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Epoché as Personal Transformation

This paper argues that the parallel that Husserl draws in The Crisis between the phenomenological epoché and religious conversions is not just a rhetorical device but involves a crucial methodological idea. By pointing to the depth-dimension of living consciousness and its possibilities of transformation, the parallel sheds light upon the ultimate task of the phenomenological- transcendental reduction. To argue for this this claim, the paper first explicates the two principal epoch􀀈s that Husserl distinguishes in The Crisis, the epoché of objective science and the epoché of the lifeworld, and then it argues that the parallel only concerns the latter. Second, the paper studies the unity of the lifeworld and our relation to this unity, in order to illuminate the phenomenological task of suspending all belief in the presence of this world. It argues that the epoch􀀈 of the lifeworld cannot proceed stepwise but has to be performed “in one blow”. Finally, the paper turns to William James’ account of religious conversions, as developed in his The Varieties of Religious Experience, to make sense of Husserl’s suggestion that religious conversion offers a more accurate model for the completion of this task than any positive scientific form of critique.