Key Arguments

• Natural reflection in everyday life and psychology presupposes the world as already existing: “In the ‘natural reflection’ of everyday life, also however in that of psychological science (that is, in psychological experience of our own psychic processes), we stand on the footing of the world already given as existing — as when, in everyday life, we assert: ‘I see a house there’ or ‘I remember having heard this melody’.”
• By contrast, transcendental-phenomenological reflection ‘delivers’ us from this footing through the universal epoché regarding world-being: “In transcendental-phenomenological reflection we deliver ourselves from this footing, by universal epoché with respect to the being or non-being of the world.”
• In the modified ‘transcendental experience’ we look at and describe the reduced cogito, but we no longer share in its naïve positing of existence: “The experience as thus modified, the transcendental experience, consists then, we can say, in our looking at and describing the particular transcendentally reduced cogito, but without participating, as reflective subjects, in the natural existence-positing that the originally straightforward perception (or other cogito) contains or that the Ego, as immersing himself straightforwardly in the world, actually executed.”
• Husserl notes that reflection always changes the original process, but insists that in transcendental reflection this change still leaves us with a genuine experiencing of the original act with all its moments: “Therewith, to be sure, an essentially changed subjective process takes the place of the original one; accordingly it must be said that this reflection alters the original subjective process. But that is true of every reflection, including natural reflection.”
• He emphasizes that the phenomenological ego’s abstention is only ‘his affair’; it does not alter the existence-positing and factuality that belong to the straightforward perception and its object as experienced: “The reflecting Ego’s non-participation in the ‘positing’ (believing, taking a position as to being) that is part of the straightforward house-perception in no wise alters the fact that his reflecting experiencing is precisely an experiencing experiencing of the house-perception with all its moments, which belonged to it before and are continuing to take shape. And among these, in our example, are the moments of the perceiving itself, as the flowing subjective process, and the moments of the perceived ‘house’, purely as perceived. There is lacking neither, on the one side, the existence-positing (perceptual belief) in the mode of certainty, which is part of — normal — perceiving, nor, on the other side (that of the appearing house), the character of simple ‘factual existence’. The non-participating, the abstaining, of the Ego who has the phenomenological attitude is his affair, not that of the perceiving he considers reflectively, nor that of the naturally perceiving Ego.”

Source Quotes

Only in reflection do we “direct” ourselves to the perceiving itself and to its perceptual directedness to the house. In the “natural reflection” of everyday life, also however in that of psychological science (that is, in psychological experience of our own psychic processes), we stand on the footing of the world already given as existing — as when, in everyday life, we assert: “I see a house there” or “I remember having heard this melody”. In transcendental-phenomenological reflection we deliver ourselves from this footing, by universal epoché with respect to the being or non-being of the world.

In the “natural reflection” of everyday life, also however in that of psychological science (that is, in psychological experience of our own psychic processes), we stand on the footing of the world already given as existing — as when, in everyday life, we assert: “I see a house there” or “I remember having heard this melody”. In transcendental-phenomenological reflection we deliver ourselves from this footing, by universal epoché with respect to the being or non-being of the world. The experience as thus modified, the transcendental experience, consists then, we can say, in our looking at and describing the particular transcendentally reduced cogito, but without participating, as reflective subjects, in the natural existence-positing that the originally straightforward perception (or other cogito) contains or that the Ego, as immersing himself straightforwardly in the world, actually executed.

In transcendental-phenomenological reflection we deliver ourselves from this footing, by universal epoché with respect to the being or non-being of the world. The experience as thus modified, the transcendental experience, consists then, we can say, in our looking at and describing the particular transcendentally reduced cogito, but without participating, as reflective subjects, in the natural existence-positing that the originally straightforward perception (or other cogito) contains or that the Ego, as immersing himself straightforwardly in the world, actually executed. Therewith, to be sure, an essentially changed subjective process takes the place of the original one; accordingly it must be said that this reflection alters the original subjective process.

This continues to hold, then, for transcendental-phenomenological reflection. The reflecting Ego’s non-participation in the “positing” (believing, taking a position as to being) that is part of the straightforward house-perception in no wise alters the fact that his reflecting experiencing is precisely an experiencing experiencing of the house-perception with all its moments, which belonged to it before and are continuing to take shape. And among these, in our example, are the moments of the perceiving itself, as the flowing subjective process, and the moments of the perceived “house”, purely as perceived.

There is lacking neither, on the one side, the existence-positing (perceptual belief) in the mode of certainty, which is part of — normal — perceiving, nor, on the other side (that of the appearing house), the character of simple “factual existence”. The non-participating, the abstaining, of the Ego who has the phenomenological attitude is his affair, not that of the perceiving he considers reflectively, nor that of the naturally perceiving Ego. We may add that it is itself accessible to an appropriate reflection; and only by means of this do we know anything about it.

Key Concepts

• In the “natural reflection” of everyday life, also however in that of psychological science (that is, in psychological experience of our own psychic processes), we stand on the footing of the world already given as existing — as when, in everyday life, we assert: “I see a house there” or “I remember having heard this melody”.
• In transcendental-phenomenological reflection we deliver ourselves from this footing, by universal epoché with respect to the being or non-being of the world.
• The experience as thus modified, the transcendental experience, consists then, we can say, in our looking at and describing the particular transcendentally reduced cogito, but without participating, as reflective subjects, in the natural existence-positing that the originally straightforward perception (or other cogito) contains or that the Ego, as immersing himself straightforwardly in the world, actually executed.
• The reflecting Ego’s non-participation in the “positing” (believing, taking a position as to being) that is part of the straightforward house-perception in no wise alters the fact that his reflecting experiencing is precisely an experiencing experiencing of the house-perception with all its moments, which belonged to it before and are continuing to take shape.
• The non-participating, the abstaining, of the Ego who has the phenomenological attitude is his affair, not that of the perceiving he considers reflectively, nor that of the naturally perceiving Ego.

Context

Middle of § 15, where Husserl contrasts natural reflection, which leaves world-belief intact, with transcendental reflection, which applies the epoché yet still gives access to the full structure of the straightforward act and its belief-character.