The Phenomenological Method of Eidetic Intuition and Its Clarification as Eidetic Variation

This chapter investigates phenomenology’s “eidetic” methodology, which, when applied to the essential structures of consciousness, opposes an empirical psychology that must rest on empirical generalizations. It clarifies the sense in which eidetic intuition is a form of cognition and how it yields knowledge of a priori (necessary and universal) structures without falling into a kind of Platonism that hypostasizes what is essential to a type. It also explores the intimate connection between “free phantasy” or imaginative variation and the resultant eidetic intuition. In concluding, it discusses a series of potential difficulties with the notions of eidetic variation and intuition.