Without Reduction. Introduction to Claude Romano’s Empirical Phenomenology

Abstract

The aim of this paper is to present the main directions of Claude Romano’s thoughts with regard to the “realism of the lifeworld” (réalisme du monde de la vie), which begins with a specific critique of Husserl’s transcendental phenomenology – especially phenomenological reduction and intentionality – and points to a so-called descriptive realism without reduction. Romano’s realism is based on the “holism of experience”, a new phenomenological approach to perception and the world, where the meaning of the phenomenon is already revealed at the pre-reflective, pre-hermeneutic level. In light of this, there is no need for reduction to get to the phenomenal field. If phenomenology can claim a kind of method, it is hermeneutics, which, however does not serve to get to phenomena, but only to describe them.