.Begin Table C.
Introduction	1
Intentionality	3
Constitution	7
The ideality of construction	11
The Reduction	15
Meta-Philosophy	19
.End Table C.

Introduction

In this paper I will compare two basic concepts of twentieth century thought, particularly with respect to their use in theory of science. 'Construction' and 'constitution' seem to have much in common in that they describe the process of experience rather directly, i.e. without presupposing a metaphysical analysis on what there is. This resemblance, however,  remains that simple only at first sight; it vanishes if we realize that the basic terms were developed into Constructivism and, so to speak, 'Constitutionalism', what means in our case: Phenomenology. It would be possible, but not very interesting, to compare the different 'standpoints' as doctrines of science. At least to me, it seems much more promising to investigate the implications and basic assumptions of the fundamental concepts and (especially) the way in which they were introduced.
This paper has its origin in a discussion about the relation of Phenomenology and Constructivism. More or less by chance, I had to refer the basic features of Husserl's thought to an interested and active audience. It was through the questions and contributions, particularly from the constructivist 'fraction' that I saw more clearly the relation in question. Furthermore, it gave me the idea that it is also promising for the constructivist enterprise itself, or for a constructive critique, to discuss its relation to phenomenology.1
Both the concepts of construction and of constitution play a specific role: they should explain how we get knowledge of the world without just depicting it. Doubtlessly, the depart from the image-theory (our knowledge being an image of the world) is the common ground.2 However, if there is no such one-to-one relation to the world, we need explanation how some elements of experience remain stable nevertheless; in other words, how 'validity' (in the weakest, non-positivist sense) can be conceived. 
We have to postulate a certain structure or achievement which generates degrees of validity - and this implies ontology in any case. Not questioning the common ground of Constructivism and Phenomenology, the task of my paper will be to explain what could be meant by 'we construct the world' respectively 'the world is constituted by subjectivity'.
As not only Heidegger but also Quine have convincingly argued, every theory has its own implicit ontology or metaphysics, particularly in its vocabulary. Analysing vocabulary, therefore, is a excellent way to analyse the hidden metaphysics, and vice versa: as soon as we take any terminology for serious, we consider it to be part of a theory. Therfore I will focus on Constructivism and Phenomenology as theories, strictly speaking, as universal theories. It would be absurd to doubt that science at some times or other performs constructions (or constitutions), the question is, if it can be adequately described as constructing (constituting) in general. In this paper, I will only deal with the latter question, therefore I won't take into account all kinds of practical applications, auxiliary uses, and so forth. Of course, all this 'outcome' isn't directly affected by my criticism of the basic concepts, but this criticism can confine its claims (to be general theories) and clarify or even purify the way it speaks (by analysing their vocabulary).

First of all, 'construction' is much more common than 'constitution'. I will neither make a survey of the occurrence of these concepts in history nor an analysis of their use in ordinary language. Assuming that constructivism is a theory that focuses on our active part in relation to the world, I will concentrate on the more intricate and less familiar concept of constitution. What are its origins and its contexts? We will see that the similarity of 'constitution' and 'construction' is smaller than it appears on first sight. Hence, clarifying the context of 'constitution' means also clarifying a precise use of the term 'construction'. Husserl's idea of constitution is by its very nature an excellent background to understand more deeply what construction means - and what overtones it necessarily entails.3

Of course, I won't give a general account of Husserl's thought here, rather describe briefly some problems due to which Phenomenology is in contact with Constructivism. In the first three sections I will focus on the way phenomenology describes the world, following roughly the development of Husserl's thought. The last two sections deal with the phenomenological attitude and method - with 'reduction', which is often ignored in the mere comparision of doctrines.
We start, however, much more simply. Construction and constitution both relinquish the image-theory. In constructivism, this refutation is often accompanied by the refutation of perception as a paradigm for science. On the contrary, perception is doubtless the main paradigm of phenomenology. The phenomenological understanding of perception is, however, radically different from traditional theory. If we think perception phenomenologically, there is no more space for any kind of image-theory; rather image-theory appears as a result of a basic misunderstanding about what perception is.

Intentionality

What is perception? In the classical view, perception consists of an inner 'image', a 'representation' in the consciousness. Traditionally, the question has always been defining to what extent this representation is caused by the inner or by outer forces. The realist position would claim that the outer reality is the source of the sensations and thereby causes the representations, the idealist position would argue that representations are in one way or another 'created' by the subject, which means that the subject forms his images of the world actively. Concerning ontology, the problem is if the inner, spiritual world is reducible to the material world or vice versa.
For Husserl, the whole problem is based on a fundamental misunderstanding, which is first of all result of an equivocation. In his famous fifth Logical Investigation he distinguishes the different meanings of 'content of consciousness'. If we take, for example, the perception of a melody, we can speak of a 'content of consciousness' in at least two senses. On the one hand, the consciousness includes the sensations we receive: the actual tone with its pitch, its loudness, and other qualities. Husserl calls this 'real content'; in fact, consciousness is in a way the sum or the succession of sensations. The consciousness of which the sensations are the real content, can best be designated as stream of consciousness and has (at least for Husserl in his Logical Investigations) nothing mysterious, nothing of a spiritual world - it is a complex whole like other material entities. On the other hand, insofar we perceive this melody, we have somehow the whole melody 'in' mind, with the tones already faded away and the tones we expect to come. The content of consciousness in this second meaning is obviously not a content in an ordinary sense, it is not 'in' consciousness in the same way a glass is 'in' a cupboard or a part is 'in' its whole. There has to be different meaning of content and, correspondingly, another sense of consciousness. 
This two meanings should not only be kept apart, the notions of intentional consciousness and of intentional content are indispensable to not completely misunderstand experience. How can we understand that we perceive a succession of tones as a melody if there is nothing to unify the distinct tones? Or, another example: if we try to comprehend the theorem of Phytagoras and therefore contemplate an example in a geometry-book, we actually see a specific triangle, but we mean the sentence which is valid for all triangles.The theorem in general is intended, while only the concrete triangle is present.
For Husserl intentional relations differ from real relations in a radical way. Whereas real entities consist of parts, like the concrete triangle of three lines, intentional entities have no parts - the sentence of  Phytagoras does not consist of the individual triangles - it is even of no importance, how many triangles there are. Because intentional contents have thus a very specific structure, it is misleading to picture them as inner images. An image would be precisely a real content of consciousness: it makes sense to speak of the image of a specific triangle, but the notion of an image that can never be presented sensually is just an absurdity. This is even more obvious in respect to time: obviously, the real contents succeed in the stream of consciousness, but not the intentional ones. 
Consequently, the important ontological distinction is not the one of inner and outer world, but of different forms of relationship (intentional and real), no matter if they are inside or outside. In fact, the weakness of the image-theory is, that it simply doubles the world, whereas Husserl tries to find a complex structure in it. As we will see, the two kinds of relation do not form two regions, even if Husserl first employs this distinction to distinguish the psychical from the physic.4 In experience, they are already interwoven.

