Husserl has often stood accused of Eurocentrism given his disquieting coupling of philosophy as universal science with Europe. And yet, however much this accusation has clouded the appeal of transcendental phenomenology, the nature of this charge remains obscure: whether Husserl’s chauvinism is merely a personal opinion punctuating his writing or is instead closely connected to the methods of phenomenology has been left unexplored. This paper offers itself as a corrective, looking to get a clearer picture of how precisely Eurocentrism afflicts transcendental phenomenology. The overarching aim of doing so is to chart the possibilities for the development of a non-Eurocentric, decolonial phenomenological thinking which exploits the enduring appeal of Husserl’s commitment to presuppositionlessness. The first part of the paper considers the relationship between the phenomenological reduction and eidetic variation, showing that, by Husserl’s own lights, phenomenological science seeks to expel all forms of prejudice. Part two, however, shows that the entrance of Eurocentrism into phenomenology is not simply accidental, in two distinct senses. The first, which takes off from Merleau-Ponty’s (implicit) critique of Husserl, argues that Husserl in his late work is insufficiently attentive to the empirical dimension: Eurocentrism thus stems from the overly transcendental emphases of this project and its inability to engage with concrete human diversity. The second draws on Derrida’s (explicit) critique of Husserl, arguing that it is precisely the admission of concrete historico-cultural facts into phenomenology that compromises the universal by identifying it with the particularities of Europe. I thus show that Eurocentrism does indeed insinuate itself in Husserl’s methods—not, however, in a manner that renders transcendental phenomenology irredeemable. Given the opposition between these two insightful criticisms, however, I argue that the challenge for a decolonial vision of phenomenology is formidable.

胡塞尔经常被指责为欧洲中心主义，因为他将哲学作为普世科学与欧洲的结合令人不安。然而，无论这种指责如何使先验现象学的吸引力蒙上阴影，这种指责的性质仍然模糊不清：胡塞尔的沙文主义是否仅仅是他作品中的一种个人观点，或者与现象学方法密切相关，尚未得到探索。这篇论文将自己作为一种修正，试图更清楚地了解欧洲中心主义是如何影响先验现象学的。这样做的首要目标是绘制出一种非欧洲中心的、非殖民主义的现象学思想发展的可能性，这种思想利用了胡塞尔对无预设的承诺的持久吸引力。论文的第一部分考虑了现象学还原与本质变异之间的关系，表明在胡塞尔自己的观点下，现象学试图消除一切形式的偏见。然而，第二部分表明，欧洲中心主义进入现象学不仅仅是偶然的，在两种不同的意义上。第一个，从梅洛-庞蒂对胡塞尔的（隐含的）批评出发，认为胡塞尔在他的后期工作中对经验维度的关注不够：因此，欧洲中心主义源于该项目的过度超验重点及其无法与具体人类的多样性。第二个借鉴了德里达对胡塞尔的（明确的）批评，他认为，正是将具体的历史文化事实纳入现象学，通过将普遍性与欧洲的特殊性等同起来而损害了普遍性。因此，我表明欧洲中心主义确实在胡塞尔的方法中暗示了自己——然而，不是以使先验现象学不可救药的方式。然而，鉴于这两种有见地的批评之间的对立，我认为对现象学的非殖民主义愿景的挑战是巨大的。