The Phenomenological Reduction in Qualitative Research and Philosophy: Bytautas and Husserl

Abstract

The phenomenological and eidetic reductions have long been misunderstood and misused in qualitative research, hindering cumulative and cooperative progress. To restore conceptual clarity and to reframe any possible use of the reductions within qualitative inquiry, this paper advances a three-step remedy. First, because current difficulties stem from proliferating divergent interpretations, I return to Edmund Husserl’s own descriptions to establish a historical and conceptual baseline. I provide an orthodox, succinct, and practical outline of Husserl’s phenomenological and eidetic reductions. Second, I shift from Husserl’s account of the reductions to the uptake of these reductions in qualitative research. I specifically unpack one example, where the reductions are mischaracterized, by critically engaging Marius Bytautas’s recent article in this journal, “What is Reduction in Phenomenology, Really?”. I show that Bytautas describes the reduction in such vague ways that his account can offer no methodological guidance. I also demonstrate that Bytautas presents what he takes to be the outcome of the reduction – essences – in ways that contradict or confuse central phenomenological terms and insights. Third, I situate Bytautas’ difficulties within the broader literature, showing that his problems are not anomalies, but reflect recurring challenges in attempts to operationalize phenomenological reductions for empirical research. Using Bytautas as a case in point, I highlight how these difficulties arise when phenomenological reductions are asked to bear incompatible demands within qualitative inquiry. I conclude by indicating more viable ways phenomenological insights can be taken up in qualitative research without reproducing the analytic breakdown evident in Bytautas’ reconstruction.

The phenomenological reduction is invoked often in qualitative research, yet remains inconsistently defined (Paley, 2016; Williams, 2021). Scholars describe the reduction in divergent and sometimes incompatible ways. This variability produces methodological disunity and blocks cumulative progress. Researchers talk past one another, which prevents the consolidation and extension of methodological insights (Zahavi, 2021).

Marius Bytautas has taken up this difficulty in an article recently published in this journal, entitled, “What is Reduction in Phenomenology, Really? An Attempt to Get to the Essence of the Phenomenon” (2025). In that text, Bytautas positions himself as offering a solution to the “methodological fragmentation” of phenomenological research, promising “a systematic understanding of reduction in phenomenology” (2025, p. 2). His central aim is to provide a usable account of the reduction in phenomenology for qualitative researchers, and – to this end – he frequently draws upon the ideas and terminology of Husserlian phenomenology in order to ground that account in phenomenology’s philosophical origins.

This ambition deserves to be taken seriously. Bytautas’ article is motivated by a genuine and widely felt difficulty in phenomenological qualitative research, namely, the routine invocation of reduction without conceptual clarity or methodological accountability. His paper reflects sustained engagement with methodological sources. And it is animated by a commendable desire to make phenomenological concepts workable for empirical researchers, rather than leaving them as opaque gestures. In this respect, Bytautas’ article is clearly written in good faith, with pedagogical intent, and with a concern for the credibility of phenomenological research as a qualitative approach. The effort to provide researchers with a framework for articulating what they do when they speak of reduction is not only legitimate, but timely. If successful, such a project would represent a significant contribution to the field.

At the same time, this ambition introduces a central difficulty that structures Bytautas’ article as a whole. Bytautas seeks to remain faithful to Husserl’s philosophical account of the reduction, while also treating that account as a methodological resource that can be taken up within empirical qualitative research. This approach presupposes that Husserl’s reduction functions as a transferable procedure, rather than as a philosophically situated operation oriented toward a specific epistemic goal. As the analysis that follows shows, this presupposition generates an account that neither preserves the philosophical role of the reduction nor yields a determinate method for qualitative research.

On the one hand, Bytautas does not arrive at a sufficiently determinate definition of reduction for use in qualitative research. The meaning of “reduction” shifts across the paper, and the characterizations offered never settle into a coherent account capable of guiding empirical practice. As a result, the framework does not resolve the methodological fragmentation it identifies and, in several respects, risks reproducing it. On the other hand, although Husserl’s terminology and authority play a central role in the article, Bytautas’ reconstruction departs in substantive ways from Husserl’s own descriptions of the reductions and their philosophical aims. In this respect, the account neither stabilizes a qualitative method nor preserves continuity with Husserl’s project.

To properly demonstrate the difficulties that arise in Bytautas’ account, this discussion is divided into three moves. First, I present a practical account of Husserl’s phenomenological and eidetic reductions. I provide an orthodox – yet succinct– outline of the central features of Husserl’s two reductions, providing a conceptual and historical baseline. The presentation of Husserl’s framework then serves as the foundation for the second movement, where Bytautas’ reconstruction is examined and shown to become internally unstable and historically inaccurate. In the final movement, I turn to the implications of this analysis beyond the specific case of Bytautas. I show how his article can function as an exemplar, making visible the kinds of difficulties that can arise when Husserl’s phenomenological reductions are taken up as methods in qualitative research. Building on this case, I then discuss how qualitative inquiry can move forward without reproducing these tensions. I close by indicating how phenomenological insights can inform qualitative research in a careful and limited way, providing practical and concrete proposals.

