Ideation, Attitude, Reduction

Abstract

In the present chapter we will reconstruct the development of Husserl’s understanding of the way in which ideal objects are grasped. Three main stages will be distinguished, hence three main methodological tools: the notion of ideation and idealizing abstraction; eidetic or a priori attitude; eidetic reduction. We will extensively elaborate on the emergence of the notion of a priori attitude around 1910–1911, and we will also maintain that the introduction of the eidetic reduction in Ideas I should not be really understood as a new methodological notion but rather as a further development of the notion of attitude.