The Reduction and ‘The Fourth Principle’

Jean-Luc Marion

Among the many difficulties, or even paradoxes, that phenomenology has imposedupon us by positing itself as a doctrine, or at least as a radical foundation forphilosophy, one must first and foremost consider the operation typically referredto as the reduction. The reasons for detecting difficulties therein are many, but theytake on even greater significance since Husserl proclaimed the reduction to befundamental to any philosophy that wished to establish itself as a phenomenology.The history of phenomenology, then, would appear not only as the history of allthe difficulties encountered in the reduction, but principally as the history ofHusserl’s own self-elucidation of his entire project. This brings us to the point ofreformulating Ricoeur’s claim—that phenomenology is the sum ofmisinterpretations of Husserl’s doctrine—with this new contention: thatphenomenology consists in the sum of discussions and disagreements about thedoctrine and practice of the reduction.