Husserl’s Phenomenological and Eidetic Reductions: A Conceptual Baseline

In this section, I outline Husserl’s reductions, offering a general guide to the foundations of phenomenology for qualitative researchers. To begin, it is important to note that there is not a single reduction for Husserl. While Husserl describes different reductions across his works, the phenomenological reduction is generally understood as composed of two interrelated steps: (1) the epoché and (2) the transcendental reduction (Husserl, 1976b, pp. 68–69/1982, p. 66. Citation convention: When referencing Husserl, I provide the German edition first, followed by the English translation where available, separated by a slash. This citation style departs from APA for precision). Alongside these, Husserl also distinguishes a critical third step, the eidetic reduction. To be certain, all three of these serve as preparation for phenomenology. It is only once one has completed these three steps that they can first begin to execute philosophical phenomenology. In what follows, I outline Husserl’s account of these three steps in straightforward terms.

The Epoché

The Epoché as Bracketing

Husserl introduces the epoché as a way of removing certain obstacles to phenomenology. He saw that in everyday life I accept a range of beliefs and assumptions about the world, which prevent me from performing phenomenology (Sokolowski, 2000, pp. 42–46). These beliefs and assumptions prejudice me and color my world in such a way that I cannot rightly interpret how objects give themselves to me. Husserl designed the epoché as a methodological step to suspend these preconceptions, thereby clearing the ground for phenomenology to proceed. In what follows, I explain the epoché in simple terms, focusing on its basic structure and purpose.

The epoché can be difficult to understand, because Husserl conceived it as one kind of “bracketing,” a term already muddled in the qualitative scholarship. It is therefore important to be clear about what bracketing actually means. For Husserl, bracketing is not to deny, doubt, or refute a belief (Husserl, 1956, p. 457; Husserl, 1959, p. 465; Husserl, 1991a, pp. 49–50/1960, pp. 7–9). Instead, when I bracket, I take up a new perspective. From this perspective, I place the belief “on pause”. I do not treat it as true, and I do not treat it as false. I simply set considerations about its truth-value aside (Husserl, 1976a, p. 153/1970, p. 150; Moran & Cohen, 2012, pp. 11, 147–148). For example, I certainly believe that the earth revolves around the sun. Yet, when I bracket this belief, I adopt a new perspective in which I no longer affirm or deny it. I hold it in suspension. I put my acceptance of the truth of this fact “on pause”.

To begin phenomenology, however, one cannot perform just any bracketing. Rather, a particular kind of bracketing is necessary, namely, the epoché. To clarify the kind of bracketing that the epoché requires, I outline two “movements” of the epoché, although both are part of one method.

Bracketing All Prior Beliefs

First, I discuss what I term the “wholesale” bracketing of the epoché. Husserl was motivated to execute such wholesale bracketing, because he believed that much of what we ordinarily accept as true is taken over uncritically – through habit, tradition, or established ways of thinking. Husserl’s response to this situation was to insist on a genuine beginning for phenomenology, one that does not proceed by refining existing commitments, but by setting them aside. To begin in this way, Husserl devised the wholesale bracketing of the epoché, which suspends all prior beliefs, facts, and sciences (Husserl, 1991a, p. 66/1960, pp. 13–14; Ströker, 1997; Smith, 2003, pp. 17–18, 27). The wholesale bracketing therefore requires the suspension of everything previously taken as true, so that phenomenological analysis does not rely on inherited assumptions, but proceeds without presupposition (Attig, 1980; Bernet et al., 1993, pp. 67–69; Walsh, 1988, pp. 214–216). All claims are included in this suspension, regardless of discipline, along with the theoretical frameworks that support them (Husserl, 1956, p. 457; Husserl, 1959, p. 465; Husserl, 1989, p. 152; Husserl, 1991b, pp. 49–50/1960, pp. 7–9). To demonstrate the radicalness of the epoché, even basic mathematical truths – such as 2+2=4 – need to be suspended.

Bracketing the Natural Attitude: Suspending the Assumption of Ready-Made Meanings

While the epoché requires suspending all prior beliefs, it also has a more direct and specific target. The second movement of the epoché (contained within the first) is the bracketing of what Husserl calls the “natural attitude” (Husserl, 1976a, p. 148, 151, 153/1970, p. 145, 148, 150; Husserl, 1976b, pp. 60–61/1982, pp. 56–57). In what follows, I set out to clarify the natural attitude, and the bracketing of it.

The natural attitude is difficult to understand, precisely because it is so deeply ingrained in our everyday way of relating to the world (Husserl, 1968, pp. 143–144; Husserl, 1980, pp. 218–228, 276–287). Specifically, the natural attitude is an enduring background belief about how objects appear to me. It is not only about the objects themselves, but about how I take or understand their appearance.

When Husserl speaks of the natural attitude, he is talking about how we grasp the meaning of objects (what he calls the “noematic sense”; Husserl, 1976b, pp. 206–210/1982, pp. 217–221; Drummond, 2015. Technical note: I focus my analysis on meaning, rather than being as such, even though – for Husserl – the epoché ultimately targets a specific meaning, namely the taken-for-granted meaning of being. See Byrne, 2020, 2022). By “meaning,” Husserl does not mean a thought I invent or an idea I add onto the object. Rather, he means the way the object presents itself to me as I encounter it. When I look – for example – at my red coffee cup, its meaning is found in the way it shows itself to me. I see its bright red color standing out on the table, its curved handle extending to the side, and its cylindrical shape that holds liquid. The meaning of the cup is not something hidden behind these features. The meaning of the cup simply is the way the cup is present to me here and now – through the characteristics that show themselves in experience.

