Abstract

Husserl's phenomenological reduction is aimed at disclosing, the potentialities of a transcendental ego as absolute ground of any possible knowledge. This absolute ground is impossible to attain in the natural attitude of the naive, non-reduced lifeworld. But the reduction is exposed to a difficulty of principle, since the language of the transcendental ego cannot be other than ordinary language. However, instead of dismissing the validity of the reduction, this problem reveals how much the transcendental ego's alienation in the natural world is part of its transcendental meaning.