Hence, the main point of Husserl's argument is not that these intentional contents cannot result straightforward from perception. This may lead to some kind of philosophy of the a priori which concedes fixed elements in experience - the sort Popper or Frege describe as the realm of ideal entities. Husserl distinguishes this realm of ideal, but objective entities from another one that he calls 'Sinn' (meaning). The 'Sinn' is something inbetween the consciousness (the real content e.g. the specific triangle) and its referent (e.g. Phytargoras' theorem as objectively valid); Frege, who influenced Husserl thoroughly, finds an excellent example for this:
Somebody observes the moon through a telescope. I compare the moon itself to the reference; it is the object of the observation, mediated by the real image projected by the object glass in the interior of the telescope, and by the retinal image of the observer. The former I compare to the sense, the latter is like the idea or experience [for Frege real content]. The optical image in the telescope is indeed one-sided and dependent upon the standpoint of observation; but it is still objective, inasmuch as it can be used by several observers.5
We can say that we intend the moon through the telescope, and in general that we intend something through a meaning. Meaning presents the object as something, as an object with a certain meaning, e.g. being an example for Phytagoras' theorem. This concept of meaning shouldn't be misread as a kind of mediation between subject and object - the relation between two incomparable things will always remain mystical. What should be related here are different levels of generality: the impression, which has (as a real content) its unique place in time and space, the meaning, which can be iterated, the referent, which can bear different meanings. For example, I can remember the 'same' triangle, it is obviously not the same real content (for it's only remembered, not perceived), but the same meaning. Still, I can refer to the phytagorean theorem by different meanings (by triangles, by algebraic formula, etc.). As we will see, the introduction of meaning allows Husserl to transform the old dichotomic questions into questions how something happens. 

First of all, it allows to think the relation between real and intentional content: they meet on the level of meaning. Meaning is not stricly inside consciousness (as a real content), it isn't strictly outside either. For, if it would be strictly outside, it would be just obscure how it could appear in consciousness. Husserl is fundamentally concerned with this problem: how something that is by its very meaning transcendent to consciousness (i.e. more than the real content) can be manifest as transcendent in consciousness. There is something present in consciousness (the specific triangle), but it is a fundamental property of meaning that this present 'moment' is only the point of departure from which the meaning as a whole is built up. This property is identical to Husserl's famous intentionality of consciousness. Being intentional, the consciousness is always ahead of itself, it is a presumption, i.e. it transcends the given real content towards a transcendent object: "An object isn't represented in consciousness because any 'content' that is in someway similar to the transcendent object simply is inside consciousness" - that would be the thesis of image-theory - "but because in the phenomenological essence of consciousness itself all relation to its objectivity is enclosed (and can only be enclosed in it), namely as a relation to a transcendent object."6
This is already the fundamental property of perception: "External perception is a constant presumption on something which it can essentially not fulfil."7 Husserl's famous example is a cube: we see at most three sides, but we presume that it has a backside, that we can turn it or change our position towards it. It will never be possible to see all sides, but we intend a spatial object with a backside all the time. And for Husserl it is the meaning of a spatial object (like for any transcendent object) that it can never be totally present. Even God cannot see a cube from all sides - otherwise it wouldn't be a cube that he is seeing.8 
Meaning, thus, consists of different moments: present ones, and other ones, which are only intended, appresented, or mere intentions. It is already due to this intentional structure of meaning that consciousness is directed towards transcendence, i.e. to something that is more than the immanence of real content. There is no question if there is anything more beside or behind the intention, because already inside this intention there is more meant than present, more implied than actually given. The transcendence is already implicit in the subjective part, because the constitution of meaning, which happens in a 'subject', has a certain structure that I will discuss in the next section.


With his notion of intentionality, Husserl overcomes the spurious scheme of subject and object - there is a kind of in-between, the realm of intention or of meaning which is both in consciousness and leads towards the outside world. It has a transcendence of it's own - therefore there is no question how something from 'outside' gets 'inside'. We are already outside, or our inside has an outside in itsef. The meaning of the external experience can be elucidated without reference to a world of things-for-themselvesXXX.
But this does not entail that their existence is denied. As we mainly will see in the next section Husserl remains neutral in regard to the question of an 'outside world'. While analyzing the intentional realm it is principally nonsense to speak of an outer world to which our inner representation may fit or not. On the other hand, it is no less nonsense to speak of an inner representation without orientation towards the real world. Husserl is often misleading here, but the fact that consciousness is intentional also means that the 'inner' world cannot be understood without its intended meaning. Therefore, if for Husserl the world is 'constituted in consciousness', this cannot be understood as if consciousness would produce the world.9 If anything, Husserl's conception may imply, that meaning is created somehow;10 as we will see in the next sections, though, even this is inconsistent. 'Constitution' forges no decision if the subject puts its own meaning in the world (what happens in case of an hallucination) or if it perceives the existing things.
Being neutral doesn't mean to have nothing to say. The deeper sense of Husserl's argument is that it makes no sense to inquire the 'subject' apart from the 'object' or the other way round. Any promising analysis must stay inbetween, therefore it should carefully avoid terms that stressing one or the other side. A certain performance correlates with a certain object: this indissoluble relationship Husserl calls correlation. It will enable him to analyse the relation twofold, to analyse what is called constitution in a precise sense. In constitution, it remains ambiguous what is prior: does the achievement 'produce' the object or does the object require by itself a certain performance (what Husserl calls 'Nachkonstitution'), which allows the pregiven thing to appear in consciousness?11 In this respect it is also important that Husserl quite often uses the reflexive form: reality 'constitutes itself' in consciousness.12
Already at this point, we might have to face a severe difference to constructivism. Can we speak of something that constructs itself? A construction seems to imply quite necessarily someone who constructs. Constitution, not only in the Husserlian sense, leaves somehow undecided, if it designates an action or a state. 'Constitution' in the ordinary sense - as constitution of a body as well as of a community - does less indicate an activity that has created its object, but the fact that future activities will be regulated by this constitution. In other words, whereas a construction is rather equivalent to the activity which constructs, a constitution has different overtones: it evokes a substantiality not completely reducible to a process. As we will see, the concept is therefore not only suitable to limit a certain hybris of the subject, it can also articulate the cohesion of the experience as a whole. It is not the stable outside-world, but the realm inbetween, consisting of the constituted as well as of the constituting, in which a phenomenological perspective conceives the persistence of the world.

Husserl borrowed the term 'constitution' from the Neo-Kantians;13 it is thus interesting to specify where he differs from them respectively from a Kantian version of transcendental philosophy. For the Neo-Kantians 'constitution' generally means the process by which subjectivity forms objectivity by virtue of its own activity. The task of the Neo-Kantian philosopher is to determine these forms, the a priori, by 'philosophical psychology', i.e. by analysing the subject. In a way, Kantian philosophy is constructivist inasmuch as Kantianism tries to find the aprioric forms of experience. As Kant claims in the introduction of the Critique of pure Reason, this constructivist approach is the only way to trace this forms, because only the subject-pole of the relation is determinable, whereas the contingent object-pole is not.
Even if Husserl seems to be similar up to his formulations,14 his philosophical project is entirely different. Now, after having indicated some basic features of intentionality, we must turn to this: Husserl's project is not to grant experience apriori, but at first to elucidate experience as a whole. Elucidation, that means to bring a rational mode of analysis in an obscure region, or, as Husserl usually says, "to transform an obscurity into a problem that may be worked at (Arbeitsproblem)"XXX


Constitution

Clarification is necessary here, indeed: We saw that the concept of constitution is somehow ambiguous, and ambiguity is not only a merit, but also a problem. So far, the intentional region is quite undifferentiated and only negatively characterized. I will now try to elaborate how meaning can fulfil its role in Husserl's argument. It is in fact by the very properties of meaning that we can understand what transcendence is. In other words, by inquiring how the constitution of meaning is performed, we will see more clearly why meaning is transcendent per se.

