is not easy to answer this question. Ever since its emergence, the phenomenological method has been conceptualized in a number of ways, whose compatibility remains a contentious issue. On the one hand, there is the more apparent problem of methodological consistency that runs throughout the phenomenological movement. As Paul Ricoeur (1987, 9) has famously put it, the history of phenomenology is the history of Husserlian heresies. On the other hand, even if one limits oneself to classical phenomenology in general, and Husserlian phenomenology in particular, one nonetheless has to deal with questions concerning the compatibility of different methodological frameworks (say, those of static and genetic phenomenology), as well as of different accounts of the same methodological procedures (say, the account of the reduction as presented in Ideas I, First Philosophy II, and The Crisis of European Sciences and Transcendental Phenomenology). In the present context, it is not my goal to enter into this conflict of interpretations. I believe it is possible to bypass these controversies if one supplements methodological considerations with two qualifications. First, one needs to focus on the identification of the fundamental methodological principles, that is, those principles that could be qualified as necessary, although not necessarily sufficient. I will contend that the methods of the epoché, the phenomenological reduction, and eidetic variation are the fundamental principles of Husserlian phenomenology. I do not think that allegiance to these three phenomenological principles is sufficient to clarify what classical phenomenology (to say nothing of the phenomenological tradition as a whole) can contribute to pain research. It is therefore necessary to supplement these three methodological principles with further principles. Second, these three phenomenological principles, while necessary, can be conceptualized in more ways than one. The grandiose task of providing an exhaustive treatment of these principles is unattainable in the framework of a study that focuses on the phenomenology of pain. Here I strive to identify only the essential features of these methodological procedures, while at the same time conceding that they not only can be, but that they also have been, articulated in a number of complementary ways.
A few words on the fundamental goals of Husserlian phenomenology are appropriate here. Husserlian phenomenology is marked by the ambition to be a science of phenomena purified of all unwarranted assumptions, constructions, and interpretation. For this reason, it strives to be a descriptive science, which would present phenomena the way they appear, without distortions or misrepresentations. It is, however, not enough to describe phenomena in order to grasp them the way they appear, since descriptions all too often succumb to bias and manipulation. Precisely because it strives to describe phenomena exactly as they appear, without any contamination, the possibility of phenomenology hinges upon its capacity to design a suitable methodology that would ensure the reliability of phenomenological descriptions. The methods of the epoché, the phenomenological reduction, and eidetic variation are meant to demonstrate the possibility of phenomenology, conceived of as a method for studying pure phenomena in an unbiased way.
The Greek word epoché means “suspension, or bracketing.” To bracket, or suspend, means to put certain beliefs and commitments out of action and consideration. 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”
