The natural attitude and the phenomenological reduction

pp. 83-106

in: Aron Gurwitsch, The collected works of Aron Gurwitsch (1901–1973) I, Berlin, Springer, 2010

Abstract

At every waking moment of one's life, one finds oneself—and this is but a purely objective fact—in the world, which one takes as really existing. Wakefulness consists in nothing else than in being conscious of the surrounding world, as well as of oneself as located in this region of the world, a region delimited in a more or less indefinite manner and constituting the environment of the subject in question. In this environment, the subject is presented with a great diversity of objects belonging to different sorts. In respect of these objects, one does not always comport oneself as a mere spectator. On the contrary, a purely contemplative comportment, far from being permanent, is a specific attitude in which no subject can continuously persevere, not even if he is someone for whom it has become a habitual disposition, as it is with the scientist.