Intentional contents (or meanings) do not have parts in the same sense as material objects, but they have 'moments'. For example, a sentence consists of words and even the meaning of a sentence 'consists' in some sense of the meaning of its words, but we canot determine its meaning by simply summing up the meaning of the words. The relation between the single meanings (the moments) of the sentence is much more complex than the one between parts, but there may be a way to analyse this relation nevertheless. 
Not just linguistic acts have meanings, but also perceptual ones: each perception presents its object as something. I already mentioned above that we can distinguish at least two moments in any given object: the actual present one and the one which is meant (or appresented). In his Ideas, Husserl identifies the first moment with the real content of consciousness, that means that every constitution builds upon some sort of sensations; later, however, he becomes aware, that even the most simple components presuppose other achievements of consciousness. Throughout his work, though, the relative distinction between present and merely intended moments remains fundamental.15 This difference is not all the time as distinct and determined as in his early writings, but describes the simple fact that different forms of experience present us the perceived 'itself' to a greater or lesser extent.

Moreover, the distinction between presentation and mere intentions is shifting in the process of experience. Intentionality aims at the real world: the expectation that is preformed in mere intentions tries to be 'fulfilled' or warranted. An intention upon an external object, for example, presumes its backside - it is possible to surround this object and to fulfil this intention. The way this could be done, is already prescribed in the intention: like any external object requires by its own meaning, that we can perceive it from different sides, the intention on a geometrical theorem implies, that we can draw different pictures as examples of it. Different intentions have different styles of fulfilment, and these styles may even be more complicated, requiring some achievements prior to others. Our former example requires first to apprehend the drawing as a geometrical one (and not e.g. as an ornament), then to understand it as a demonstration of a theorem. There is a necessary succession (Husserl calls it 'Stufenbau') XXX from the presented, most singular, to the most genereral. The analysis of this structure is the analysis of constitution.
The ambiguity in the notion of constitution is even more obvious here, because the analysis has to be an analysis of correlation. On every level, an achievement and an achieved, the so-called noetic and the noematic moment, correspond to each other. Every noema (every meaning) not only corresponds to noetic achievements, but can be traced back to more fundamental noematic moments that it presupposes. With the differentiation between present and appresented moments, Husserl brings an orientation into the region of intentionality: even if a meaning has no parts, it has certain moments that must be fulfilled in a specific order.


Two remarks are particularly important here. First, the differentiated concept of constitution transforms the question what we constitute into the question how we constitute. Furthermore, this transformation is not a subsequent one: as we have seen in the preceeding section, constitution always implies that there is something really present (the actual content). Constitution necessarily has a nadir (Husserl's 'Urimpression') and an orientation, whereas the concept of construction does not necessarily imply such an order.
If we assume that construction has no such orientation, we reflect upon one of the greatest possible disadvantages of constructivism: constructivism cannot provide an understanding, that some things are easier to construct than others. It is not self-contradictory to construct e.g. the concept of a four-cornered circle, i.e. it's not self-contradictory on its own, but only if we employ additional rules (like logic). Without being implied in the concept itself, differentiations as well as restrictions of construction must be imported from elsewhere - a dangerous matter, because all kinds of prejudices about how the world is, may enter theory.
Second, contrasting to Husserl (who interprets experience as a process from the very beginning), constructivism may speak of successive constructions; in general, however, every construction is isolated at least logically. Using Husserl's words, it seems that the relation between the different constructions is one of parts: each construction creates a specific object and afterwards these objects enter into relationships. 
Let's have a look at Kant whom we conceded some constructivist tendencies. In fact, Kant has the problems we have just mentioned: first, he can only restrict the subject's faculties by recurring to logic; second, he can establish the notion of a process of experience only by the 'problematic' argumentation (in the 'transcendental dialectics'), which constructivists like to ignore. This problem directly stems from the Kantian conception of the apriori: after being uncovered elsewhere (partly in the interpretation of the subject, partly in logic) the apriori should be applicable to all kinds of experience and grant its objectivity.
For Husserl, the whole matter is different. Because consciousness is intentional, attempting to isolate principles only on one side (be it subjective or objective) makes no sense. When Husserl speaks of an apriori, he does not mean any elements that could be present apart from an entire experience, not even analytically. It is always a specific apriori, the apriori of a specific constitution, e.g. of external perception. It consists of an intentional structure, of a specific style, which the fulfilment of an intention has to follow. The intention upon a four-cornered circle is not impossible because of being contradictory; strictly speaking, it is not an intention at all - because its fulfilment is in principal impossible, it has no structure. The 'intention' upon a four-cornered circles pretends to be an intention upon an spatial object, in fact it is just a mere combination of concepts. It is not contradictory, but senseless ('widersinnig'). It is specific for the Husserlian apriori that logic is not pregiven to experience, this entails that the logical notions are secondary with respect to the structure of possible fulfilment.
Here we touch on a general feature of Husserl's philosophy. Unlike Kant, he doesn't spend much effort to explain the objectivity of our thoughts: "The main point is not to ensure objectivity, but to understand it."16 Being intentional, consciousness always aims at objectivity; this can be elucidated, but has no need and no possibility to be explained. Even the effort to explain would be misleading, insofar as it has to isolate consciousness first. Husserl's method is interpretation ('Auslegung') more than explanation: is it not possible, he argues, that we just accept the meaning in the way it is given to us, without explanation, but with the attempt to uncover its hidden implications? To 'elucidate an experience' in a phenomenological sense means precisely to transform the mere intentions into possible fulfilments, or, at least, relatively more fundamental components. Evidently, this is an infinite process. Until the Ideas, Husserl conceives it as some sort of introspection, later he notices that the acceptance of the meaning needs a special attitude - the epoché -, which is itself result of a specific achievement - the reduction. Before we come to this most intricate part of Husserl's thought, we must have a look at another property of meaning.

Meaning has appeared ambiguous so far: it neither belongs to the subject nor to the object; it has a certain structure, a constitution. The status of this structure itself, however, is not quite clear by now. It is not 'in' consciousness; but is it not a structure of intentions and aren't these intentions psychical events? Until now, I have described constitution as if it would be a psychical process, even if it aims at the world. For Husserl, the activity of intending (the noetic 'act') itself is a real content of consciousness, but the latter is meant only in a figurative sense. The argument in the next section will be that intentions are somehow different from psychical events by their own meaning. In other words, and with regard to constructivism, I will pose the question who constructs; Husserl will argue, that an individual construction is an untenable notion.


