Dieter Lohmar

In this contribution I will discuss Husserl’s eidetic method, which is dedicated to discover the apriori structures of consciousness. The method of seeing essences of the Logical Investigations (1900) should mark the opposition of phenomenology as an apriori science of consciousness and empirical psychology. The eidetic method starts as an everyday human ability to recognize equalities in different things, but it can and must be refined to become the basic phenomenological method. In the lecture Phenomenological Psychology (1925) the eidetic method is specified as eidetic variation, which is characterized by the demand for unlimited variation of the starting example in phantasy. – The second part of my article is dedicated to critical considerations. One topic is the problematic interaction of an ideally infinite variation together with the necessary limitation of this variation (to avoid crossing the conceptual demarcations of the starting example). From this point of view questions concerning the true sense and unavoidable limitations of the eidetic method are discussed anew.

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