World in Brackets: Phenomenology, Reduction, and the Body

Why do we suspend judgment?

Why does phenomenology begin by placing the world "between brackets"?

And why does the body resist every attempt to set it aside?

The World in Brackets follows the history of one philosophical gesture, the epoche, from ancient Greece to contemporary phenomenology. Moving from the Cyrenaics and skeptics to Descartes, Husserl, Heidegger, Merleau-Ponty, and Marion, Hernán Inverso shows that reduction is not a discarded method of early phenomenology but the living thread that runs through the tradition.

Combining historical scholarship with systematic reflection, this book explores reduction and doubt; the relation between consciousness and the world; the role of corporeality in phenomenology; and givenness and the limits of appearance.

A rigorous and original contribution to one of the central philosophical traditions of the modern world.