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precisely the accomplishment of phenomenology, which for the first time has made thespirit accessible to systematic experience and science.On one level, the mood and form of expression of this presentation does not, perhaps,provoke any particular reaction. One is aware that it is indeed a public lecture, presentedin a non-specialist context. Husserl simply states, in his particular version, what anyserious general philosophical theory, secure in its own outlook, would try to do in a similarsituation: he presents a historical context and an analysis of what he perceives to be a seriousspiritual problem, and from there he suggests in what way his own philosophical attitudecould serve as a liberating therapy. But in the particular case of phenomenology, such ashallow understanding of the intentions of the author is not sufficient. What is said andsuggested, in this public lecture, in fact stems from the deepest layers of the phenomenologicalproject, in ways I will now try to develop.First of all, Husserl’s language in this lecture immediately strikes one as surprisingly nonphenomenological.He does not mention either the natural attitude, or any of the reductions.And finally, he focuses on the “spirit,” a notion of which he seldom speaks otherwise. Onthe other hand, the underlying scheme remains very much the same. “Objectivism” needonly be replaced with the “natural attitude,” and the whole discussion of the need for a certainchange in attitude (in understanding the spirit) with that of the need for a transcendentalturn. Finally “spirit” could in this context very easily be substituted for “transcendentalsubjectivity,” and immediately the continuity would appear obvious.Other authors have already pointed out that, what seems to be operating throughout thewritings connected to The Crisis is a peculiar new kind of reduction, closely affiliated withthe transcendental reduction but arising from a different context, viz., what David Carrcalls an “historical reduction.” 8 Phenomenology had already, from its early beginning, defineditself as a radical reflection, seeking legitimacy in its determination and ability toattain a truly original stratum of experience of pure givenness, where every unreflected presuppositionwas to be set aside, in favor of an account of how things manifest themselvesin noematic variation. This ambition found its formal expression in the transcendental orphenomenological epoché or reduction, by means of which the reflecting ego -- to use theformulation of the Cartesian Meditations -- “posits exclusively himself as the acceptancebasisof all Objective acceptances and bases.” 9The principal target of the transcendental turn is the so-called “natural attitude,” inwhich the ego does not perceive itself as the ultimate acceptance-basis, but rather as onlyone among many psychic egos inhabiting the world. The reduction transforms this selfunderstandingof the personal ego by means of a fundamental gestalt-shift. Suddenly all facticity,which was up till then seen as existing in itself, is encountered as sense and validityfor the intending ego. What was hitherto perceived as external transcendency, suddenlyappears as immanent transcendency, and the former isolated psychic ego is at once disclosedas a transcendental intentional field of experience for itself to investigate.The principal target for the reduction is thus the sense of the existence of materialobjects, accessible to experience. Once they are seen as appearing within the field of intentionalsubjectivity, their givenness can be interpreted and explicated in a new fashion.But how much does the reduction claim to encompass? In §11 of the Cartesian Meditations,Husserl expresses himself in the following way: “That I, with my life, remain untouchedin my existential status, regardless of whether or not the world exists.” 108910Carr, Phenomenology and the Problem of History, 117.Husserl, Cartesian Meditations, 26.Ibid.238