Specific Transcendental Phenomenological Procedures

Abstract

Phenomenology was defined in the last chapter as a descriptive, eidetic science of transcendentally purified mental life-processes in the natural transcendental attitude. When seized upon in reflection those processes, moreover, are found to exhibit a noetic-noematic plane of demarcation according to which all actional and secondary passive mental life-processes are founded on and “presuppose” all primary passive mental life-processes (although the converse is not the case). This noetic-noematic plane of demarcation provided a clue for determining the correct methodic order in which the step-by-step transcendental phenomenological refrainings and reductions are to be carried out by means of what Husserl called “abstractive” or, perhaps better expressed, “discriminatory,” procedures that will reveal and objectivate the variously reduced strata of oriented constitution. By making explicit these procedures for refraining from the general positing in which the naturalness of the natural transcendental attitude consists it will be possible at the same time to critically examine the specific context in which Husserl introduces the notion of oriented constitution in the Fifth Cartesian Meditation: objectivation of the constituting of the “primordial quasi-objective world.”