The Ideality of Constitution

We saw that Husserl's idea of meaning (like Freges) is situated between the real object and the impression we actually have in mind. This implies, that a meaning can be identical for different impressions; even if the object is intended as something specific, this intention is more general than the different acts of constitution. It may be, for example, that we see the same birch-tree as an indication of water one time and as firewood another time; but even these meanings have a kind of identity: we can come back to each of them in another intention by perceiving the tree again as firewood (or even by remembering it). The meaning 'birch-tree as firewood' therefore has an identity in consideration of the individual acts in which it is meant. 
This generality of meaning grants both that consciousness is directed towards objects and that it is identical in time. The fulfilling act is by definition an individual one; what is fulfilled is thus only a moment of meaning, therefore the intention requires at least a reiteration of this fulfilment, normally the fulfilment of other aspects.17

Considering the generality of meaning, it is now not only possible to describe the single noema, but also the generality of acts by which it would appear in consciousness. This provides the means to think of identity of consciousness: Appearing at different times, even two identical intentions are different as real contents of consciousness. If they wouldn't have an intentional moment, too, it wouldn't be possible to understand how the stream of consciousness has identity itself. Because meaning requires a class of possibile actualisations, it prescribes a style which is not only the future style of experience, but implicates the style of conscious life. By intending, consciousness not only constitutes objectivity, but also its own identity. In fact, the constitution of the objective world and of the self come out of a single process. 18
Constitution is hence a double-sided performance and it is misleading to speak of consciousness as the agent which constitutes even meaning. The constitution of meaning is a constitution of possibilities, in any case it transcends the actual consciousness. Transcendence can only appear in consciousness, insofar the latter implies different consciousness, be it my own future consciousness, or, more radically, an other's consciousness.19 In Husserl's words: since every intention has a horizon, it transcends itself towards a style of constitution on the one hand (noetically) and as style of the constituted on the other (noematically). Meaning has immanent transcendence, i.e. its mode of existence is exactly being meant (or intended) as transcendent by a consciousness (and in a consciousness), which is not isolated and individual here, but already oriented towards the world and towards consciousness of others. Actually, we notice a shift in the concept of consciousness: it isn't a subjective capacity anymore, but an open structure.
Given this immanent transcendence we can resume the ontological problem discussed in the first section. Experience in a phenomenological sense does in fact not take place between subject and object, but in immanent transcendence. This is in any case prior, and we can even not determine the meaning of 'subject' and 'object' until we have understood the properties of experience which only show themselves in phenomenological analysis. When 'subject' and 'object' have the same root - in experience as a whole - it is nonsense to construct an opposition here, like it is nonsense to reduce one of them to the other. "Between consciousness and reality there yawns a true abyss of meaning"20 - but it is an abyss of meaning now. By elucidating this region of meaning, Husserl departs from an artificial problem. He does, yet much more technically, what Wittgenstein suggests to be the task of philosophy: to show the fly the way out of its glass.


Even the meaning cannot be understood as being constituted by a single subject, therefore a commonplace-interpretation of phenomenology like: 'we don't construct the world, but its meaning' is untenable. If we want to keep the notion of intentionality, we have to keep the immanent transcendence of meaning.
I think, this question also concerns constructivism: not only what is constructed, but who is the agent of construction. In a phenomenological sense meaning can neither be 'constructed' in a single event, nor by an empirical subject. For, if such an individual construction would be thinkable, if meaning would be nothing more than each of its performances, it would lose its transcending force, which is so helpful in order to dissolve the classical problem of the relationship between being and knowledge.
Certainly, no constructivist would maintain that we construct the world as individuals, but as a scientific community, a discipline, a culture, or as anything else. However, problem is quite similar to the problem I discussed in the preceeding section i.e. how construction can be restricted. The specification of the general term 'construction' seems to be arbitrary. It is even not self-contradictory to speak of an isolated construction. Because the concept is not orientated towards generality by itself, it tends to be nothing more than a collective name for miscellaneous theories. It hasn't yet precise content, therefore it may change more and more from a description into a catch-phrase.

It has been often remarked that the notion of 'horizon' is one of the most fruitful concepts of phenomenology. It should be clearer now, that it does not stem from a general view on humanity or history (or even from XXphilosophy of life), but from the theory of constitution. Interpreted phenomenologically, a constitution has horizons as a result of basic properties of meaning, prior to any de facto qualities of experience.21
A horizon is not a border in the usual sense: it is by definition transgressable. If this is true, the question who constitutes must be posed in a different way. Not only is it arbitrary to define a particular agent - be it the discipline, the culture, or whatever -, it is also insufficient. If a construction takes place as an action of a specific group, it nonetheless has its horizons in a phenomenological sense. The actual constructing group may perform an unique act, but this act implies possible repetitions in future or by other groups. Another group can reconstruct a meaning at least similar to the original one. Important to notice, that the Husserlian relative apriori doesn't claim to grant this, else it would provoke an endless argument, if it is really the same meaning in a different context. We may follow Husserl in simply maintaining that it is possible to repeat meaning relatively identically, otherwise we wouldn't understand what meaning is. The 'horizontality' of meaning does also not imply that all actualisations are uniform: the constitution has its starting point as the horizon has a place where the spectator is located. A certain intention is therefore not valid to the same extent for all subjects: even if ideally everyone is implied, some are more than others.

This is what Husserl calls an oriented constitution in a precise sense. It has a certain nadir, the real presence, the present subject, the concrete moment and the like.22 But it also has an ultimative horizon, both in noetic and noematic sense. Noetically spoken, the last horizon can be considered as mankind - in the last instance, any intention presumes that everyone can repeat and understand it. On the noematic side, we find an infinite whole of all possible references and fulfilments - what Husserl calls world. Everthing we intend is part of this world, hence there is only one world. Even if we have contradicting intentions, they will claim to be general, therefore they will be interwoven on a specific level of their possible fulfilment.
Of course, there are endless questions how the generality of meaning can be fulfilled in a specific case, but these questions are now no longer ruled by self-made dichotomies; they convert into problems. We already have an idea how the analysis of this problems may proceed; however, if the world is by definition infinite, how can we find a an access? We are already equipped with the method of correlational analysis, but the correlational description stays naive as long as we do not know where to begin in this endless region. At this point Husserl's idea of the phenomenological reduction enters the scene.

Perhaps I should add some general remarks here. We have argued that, compared with 'constitution', 'construction' has several disadvantages. First, it overemphasizes the distinction between subject and object, second it gives no account of how the world is constructed, third it does not reflect that construction is not a single act. In general, it seems to me that 'construction' is not only different from 'constitution', but not very suitable as a key concept for a far-reaching theory. Such a theory should be based on a strong concept, which doesn't necessarily mean a complicated one. Much more important, such a concept should provide inner differentiation without losing its decisiveness - phenomenologically spoken, it should have rich horizons. For example, it seems to me, that the (Freudian) notion of the unconscious as a text is such a strong concept, whereas the (Jungian) notion of the unconscious as an image isn't. Of course, this doesn't imply that one concept is 'wrong', but the latter is less convenient to build a theory on it.
Valuing concepts as more or less useful without judging them as true or false is the genuine phenomenological way of dealing with problems. As we have seen, clarification does not search for the 'real reference' of a certain meaning, but for its possibilities. Can we imagine something like the 'immanent transcendence' of theoretical concepts? Preforming the style of a theory, the central concepts could be analysed phenomenologically: both as a result and as an origin of a specific style of constitution. It wouldn't be necessary but even be misleading to analyse the key concepts in their relation to their real referents - their task is more to outline the realm in which the theory will unfold. Even if both designate rather obscure entities, the Freudian unconscious leads towards the problems of linguistics and history, the Jungian towards the chaotic material of myth. 
Husserl consequently upholds the possibility of such a reflexive inquiry. With regard to this almost classical idea, his particular contribution can be seen in that he discovered and articulated the difficulty of such an analysis. It will always be threatened by fallacy, by being confounded with a naive explanation, i.e. an argument that is based on facts and not meanings. This seems to be the danger that threatens and sometimes befalls constructivism, too.

