ON TIME - NEW CONTRIBUTIONS TO THE HUSSERLIAN PHENOMENOLOGY OF TIME
PHAENOMENOLOGICA SERIES FOUNDED BY H.L. VAN BREDA AND PUBLISHED UNDER THE AUSPICES OF THE HUSSERL-ARCHIVES
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ON TIME - NEW CONTRIBUTIONS TO THE HUSSERLIAN PHENOMENOLOGY OF TIME
Editorial Board: Director: U. Melle (Husserl-Archief, Leuven) Members: R. Bernet (Husserl-Archief, Leuven) R. Breeur (Husserl-Archief, Leuven) S. IJsseling (Husserl-Archief, Leuven) H. Leonardy (Centre d’études phénoménologiques, Louvain-la-Neuve) D. Lories (CEP/ISP/Collège Désiré Mercier, Louvain-la-Neuve) J. Taminiaux (Centre d’études phénoménologiques, Louvain-la-Neuve) R. Visker (Catholic University Leuven, Leuven) Advisory Board: R. Bernasconi (The Pennsylvania State University), D. Carr (Emory University, Atlanta), E.S. Casey (State University of New York at Stony Brook), R. Cobb-Stevens (Boston College), J.F. Courtine (Archives-Husserl, Paris), F. Dastur (Université de Paris XX), K. Düsing (Husserl-Archiv, Köln), J. Hart (Indiana University, Bloomington), K. Held (Bergische Universität Wuppertal), K.E. Kaehler (Husserl-Archiv, Köln), D. Lohmar (Husserl-Archiv, Köln), W.R. McKenna (Miami University, Oxford, USA), J.N. Mohanty (Temple University, Philadelphia), E.W. Orth (Universität Trier), C. Sini (Università degli Studi di Milano), R. Sokolowski (Catholic University of America, Washington D.C.), B. Waldenfels (Ruhr-Universität, Bochum)
For further volumes: http://www.springer.com/series/6409
ON TIME new contributions to the husserlian phenomenology of time Edited by Dieter Lohmar and Ichiro Yamaguchi
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Editors Dieter Lohmar Universität Koln Husserl-Archiv Albertus-Magnus Platz 50923 Köln Germany
[email protected] Ichiro Yamaguchi Graduate School of Literature Toyo University 5-28-20 Hakusan Tokyo Bunkyo-ku 112-8606 Japan
[email protected] ISSN 0079-1350 ISBN 978-90-481-8765-2 e-ISBN 978-90-481-8766-9 DOI 10.1007/978-90-481-8766-9 Springer Dordrecht Heidelberg London New York Library of Congress Control Number: 2010927218 © Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2010 No part of this work may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, microfilming, recording or otherwise, without written permission from the Publisher, with the exception of any material supplied specifically for the purpose of being entered and executed on a computer system, for exclusive use by the purchaser of the work. Printed on acid-free paper Springer is part of Springer Science+Business Media (www.springer.com)
CONTENTS
Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
ix
Rudolf Bernet: Husserl’s New Phenomenology of Time Consciousness in the Bernau Manuscripts . . . . . . . . .
1
John B. Brough: Notes on the Absolute Time-Constituting Flow of Consciousness . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
21
James Dodd: Death and Time in Husserl’s C-Manuscripts . . . .
51
Saulius Geniusas: On Birth, Death, and Sleep in Husserl’s Late Manuscripts on Time . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
71
Klaus Held: Phenomenology of “Authentic Time” in Husserl and Heidegger . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
91
Dieter Lohmar: On the Constitution of the Time of the World: The Emergence of Objective Time on the Ground of Subjective Time . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
115
Yves Mayzaud: The Metaphor of the Stream: Critical Approaches . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
137
James Mensch: Retention and the Schema . . . . . . . . . . . . .
153
Stefano Micali: The Temporalizations of the Absolute Flow of Time-Consciousness . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
169
Liangkang Ni: Horizontal-Intention: Time, Genesis, History – Husserl’s Understanding of their Immanent Relationship . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
187
Luis Niel: Temporality, Stream of Consciousness and the I in the Bernau Manuscripts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
213
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Lanei M. Rodemeyer: A Return to Retention and Recollection: An Analysis of the Possible Mutual Influence of Consciousness and its Content . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
231
Tetsuya Sakakibara: Reflection Upon the Living Present and the Primal Consciousness in Husserl’s Phenomenology . .
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Nicolas de Warren: The Inner Night: Towards a Phenomenology of (Dreamless) Sleep . . . . . . . . . . .
273
Ichiro Yamaguchi: Intermonadic Temporalization in Simultaneous Reciprocal Awakening . . . . . . . . . . . .
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Dan Zahavi: Inner (Time-)Consciousness . . . . . . . . . . . . .
