A Critique on Pierre Schaeffer’s Phenomenological Approaches: Based on the Acousmatic and Reduced Listening

Aiming at examining Schaefferian phenomenology from the viewpoint of phenomenology proper, and in particular,critically observing how successfully Schaeffer understood the workings of key phenomenology concepts and applied themto his research on sound objects and listening, this paper conducts a short survey on the relationship between natural and phenomenological attitudes as well as the concept and implications of phenomenological reduction understood by phenomenology proper as well as by Schaefferian phenomenology. The survey shows that, while Schaefferian phenomenology rightly—and timely—recognized the acousmatic situation, or more accurately, acousmatic attitude, as the phenomenological attitude under which our listening experience can be investigated phenomenologically, it misunderstoodthe workings of phenomenological reduction and employed only part of it. Consequently, as this essay argues, Schaefferian phenomenology limited the totality of listening phenomena to its part, thus endangering the phenomenological project that it set out to do.