The Reduction

As we have seen, constitution cannot be conceived as a psychical process. Is it thus nothing but some kind of mythical construction,23 a mere formal instance, necessary for constructing the theory of intentionality, but as obscure as imaginary numbers? More precisely: what is the meaning of constitution itself, respectively how can meaning in general be given? For Husserl's method is not constructing entities, but, beginning with the given, elucidating their implications. 
Let's return to Freges example of the moon and the telescope. Usually, as Frege pointed out, we look at the moon. But it is also possible to turn towards the telescope, to take up another point of view. We may be interested in the telescope as such, we may also be interested, how the telescope lets us see the moon, how it 'gives' the moon. If we are interested in the latter, we do not only change the object of our experience, but we change the way we experience itself, or in Husserl's words, we take up another attitude. We can compare the phenomenological attitude with the experience of how the moon is given through the telescope, of the givenness of the moon; reduction is the way that leads us to this attitude. The parallel between telescope and meaning is, however, insufficient: If we turn from the moon to the telescope, we turn from one individual entity to another. As we have seen, meaning is not an isolated entity, it contains its own generality, it is never a simple meaning, but always related to other meaning. And, as we have also seen in the first section, these relations are fundamentally different from relations between real objects. Considering this, between the moon and the telescope exists a real relation, so the telescope is an instrument which has some influence on our image of the moon; even more, this influence can be interpreted as a causal one. If we are interested in the way the moon appears through the telescope, we may call this reflection, i.e. we examine the properties of the telescope with respect to their causal influences.24 Yet, meaning is not an instrument, since nothing can be given apart from it and it is nonsense to speak of the causal 'impact' of meaning - which is the condition of givenness - on the given.25 Meaning is rather a medium, a system which makes something originally appear. As a system, it is not real in the sense of real objects, but as a texture of different possible references.26 The attitude, in which we turn towards meaning is therefore radically different from the attitude towards real objects. Following Husserl, we may call it reduction.27

Still, this does not point out how reduction can be possible. How can we turn towards something that is horizon by definition, how can we experience something invisible? Concerning reduction, Husserl's first basic insight is that phenomenological attitude is unnatural and difficult to achieve. Whilst turning towards the telescope is of no great effort, focussing on meaning is constantly threatend by falling back into the natural attitude, i.e. by taking intentional relationships for real ones. In fact, Husserl's later work was mainly dedicated to articulate the difficulty of a consequent and radical reduction.
If the phenomenological attitude is unnatural, we have to analyse the natural attitude first. It is essentially unobtrusive, it is natural in the sense that everything seems to be apparent. While staying in the natural attitude, we only perceive what is already constituted, but never the constitution itself. The 'failure' is twofold: first to take the present object for all, not taking into account the infinite process of constitution. That means, in the natural attitude, the world is complete all along. Second, to identify the present object with the external one.
Reduction is twofold, too. We can access the realm of meaning, which is ignored in the natural attitude by its structure, if we 'block' the movement towards the real object - in Husserl's words, if we suspend the 'Urdoxa', if we 'inhibit' our natural intention to take things for real. That does not necessarily mean that they aren't real, this question just won't interest us for a while. More important here is that after this suspension something remains: the region of meaning. As we have seen, a hallucination and an objective perception are similar at least in that they have a certain meaning; if we are usually interested to figure out if something is an object or a phantom, we can also ask, in what respect they are similar. This is not a reflection, because we don't want to explain why another object causes this phantom, or even why this phantom can deceive us - in phenomenological attitude, phantoms and objects are just equal for us. The only question that interests us is why something can appear as something, be it as a deception, a perception or whatsoever.28
Reduction is thus possible, because the meaning can be conceived by itself, regardless of the transcendent world. Besides, or more fundamental than the question if the referent exits, is the principle, that nothing would not be able to appear for us without consciousness performing a certain constitution. We can analyse this constitution, its necessary form of fulfillment, without taking into account if the real referent exists.29 Inhibiting the question of existence in this way is the famous Husserlian epoché.

As we have seen in the preceeding sections, constitution and correlation do not refer to an invidual consciousness. Reduction should direct us to a region of pure meaning; therefore, it does not retain the isolated subject as a remainder, which then 'contains' the whole world.30 Nevertheless, reduction is subjective in a certain sense. First, it is the achievement of a certain subject, second, it is based on the presence of the ego, third, a certain intention belongs (correlatively) to the realm of meaning that appears in reduction.
The first problem of the reducing subject is the problem of what Husserl calls 'Vormeditationen', i.e., preparations to reduction. The empirical subject of the future phenomenologist has to be motivated to perform the reduction. This later leads to the concept of lived world and the phenomenology of history, but this is of no interest here. The second problem concerns the 'Urgegebenheit', the original presence of the ego. It is perhaps the most intricate one, because it seems to tend towards a Cartesian Idealism. But Husserl's intention is different here: he wants to comprehend the inquiry in phenomenological attitude still as an experience. As we have seen, an experience presupposes a presence to start with. If the notions of intentionality and the like shouldn't be revoked, there must be something at least similar to 'presence' after we have performed reduction; and this is just the presence of the ego. The third problem concerns the result of reduction, which Husserl calls a sphere of pure subjectivity. It is, nevertheless, 'subjective' only by equivocation: not as 'private', but as a sphere that consists of achievements in both senses (the achieving and the achieved). By calling it 'subjectivity', Husserl points out the methodical way on the one hand and tries to avoid naive misunderstanding on the other. Concerning the latter, it may be doubted if he was sucessful.
I won't go into details concerning these problems of subjectivity now. Here again, they develop from simple questions or even paradoxes into analysable problems: If the classical question, how something can get from the outer reality into the subject, seems quite unsolvable, we can well work on the problem how subjectivity and the world are constituted together. Somehow the different aspects of subjectivity really belong together: the phenomenological experience is the achievement of the reducing subject, the ego is its pole of presence, subjectivity is its noematic correlate. In other words, by phenomenological analysis the ordinary meaning of 'subjectivity' is modified; what seems monolithic at first sight, unfolds into a network. Consequently, 'subjectivity' for Husserl no longer denotes the generality of subjects or a kind of super-subject, but precisely the way a subject can appear as such in experience.31 Phenomenology neither presupposes the sef-presence of subjectivity nor denies it, but puts it in question. As a result, also the conception of the individual subject shifts from the active and autonomous agent to an embodied experience. 32


