ABSTRACT
Husserl’s conception of radical, ongoing reflection in light of changing historical-philosophical context should lead us to reconsider also the meaning of the phenomenological reduction itself. Rather than surveying the vast secondary literature on the reduction, this chapter provides such a reconsideration, focusing on topics of interest in theoretical philosophy in our current moment, after the analytic-continental divide. In light of Husserl’s application of the reduction to historicity, presuppositions of contemporary theoretical philosophy – especially scientistic and linguistic preconceptions about meaning inherited from the period of the divide – appear as products of a particular moment of philosophical consciousness that demand rethinking. Radical reflection similarly points beyond the inherited, intellectualized conception of I-subjectivity toward embodied we-subjectivity, as demonstrated in Husserl’s accounts of the intersubjective reduction. The reduction is thus interpreted as revealing a historically contextualized world of meaning always already intersubjectively constituted down to the prepredicative level of lived bodies – not exclusively at the level of shared language, concepts, or discourse. Husserl’s notions of reduction and reflection thus interpreted are of great relevance for contemporary post-divide topics such as the critiques of representationalism, cognitivism, and epistemological intellectualism, and anticipate the increasing interest across the traditions in collective intentionality, empathy, and embodiment.