In the natural attitude, I take the meanings of objects as ready-made, existing entirely on their own and apart from me. The cup’s redness, size, and shape are assumed to be already there – complete and finished – whether or not I ever notice them. When I am in the natural attitude, even if I am not looking at the cup, I still believe that the cup’s meaning is just waiting there – ready-made for someone else to see. From this standpoint, I play no role in shaping meaning. I only passively receive meaning, as if objects themselves deliver their meanings already packaged and complete (Husserl, 1976b, pp. 58–60/1982, pp. 53–55; Sokolowski, 2000, pp. 44–46). Important to note is that, when placed in philosophical terms, this implicit belief of the natural attitude takes a form that is similar to what philosophers describe as the metaphysical position of realism.

Husserl’s epoché is the bracketing of this everyday belief in ready-made meanings. Instead of taking for granted that the world gives me its objects with their meanings already fixed, I am asked to set this assumption aside (Husserl, 1959, pp. 457, 465; Husserl, 1976b, pp. 121–122/1982, pp. 149–150; Moran, 2012, p. 111; Schmitt, 1959, pp. 239–240). Bracketing the natural attitude does not mean denying that the world exists or doubting the things around me. It means putting “on pause” the belief that their meanings are already complete and independent of me.

In sum, the epoché has two movements. At its broadest, my wholesale bracketing suspends all prior beliefs, facts, and sciences so that phenomenology can begin from a cleared ground. Within this wholesale suspension, the epoché more specifically withholds the natural attitude – the ingrained assumption that objects come to me with their meanings already prefabricated.

The Transcendental Reduction

Accepting the Transcendental-Phenomenological Attitude

The suspensions of the epoché mark a negative movement. Yet, to enter into phenomenology, one does not need to simply bracket their beliefs, but instead accept a new way of thinking. This new way of believing is a replacement for the natural attitude. While the epoché asked us to bracket the natural attitude, the next step of the phenomenological reduction – the transcendental reduction – requires adopting a different way to think about the meaning of objects. Specifically, via the transcendental reduction, I accept that the meaning of objects depends on conscious activity, namely my apprehension or interpretation (Auffassung) of objects. By performing the transcendental reduction, I see that there are no meanings that exist on their own, waiting to be discovered. Instead, I recognize that meaning emerges only insofar as an object is taken up and disclosed through someone’s consciousness (Husserl, 1956, pp. 324–327; Husserl, 2003, pp. 78–79, 111; Hobbs, 2019, pp. 156–159). While the natural attitude affirms that the meaning of objects are passively received, the transcendental reduction asks me to accept that consciousness is active in its meaning-making. The meaning of any object is therefore always the meaning of that object for someone. To accept this is to recognize that the sense and significance of the world are made manifest through the ongoing interplay between conscious subjectivity and the world itself (Bernet et al., 1993, p. 74; Husserl, 1959, p. 505; Husserl, 1973a, p. 480; Husserl, 1973b, p. 373; Zahavi, 2008).

This new belief, that the meanings of objects depend upon my active meaning-making, is what Husserl calls the phenomenological attitude, more technically the transcendental-phenomenological attitude or transcendental idealism (Husserl, 2003, pp. 151–160; Philipse, 1995, pp. 251–254). When this shift is expressed in philosophical terms, performing the transcendental reduction involves a change in metaphysical views. The broadly realist orientation implicit in the natural attitude is replaced, through the transcendental reduction, by the metaphysical transcendental idealism of the phenomenological attitude. This change in metaphysical outlook marks the central aim of Husserl’s phenomenological reduction as a whole.

The Transcendental Reduction Delimits the Field of Inquiry

Up to this point, I have explained the transcendental reduction as a shift towards the transcendental-phenomenological attitude. But another question still needs to be answered: why does Husserl call this move a reduction? Put simply, when Husserl uses the word reduction, Husserl is limiting, narrowing, or even just specifying what phenomenology will investigate. That is, he is “reducing” the scope of investigation. Once the meaning-making relationship between consciousness and the world is accepted, Husserl’s transcendental reduction is the “reducing” of phenomenology to studying this meaning-making relationship (Husserl, 1976a, pp. 154–155/1970, pp. 151–152; Bernet et al., 1993, pp. 89–90; Luft, 2004, pp. 221–224). When I phenomenologize, I examine how objects become disclosed as meaningful via my consciousness of them.

What must be emphasized is that this does not mean that the phenomenologist focuses only on the subject-side of this relationship. Phenomenology is never interested in focusing on only one side of the meaning-making relationship. Instead, to execute phenomenology is to study the meaning-making of the subject, the object that is given as meaningful, and the relationship between these two (Welton, 2000, pp. 221–230, 331–340; Zahavi, 1996).

The Eidetic Reduction

The phenomenological reduction – comprised of the epoché and the transcendental reduction – is critical, but still not enough to begin phenomenological philosophy. A further step is required before one can phenomenologize properly, namely, the eidetic reduction.

The Eidetic Reduction Further Delimits the Field of Inquiry

Like the transcendental reduction, the eidetic reduction also narrows the scope of study. This further narrowing is necessary, because if phenomenology tried to describe every single experience and object, it would quickly become unworkable and unphilosophical (Husserl, 1991a, pp. 67–68/1960, p. 29: Bernet et al., 1993, pp. 77–78). If phenomenology set out to record all my experiences – first, my awareness of the computer, then the coffee cup, then the table, the window, the sounds outside, and so on – it would look more like keeping a diary or writing a stream-of-consciousness narrative than doing philosophy. Such a catalog would have no clear focus.

