Scheler’s phenomenological reduction

On Max Scheler’s account, the purpose of the phenomenological reduction of an experience is to reveal the a priori or essential contents that are constitutive for that experience. By contrast to Husserl, Scheler does not hold that the reduction reveals the immanent contents of consciousness, but objective and mind-independent sense-structures. In this paper, I aim to give a systematic account of these claims by interpreting the phenomenological reduction as demonstrating the objectivity of knowledge. To do so, I discuss what the objective contents of an experience are, how Scheler proposes to get them into view and what he takes the relation of mind and world to consist in. In doing so, I draw in particular on some of his posthumously published and little discussed ideas on the reduction. While Scheler complemented his method with a metaphysical interpretation, in concluding my discussion, I suggest a more naturalistic way in which to understand the results of the reduction.