Husserl in Paris, 1929

 

"What's needed is a radical reconstruction that satisfies the idea of philosophy as universal unity of intellectual discipline in a unity providing an absolutely rational foundation. Descartes carries out this demand for reconstruction in a subjectively oriented philosophy. This subjective turn is achieved in two steps."

"The first: Anyone who seriously wants to become a philosopher must once in his life withdraw into himself and then, in himself, attempt to overthrow and reconstruct all established intellectual disciplines."

Edmund Husserl, 1929, Paris Lectures

Husserl went on, a bit further in his lecture:

"We remain faithful to radical self-recollection and thereby to the principle of pure intuition, and that means to allow nothing to have validity except what we have actually and at first entirely unmediatedly given on the field of the ego cogito opened up to us by the epoché - and this means to allow nothing to evolve into an assertion that we do not ourselves see."

"In this, Descartes was deficient, and so it happens that he stands before the greatest discovery, has even made this discovery in a certain way, and yet does not apprehend its real meaning, that of transcendental subjectivity, and thus does not pass through the portal that leads into genuine transcendental philosophy."

"The portal" is your own consciousness, the only way to phenomenology. This is clear. One must start with oneself.

But what is the epoché? 

"This universal abstention from taking any stand regarding the objective world - what we call the phenomenological epoché - becomes the methodological means by which to comprehend myself purely as that ego and that life of consciousness in which and by which the entire objective world is for me - and is in its manner of being for me."

What is the point of the epoché? What difference does it make?

"Everything remains as it was, except that I do not take it all as simply being but rather withhold myself from taking any stand regarding [what counts as] being and [what as] illusion. I must also withhold myself from any other opinions, judgements and valuations regarding the world, since these presuppose the being of the world; and for these as well my withholding of myself does not entail their disappearance - inasmuch as they are themselves phenomena."

This is the crucial feature of the experience of 'performing' the epoché: we determine that nothing is real or unreal, and the world floats free of its anchor, its Mark of the Real.

I don't understand, though, what he means by "inasmuch as they are themselves phenomena". Does "they" refer to "opinions, judgments and valuations regarding the world"? 

Does that mean that the opinions, judgments and valuations don't disappear, even though I've deactivated the category they belong to, i.e., "mere subjective experience"? 

Do they float free like 'the world' does?