AYUDA (AY)

104

Unit 3: Epoche as a Key Theme in Phenomenology

105

This can also be referred to as the ‘method of reduction.’ The term epoche is the Greek term for bracketing or suspension of belief. Husserl uses it to describe his method of phenomenological suspension in which we detach ourselves from any viewpoints with regards to the objective world. It means the removal from our minds all, and any prejudices, prior beliefs, and assumptions concerning the object of investigation. This will enable us approach our investigation of the object with an open mind (Omoregbe 2001:24).

The idea of epoche or phenomenological bracketing was introduced to phenomenology by Husserl. He borrowed it from mathematics. As a mathematical method, it is employed in resolving interrelated or complex problems. It attends to complex problems in piece-meal manner without further complicating the problem. As employed by Husserl in phenomenology, it serves to put aside dubious and controversial cognition from the natural standpoint. Epoche is the act of focussing on any part or all of one’s experience by observing, analysing, abstracting and describing that experience and then removing oneself from the immediate and lived engagement in it. Thus, Owolabi describes it as “the process of sweeping off the prejudices of the natural standpoint in order to attain the phenomenological standpoint” (1992:286).

Husserl himself describes epoche thus:

The thesis undergoes a modification whilst remaining in itself what it is; we set it as it were “out of action.” We 2disconnect it,” “bracket it.” It still remains there like the bracketed in the bracket, like the disconnected outside the connexional system. The thesis is experienced as lived (erlebnis) but we make no use of it, and by that, of course, we do not indicate privation as when we say of the ignorant that he makes no use of certain thesis (1970:108).

Epoche extends to all phenomena and elements of experience, including people, things, beliefs, cultural situations, etc. To bracket all phenomena does not necessarily mean to put them off; it rather means that we look at them necessarily judging whether they are realities or appearances. We abstain from passing opinions or judgments, or valuations about them;

it is standing back from things. It enables us to review the naivety that characterizes the natural attitude in the light of the phenomenological attitude. It helps us to destroy all interest so that we can rebuild our experience; it is the demolition exercise according to Jim Unah, which is motivated by the genuine desire to reconstruct. It gravitates us “towards the essential structures of experience or that we construct the world as it is when we suspend all judgments as we focus attention on the given fact of experience” (Unah 1996:217).

106 According to Husserl, epoche means that:

We put out of action the general thesis which belongs to the essence of the natural standpoint, we place in brackets whatever it includes respecting the nature of being: this entire natural world therefore which is continually

‘there for us’, ‘present to our hand’ and will ever remain there, is a fact about the world of which we continue to be conscious, even though it pleases us to put it in brackets. If I do this, as I am fully free to do, I do not then deny this world as though I were a sophist, I do not doubt that it is there as though I were a sceptic; but I use the phenomenological epoche which completely bars me from using any judgment that concerns spatio-temporal existence (1970:110-111).

Based on Husserl’s description, epoche is a way of putting aside all unnecessary data of experience, this will enable the perceiver to analyse and interpret a particular process of experience. It is a process of perception that encourages us to fully concentrate on the particular object or phenomenon of perception. It suspends all previous ideas about a given phenomenon of cognition so as to concentrate on the immediate and direct data of the phenomenon. It is simply correct to say that bracketing is an epistemological tool used to get the epistemic subject ready to obtain a perfect and immediate knowledge of phenomenon (Owolabi 2001:287).

The Husserlian notion of epoche is not the same as the Cartesian methodic doubt. Husserl used the method of epoche to describe detachment from any point of view concerning the objective world. Descartes, on the other hand, used the methodic doubt to describe his refusal to believe and accept any proposition that he cannot perceive clearly and distinctly.

Therefore, Descartes proceeded to doubt everything, all phenomena, including the world, except his thinking self. On the contrary, Husserl brackets all the elements of experience, refusing to assert that he would exists or not, he brackets the entire constitution of our experienced life; objects, other people, and cultural institutions. Husserlian bracketing simply means to abstain from asserting phenomena as real or appearance. In this epoche, Husserl discovered himself as the ego. By the ego, we mean the consciousness in which consists the objective world as it exists in its entirety. In contrast to this, is the fact that Descartes deduced the objective world from the residual certainty of the ego (Stumpf 1989:490).

Husserl’s epoche is an epistemic method aimed at attaining immediate apodictic knowledge following the spirit of Descartes’ methodic doubt. It is however, not to be confused with the Cartesian method. In epoche, the epistemic subject is not in doubt about his previous beliefs like in the Cartesian methodic doubt. The epistemic agent only puts

107

aside previous ideas and suppositions, for the moment, about the object of cognition, to allow him have a prejudice-free cognition. This is not the safe as doubting all previously held beliefs about the object of cognition, either sincerely or pretentiously, as it is the case with Cartesian methodic doubt. It is a caution to the epistemic agent in his process of observation, not to becloud the phenomenon with his previously held beliefs, prejudices, suppositions and biases.

For Husserl, the world is simply all that we are aware of what appears valid to us in our actions of thought. Therefore, he argues that we should not assert anything about that which we do not see ourselves. By this very fact, he rejects the Cartesian and Kantian notions that reality goes beyond the immediate phenomenal realm. According to Husserl, epoche enables us to discover the original or primordial mode of experience. What we find here is consciousness and the objects of consciousness. The ego is the source of objects and what they mean because in the ego we always find the irreducible element of experience. It means therefore, that objects appear as they are determined by the structure of the ego or thinking self. That is to say that “the meaning and being of things is primordially constituted in and through consciousness” (Stumpf 1989:491). Husserl refers to this as the act of intentionality which is the defining characteristic of consciousness. The idea of intentionality will be explained further in the next unit.

Epoche serves as a starting point as it provides and guarantees the kind of neutrality required by the phenomenological method because it is epistemologically impartial. It is therefore, a necessary condition to all phenomenological procedures. It leads us back to the centre of reality which is the conscious self; it leads us into the method of reductions.