Instead of cataloging all different experiences and objects, the eidetic reduction limits the scope of phenomenology to identifying and clarifying the structures of experience and objects. More specifically, philosophical phenomenologists look to identify the essential structures of experiences and objects (Husserl, 1991b, pp. 97–98/1989, pp. 62–64). To state this in a far too simple manner, these are the structures that are necessary and sufficient for a particular kind of experience or object to be that kind of experience or object. In other words, phenomenologists look for the structures that are necessary and sufficient for a given type of experience or object to be what it is (Husserl, 1991a, p. 88/1960, p. 51; Husserl, 1991b, pp. 97–98/1989, pp. 62–64). The eidetic reduction is simply the decision to identify (and intuit) these essential structures (Depraz, 1999, pp. 100–102; Sokolowski, 2000, p. 184).

Eidetic Variation, Essence, and Instantiation

To uncover these essential structures, Husserl introduces a method he calls eidetic variation or – synonymously – imaginative variation. The idea is simple: I take a particular example of an object or experience and, in imagination (Plotka, 2020), begin altering its features. I change as many traits as I can while keeping track of what makes the object remain recognizably the same kind of object. Through this process, I begin to see which features are essential and which are accidental (Husserl, 1939, pp. 410–420/1975, pp. 340–348; Majolino, 2016).

For example, suppose I want to investigate the essential structure of a chair – which Husserl calls the essence of a chair. I start with one chair in front of me. In imagination, I vary its traits: its color from red to blue, its material from wood to plastic, its size from large to small, its style from modern to antique. All of these changes can occur while the object still counts as a chair. But if I remove its capacity to support sitting or take away any structure that allows it to function as something to sit on, then it is no longer a chair. This shows me that the capacity for sitting is an essential trait, while the particular color, material, and style are not essential traits.

When I complete this process, what I arrive at is what Husserl calls the essence of a chair. Importantly, the essence is not the same as the individual phenomenon in front of me. The particular wooden chair at my desk is not its essence. Nor is the essence just the sum of its visible traits. Instead, the essence is the general structure revealed through variation – what must remain if the object is to count as a chair at all. In this way, the essence is not a private image in my head, but a universal and general idea (technically, an ideality) (Husserl, 1939, p. 421/1975, pp. 348–349; De Santis, 2021). Any chair, no matter its specific form, must in some way fulfill this essential condition.

The Reductions as the Entryway to Phenomenology

The above analysis has clarified Husserl’s understanding of the phenomenological and eidetic reductions. Through the epoché, prior assumptions are suspended, including the natural attitude that treats meanings as ready-made. Through the transcendental reduction, meaning is understood as arising through the relation between consciousness and world. Phenomenology is thereby restricted to investigating this meaning-constituting relation between subject and object. When articulated in philosophical terms, this restriction is a shift in metaphysical orientation, in which the broadly realist presuppositions of the natural attitude are replaced by the transcendental idealism that defines the phenomenological attitude – and phenomenology as a whole. The eidetic reduction further specifies this task by directing attention to the essential structures of experiences and objects. Taken together, these reductions do not mark the end point of phenomenological analysis, but only its entryway.

Bytautas’ Reduction in Phenomenology

Having outlined Husserl’s account of the phenomenological and eidetic reductions, I now turn to the reconstruction proposed by Marius Bytautas. In his article, Bytautas aims to clarify what reduction means in phenomenology and to articulate an account that can be taken up within qualitative research. He draws extensively on Husserl’s terminology and positions his analysis as a response to ongoing methodological uncertainty in phenomenological qualitative work. In this section, I examine how Bytautas characterizes reduction in phenomenology and how this account functions within his proposed qualitative framework.

To begin, I first highlight a point of agreement. Specifically, at one place in his text, Bytautas describes reduction as “a step that allows explaining the phenomenon in its necessary and sufficient qualities” (2025, p. 3), which Bytautas understands as the essence. This statement broadly accords with Husserl’s view, as – for Husserl – the end goal of the reductions and analysis is the identification (and the intuition) of the essences of experiences and objects. Indeed, Bytautas states that the reduction, “is the active part of inquiry that the researcher goes through to arrive at the essence of a phenomenon” (2025, p. 4).

This in mind, how does Bytautas define the “active part of inquiry”? What, for him, does the researcher actually do to carry out the reduction? His answer is as simple as it is startling: the reduction is everything that a qualitative researcher does when executing their phenomenological study. For Bytautas, the literature review is the reduction, the interview is the reduction, the analysis is the reduction, and the writing is the reduction. Every stage of qualitative phenomenological research is, for Bytautas, nothing but reduction. Bytautas writes,

Reduction is so central to phenomenological research that if someone were to ask a researcher what they were doing, they could easily reply with “I am reducing”. In the remaining part of this section, I will argue that this is not limited to the stage of data analysis. The same answer could be given at the literature review stage, the interview stage, and even the writing up stage. … This is because the analysis in phenomenological research is the reduction itself (2025, p. 4).

This expansive redefinition is reinforced in what seems to be the thesis statement of Bytautas’ article. On the final page, he asks:

But what is reduction, really? As promised in the title of this article, I have attempted to get to the essence of the phenomenon of reduction. Ironically, the title itself can be seen as answering to its own question – reduction in phenomenology (not to be confused with epoché) is, in fact, an attempt to get to the essence of the phenomenon, employing many diverse, some clear and some vague strategies or practices (2025, p. 8).

