 Welcome to this lecture series on Aspects of Christian Philosophy, module 32. This lecture attempts to introduce the philosophy of Edmund Riesel, which is known as phenomenology. And we will concentrate on basically on two-three aspects of phenomenology, because it is a very important philosophy, which is very important in the sense like 20th century European thought, particularly the continental European philosophy was very significantly influenced by the contributions of this philosopher Edmund Riesel, particularly his phenomenology. Like some of his famous disciples, one of his famous disciples is Martin Heidegger, who is one of the very important and great thinkers of 20th century European thought. And many others like Hans Kierg-Gadamer, when he develops his hermeneutics, he still remains as a phenomenology. So, phenomenological approaches to philosophy is a very significant movement in 20th century thinking. So, we will basically try to focus on the issues like where phenomenology talks about what is phenomenology, we will try to understand. And then afterwards, we will see the, there is another very important problem, another very important concept, the concept of intentionality. And then the method, the method phenomenologist approach or particularly Edmund Riesel has adopted the method of reduction. So, we will concentrate on the three aspects of this philosophy. So, we will start with Edmund Riesel, he is no doubt one of the most influential philosophers of 20th century European thought. And his reputation is mainly due to his contributions to phenomenology. So, he is known as a founder of phenomenology, though many others, many other philosophers before him had talked about phenomenology. It was as a kind of philosophy and a kind of method, it was Uzor who brought phenomenology into the forefront of philosophical enterprises. And now again, like as I mentioned there are many other thinkers like Kant, Fitch, Hegel and Enes Mac, they all referred to the term phenomenology in their respective philosophies. Hegel for example, has even written a book, phenomenology of the guised of the spirit. Credit actually goes to Uzor when it comes to phenomenology, introducing phenomenology as a separate philosophy. And so in all major contributions in this area are from him. And in philosophy, phenomenology appears both as a philosophy as well as a method. So, he suggests a method which is known as phenomenological method, which consists of several stages of reduction which finally takes us to a kind of transcendental reduction, which isolates the transcendental ego. And again it was Uzor who conceives phenomenology as a foundational science, a presuppositionalist philosophy. This is again a very important and interesting aspect of his thought, because 19th century philosophy or 20th century by the time it was 20th century, philosophy was gradually losing its importance as a foundational discipline. As all of us know, as we have discussed in our previous lectures in this lecture series, most of this traditional European thinkers were conceiving philosophy as a foundational discipline. In the Greek, during the Greek ages it always enjoyed the status. And even when in modern philosophy many thinkers try to define philosophy as a foundational discipline by making it epistemology, they thought that philosophy is going to do a very important job for humanity. But gradually it was losing this foundational status and Fusel is trying to regain it by establishing philosophy as phenomenology, as a foundational discipline, as a foundational science which he calls a presuppositionless philosophy. So, as a presuppositionless philosophy, phenomenology tries to arrive at or tries to get a knowledge about the most important or rather to put it in other words, the primordial data of all our knowledge. So, try to capture the primordial data of all human knowledge, whether it is science or any field for that matter. The basic experience, the primordial data of all knowledge, all experience. And the question is where do you find them? Where do you find this primordial data? And Fusel's answer is we find them in our consciousness. So, consciousness thus becomes a very important domain of philosophical inquiry. And a philosopher should inquire or should examine the consciousness with an intention to understand the most immediately given data to consciousness, when we know something. So, all knowledge presupposes this data, where something is given directly, immediately to the consciousness. That raw data from where the consciousness would later on apply its categories and other things and develop a knowledge, a system of knowledge. But the primary data, the primordial data consist of those immediately given things. So, philosophy or phenomenology should attempt to try to capture that. So, that is a major, I mean that is the most important aspect of phenomenological inquiry. The slogan is back to things themselves. So, these are the things in themselves according to Fusel. They are not the things in themselves of the Immanuel Kant, where it has been designated as Nomina, which are unknowable, which cannot be known through sensors or which remains as in a domain which is unknowable, agnosticism. But here, Fusel is not an agnostic or a skeptic like you, but he is very clear about it. He asserts that the primordial data of all knowledge can be found in consciousness with an inquiry into consciousness, a phenomenological inquiry into consciousness. What is this inquiry? This