In his early writings, Husserl did not consider genetic investigations appropriate to phenomenology. He thought genetic investigations were of an empirical nature, that they had to rely on empirical methods, and that their significance was also only empirical. Such was the view Husserl held in the Logical Investigations (2000; first published in 1900–1901), where phenomenology, conceived of as descriptive psychology, was methodologically compelled to exclude all genetic considerations.19 In the first volume of the Ideas (1983; first published in 1913), Husserl also defended such a perspective.20 According to Husserl of Ideas I, questions about essences are fundamentally different from questions about facts.
The recognition that genetic considerations need to be incorporated into phenomenology was triggered by the realization that static phenomenology relies upon presuppositions that call for genetic clarifications. Phenomenology is a study of consciousness, yet consciousness is not just a field of experience, but also a stream of experiences, and insofar as it is a stream, it must be studied not only in terms of its essential structures, but also in terms of its development. The synchronic study of consciousness that we come across in static phenomenology needs to be supplemented with a diachronic investigation.
Recall my earlier observation about eidetic variation. As an investigator, I must already have a vague grasp of the phenomenon before I subject it to the method of eidetic variation. Yet, precisely because this vague understanding is inexplicit, that is, precisely because I do not know what is entailed in my largely preconceptual understanding of the phenomenon, I am in need of eidetic variation—a method that would enable me to purify the phenomenon’s essence from various confusions and misapprehensions. This means that the method of eidetic variation hangs on the shoulders of the investigator’s mundane grasp of phenomena: it is a method for testing, revising, and refining the already pregiven understanding of the phenomena.
What does phenomenology have to say about this preconceptual understanding? As far as the method of eidetic variation is concerned, phenomenology merely relies on its availability, without inquiring into its possibility. Precisely, therefore, we are in need of genetic considerations. Such a supplementation is necessary, since in its absence we would have to conclude that phenomenology itself rests on presuppositions that can be handled only by means of other kinds of investigations. That is, we would have to concede that the phenomenological analysis of essences is possible if, and only if, one already has a largely preconceptual grasp of phenomena that can be clarified only nonphenomenologically. Such a state of affairs would compromise phenomenology’s aspiration to be a fundamental science of pure experience, which neither rests on naturalistic preconceptions nor limits itself to filling in the gaps left open in other fields of research, but which clarifies the fundamental concepts and fundamental presuppositions that are at work in other investigations. We thus need to ask: How does preconceptual understanding originate, and how does it develop? Genetic phenomenology is meant to answer these two questions.
Genetic considerations arise from the need to supplement the analyses of being with reflections on becoming.21 Questions about the genesis of the preconceptual understanding of phenomena can be appropriated in phenomenology if, and only if, one demonstrates that the sphere of becoming can itself be studied, not at the factual, but at the eidetic level.22 To demonstrate that the sphere of becoming is a legitimate phenomenological theme, one must show that the genesis of the preconceptual understanding of phenomena is itself ruled by certain principles, which can be clarified phenomenologically.
Husserl (2001, 629) identifies genetic phenomenology as explanatory, as opposed to static phenomenology, which he qualifies as descriptive. These qualifications suggest that insofar as one follows the principles of static phenomenology, one must zero in on the intuitively given phenomenon, and, following the method of eidetic variation, one must describe its essential characteristics. By contrast, the genetic method requires that one trespass the boundaries of pure description. As seen from the genetic standpoint, it does not suffice to describe; rather, one must explain. Insofar as genetic explanation is a matter of interpretation, one could characterize genetic phenomenology as genetically oriented hermeneutics of subjective life and the life-world (see Luft 2004, 226). Yet, obviously, not any kind of explanation or interpretation is phenomenological in the genetic sense of the term. Here we turn to the crucial question: What, then, are the fundamental principles that make up the methodological core of genetic phenomenology? Despite the basic nature of this question, it is extremely difficult to answer.23
The fundamental methodological difference between static and genetic phenomenology can be clarified by focusing on the different paths to the phenomenological reduction.24 While static phenomenology relies upon the so-called Cartesian path, genetic phenomenology offers two alternative paths, which Husserl identifies as the path through psychology and the path through the life-world.25 A detailed account of these two paths is not possible in the present context. Fortunately, it is also not necessary. My task here is to portray these two genetic paths in broad strokes and to highlight their common methodological features. It is these common features, I will suggest, that make up the methodological basis of genetic phenomenology.
Both genetic paths to the reduction are alternatives to the Cartesian path, which is dominant in static phenomenology. The Cartesian path is motivated by the recognition of the irrevocable contingency that characterizes the general thesis of the natural standpoint. This thesis runs as follows: “the” world as actuality is always already there (see Husserl 1983, §30; and Husserl 1959, §33). The recognition that this thesis is irretrievably contingent calls for a radical alteration of the natural thesis, which Husserl conceptualizes under the heading of the phenomenological epoché. In its own turn, the epoché provides us with the possibility to turn our attention to the field of pure experience, conceived of as the phenomenological residuum. The phenomenological reduction is nothing other than this “universal overthrow” (Husserl 1959, 68) of the natural attitude, which one could also characterize as the radical deliverance of attention from its worldly absorption and its redirection to the newly discovered field of transcendental experience.
As seen from the genetic standpoint, the Cartesian path to the reduction suffers from two chief limitations. First, it gives the false impression that the transcendental field of experience is empty of content (or at least any content that would clearly correspond to the content of mundane experience). It thus seems that phenomenology is reinvigorated Platonism, which liberates us from the shadows in the cave and directs us away from the field of everyday experience to another world of ideas and essences. Second, the conception of the reduction that prevails in static phenomenology, and especially when coupled with the method of eidetic variation, gives the misleading impression that phenomenology can conceptualize the field of pure experience only synchronically (that is, in terms of eidetic structures, which characterize all possible experience) and not diachronically. It thus seems that such an approach to the reduction overlooks the full-fledged significance of the temporal nature of the experiential field, conceiving of it only as a pure form, and not as a field of genesis.
The path to the reduction through psychology is marked by the refusal to suspend the thesis of the natural attitude in one go. This path prefigures transcendental phenomenology. It invites the investigator to focus on specific acts phenomenologically, even before one performs the universal epoché and the universal reduction.26 To follow this path is to engage in mundane phenomenology, which still hasn’t brought into question the belief in the world (see Held 2003, 28–29). We can thereby see how the genetic approach overcomes the first limitation of the static approach I have identified above. Anything and everything we come across in the natural attitude can be reabsorbed within the field of transcendental experience and thereby transformed into a phenomenological theme.27 Following the psychological path, one demonstrates that the field of experience is not empty of content: there is absolutely nothing in the field of mundane experience that cannot be redeemed phenomenologically. Moreover, following the genetic path also enables one to overcome the second limitation, which concerns the prospects of a diachronic