Bytautas’ remarks – here at the end of his paper – present the reduction in broad and indeterminate terms, demonstrating that his definition never stabilizes into anything solid or usable. What seems intended as a clarifying statement instead underscores the vagueness of the account, leaving the concept without coherence and offering no clear guidance for research practice.

Bytautas’ Treatment of Husserl’s Reductions

Having pointed out that Bytautas’ general account of “reduction” is methodologically indeterminate, I now turn to his engagement with Husserl. Bytautas frequently presents his reduction as grounded in, or equivalent to, Husserl’s reductions, while – at the same time – treating the phenomenological reduction as a method for qualitative research practice. In what follows, I show step by step how Bytautas’ attempt to treat Husserl’s reductions as the reduction operative in qualitative phenomenological research places unsustainable strain on his analysis. Specifically, I examine, Bytautas’ treatment of the epoché, the transcendental reduction, and the eidetic reduction. I show that – when discussing each of these three methods – Bytautas presents conclusions that directly conflict with Husserl’s account. And that he articulates a qualitative methodology that offers no concrete direction for how research should be conducted.

Bytautas’ Epoché

Beginning with the first step of the phenomenological reduction, Bytautas’ classifies the epoché as one way to execute “reduction”, that is, one way to analyze a phenomena or experience to determine its essence. He writes that he, “consider[s] epoché to be a move (or a technique) of reduction in phenomenology” (2025, p. 4). On this point, Bytautas is certainly justified. Husserl himself occasionally describes the epoché as a reduction, though more often he treats it as a step within the broader phenomenological reduction (as necessary preparation for the transcendental reduction).

Yet, when Bytautas turns to a more detailed account of the epoché, his description quickly departs from Husserl’s understanding of this method. He treats the epoché primarily as a practice of identifying and setting aside preconceptions, so that the researcher can attend more directly to participants’ descriptions of experience. He writes that the epoché “brings preunderstandings and prejudices to the surface” (2025, p. 4), and later states that, “Following the acknowledgment of preunderstandings … the researcher should set them aside (in other words: put them in brackets or apply epoché)” (2025, p. 5).

Although this characterization of the epoché is common in the qualitative literature (Creely, 2018, p. 114; Moustakas, 1994, p. 91; van Manen, 2014, pp. 91–92), it faces two serious problems. On the one hand, this definition of the epoché bears little resemblance to Husserl’s epoché (Byrne, 2025a, 2026, In press; Zahavi, 2021). As stated above, for Husserl, the epoché is not a matter of identifying and bracketing particular prejudices, but a radical suspension of all presuppositions – including and especially the natural attitude. On the other hand, the demand that researchers set aside their biases is not a specialized procedure, but a basic expectation of any empirical study. Naming this ordinary requirement “epoché” does not add substance, but rather lends the appearance of technical depth to what always is (or at least should be) standard practice.

Finally, Bytautas extends this definition of the epoché by claiming that it can be executed as a reduction at every stage of research. He explicitly identifies the literature review, the researcher’s preparation for interviews, the interviews themselves, and the process of writing as occasions for carrying out the epoché (as a kind of reduction) – that is, for eliminating biases from each respective stage of study (2025, p. 5).

Bytautas’ Transcendental Reduction

Moving now to the second step of the phenomenological reduction, Bytautas simply never acknowledges the transcendental reduction. Although his paper claims to provide a systematic account of “the” reduction in phenomenology, the transcendental reduction – which for Husserl is the decisive step that allows for entering into the phenomenological attitude – is never addressed directly. There is no sustained explanation of what the transcendental reduction entails, nor any indication that Bytautas recognizes its central role in the phenomenological project. This omission is significant given Bytautas’ aim to anchor his account of reduction in phenomenological philosophy.

Because Bytautas does not engage with the transcendental reduction, he can characterize phenomenology in ways that contradict the central results of the transcendental reduction. For example, Bytautas concludes,

However, rather than evaluating the truth or error of sense perception, phenomenologists focus on how perception is structured in lived experience. It is the subject that is important, not the object. Therefore, for a phenomenologist, a phenomenon is not the object itself, but the direct and pre-conceptual experience of that object. In the words of Heidegger, the phenomenon only comes into being when there is a subject experiencing it (2025, 4).

Bytautas’ framing here portrays phenomenology as a kind of subjectivism, as if its sole concern were the subject’s private experience. This characterization becomes possible precisely because the transcendental reduction is absent from the account. For Husserl, the transcendental reduction does not isolate the subject, but discloses the relationship of subject and object, showing how meaning arises only between them. To claim that “the subject is important, not the object” is to overlook the core insight of the transcendental reduction.

Bytautas’ Eidetic Reduction and Eidetic Variation

Finally, the picture shifts when we turn from the phenomenological reduction to the eidetic reduction. Indeed, Bytautas’ account of the reduction appears to more closely align with Husserl’s theory of the eidetic reduction. In partial agreement with Husserl, Bytautas understands the ultimate goal of phenomenology – and thus the process and outcome of his own version of reduction – to be the identification of essences. Similar to how Husserl employs the eidetic reduction to focus phenomenological inquiry on the intuition of essential structures of experiences and objects, Bytautas conceives of his reduction as an investigation that culminates in the discovery of the essence of a phenomenon.