inquiry consist of removing everything that is unimportant and focusing only on consciousness and its content. So, this is precisely the aim of consciousness. So, in summary phenomenology consist in this assumption, this philosophy and this method. Now, let us see Fusel's phenomenology. He was a mathematician, that is another interesting aspect about his career. And since he is a mathematician like all mathematicians he is also he was also interested in abstract concepts, entities, numbers. But then when you try to understand what a number is, whether it is a concept in the mind, if normally understood that one way to understand the numbers are to conceive it as a concept in the mind. But if it is a concept in the mind, whether it is a mental entity, whether it is psychological or subjective, something which Fusel was not very comfortable with. So, he was as part and parcel of his project, Fusel advocates a form of anti-psychological which is which is also found in another contemporary I mean contemporary of Fusel, another mathematician and logician Gottler Frege, which you have very briefly been mentioned in our one of our previous lectures. So, he was he was a student of Franz Brentano who was a psychologist, very well known, very interesting philosopher, his descriptive psychology and was also influenced by the empiricism of David Hume and he opposed the naturalism and historicism in German thought, which is which we can see in for example, the historicism, the kind of historical approach to philosophy. So, he was sort of opposing all these things and trying to be trying to do justice to the to the logical foundations or rather to put it in other words inquiry into the foundations of mathematics led him to logic and then to epistemology and finally to philosophy. So, the root is very clear like as it happened in the case of Frege Wittgenstein and many others, he started out with mathematics and from mathematics to logic, but here he goes to epistemology and later on finds that many of the questions, many of the problems which he is concerned about cannot be answered from the framework of an epistemologist. So, if epistemological turn in philosophy inadequate to answer some important questions in philosophy. So, he turns to philosophy in a different way. So, phenomenology was proposed as an alternative method. Now, there are basically three conceptions of phenomenology, the one hand it was conceived as a science of sciences, I have already mentioned it the foundational science, it is in reverse to discover the basis of consciousness and so that is what the primary entity with which phenomenologists are concerned with is consciousness. Number two, it is conceived as a first philosophy and in that this sense it is coextensive with philosophy and the third sense is where probably the most important conceptualization of phenomenology, where phenomenology is conceived as a transcendental idealism, transcendentalism all meaning had its source in the transcendental ego. So, ultimately Husserl aims at all to this domain of transcendental ego and its pure contents. So, that is it what phenomenology's ultimate aim is. Now, when you try to assess the contributions of phenomenology particularly the Hazelian phenomenology, it definitely consisted of a break from many traditional concerns and also inaugurated in UF thinking in European philosophy. Though phenomenology as such is not a very old idea as a method, as a philosophy Husserl combines it brilliantly and presents it in the context of one of the most turbulent centuries, 20th century in human history. So, it on the one hand there is a break from the traditional concerns and on the other hand it is inaugurates in UF thinking. Then it is also influenced many philosophers, I have already mentioned a couple of names Heidegger, Martin Heidegger, then Hans Georg Gallimer, Ron Paul Sartre. So, French philosopher and existentialist Ron Paul Sartre, then another very notable phenomenologist Merleau-Ponty, who is a French phenomenologist and there are many others. So, existentialism, hermeneutics, deconstruction, all these people, all these philosophers who belong to these different schools and traditions were influenced by Husserl's phenomenology. And as I already mentioned it emerged at a time when philosophy was facing a crisis. So, one of Husserl's aim was to bring back philosophy to that status of foundational discipline by conceiving philosophy as a presuppositionless endeavor and provides a new life to German philosophy as the decline of great idealistic tradition had already begun by that time. So, you can see that importance of Husserl needs to be assessed from this background. You can see that two very important traditions of 20th century philosophy, hermeneutics, which was primarily spearheaded by Adama also to some extent Heidegger. Then on the other hand, the existentialist or existentialism, the philosophy which was advocated by French philosophers Ron Paul Sartre, Albert Camel and many others in Europe, continental Europe, they were all influenced by Husserl's phenomenology. And now, let us see the subject matter of phenomenology, phenomena. So, phenomena is the subject matter of philosophy. That is the reason why we call it phenomenology. And what is phenomena? A phenomena is their objects and events around us. It is a technical term used by Husserl, not in the sense, in the sense in which Immanuel Kant has used the term phenomena, where he distinguishes it from phenomena or things