Husserl uses a number of expressions to characterize the epoché: abstention, dislocation, unplugging, exclusion, withholding, disregarding, abandoning, bracketing, putting out of action, or putting out of play. As all these descriptive approximations suggest, the epoché is a unique modification, which should not be confused with either doubt or negation.2
First and foremost, the phenomenological epoché is the abstention from all participation in the cognitions of the objective sciences—the putting out of play of any critical position-taking with regard to their truth or falsity. This is of great importance for the phenomenology of pain, since it suggests that phenomenological analysis is possible only if it places in brackets the accomplishments we come across in the science of pain. Pain phenomenology cannot rely either on pain biology or on pain sociology. However, such a suspension of scientific validity, radical as it is, does not exhaust the full meaning of the phenomenological epoché. This is because, “in concealment, the world’s validities are always founded on other validities, above the whole manifold but synthetically unified flow in which the world has and forever attains anew its content of meaning and its ontic validity” (Husserl 1970, 150). We can take this to mean that even if the researcher places all scientific validities in phenomenological brackets, that is, even if he refuses to accept these validities as validities, even under such circumstances, he cannot be assured that his research unfolds in an unbiased way, for even the natural and seemingly innocent assumption that the phenomena he addresses are natural phenomena (that is, parts of nature) already rests on unclarified presuppositions. This is of great importance for pain research, since it means that a phenomenologist should not conceive of pain as a natural occurrence, determined by some kind of natural causes, irrespective of whether or not these causes are known scientifically. Besides requiring that one bracket all scientific knowledge about pain, the method of the epoché also requires that one put out of action the fundamental presupposition that underlies the science of pain, namely, the assumption that pain is a natural or, more precisely, a neurophysiological phenomenon.
Taken by itself, it is unclear where the epoché leaves us. As far as the phenomenology of pain is concerned, it makes clear that a phenomenologist cannot accept either the scientific results that issue from or the fundamental assumptions that underlie the science of pain. These are negative determinations. The method of the epoché gains a positive sense when it is coupled with the phenomenological reduction.3
With reference to the phenomenological reduction, Husserl has remarked that “the understanding of all of phenomenology depends upon the understanding of this method” (1977, 144). This is hardly an overestimation, since the acquisition of phenomena in the phenomenological sense relies upon the performance of the phenomenological reduction. In the natural course of life, I stand on the ground of the world’s pregivenness: I accept the world’s being as a matter of course, without inquiring into those acts of consciousness, through which it obtains its meaning. My interests are exclusively absorbed in the objective world, and not in the flow of experience, through which it obtains the status of the objective world. We can conceive of the phenomenological reduction as a fundamental change of attitude that enables the phenomenologist to redirect his interests from objects in the world to his own experience. While in the natural attitude, I am naively absorbed in the performance of my experience and thus my interests are exclusively absorbed in the objects of my experience, in the phenomenological attitude, my new interests are redirected toward those very experiences through which the objects in the world and the world itself gain their meaning. It thereby becomes understandable why Husserl would contend that “subjectivity, and this universally and exclusively, is my theme” (1973a, 200). The crude mistake to avoid here is that of conceptualizing subjectivity as something mysteriously cut off from the world and different types of objectivity. Even though Husserl’s phenomenology is often subjected to such a critique, it is hard to come across any analyses of such subjectivity in his writings. Phenomenology is interested in subjectivity’s hidden constitutive accomplishments, through which objects in the world, and even the world itself, come to be what they are. The subjectivity thematized in phenomenology should be conceived of as a field of pure experience, or as a field of the world’s self-manifestation. By providing access to such a field, the phenomenological reduction opens the way to immanent knowledge.4
Besides providing access to the field of immanence, the phenomenological reduction also enables the phenomenologist to keep this field pure of all mundane contaminations. It is crucial to stress that the field of immanence that remains untouched by the epoché is not a region within the natural world, but a field of pure experience, within which nature and the world come to self-givenness. One can further qualify this region as fundamentally unnatural, comprising not things (natural or cultural), but merely pure phenomena. Phenomenology thematizes the field of pure experience as the region within which things come to their self-manifestation. In this way, phenomenology opens up a new science, “the science of pure subjectivity, in which thematic discourse concerns exclusively the lived experiences, the modes of consciousness and what is meant in their objectivity, but exclusively as meant” (Husserl 1977, 146).
What is the significance of the phenomenological reduction for such a field of research as the philosophy of pain? While through the method of the epoché one loses pain as a natural phenomenon, through the method of the phenomenological reduction one regains it as a pure experience. The fundamental goal of the phenomenology of pain is thereby delineated: its fundamental ambition is to give an account of pain as a pure experience, that is, as an experience purified of all naturalistic apprehensions. The goal is to consistently disconnect all the natural apperceptions, which codetermine our common understanding of pain, conceived of as a natural phenomenon.
Here we stumble across new difficulties. Should one not liken the field of pure experience to a ceaseless Heracleitean flux, to an incomprehensibly streaming life, in which being-thus indefinitely replaces being-so? If pure consciousness indeed is such a stream of experience, then how can one possibly obtain any knowledge of this field? The phenomenologically reduced field of experience appears to be inaccessible to intersubjectively verifiable knowledge. It thereby becomes clear that the possibility of phenomenology is not yet secured by means of the epoché and the reduction. The third methodological procedure, namely, the method of eidetic variation, is designed to provide a solution to this dilemma. Phenomenology does not strive to be a factual science of conscious experiences. Rather, it is meant to be an exploration of the essences of conscious life—a descriptive eidetics of reduced consciousness. Insofar as phenomenology is an eidetics of experience, the phenomenology of pain must be an eidetics of pain experience. It does not just strive to give an account of pain, conceived of as pure experience; its fundamental goal is to clarify the essence of such experience.
Still, before turning to eidetic variation, we are in need of a further clarification. Although so far, we have spoken of the reduction in a rather unqualified way, there are good reasons to distinguish between different kinds of reduction, and especially between phenomenological and transcendental reductions. From the time he discovered the reduction in 1905 until around 1916, Husserl himself did not discriminate between these forms of the reduction. Subsequently, it became clear that insofar as one speaks of the reduction in an unqualified way, it remains an ambiguous concept in that it is associated with two significantly different functions. First, it is associated with the method of bracketing the natural world and of transitioning from a naive naturalistic ontology, which is straightforwardly absorbed in beings, to the analysis of meanings. Second, it is also associated with the further transition from the field of meanings to the ultimate source of all meaning, which Husserl identified with transcendental (inter)subjectivity. From around 1916 onward, Husserl started distinguishing between these two functions of the reduction. The first function was identified as the phenomenological reduction, while the second one was identified as the transcendental reduction. The phenomenological reduction is the method that enables the phenomenologist to transition from the natural world, conceived of as the universe of real things as given in the natural attitude, to the world of pure phenomena. Yet a phenomenologist need not stop with this methodological procedure. One can further supplement the phenomenological reduction with the transcendental reduction by initiating a further transition from the field of phenomena to their ultimate condition, or presupposition, which Husserl associates with transcendental (inter)subjectivity