I think that this new paradigm of subjectivity is a fruitful one, for philosophy as well as for theory of science. It may seem adequate to picture science as some kind of corpus, a structure that is physical, not reducible to its formal, 'ideal' moments but not a mere accumulation either. To speak of the corpus of science is to perceive science as a network of institutions, practices, and representations. This corpus is neither the producer (constructor) of our knowledge nor just an instrument with which we perceive the world - like our own body, which is neither constructed nor objective, but a constituted-constituting, it is the medium through which and in which we are in the world. To analyse knowledge as embodied involves history, too: the body displays what Husserl calls 'inner history'. This history of the body is present and legible rather in its inner structure (its inscriptions and sedimentations) than in any external influences. It is therefore a paradox history (a history without events), a history which only makes sense as transcendental history. 33

Meta-Philosophy

What do the results of reduction entail concerning our analyses of constitution? In other words: What is the task of a transcendental philosophy in the Husserlian sense?
Husserl distinguishes two kinds of inquiry: a natural one oriented towards objects, and a transcendental one oriented towards what enables something to appear as an object.34 These two kinds of inquiry (or attitudes) are different and interwoven at the same time: The attitudes are different because conditions of appearance are not of the same matter as natural objects (as the model of 'reflection' would presume). It seems that the world bears two kinds of descriptions, that it is irreducibly double-sided. 
They are interwoven insofar as the conditions of appearance can't be analysed appart from experience (as in Kant). Moreover, if we presume a certain object in a certain way, the object perceived as this object cannot contradict this presumption totally, otherwise it won't appear. If we one day encounter an external object without backside, we simply won't perceive it as external object. But, we can never deduce any empirical truth from our phenomenological results, they remain on the level of possibilities. As I have shown, we don't speak about empirical subjects if we speak phenomenologically about constitution. We do speak about the horizon in which we understand ourselves as subjects. Thus, phenomenological reduction does not produce a kind of super-knowledge, more general or 'more true' than the knowledge of the natural attitude; it is just different knowledge.
Even if the natural attitude can be inquired in the phenomenological one, that does by no means imply any 'Aufhebung' in the Hegelian sense. As phenomenologists, we focus on what the natural attitude misses, but we cannot account for the whole experience. "Particularly in the case of the Objective world of realities [...] phenomenological explication does nothing but explicate the sense this world has for us all, prior to any philosophizing, a sense which philosophy can uncover, but never alter."35 There is a mystery left: the mystery that there is  transcendence. This mystery is the source of phenomenological inquiry, a source which could never be left behind - because reduction rests upon concrete experience, the transcendental sphere can never completely detach from the empirical. "No ordinary 'realist'" characterizes Husserl himself "has ever been as realistic and as concrete as I, the phenomenological 'idealist' (a word which by the way I no longer use.)"36 This is precisely why reduction must be achieved permanently, whereas the 'Aufhebung' is a single moment in history.

Concerning the two different attitudes we can imagine two kinds of theories: transcendental theories are not more general than 'natural' ones, neither in the sense of 'prior' nor as posterior schematizations by induction. Husserl thereby gives a substantial solution for the problem of meta-theory that differs from the classical concepts both of reflection and of systematization.37
This is, I think, important for constructivism, too. We have to ask constructivists how they conceive their relation to 'ordinary' scientific theories: do they claim to understand 'better' the same or do they understand something different? Furthermore, if they understand something different, are they able to articulate the difference (as phenomenology is because it can comprehend the natural attitude)? Constructivist theories, as it seems to me, tend to ignore that the usual perception is fundamentally anti-constructivist; they do not try to elucidate the difference between everyday-theories, scientific ones, and their own ones. Sometimes, they even present the constructivist paradigm as such a simple solution for all traditional problems that we will ask why no one has found it sooner. Of course, we should not impose upon anyone the Hegelian requirement to understand one's place in history, but a theory should be able to seriously deal with its relation to the predecessor, be it historical or structural.
More generally spoken, constructivism has to face these problems, because it too often leaves open what kind of theory it actually employs. It ought to be clear, if an argumenation is meant to be transcendental or empirical; if it is not, we often hardly know what is spoken about. In the preceeding sections we have seeen some of the ambiguities or even weaknesses, which arise for constructivism that understands itself as an universal theory: it gives no answer how, to what extent, and by whom the world is constructed. Whereas 'constitution' only makes sense as transcendental, construction seems to alternate: sometimes it is used empirically, as a simple description of what really happens; sometimes transcendentally, following a metaphysical argument. If we speak of construction, do we mean that we experience certain constructions or do we reason that we can only have contact to the world through constructions? Without performing anything similar to the phenomenological reduction,38 we can not even pose these questions precisely. For sure, it is not at all necessary that every theory becomes transcendental. The transcendental attitude needs the empirical one and vice versa. It is, however, insufficient to stay inbetween, to oscillate blindly from one to the other.
By reduction, phenomenology can posit itself, that means it can circumscribe its own validity. Hence, phenomenology is essentially critical. It does not simply propose a new ontology, but an analysis of old ones. Its task is not to decide between ontologies, but to inquire the possibility of this decision - the possibility or the common ground of the dogmatic quarrels about ontological standpoints. In order to fulfil this function, it carefully has to avoid being involved : not by maintaining an overall perspective, but by investigating what the different disputants already presuppose. In this respect, phenomenology is really meta-theory.

Concerning science in an ordinary sense, the task of this meta-theoretical attitude is to make clear how we speak about science. It is not enough to take some standpoint here - as Husserl has shown, it is really a research work. The idea is to analyse the key concepts of science. They form their ideology, their blind spot, but also their horizon that enables a certain appearance of the world. We can neither see nor extricate this blind spot, we can also not harmonize everything with a great synthesis. That modern science would intend such a synthesis is mainly a paranoia of constructivists, a paranoia that let them sway to the other side: to build themselves a kind of great synthesis, which gives the most simple answer to all great questions. Husserl has, however, shown that it is possibile to avoid some of this questions (e.g. the artificial one of subject and object), to work out others. Phenomenology is everything else but an answer to the riddels of reality. The fundamental questions do not disappear, they are articulated as possibilities of understanding, as horizons.
 