in themselves which are ultimate realities. For Kant, this is an appearance. The phenomenal world is an appearance. It is not something which is the real world, but for a phenomenologist, the phenomena consist of the primordial entities which are directly given to the consciousness. So, there are objects and events around us, other people, ourselves, even in reflection, our own conscious experiences as we experience them. All these things constitute what we understand phenomena is. Things as they are given to our consciousness, whether in perception or imagination or thought or volition. So, things as they are given to our consciousness, directly given to, most immediately given to. All these are descriptions which phenomenologists use to describe the concept of phenomena. And there are, of course, there are two types of phenomena we can designate. And particularly this distinction was very important when Brentano Husserl's predecessor, of course, not a phenomenologist. He was a descriptive psychologist and Husserl also was trained by him for some time. So, Brentano is the one thinker who has actually started taking this concept of phenomena to the forefront of philosophizing. And Brentano does this in order to distinguish the mental phenomena, the psychic phenomena from physical or material, the events, the phenomena in the material world. So, he wants to maintain a distinction. He would assert that the mental phenomena is unique. And according to Brentano, we will see it later, what distinguishes the mental phenomena, physical phenomena is the intentionality aspect of it. So, we will come to that. Husserl also in the beginning recognizes that there is a distinction, but he would never associate intentionality with mental phenomena alone. I will come to that. So, mental phenomena what occurs in the mind or acts of consciousness or their contents. And physical phenomena are objects of external perception starting with colors and shape. Elaborate these concepts a little later. Now, consider phenomenology, Husserlian phenomenology and its fundamental objectives. As I already mentioned it, it is a study of the phenomena. And phenomena is as we have seen experienced in various acts of consciousness, they are directly given to consciousness. And they are isolated by suspending all consideration of their objective reality or subjective association. So, this is what phenomenology does precisely, that you try to isolate this immediately given most primordial data of consciousness by separating them by applying a method, the method of reduction. We will see it later. By applying this method, you separate this conscious immediately given data from all other associated knowledge about the reality, about our subjective prejudices etcetera. It definitely another important thing is phenomenology is associated with a search for certainty. It is a philosophy or particularly Husserl, Husserl conceives philosophy as a rigorous science dealing with ideal objects or essences of things originating in the consciousness. So, once you can identify them and locate them and isolate them, you have with you things which are the most primordial, the essences of things which directly originate in the consciousness. They are the fundamental data of all knowledge. Now, as I already indicated, the concept of phenomena when Husserl develops this concept, he was significantly influenced by Brentano his own teacher. And I have already mentioned this, that Brentano makes a distinction between psychological and physical phenomena. And according to him, what characterizes a mental phenomena is intentionality, the directedness of experience. In our consciousness, I see an object say for example, the chair in front of me. My consciousness about the chair is directed towards an object the chair, which is not there in my mind, but which is outside. So, this is a very important characteristic feature of a mental phenomena according to Brentano. And it exists intentionally in acts of consciousness. This is called intentional inexistence. All mental phenomena exist in this way. And it defines and classifies the various types of mental phenomena. He goes on doing that elaborately. Now, we will see how Husserl has appropriated this notion of intentionality, what makes Husserl's position different. Every mental phenomenon or act of consciousness is directed towards some object. This is something which Husserl, Brentano as well as Husserl share. This intentional directedness constitute as a core of Brentano's descriptive psychology. Though there is a concept, a disease of intentional directedness, that mental phenomena directed towards an object that exists outside. And when it comes to Husserl, Husserl replaces psychical phenomena with experiences or intentional experiences. So, here he is not very happy with identifying or with the term psychical phenomena, because Husserl's phenomenology as I already indicated in the beginning was also advocating a form of anti-psychological. So, according to Husserl, intentional means it aims at or refer to something objective. So, it cannot be a subjective feeling, but rather it refers to something which is objectively out there. Also influence by, so in developing the notion of intentionality and developed his own concept, Husserl was influenced also by William James, his principles of psychology. And now, let us see the principle of intentionality discussed by Husserl. So, phenomenological count of experience, when phenomenologist tries to give