"Reducing" our Common Sense

In phenomenology, we have inherited a set of terms that sit on the cusp between high modernity and the post modern critique of traditional metaphysics. There is a lot to learn from the phenomenological approach, but caution is required.

Caution is especially required with the notion of “bracketing” our experience, or engaging in the phenomenological “reduction.”

At its core, the reduction is a reminder to us as researchers to stay alert to the deadening effect of common sense. We are not interested in how people conceptualize the world—we are interested in how they live it! We are interested in how they experience its everyday manifestations. For that, story is required—rather than a “semi-structured interview protocol.”

We are interested in how people experience the world in moments of heightened flow, in moments of great vibrancy and potential meaning. Moments where there are cracks in our common sense and our natural attitude is opened up to the wonder of everyday life. 

To break away from common sense—what we think we know about the world—is to stay open and wondering. It is to try to be true to our pre-reflective experience of the world. For it is common sense that covers up our experiences, deadens them, and prevents them from expanding and deepening.

The reduction is the reminder to break from common sense—to enter into a reflective, phenomenological mode where we experience the world as question and possibility. But we do this so as to gather meanings that we then can re-situate back into the lifeworld of everyday meaning, acting and speaking. That is, to re-construct and re-enliven our common sense.

The reduction is ultimately a reminder that our only access to the world is through consciousness. To study the world is to study a person engaged with the world. There is no object apart from an observing/desiring/acting subject.

Therefore, the reduction reminds us that we can never study the world objectively without attending to the way it is subjectively experience. Phenomenology is the objective study of subjectivity!