Naturally, there are fundamental differences between these two reductions. Bytautas’ reduction encompasses all stages of qualitative investigation, whereas – for Husserl – the eidetic reduction names a specific methodological decision to direct analysis toward essences.

Yet, a more interesting point of divergence emerges when we turn to how essences are actually to be discovered. As outlined above, for Husserl, the identification of essences can occur via eidetic or imaginative variation – through which the invariant structures of experience are disclosed. Bytautas himself names this method as Husserl’s way of arriving at essences and even summarizes it in broadly accurate terms, writing, “Simply put, it is the imaginative alteration of certain qualities of a phenomenon in order to arrive at those that are necessary and sufficient” (2025, p. 5). At this level, then, the account remains recognizably Husserlian.

When Bytautas turns to examples, however, his account becomes problematic. He primarily illustrates his understanding of imaginative variation by appealing to a recent work by Matikainen (2024). Bytautas presents Matikainen’s study – which examines the transformative way of becoming a teacher, as a particularly instructive example of imaginative variation. Bytautas cites Matikainen as writing:

First, for there to be transformative learning there had to be something that transforms. I defined that transformative way of becoming a teacher transforms especially student teachers’ meaning systems related to learning, teaching, and education. Secondly, transformative way of becoming a teacher was essentially a process. I deduced that there had to be a starting point to the process that included the student teachers’ meaning systems as they were before the transformation ([Matikainen] p. 385) (Bytautas, 2025, p. 5).

This is not imaginative variation in Husserl’s sense, nor does it match the version Bytautas outlines. Instead of systematically varying features in imagination to identify what is essential, Matikainen merely infers what must be present in a process of transformation. In treating this inferential move as an instance of imaginative variation, the analysis shifts away from Husserl’s method while continuing to rely on its terminology. As a result, the procedure being endorsed becomes a form of generalized description under a phenomenological name. Bytautas’ attempt to preserve philosophical grounding while accommodating qualitative practice thus results in a method that satisfies neither demand.

Assessing Bytautas’ Use of Husserl’s Reductions

Taken together, Bytautas’ treatments of the phenomenological and eidetic reductions do not cohere with Husserl’s account of these methods. The epoché is recast from Husserl’s suspension of presuppositions into a general call to reduce bias. The absence of any sustained engagement with the transcendental reduction leaves the orientation and scope of phenomenological inquiry unclear. The eidetic reduction likewise departs from Husserl’s method once imaginative variation is treated as a form of inferential or speculative reasoning, rather than as a disciplined means of identifying necessary and sufficient structures. Across these discussions, the criteria governing what counts as a reduction shift, yielding an account that cannot be reconciled with Husserl’s framework and whose terminology remains unstable.

When this reading of Husserl is placed alongside Bytautas’ own account of reduction, the connection becomes apparent. Because the philosophical basis of the reductions is inconsistently specified, the account of reduction developed in the article also fails to stabilize. Variations in how the epoché, the transcendental reduction, and imaginative variation are understood carry through the analysis, with the result that the concept Bytautas calls “reduction” never settles into a determinate meaning.

Bytautas’ Essence and Phenomenon

The preceding discussion examined how Bytautas understands the process of reduction and showed that his descriptions collapse into vagueness or misapplication. Yet, the difficulties identified in Bytautas’ account of reduction do not remain confined to this level of analysis. These problems carry over directly into how he understands and articulates a key concept of his analysis, namely, “essence”. For Bytautas, essence is the organizing aim of his reconstruction and method. He treats qualitative phenomenological analysis – which he equates with reduction – as a route to essences (Bytautas frequently states that reduction is both the process and the result, though this claim remains difficult to interpret). To see how the difficulties identified in Bytatuas’ account of reduction fully carry through his theory, I now turn to what he means by essence – and, relatedly, by phenomenon.

Bytautas’ Phenomenon and Essence

To begin to outline Bytautas’ definition of essence, I start with his account of the term “phenomenon”. Bytautas treats phenomenon and essence as closely related, at times even interchangeable. For this reason, his understanding of phenomenon provides the most direct route to his understanding of essence.

Bytautas introduces his account of the phenomena by promising to “illuminate the distinction between phenomenon and experience” (2025, p. 3). He presents this distinction as foundational for his argument. He then writes, “An experience is always more than a phenomenon, but it also never encompasses the phenomenon in full” (2025, p. 4) He further clarifies this distinction by stating, “As Husserl (1976) explained, consciousness never has complete access to a phenomenon (the experience is partial), but somehow it perceives the phenomenon in full” (2025, p. 3).

These claims reflect a serious terminological confusion. In phenomenology, the phenomenon is not the object itself, but the object as it appears (Drummond, 2015; Zahavi, 2004, 2008). When I look at a table, what is given is the table as it appears from this perspective. I take it as a whole, yet what actually shows itself now is only the top surface. This appearance is the phenomenon. The object, by contrast, is the table itself, which is never given all at once. Moreover, experience refers to the subject’s intentional act or stream in which such appearances are given (Moran & Cohen, 2012). In Bytautas’ usage, phenomenon is made to do the work of object, and experience is made to do the work of phenomenon. This reversal collapses the basic distinctions his account requires.

Put plainly then, Bytautas has mistaken the phenomena of phenomenology.

This instability becomes explicit elsewhere in the paper. For example, Bytautas writes, “Therefore, for a phenomenologist, a phenomenon is not the object itself, but the direct and pre-conceptual experience of that object” (2025, p. 4). This statement contradicts his earlier characterization, where he described the phenomenon as the object itself and experience as the way the object is given. Here, Bytautas instead collapses phenomenon into the subject’s experience of the object (“a phenomena is … pre-conceptual experience”). It is not just that Bytautas’ terminology is incorrect, it is that it is unstable from one page to the next.

