Mindfulness as Motivation for Phenomenological Reduction

There is a growing interest among philosophers in the relation between phenomenology and mindfulness. In addition to phenomenological descriptions of mindful experiences, a debate also arises over the utility of mindful training to the practice of phenomenology. In this chapter, I suggest that the practicality of phenomenology is in itself a core theoretical issue, hence the significance of the debate. Since phenomenology is by and large a transcendental discipline, it is obliged to clarify its own methodological ground, namely the practical as well as theoretical conditions of exercising the phenomenological reduction. This direction of inquiry, as I attempt to show, unfolds itself preliminarily in the works of Edmund Husserl. Then his last assistant Eugen Fink gives a systematic shape to the same inquiry through a transcendental theory of motivation. I propose to evaluate the relevance of mindfulness to phenomenology in this theoretical framework. An in-depth inquiry into the motivation for phenomenological reduction, I submit, will help to decide how far mindful training can complement the practice of phenomenology.