an account of experience, he says that Husserl says that everyday experiences are intentional, all day to day experiences are intentional. But at the same time, there is another problem like as an empiricist or as a philosopher who emphasizes on experience, everyday experience or whatever. Experiences are always, they always reveal their objects from a perspective. Say for example, when I see this pen, when I see this pen like this, let us keep it like this, I do not see this part of the pen. I can see this only if I turn my head to this side, then I can see this. So, my for as well as I am concerned only this aspect, only it is only revealed from this aspect, it is perspectival in that sense. But the phenomenological account of intentionality reconcile with the objectivism of intentionality on the one hand, perspectivalism or perspectivism of empirism on the other. So, it tries to combine these two principles into a more comprehensive conception of experience. Principle of intentionality, where consciousness is always consciousness about something. So, this aboutness is emphasized. It points to something outside the mind which is conscious of the object and everyday experiences are directed towards objects, properties and states of affairs. So, this aboutness is something which makes as one would be wondering a philosopher like Husserl is talking about consciousness. He wants you to look inside your own consciousness and see what are the contents present there. So, is it solipsism? Is it subjectivism? So, the answer probably is that it is not subjectivism because this consciousness is not just consciousness in abstract. There is nothing called an abstract consciousness, a condensed consciousness. Consciousness is always treated as consciousness about something. It points outwardly to an object in the world. So, it cannot be merely subjective. So, everyday experiences are directed towards objects, properties and states of affairs. And though experience reveals its object from a perspective as I have already pointed out in the case of this pen. It is seen from a perspective, but we are intentionally directed toward a full three-dimensional object. But what I see is not this part of the pen. My perception or my consciousness, this pen is given as a complete object. It is not just this aspect of the pen. Though I do not see it, I do not see all the aspects of this pen. Now, there are different modes of consciousness. For example, presentation, judgment, love, hate, desire. These are all different modes of consciousness I have. Something, there is a consciousness. When I desire an object again, but all of them, what is common to all of them is they are all about something. There is an aboutness. There is something which points outward to itself. And this is what is called transcending. So, objects are presented in experience as transcending in my mind alone. But my mind or my consciousness point towards something that lies outside. So, there is an element of transcendence there. They are presented as going beyond the experience we have of them. So, as I mentioned, the experience I have of this pen is confined to or limited to this part of the pen, not this part. But still, what I experience is not this part of the pen, but the whole pen, the pen as such. So, in that sense, they are presented as going beyond the experiences we have of them. Again, experience is perspectival. All experiences are perspectival as I already mentioned, but it also presents its object to us as transcending the perspective. When we see a tree, we do not see a mere image of the tree or a packet of sense data, but we see the tree itself. So, here it goes beyond empiricism. One theoretical position or theoretical aspect, which is related to empiricism is the image theory. We have already examined this when we discussed John Locke's concept. There is an image, an idea which comes to the mind, which is not the object, but there are several images. The mind forms several images, several ideas. So, perception enables us to go beyond the image which is presented to us. This is what, because the object itself is given to me. We relate to the object itself as an image to a certain extra conscious object. So, we do not probably see all aspects of the object at a time, because all experience is perspectival. But what we see is essentially related to that object. So, for us, what is given to us in consciousness is the entire object as such. We do not get a row uninterrupted image, images in consciousness. We get the data that are already interpreted as images of some objects or other. So, when I see this pen from this part, I get an image, I get a data. There is some data which is received by me, but this data is not something which comes to me in isolation one by one. But my reception of this data is already interpreted in a certain way. I interpret it as an image or a data of the pen, which I see. So, the pen as such is given in consciousness and can discuss forms of sensibility, space and time. He has shown that objects, the sensibility, for example, the objects are given through sensors already in a pre-ordered form. So, all seeing in one sense is understanding. There is no pure seeing of an object. So, similarly, we get the data as already interpreted as images of some object or other. So, this is again as I mentioned, while developing the theory of the intentionality principle, Housel was influenced by his teacher, Frans Brentano. And Brentano says that every mental phenomena