Perhaps the best formulation of the reduction is the one offered by Husserl’s assistant Eugen Fink when he spoke of a “wonder” before the world. This is not because we renounce the certainties of common sense ( certitudes du sens commun) and of the natural attitude – on the contrary, these are the constant theme of philosophy – but rather because, precisely as the presuppositions of every thought, they are “taken for granted” ( « vont de soi »), and they pass by unnoticed, and because we must abstain from them for a moment in order to awaken them and to make them appear. Landes (2012):īecause we are through and through related to the world ( rapport au monde), the only way for us to catch sight of ourselves is by suspending this movement, by refusing to be complicit with it (or as Husserl often says, to see it ohne mitzumachen ), or again, to put it out of play. The immediate context is about the phenomenological practice of ‘reduction’ which, for the philosopher, includes reducing what he takes for granted and ‘stepping back’ from his habitual relations with the world, his ‘natural attitude.’ Here is a bigger piece of Merleau-Ponty's avant-propos, translated this time by Donald A.
This quotation is an excerpt from Merleau-Ponty's preface to Phenomenology of Perception as translated by Colin Smith (1958).
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