The problem deepens when Bytautas connects phenomenon to essence. On the one hand, Bytautas writes, “the essence is equal to the phenomenon itself” (2025, p. 3). On the other hand, he states, “This unity is observed between the phenomenon, which is the whole, and its essence, which is the parts” (2025, p. 3). Yet, these claims are incompatible. Either the essence is identical with the phenomenon, or it is unified with its parts, but it cannot be both. Equivalence is distinct from unity. More importantly, neither claim corresponds to Husserl’s position. For Husserl, essence is an ideal structure disclosed through imaginative or eidetic variation.

Themes and Essences

A more serious difficulty arises in how Bytautas understands the relation between essences and themes in qualitative research. Drawing on Žydžiūnaitė’s study on non-art teacher creativity (2022), Bytautas affirms that the study’s eighteen themes together constitute the essence, writing that “there is a unity between the 18 themes (the essence) and the phenomenon of non-art teacher creativity” (2025, pp. 3–4). This claim rests on a mistaken conflation of themes and essences.

In qualitative research, themes identify patterns in what participants report. Themes capture what commonly appears across interviews or observations. An essence, by contrast, does not describe what often appears. An essence specifies what must be present for something to count as that kind of object or experience at all.

A simple example helps clarify this distinction between themes and essences. Suppose a qualitative study of teaching aims to understand teachers’ experiences. Through an analysis of interview data, the researchers identify recurrent themes in teachers’ accounts, such as classroom creativity, professional identity, and institutional constraint. These themes identify patterns that frequently appear in participants’ accounts. Yet, these themes do not address the essence of being a teacher. The essence concerns which features are required for someone to count as a teacher at all. A teacher could – for example – lack classroom creativity or institutional constraint and still be a teacher. Because these features can vary without altering the kind of phenomenon under investigation, they are thematic characteristics, rather than essential.

By contrast, eidetic analysis asks a different question. Through imaginative variation, I seek to determine which features can be removed or altered while the phenomenon remains what it is, and which characteristics cannot be removed without the phenomenon becoming something else. It is those features that cannot be removed without changing the kind of phenomenon that are essential. Via this imaginative variation then, I can realize that the essence of being a teacher is actually – and simply – that one engages in the activity of teaching others. In contrast, I see that the essence is not the particular ways in which teaching is stylistically enacted or institutionally shaped. The activity of teaching alone is necessary and sufficient for someone to count as a teacher, and thus constitutes the essence of being a teacher.

Accordingly, when Bytautas treats a set of recurring themes as the essence itself, he collapses the distinction between them. What is frequent is treated as what is necessary. As a result, researchers are given no criterion for distinguishing between patterns in data and essential structures – and the eidetic task loses any clear methodological meaning.

This confusion becomes especially clear in a later passage, where Bytautas attempts to clarify what he means by essence as “necessary and sufficient qualities”. The passage is worth quoting at length, since it shows how the slippage between the essential and the thematic carries concrete and practical consequences for his account. He writes:

The reader may recall that in a number of places in this article I have referred to the essence as ‘the necessary and sufficient qualities of a phenomenon’. But what if a person, who has experienced a phenomenon, was not able to experience all the necessary qualities of it? … This is precisely where we see a clear distinction between an experience and a phenomenon. A phenomenon is experienced by subjects, and it is subjects that allow for the very existence of a phenomenon, but the phenomenon exists separately from the subjects.

What this passage reveals is not a minor terminological slip, but a basic failure to grasp what necessity means. If a feature is necessary, then the phenomenon cannot occur without it. It therefore bears stating explicitly: what is necessary cannot be unnecessary. By claiming that a phenomenon can be experienced while lacking some of its necessary features, Bytautas effectively treats necessity as if it were a recurring theme, rather than a condition of the phenomenon itself. In doing so, he erases the distinction between what must be present and what merely tends to appear.

Assessing Bytautas’ Phenomenon and Essence

Taken together, these confusions about phenomenon and essence render Bytautas’ account untenable. His terminology shifts – at times treating phenomenon as object, at times as appearance, and at times as experience – which removes any stable basis for analysis. That instability then carries into the concept of essence, which alternates between being identified with the phenomenon, treated as a mere collection of parts, or reduced to a list of themes. Because neither term stabilizes, neither can perform a clear methodological role. As a result, the framework fails to provide qualitative researchers with usable or actionable guidance.

Conclusion

Bytautas as Exemplar

To conclude, this analysis has shown that Bytautas’ accounts of reduction and essence lack conceptual clarity and internal coherence. His reconstruction does not accurately represent Husserl’s account of the phenomenological reductions. And his discussion does not yield a determinate framework that qualitative researchers could reliably apply in practice.

These difficulties, however, should not be understood as idiosyncratic to Bytautas’ article. Rather, his analysis brings into focus a problem that has recurred across phenomenological qualitative research more broadly. Again and again, researchers have attempted to remain faithful to philosophical accounts of phenomenological methods while simultaneously adapting those accounts for empirical research practice. The result has often been conceptual overload rather than clarification (Byrne, 2026, In Press; Williams, 2021; Zahavi, 2021, p. 268). In this respect, Bytautas’ contribution does not stand apart so much as it exemplifies tendencies that have shaped qualitative phenomenological research more broadly. What makes his article notable, then, is less the presence of distinctive errors and more the way it crystallizes challenges that are already widespread in the field.