is characterized by the intentional in existence of an object. We have already seen this. It is directed toward an object or imminent objectivity. It is called imminent objectivity. The objectivity is imminent to that process of being conscious of an object, because it is directed towards an object that is outside. Every mental phenomenon contains something as an object within itself, although not everyone does so in the same way. This object is the reference to a content. So, there is a reference to a content. When I see a chair, I see a chair, not a part of the chair. So, it is not just a mental-psychical phenomena. In that sense, there is something to which it is directed to. But Brentano's intentionality principle has some limitation. I have already indicated that it aims at distinguishing the physical from the psychical, which was not actually the purpose of Housel. This is because consciousness is always intentional according to Brentano. And in this context, it becomes necessary for Brentano to initiate a study of consciousness, because this is what intentionality is something which distinguishes psychical from physical. And psychical is always found in the consciousness. So, to capture that, you have to study consciousness and also on the phenomena as they are directly given to consciousness. So, when I see something for instance, let us take a very concrete example. When I see a ball point pen, what is that which is given to me into my consciousness? That is the subject matter of inquiry. I am just taking a very trivial, very day-to-day kind of an experience. Every mental state contains its object completely within itself. So, this pen, I mean this, I am conscious of a pen in which not a part of pen I am conscious of. I am conscious of this entire pen. It may not contain all the fine details of the pen. Say for example, its color, its shape, its make, the material out of which it is made, the things which are written on it. All these things are details which need not be known to me. They will understand that this is a pen. There is something which is necessary for me to understand this as a ball point pen. So, when I understand this as a ball point pen or to put it in other words in the language of a phenomenonologist, when this pen is given to me, given to my consciousness, how my consciousness understands it? What are those aspects which are captured by the consciousness? That is the subject matter of inquiry. Intentional object is imminent to the mental state. Now, when you come to Husserl, Husserl according to Husserl, experiences are directed towards entities which are both mental and non-mental. I have already said this. There is no such distinction as far as the principle of intentionality is concerned made by Husserl. He says that I do not see color sensations, but colored things. So, when I see a red flower, I do not say that I have sensations of redness and sensations of flower. I would say it is a red flower. So, I see sensations, not sensations, but colored things. Any kind of entity like physical objects, persons, numbers which are not spatiotemporal, like a patch of blue, universals like blueness, state of affairs, mental entities like thoughts, images and feelings, etcetera, can become an intentional object. So, the domain of intentional objects are not confined to psychical entities. They include all these things according to Husserl. Then, he proposes a method to isolate this directly given essences. So, there is a definite method. So, this is another important aspect of Husserlian phenomenology. It is not just a philosophy, but also a method or rather to put it more accurately. It is a philosophical method, a method that combines a philosophical theory as well as a kind of practical application aspect. Phenomenology focuses on the essential aspects, which can be termed as the meanings. The ultimate, I mean most essential things are the meanings. So, phenomenology tries to understand that and it seeks to isolate the essences. So, I have already indicated this, that when you see this pen for instance, let us take a very concrete example. The pen is, in the language of phenomenology, the pen is directly given to the consciousness when I understand it. Now, what is it for a phenomenologist to say that, I understand that this is a pen or an understanding, the experience of a pen consists of what? So, I need to isolate the essence. I have several details here. I have already mentioned those details like the make of the pen, the material out of which the pen is made, the color of the pen, the shape of the pen. All these things are aspects about the pen, which are not really essential to understand what is this object. So, all those aspects, which are in the essential needs to be removed. And come to that, you know by removing those in the essential aspects, finally you reach the essence. So, that is what phenomenologist tries to do. So, everything perceived is bound to, bound up with the essence of perception, which is different from the object that exists in nature. Every intentional experience gives meaning as the essential characteristic of giving some meaning. So, that is again the meaning giving act is the intentional act. So, when I am conscious of something, that very process of conscious of something is a meaning giving act, which is done by the consciousness. And by the process of giving meaning to that object, the object is comprehended. So, it is, they cannot be separated, they are not two different