only the changes that occurred with the transi- tion from the phenomenological work of Husserl to the phenomenological work of Heidegger, but also with subsequent developments and changes that occurred in the wake of those two authors, thanks to their students and readers. Indeed, the 8 Jacques Taminiaux treatment by Husserl and Heidegger of the two topics I just mentioned reveals on close inspection several blind spots, which were to arouse objec- tions and to incite other approaches that claimed to be more phenomenological, more faithful to the phenomena than the previous ones. I use reduction as a point of reference for a simple reason that I shall now elucidate. I Since its inception with the publication of Edmund Husserl’s Logische Untersuchungen at the beginning of the twentieth century, the philosophical trend called “phenomenology” has been an attempt to be the logos of all phenomena appearing within the scope of human experience, or to give those phenomena the opportunity to show as precisely as possible what characterizes them specifically. Focusing thereby his investigations on the descrip- tion of what appears in the field of human experience, Husserl repeatedly claimed that the only possible method for the strictly descriptive way of doing philosophy that he was proposing was what he called reduction (Reduktion). In order to approach any topic whatsoever within the sphere of human experience without prejudice, without systematic distortion, without taking for granted traditional theses—let alone prevailing Weltan- schauungen—without succumbing to fascination Metamorphoses of Phenomenological Reduction 9 for the successes of modern science, and in order to allow the topic at stake to display its distinctive characteristics, it is necessary, Husserl repeatedly claimed, to practice again and again a reduction. Nobody can become a phenomenologist without practicing reduction as a methodological principle for any descriptive investigation. It is important to notice that the methodological rule of reduction combines two moves: a negative one, and a positive one. The negative move consists in suspending what blocks the way to the phenomena. The positive move is a return—a re- ductio—to the specific mode of appearing of the phenomenon. Let us pay attention first to the way the phenomenological reduction operates in Husserl’s work. He calls the negative move of suspending by the name epocha Greek word that designates a pause, a cessation, or an abstention, whereas he insists that the positive move of return to the matter itself (die Sache selbst) in its specific way of givenness consists in getting a view of a relationship called intention- ality, a relationship that characterizes consciousness as such in the entire range of its modes. One may wonder at the outset if the character- ization by Husserl of these two moves on a strictly methodological level, in his initial articulation of a definition of the phenomenological way of doing philosophy, does not already involve a certain