1 For a constructivist view of phenomenology see Wallner, Die Rolle der Lebenswelt für die wissenschaftliche Erkenntnis. in: Wallner/Schimmer, Wissenschaft und Alltag, Wien 1995.
2  For Husserl's critique of the image-theory see espc. Logical Investigations (Nach § 21) XX "Zur Kritik der Bildertheorie" Husserliana (Hua). The Hague 1950 f) and Hua II, 98-100 ("Aufklärung eines prinzipiellen Irrtums")
3 I will only mention here that 'constitution' is also the key term for the interpretation of phenomenology, especially in order to avoid idealist misinterpretation: As Tugendhat states (Der Wahrheitsbegriff bei Husserl und Heidegger, Berlin 1967, p 175): "Der phänomenologische Aufbau ist keine idealistische These, sondern ein deskritptiver Befund [...] Hier wirkt es sich nachteilig aus, daß man die Logischen Untersuchungen vernachlässigt und den Sinn der Konstitution aus Husserls späterer idealistischer Position und im Vergleich mit neukantianischen Idealismen verstehen will, statt umgekehrt den Sinn von Husserls Idealismus aus seiner Lehre von der Konstitution aufzuklären."
4 It was the orginal idea of Franz Brentano that intentionality is the defining property of psychic events; therefore they have an entirely different ontological status than physical ones. Already in the Logical Investigations Husserl remarks: "Es ließe sich zeigen, daß keineswegs alle psychischen Phänomene im Sinne einer möglichen Definition der Psychologie ebensolche im Sinne Brentanos, also psychische Akte sind, und daß auf der anderen Seite unter dem bei Brentano äquivok fungierenden Titel 'physische Phänomene' sich ein guter Teil von wahrhaft psychischen Phänomenen findet."(Hua XIX/1, 378) More important is that Husserl's concept of intentionality is no longer an ontological one, but functional: it is not a property of a region, but a general moment in the world.
5 G. Frege, Über Sinn und Bedeutung, in: Funktion, Begriff, Bedeutung, Göttingen 1986, 45. For Husserls relation to Frege, cf. DUMMETT, especially chapters 6-8; and more fundamental FOLLESDAL, Husserl und Frege, Oslo 1958.
6 "[...], daß also ein Gegenstand für das Bewußtsein nicht dadurch vorgestellter ist, daß ein der transzendenten Sache selbst irgendwie ähnlicher 'Inhalt' im Bewußtsein einfach ist (was genau erwogen, sich in lauter Widersinn auflöst), sondern daß im phänomenologischen Wesen des Bewußtseins in sich selbst alle Beziehung auf seine Gegenständlichkeit beschlossen ist und nur darin prinzipiell beschlossen sein kann, und zwar als Beziehung auf eine 'transzendente' Sache." LU 423XXX
7 Hua XI, 3.
8 Husserl's conception of the apriori is fundamentally different from Kant's: as a result of his criticism of psychologism, Husserl rejects the possibility to found the apriori on the subject. The apriori is, thus, more and less radical:"Kants Apriori ist zwar relativ auf das menschliche Ich, aber für dieses gilt es universal, während Husserls Apriori an sich zwar absolut gilt, aber nur relativ auf die jeweilige Sachhaltigkeit, die selbst nicht notwendig ist." (TUGENDHAT, p 165) Concerning this relative and hypothetical apriori see KERN, Husserl und Kant; eine Untersuchung über Husserls Verhältnis zu Kant und zum Kantianismus, The Hague 1964,
9 See Hall, Was Husserl a Realist or an Idealist? in Dreyfus XXXX 171:"I think the answer which should be given is a simple: 'No'." This is the reason why interpretations that focus only on Husserl's anti-objectivism are misleading (like TURNHEIM, Lebenswelt  und Wissenschaft bei Edmund Husserl, in WALLNER/SCHIMMER (ed.) Wissenschaft und Alltag. Symposionsbeiträge zum Konstruktiven Realismus, Wien 1995). This fault is often due to the fact that only the later Husserl is taken into account. Particularly the concept of lived world, which can easily be interpreted as some kind of philosophy of life XX can be misleading here (see footnote 21)
10 This is what Fink seems to propose in L'analyse intentionelle et le problème de la pensée speculative  (in Probelèmes actuels de la phénoménologie, Paris 1952, p 78): "In Husserl, the meaning of 'transcendental constitution' fluctuates between formation of sense and creation."
11 Cf. Tugendhat, p 221: "'Konstitution' wird nun von Husserl sowohl der wesensmäßige phänomenologische Aufbau der Wahrheit in der Gegebenheit genannt als auch der Aufbau des Weges, in dem ich zur Ausweisung dieser Wahrheit gelange."
12 See Sokolowski, The Formation of Husserl's Concept of Constitution, The Hague 1964, p 216f: "Consciousness does not cause its objects and their contents, they can be said to 'constitute themselves': Such an expression is not used for things which are totally caused by something else. For instance, we do not say that a manufactured product constitutes itself, but that we make or cause it, or that machines make it." This describes, as I think, precisely the difference between construction and constitution. These reflexive use of constitution is fundamental to the question of subject's self-constitution (cf. footnote 31); moreover, as self-constituting, the cartesian subject eventually tends to break apart.
13 See Sokolowski, p 214-217 For Husserls relation to Kant in general see Kern. It is important to notice that the Neokantian interpretation is based on a reduction of the Kantian project: It solely concentrates on the first half of the Critique of pure Reason. As a contemporary, Husserl as well understood Kant this way. 
14 This is particularly the case in the first model of constitution, in which the intentions inform the sensations. Husserl reproduced the Kantian model of matter and form, which he later tried to overcome in more and more subtile differences. See SOKOLOWSKI, p 201-210.
15 For Husserl this difference is no longer a metaphysical distinction of different sources of knowledge, but a description which is "allgemein und rein funktional" (Tugendhat, p 47). Intuition does no longer contain by definition only simple elements, because its immediacy is not understood in contrast to discursive thinking, but in contrast to the bare intention that has it's object not present. " Für Husserl hingegen versteht sich die Unmittelbarkeit der intuitiven Vorstellung aus dem Gegensatz zum sachfernen bloßen Meinen. So kann jetzt jeder intuitiven Vorstellung eine inhaltlich identische nicht-intuitive enstprechen. Natürlich ist auch für Husserl der Gegensatz zwischen den schlichten und den synthetischen Vorstellungen von grundlegender Bedeutung, aber er kreuzt sich nun mit demjenigen zwischen den intuitiven und nicht-intuitiven Vorstellungen." (TUGENDHAT, p 50)
16 Hua VI, 193.
17 Cf. Tugendhat, p 175, who criticizes Fink: (cf. footnote 10) "Eine 'Erzeugung' ist die Konstitution deswegen nicht, weil es ich deskriptiv-strukturell um ein ganz anderes Phänomen handelt. [...] Vor allen Dingen ist zu beachten, daß der konstituierende 'Akt' von Husserl eidetisch verstanden wird, daß also nicht dieser einzelne Akt, sondern der Akt in specie für eine Gegenständlichkeit konstitutiv ist. Schon aus diesem Grund ist das Modell der Erzeugung verfehlt, zweitens aber auch, weil das Konstituierte nur in der Konstitution ursprünglich gegeben ist und sein 'wahres Sein' also gar nicht getrennt von dem konstituierenden Akt (in specie!) zu denken ist." 
18 This resembles Kant's famous 'Refutation of Idealism' in his Critique of pure Reason: if our consciousness is temporally determinable, it is senseless to deny the existence of an transcendent world. 
19 Husserl's theory of intersubjectivity is often misread: Husserl deals not with the problem of solipsism ('How can I know that there is someone else?'), but with the question 'How is the other already present in my very experience'?. Cf. CARR, The Fith meditation and Husserl's Cartesianism in: CARR, Interpreting Husserl, Dordrecht 1987.