processes. So, in the process of comprehending the object, the meaning giving process also is completed. Let us see, I have been taking examples of pen and as I myself mentioned that it is, I am taking a very trivial example like. And a philosopher definitely is not interested in understanding what is this object, whether it is a pen or a chair or whatever. These are something which everyone knows that this is a pen. I have just taken this example to highlight important steps involved in a process of phenomenological understanding. The aim of phenomenology is to grasp the perceived as such, grasp what is essentially given, not a part of it, not an aspect of it, but the entire thing as it is given to the consciousness. The phenomenon as meant needs to be captured and search for a senses in the consciousness, the domain of a senses. So, this is another very fundamental assumption of phenomenologist, that consciousness is the most important domain of philosophical explorations. Every meaning, because it is consciousness which gives meaning to the world, it is consciousness which brings the world into being. Even that is what Husserl says, it is consciousness which brings the world into being. Because if there is no consciousness the world as such lacks every being, all meanings, all values, everything is brought by the consciousness. So, consciousness is very important in that sense. So, search for consciousness, the essences in the consciousness which is the domain of essences or meanings. Search for pure mental processes which are imminent to the sphere of consciousness that investigates them and the focus is on pure consciousness. So, gradually by step by step he is taking us to an examination of pure consciousness. Initially you know you search for objects, then you reach a point where you struck at consciousness and or rather your ego and its objects. Now, what you have to do is that apply the same principle to your ego itself which will finally take you to the conception of transcendental ego. A little bit more about consciousness and mental processes. So, these are some of those mental processes. When I remember something imagining, judging, willing, describing, feeling, perceiving, all these are mental processes. Each has its own essence. So, in a process of remembering something is remembered, something is imagined, something is being judged, something is being will, something is described, something is felt, something is perceived. What is that something? It is, it has its essence and to identify to locate that essence, the method is being suggested. The method is the phenomenological method. In examining these we exclude what does not lie in the mental act itself. In the mental act of perceiving, the mental act of imagining, the mental act of judging, of feeling. So, what is it? So, everything else that do not lie in the sphere of this mental act of imagining or passing or whatever needs to be eliminated. So, a method is devised for this examination, a method to build a science of essences because ultimately it deals with essences. It examines the consciousness which is a domain of essences and tries to identify essences within a consciousness which are imminent to that. To find the essence of consciousness by excluding what is non-essential, overcome the natural attitude. So, here Kusar talks very elaborately about something called natural attitude. This is something which all of us subscribe to natural attitude which is called natural attitude. So, in essence what it is? It is by suspending the spatio-temporal world and focusing on pure mental processes. So, what happens? What is natural attitude? See for instance, all of us we live in a world with a natural attitude for a taken care of kind of taken for granted kind of an attitude. We do not reflect upon what is going on around us. I mean I am not even consciously aware of the fact that this is a chair when I came and sat on this chair. I just take it for granted that this is a chair by just seeing it. I am not very consciously reflecting upon it. I just I mean because things around me in this world serves my purposes and there are several assumptions I have about things in this world. All these assumptions put together constitute what I mean by what Husserl's means by natural attitude. So, we believe certain things, we assume certain things, we take for granted certain things. We never question them, we never reflect upon them. So, this taken for granted kind of an attitude and living on the basis of that attitude in this world. Certain meanings are already attached piece of post to objects. A chair is something which I am going to see. I don't reflect upon it. So, these kind of an attitude needs to be questioned. We have to set them aside and such an attitude is an entrance for me to examine the object and its essence. So, the phenomenological reduction is performed in this context. The process of bracketing or apache, the Greek word which means cessation, removal or taking keeping it aside. There are certain things about an object which is not really required for understanding object. So, you just suspend them. So, that is what it is meant here. Suspending the spatio-temporal world and focusing on pure mental processes. You suspend all your judgments. See when I see this pen, it is made up of plastic. Suspend it. That is not very important for me to know what it is. It is blue in color. Again put it in bracket. I mean I am not just throwing it out, but I am just putting it bracket