Difficulties With Importing Husserl’s Methods

Importantly, the persistence of these difficulties does not indicate a lack of care or philosophical seriousness on the part of qualitative researchers. Instead, they point to the practical difficulty of adapting Husserl’s phenomenological reductions for qualitative research. Each component of Husserl’s framework – the epoché, the transcendental reduction, and the eidetic reduction – poses distinct challenges when treated as part of a qualitative research process. These challenges do not arise from isolated misreadings, but from the effort to make philosophical operations do methodological work within an empirical context (Byrne, 2025a, 2025b).

Concerning the epoché, a basic difficulty emerges immediately. Qualitative research is not ordinarily oriented toward suspending all presuppositions in the radical sense Husserl describes – including commitments to basic logical, mathematical, or ontological claims. Instead, qualitative inquiry typically proceeds by holding many such commitments fixed while attempting to remain open to participants’ descriptions. As a result, adapting the epoché for qualitative research already requires substantial reinterpretation, rather than straightforward methodological uptake.

Concerning the transcendental reduction, qualitative research is not ordinarily oriented toward adopting a transcendental standpoint or toward re-specifying meaning as dependent upon constituting consciousness. Instead, qualitative inquiry typically presupposes the validity of participants’ experiential claims and treats meaning as something to be interpreted. Performing the transcendental reduction, however, requires a shift in metaphysical orientation, from the broadly realist assumptions of the natural attitude to the transcendental idealism of the phenomenological attitude. This commitment is rarely explicit in qualitative research and typically falls outside the aims of empirical inquiry.

Moreover, the eidetic reduction does not operate on interview material, experiential reports, or patterns across cases, but requires a shift away from empirical inquiry toward the investigation of ideal structures through imaginative variation. Introducing the eidetic reduction into qualitative research therefore demands extensive reworking. It requires altering what counts as data, how analysis proceeds, and what outcomes are taken to be legitimate.

Once the eidetic reduction is adapted to fit empirical research, essences can no longer function as outcomes of a distinct philosophical operation. Instead, they are pulled into the logic of qualitative analysis and treated as products of data comparison, thematic convergence, or analytic synthesis. What counts as an essence is therefore shaped by practical constraints, rather than by clear catholic criteria.

These difficulties together show that Husserl’s phenomenological reductions are not easily incorporated into qualitative research as methodological procedures. Each reduction places demands on inquiry – epistemic, metaphysical, and analytic – that extend beyond what empirical research is typically designed to accommodate. As the case of Bytautas makes clear, attempts to adapt these reductions as methods often generate further instability rather than clarity.

A More Viable Orientation for Qualitative Research

Taken together, these findings clarify what is at stake in Bytautas’ project. His difficulties do arise because he attempts to have Husserl’s phenomenological reductions function in two roles at once: as operations grounded in Husserl’s transcendental project and as usable methodological procedures for qualitative research. It is this dual demand that structures his reconstruction and generates the instabilities traced throughout the paper. Bytautas thus serves as a clear case of what happens when philosophical fidelity and methodological usability are pursued simultaneously, rather than distinguished.

With the difficulty clarified through Bytautas’ case, the question becomes how phenomenology can be engaged in qualitative research without reproducing the tensions identified in this paper. I tentatively suggest that there is no single settled conclusion on this point. Rather, different ways of engaging phenomenology appear to involve different risks and to require different forms of care.

One option is to employ phenomenological methods in an explicitly qualified way. On this approach, researchers draw selectively on phenomenological methods while clearly delimiting their scope. This requires specifying what aspects of phenomenological methods are being taken up, how they are justified within an empirical context, and what claims they can support. When pursued carefully, such work can yield valuable descriptive analyses of lived experience without presuming to enact Husserl’s reductions in a strict philosophical sense. Studies such as Abuzied et al. (2024), Depraz (2021), and Valenzuela-Moguillansky and Vásquez-Rosati (2019) already clearly illustrate how phenomenological methods can be used productively in qualitative research (See also Byrne et al., 2025a, 2025b).

A second option is to shift the point of engagement away from methods and toward phenomenological concepts. Rather than attempting to replicate Husserl’s reductions as procedures, this approach uses phenomenological distinctions to guide research design, analytic focus, and interpretation. By front-loading conceptual commitments rather than methodological operations, researchers can draw on phenomenology without adopting a transcendental standpoint or performing philosophical reductions. Approaches such as phenomenologically grounded qualitative research (Køster & Fernandez, 2023). Articulate this strategy explicitly, emphasizing conceptual clarity over methodological replication, and have been applied in recent qualitative studies to guide analysis without importing Husserl’s reductions as methods (Grīnfelde, 2023; Køster, 2023).

Either strategy can, in principle, support meaningful qualitative research. When pursued with clear limits and explicit commitments, these approaches can make productive use of phenomenological insights without overextending Husserl’s reductions. The case of Bytautas shows what is at stake when those limits are not articulated. Without such care, phenomenological methods expand until their criteria disappear and the analysis loses any stable sense of what counts as reduction, essence, or phenomenological result. The approaches outlined here offer a way to avoid that outcome, not by abandoning phenomenology, but by ensuring that it continues to do determinate analytic work, rather than unraveling under incompatible demands.