20 Hua III, 117.
21Husserl's later works (particularly the ambiguous term 'lived world') have led some scholars to think that he had turned from rationalist philosopher to an apologist of everyday-experience. However, here is no turn at all.  Husserl's fundamental problem in the Crisis is not a description of lived world (which would be naive), but the question how the lived world as the horizon per se can be object of a science. This science cannot be a positive, direct one, but must perform reduction: "Wie kann nun das Vorgegebensein der Lebenswelt zu einem eigenen und universalen Thema werden? Offenbar nur durch eine totale Änerung der natürlichen Einstellung, eine Änderung, in der wir nicht mehr wie bisher als Menschen des natrlichen Daseins im ständigen Geltungsvollzug der vorgegebenen Welt leben, vielmehr uns dieses Vollzugs ständig enthalten." (Hua VI, 151) The phenomenon of lived world thus necessary entails the theory of phenomenological reduction.
22 See Held, Lebendige Gegenwart. Die Frage nach der Seinsweise des transzendentalen Ich bei Edmund Husserl, entwickelt am Leitfaden der Zeitproblematik, The Hague 1966.
23 Husserl's reproach to Kant culminates precisely in this: "In der Tat gerät Kant in eine eigene Art mythischer Reden, deren Wortsinn zwar auf Subjektives verweist, aber eine Weise des Subjektiven, die wir uns prinzipiell nicht anschaulich machen können, weder an faktischen Exempeln, noch durch echte Analogie." (Hua VI, 116)
24 See Hua VIII, 79: "Bloße Reflexion, und noch so sorgsam beobachtende, analysierende und noch so sehr auf mein rein Psychisches gerichtete [...] bleibt ohne solche Methode [of reduction] natürliche psychologische Reflexion und bleibt, was sie - in noch so unvollkommerer Gestalt -auch schon war: mundane Erfahrung."
25 Hall, 183: "What makes philosophical realism absurd, given Husserl's understanding of the philosophical (transcendental), is that it makes the relation between meaning (sense) and object (reference) one of causal interaction, which amounts to missing entirely the important distinction between meaning and object which is constitutive of philosophy",
26 In a word: meaning is not perceivable. See Follesdal, Husserls Notion of Noema¸ in DreyfusXXX especially 77-79; and DreyFUS, Husserl's Perceptual Noema 108-119, in ibd.
27 Since the reflection is only a relative change of view, it can be iterated: we can turn e.g. towards the physical stucture of our eye afterwards; on the other hand reduction claims to perform a completely different attitude. Husserl spent more and more work to clarify this radical change in our attitude, particularly concerning the ethical moments in that change: How can anyone be motivated to perform reduction? His turn to history (in the Crisis) is not - as often misread - a simple application of phenomenological method to the lived world, but results consequently from these questions of motivation and ethical implication of phenomenology.
28 Thereby, reduction also methodically reflects the way descriptive phenomenology already works. Here we conceive the realm of meaning in which our former inquiries already implicitly took place in a purified way: "Subjektivität, und sie universal und ausschließlich ist mein Thema, und es ist ein rein in sich abgeschlossenes, independentes Thema. Daß das möglich ist und wie, das zu zeigen ist die Aufgabe der Beschreibung der Methode der phänomenologischen Reduktion." Hua XIII, p 200.
 The neutrality in respect to ontology also becomes explicit in the Ideas: "It is only one constistent step from Husserl's admission in the Logical Investigations that his phenomenology does not provide a theory of knowledge to the bracketing of existence in Ideas." DREYFUS, 108. and "The concept of intentionality, which is too often regarded as the main discovery of phenomenology, is in fact understandable only due to reduction." (MERLEAU PONTY La phenomenologie de la perception (Paris, 1945), p XII.
29 Of course this does not mean, that Husserl would deny the existence of real referents: "Andererseits hätte es seine Unzuträglichkeit, zu sagen: 'Es ist nur absolutes Bewußtsein' als ob man sagen wollte: alles andere Sein ist nur ein scheinbares .. Das wäre freilich grundfalsch. Die Naturobjekte sind selbstverständlich wahre Objekte, ihr Sein ist wahres Sein. Es ist grundfalsch, an dieses Sein einen anderen Maßstab anzulegen als den es seiner Kategorie nach fordert und etwas darum zu diskreditieren, weil es sich im bewußtsein Konstituierendes ist, im Bewußtsein wurzelndes ist." Unpublished manuscript, cit. BERNET/KERN/MARBACH, Edmund Husserl, Darstellung seines Denkens, Hamburg 1989, p 55. See also HALL.
30 See Husserls cirtique of Descartes: the remaining ego is transcendental (correlates the world), not a piece of world which is the fundamentum in re of the latter. Hua I, XXXX
31 In fact, subjectivity is no longer the general term for empirical subjects but the eidos: what makes a subject appear as a subject. It is identical with the way something fulfils as subject for itself - therefore subjectivity for Husserl mainly redfers to the problem of of self constitution (like in the fourth Cartesian Meditation). The fact that Husserl breaks with the Cartesian project precisely by maintaining it would be worth investigating.
32 The phenomenological notion of body is not convertible to the biological one (See MERLEAU PONTY, Phénoménologie de la perception): it depends on reduction. This is obvious in German, where the distinction between 'Leib' (phenomenological) and 'Körper' (pure material) exists. The 'Leib' however evokes another theme: the theological problem of 'Leib und Seele' (Body and Soul). In German, it is possible to distinguish a 'Körper-Seele-problem' (which deals with metaphysics or theory of knowledge), a 'Leib-Körper-problem' (which deals with our Leib as the medium which let other things appear for us), and a 'Leib-Seele-problem' (which deals with the double-sidedness of human existence, with history and eschatology).
33 Cf. Derrida, The Origin of GeometryXXXX: This 'inner history' is also 'historicity' i.e the horizon that makes the historical appear as historical. By this, Husserl tries to overcome historicism, in other words, not to fetishize history, but to achieve a critical position towards it.
34 Husserl doesn't want to discredit the objective attitude of science: "What is essential for us here is the distinction between the two types on investigation (natural and philosophical) each regarded as universal investigation." Hua VI 148.
35 Cartes Med §62 schluß
36 Letter from Hsserl to Abbé Baudin in 1934, quoted in Kern p. 276.
37 To be interpreted this way, Husserl's claim to found a radical science has to be understood in the right way. It is only an attempt to found 'pure science', i.e. it is a phenomenological investigation about the meaning of 'pure science'. Husserl's rigid interpretation of Phenomenology as pure science in traditional terms - which aims naively at creating a pure science - does not cohere with the implications of his general concept, cf. TUGENDHAT, 194-196.
38 Cf. Hua VIII, 78: It is obvious, "daß wir den Zugang zur beschriebenen transzendentalen Subjektivität nicht nur faktisch der beschriebenen Methode verdankten, sondern daß diese oder daß eine verwandte Methode überhaupt unerläßlich ist sie zu entdecken."
It is thus not necessary to perform the reduction exactly the way Husserl does. What reduction casn be apart from Husserl's theory - e.g. if it is compatible with the linguistic turn? - transgresses the scope of my paper.Cf A. DE MURAULT, L'Idée de la phénoménologie, Paris 1958: " If one regards language as itself, the reduction is implicitly achieved, but not yet explicated."