and not using it for the time being. So, gradually all those inessential features and aspects of the pen is being bracketed. Finally, to reach a point where further bracketing would become impossible. That point is where you capture the essence of the object, whatever it is. So, here exclude all that is not genuinely imminent from the sphere of absolute data. So, what is the absolute data? The pen as it is given to me in consciousness. All other things, color, shape, everything is inessential to that. So, all those things are bracketed, kept aside. And what is intended is adequately given in itself. So, when this pen is given to me, directly given to me, I intend it. I understand it at my comprehension of it as a pen presupposes me intending it as a pen. So, this process is called bracketing. Setting aside or suspension of judgment is called bracketing. A suspension of inquiry, the object status as reality is suspended. A neutralization of our belief. Like we may believe a lot of things about an object. All those beliefs are bracketed, suspended. We are neutralizing them. Set aside everything that is external and the prejudices that we associate with the reality of the world. And concentrate only on the inner content of our conscious act. So, it is a gaze inside. Like you look inside deep into your consciousness. What is remembered in the act of remembering? Imagined in the act of imagination. Perceived in the act of perception. So, that is the essence. Not other paraphernalia of processes and things that might appear when a particular thing is being understood. There are so many other things which we already know about it. All those things need to be suspended. There are actually different stages of reduction. Phenomenological reductions attempts to focus on pure consciousness. Describes objects as they appear. Not in their natural causal relationships. We know everything is causally connected and our understanding is when we understand an object we also know it in connection with other objects. So, all those connections everything needs to be suspended. Hence, it is phenomenological and it is transcendental. It is called transcendental because it deals with the conditions that make any knowledge possible. That is givenness to consciousness. It is the givenness of an object to consciousness which is a precondition of all knowledge. Hence, it is called transcendental. Now, we will wind up this lecture with by very briefly examining the three types of reduction which Husserl proposes. He says that there is a phenomenological psychological reduction. Probably, there is no such hierarchy who Husserl would have imagined, but of course, there is a kind of an order. We have to start with the phenomenological psychological reduction which is a little negative which tries to avoid and eliminate unwanted information about the data which is directly given. And then, adetic is as the term indicates a dose means essences. It is more positive. It tries to isolate the essences. Concentrate on that and isolate it. The third one is transcendental which probably is the ultimate objective or aim of phenomenology. So, the psychological thing is it is a gate way to phenomenological attitude from natural attitude. I have mentioned what natural attitude is. The kind of taken for granted kind of an attitude about this world, how the world works, functions, all these things. We have certain assumptions. We are not really conscious about them. Unless we start reflecting upon them, we would not be able to be conscious of them. So, a phenomenologist needs to be careful. He or she has to be aware of his or her prejudices and taken for granted kind of an attitude in this world. So, natural attitude is bracketed. Description of mental acts free of theories and presupposition. There are so many things which we know about things and events that happen around us. So, all those things have to be bracketed. So, that ourselves from all presuppositions refrain from taking any natural objective position. So, now comes the second stage which is called edetic which is a little more important stage because it deals with a dose or essences. Individual existence of the object in question is bracketed since phenomenology is interested only in essences. So, here it looks more positive. There is a more positive look on the essences and attempt to try to understand what an essences is. It elevates the a dose, the essences, the properties, kinds of types, ideal species that entities may exemplify. So, the essences are being isolated. Properties, kinds or types or ideal species though through free variation of individuals in our imagination several individuals which belong to the same class. We find out what characteristics these things have in common. That is how you identify the essence. So, let us go back to this so called trivial example of ours, pen. There are 1000 types of pens we would have come across in our day to day life. These different types of pens might have something in common not the color, not the shape, not the make, not the material, but there is something in common. So, our mind in imagination can gaze through all these things through free variation of these individual pens in our imagination. We can identify what is common to all of them. That is the essence and locate the invariant forms which are essences. Now, we come to the ultimate goal of reduction which is transcendental subjectivity is the goal. So, this is probably the most important and interesting aspect