Key Arguments

• Husserl specifies that the sense ‘other subjects’ at issue cannot yet be that of ‘Objective subjects, subjects existing in the world’, indicating a need to methodologically suspend this worldly sense in order to investigate its transcendental constitution.
• He formulates a ‘prime requirement for proceeding correctly’: ‘first of all we carry out, inside the universal transcendental sphere, a peculiar kind of epoché with respect to our theme’, targeting precisely the intentionalities that relate immediately or mediately to other subjectivity.
• He describes the positive correlate of this abstention as a delimitation of the intentional nexus in which the ego constitutes within himself a ‘peculiar ownness’: ‘we disregard all constitutional effects of intentionality relating immediately or mediately to other subjectivity and delimit first of all the total nexus of that actual and potential intentionality in which the ego constitutes within himself a peculiar ownness’.
• Husserl insists that this reduction is carried out presupposing the transcendental attitude, where everything is already taken as phenomenon, and that the new epoché is a further, more specific sense-exclusion aimed at preparing the uncovering and clarification of the constitution of the Other.

Source Quotes

Reduction of transcendental experience to the sphere of ownness If the transcendental constitution of other subjects and accordingly the transcendental sense, “other subjects”, are in question, and consequently a universal sense-stratum1 that emanates from others2 and is indispensable to the possibility of an Objective world for me is also in question, then the sense, “other subjects”, that is in question here cannot as yet be the sense: “Objective subjects, subjects existing in the world”. As regards method, a prime requirement for proceeding correctly here is that first of all we carry out, inside the universal transcendental sphere, a peculiar kind of epoché with respect to our theme. For the present we exclude from the thematic field everything now in question: we disregard all constitutional effects of intentionality relating immediately or mediately to other subjectivity and delimit first of all the total nexus of that actual and potential intentionality in which the ego constitutes within himself a peculiar ownness1. / This reduction to my transcendental sphere of peculiar ownness or to my transcendental concrete I-myself, by abstraction from everything that transcendental constitution gives me as Other, has an unusual sense.

As regards method, a prime requirement for proceeding correctly here is that first of all we carry out, inside the universal transcendental sphere, a peculiar kind of epoché with respect to our theme. For the present we exclude from the thematic field everything now in question: we disregard all constitutional effects of intentionality relating immediately or mediately to other subjectivity and delimit first of all the total nexus of that actual and potential intentionality in which the ego constitutes within himself a peculiar ownness1. / This reduction to my transcendental sphere of peculiar ownness or to my transcendental concrete I-myself, by abstraction from everything that transcendental constitution gives me as Other, has an unusual sense. In the natural, the world-accepting attitude, I find differentiated and contrasted: myself and others.

Thematic exclusion of the constitutional effects produced by experience of something other, together with the effects of all the further modes of consciousness relating to something other, does not signify merely phenomenological epoché with respect to naïve acceptance of the being of the other, as in the case of everything Objective existing for us in straightforward consciousness. After all, the transcendental attitude is and remains presupposed, the attitude according to which everything previously existing for us in straightforward consciousness is taken exclusively as “phenomenon”, as a sense meant and undergoing verification, purely in the manner in which, as correlate of uncoverable constitutive systems, it has gained and is gaining existential sense. We are now preparing for just this uncovering and sense-clarification by the novel epoché, more particularly in the following manner.

After all, the transcendental attitude is and remains presupposed, the attitude according to which everything previously existing for us in straightforward consciousness is taken exclusively as “phenomenon”, as a sense meant and undergoing verification, purely in the manner in which, as correlate of uncoverable constitutive systems, it has gained and is gaining existential sense. We are now preparing for just this uncovering and sense-clarification by the novel epoché, more particularly in the following manner. As Ego in the transcendental attitude I attempt first of all to delimit, within my horizon of transcendental experience, what is peculiarly my own.

Key Concepts

• As regards method, a prime requirement for proceeding correctly here is that first of all we carry out, inside the universal transcendental sphere, a peculiar kind of epoché with respect to our theme.
• For the present we exclude from the thematic field everything now in question: we disregard all constitutional effects of intentionality relating immediately or mediately to other subjectivity and delimit first of all the total nexus of that actual and potential intentionality in which the ego constitutes within himself a peculiar ownness1.
• This reduction to my transcendental sphere of peculiar ownness or to my transcendental concrete I-myself, by abstraction from everything that transcendental constitution gives me as Other, has an unusual sense.
• After all, the transcendental attitude is and remains presupposed, the attitude according to which everything previously existing for us in straightforward consciousness is taken exclusively as “phenomenon”, as a sense meant and undergoing verification, purely in the manner in which, as correlate of uncoverable constitutive systems, it has gained and is gaining existential sense.
• We are now preparing for just this uncovering and sense-clarification by the novel epoché

Context

Opening of §44, where Husserl introduces a second-order, ‘novel’ epoché within the already assumed transcendental attitude, whose function is to abstract from all constitution of what is Other in order to isolate and analyze the transcendental sphere of ownness (Eigenheitssphäre).