of phenomenology. It indicates that reduction has the purpose to inhibit and take back as it were all references to the transcendent as the intentional correlate of our acts and to trace them back to the immanent or transcendental acts in which they have their source. This is from Spielberg's book on phenomenology classic work where he says that to trace them back to the immanent or transcendental acts in which they have their source. And Husserl makes a very interesting observation here. He says that I already referred I have referred to this observation made by Husserl sometime back without consciousness there would not be a world at all. Phenomenology has to study the realm of pure consciousness and the essential formations found there. So, here comes the concept of transcendental ego because as I mentioned phenomenologists are the final ultimate objective of phenomenology is to transcendental is a kind of transcendental reduction which ultimately takes us to the domain of consciousness pure consciousness pure ego. The proper understanding of ego is essential that is probably where phenomenology concludes. There is a fundamental problem with our understanding about the ego. This is again a very interesting observation because when we talk about ego or consciousness it is always linked with a notion of mind or something which is empirical something which is in this world. The talk of ego brings the natural attitude into picture because we always find ourselves in a world of objects and entities and bracketing to be applied to the ego as well. Now, as we have seen phenomenological epoch a bracketing is where you bracket all those aspects which are in essential about an object like in the case of the pen, the pig, the color etcetera. Similarly, the same method is applied now to yourself to your ego and when you apply this method to yourself, when you apply the method of bracketing to the ego the empirical ego. There are several factors which might condition or qualify the empirical ego name, place all those things all those things according to usal are in essential to understand what the ego is and you perform a kind of transcendental reduction of the ego which finally takes you to a state further reduction would be impossible. So, that part I mean that moment one can we can say that we have captured the ego that is the transcendental ego the pure ego. So, what remains is the pure ego and its pure condense the condense of its consciousness. So, this is the transcendental reduction where bracketing the ego and its intentions ceases to affirm the existence of the ego as a psychological reality. So, it is not an empirical ego which finds itself in this world and stands against the world as a subject I mean in a subject and object relationship in that sense a relational entity to this world no it is not it is pure. The empirical or psychological ego has to be set aside. So, the empirical and psychological aspects of the ego is bracketed suspended and what remains is the pure ego this is from Husserl's Cartesian Meditations I quote by phenomenological apache I reduce my natural human ego and psychic life the realms of my psychological self-experience to my transcendental phenomenological ego the realm of transcendental phenomenological self-experience. So, here we enter into the domain of meaning not the consciousness of an individual human being, but the essence of all meaning making. So, the essence of all meaning making it is not just one persons, but the essence of the meaning making activity itself what happens in all consciousness I may die this is an interesting observation which Husserl made during the last days I mean in a private conservation to his friend he has stated that I may die, but my transcendental ego is eternal it will not die and in that that actually this is one aspect of transcendent the phenomenology the transcendental phenomenology which Husserl would Husserl had not worked out elaborately by the time he died unfortunately and also by the time he was very old. And here this is probably had he developed this this aspect of phenomenology today have been really unique in western civilization because this is something which is very totally alien to western thinking that conceiving an ego which I mean of course in Plato's philosophy and in many other philosophies we have seen it, but here it is you conceive a transcendental ego which is eternal which is also again he talks about essence the essence of humanity etcetera. So, I do not want to compare it with anything in Indian philosophy as such, but I could I cannot avoid for some blends similarities this view has with the conception which is there in the open issues about the self the art man the brahman and all that and phenomenology is ultimately the philosophy of self. So, all phenomenology is ultimately a philosophy of the self it tries to understand the self there are different phenomenologies phenomenology of the body of health and many things, but ultimately all of them point to the consciousness to the self because the motto of phenomenology can be summarized in the statement back to things themselves and where do you go you go to the consciousness. I think we will wind up this lecture here as I already mentioned Husserl's influence Husserl has influenced many philosophers future thinkers and many philosophies like existentialism and hermeneutics and others we will be examining some of these contributions in the subsequent lectures of this lecture series. Thank you.