319
Name Index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
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CONTRIBUTORS
Rudolf Bernet Husserl-Archives, Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, 3000 Leuven, Belgique John B. Brough Georgetown University, Washington, DC, USA James Dodd New School for Social Research, New York, USA Saulius Geniusas James Madison University, Harrisonburg, Virginia, USA Klaus Held Bergische Universität Wuppertal, Wuppertal, Germany Dieter Lohmar Universität zu Köln, Cologne, Germany Yves Mayzaud Bergische Universität Wuppertal, Wuppertal, Germany James Mensch Department of Philosophy, Saint Francis Xavier University, Antigonish, Nova Scotia, Canada Stefano Micali Bergische Universität Wuppertal, Wuppertal, Germany Liangkang Ni Department of Philosophy, Sun Yat-Sen University, 510275 Guangzhou, PR China Luis Niel Husserl Archiv, Universität zu Köln, Cologne, Germany Lanei M. Rodemeyer Department of Philosophy, Duquesne University, Pittsburgh, PA 15282, USA Tetsuya Sakakibara Department of Philosophy, The University of Tokyo, Bunky¯o, Tokyo, Japan Nicolas de Warren Wellesley College, Wellesley, MA, USA Ichiro Yamaguchi Toyo University, Tokyo, Japan Dan Zahavi Center for Subjectivity Research, University of Copenhagen, Copenhagen, Denmark vii
INTRODUCTION
Husserl’s analyses of the constitution of time belong to the most difficult part of his phenomenology. They entail the attempt to gain insight into the deepest level of constitution as well as the different steps involved in the process that lead up to the full objective time. As one should expect, such an attempt faces exceptional difficulties. These difficulties often led Husserl in his research manuscripts to competing aporetic solutions, to unsolvable dilemmas and sometimes also to serious regresses. Yet also, the higher levels of constitution imply temporal aspects that offer challenging questions that sometimes led to the ultimate frontiers of phenomenological understanding. It thus turns out that Husserl’s analyses seem to offer at least some promising ways of accessing the problems of time-constitution. And yet, the problems often call for a renewed or even a reformed phenomenological treatment, informed by and systematically oriented to the phenomenological method. Some difficulties also arise from Husserl’s attempt to treat a multitude of constitutional questions simultaneously but without a clear insight into this variety. In his Lectures Husserl tries to treat several projects at the same time and this leads to a complex mixture of tasks and methods: (1) the analysis of immanent time itself, i.e., the flow of consciousness, and this means the character of time in the inner experience of consciousness itself (the time of the act itself ); (2) the analysis of the subjective time in its function as a medium of representation for objective time in events and lasting objects; (3) the search for the ultimate level of constitution in which, on the basis of the pure hyletic streaming (in all fields of sensibility), sensible data together with their duration are constituted; (4) the investigation of specific time-objects like melodies or events (in subjective and objective time); (5) the constitution of the unity of consciousness itself; (6) furthermore, Husserl also works on the conceptual and methodological tools of his analysis of time. ix
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Besides the deep and challenging difficulty of the topic itself, already the central text of Husserl’s investigations of time, the Lectures on the phenomenology of internal time-consciousness edited by Martin Heidegger in 1928, offers numerous textual difficulties that mirror Husserl’s lifelong struggle with time-consciousness. This text does not entirely coincide with the original Lectures Husserl delivered in the winter semester of 1904/1905, but is the result of far-reaching revisions undertaken in 1917. More than half of the text Heidegger edited is composed of Husserl’s later sketches, mainly from 1917 and partly of his manuscripts from 1908 to 1911. Moreover, in Husserl’s own view, these revisions were far from satisfactory. Husserl wrote the Bernau Manuscripts directly after the revisions of the Lectures in two working-holidays that he spent in the small village of Bernau in the Black Forest. They reveal a number of undeveloped lines of thought in the Lectures that urgently called for renewed treatment. Several problems concerning the constitution of time turned out to be unsolved and some basic methods and patterns of understanding had to undergo serious revisions. In the Bernau Manuscripts it becomes obvious that many problems of the Lectures cannot find an easy solution. Therefore, even the conceptual framework of problems in the Lectures is affected by the discussion of the Bernau Manuscripts, all the more as these research manuscripts often generate only contradictory and aporetic solutions. Concerning themes and methods, the late C-Manuscripts offer something quite different from the analyses of the Lectures and the Bernau Manuscripts that were dedicated to the structures of extended presence in the dimensions of primal-impression, retention and protention. The starting point now is the living present, and a return to this realm of experience is understood as a reductive method, similar to the transcendental and primordial reduction. In the C-Manuscripts, the egological analysis of constitution is pursued starting on a full intentional level, i.e. starting with concrete individual objects and a perspective on a world of objects, which the ego experiences and uses in concrete circumstances - but in the ultimate living present of the now. This relation to the things in the world is not only investigated on an intentional level as a striving for fulfillment, but also on a practical level and even on the level of drives and instincts. Nevertheless, some of the central themes of the Bernau Manuscripts
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are taken up again: for example, the problem of an intersubjective, common constitution of the objective time of the world and full individuation of things in this time of the world. The C-Manuscripts also address the self-constitution of the transcendental ego in time in terms of embodiment and becoming part of the world. This field of research includes special features of the ego and leads to the analysis of instincts, pleasure and displeasure, loss of strength in falling asleep, illness and old age. Moreover, these manuscripts also address phenomena like sleep, birth and death as problematic endings, beginnings and limits of subjective experience in their significance for time-constitution. Usually Husserl’s analysis of time-constitution is thought of in terms of three phases that are roughly bound up with the central publications, the Lectures, the Bernau Manuscripts and the C-Manuscripts. Today, after the publication of the central texts incorporating the last two phases, the discussion of Husserl’s analysis of time-constitution has entered a new phase. This is true for the interpretation of the latter two texts but it also affects our reading of the Lectures. Today, in the aftermath of the recent publication of the C-Manuscripts, it seems more likely that the seemingly separated first two phases are more close to each other than expected. The new and broader context allows for a more thorough interpretation of the whole enterprise of time-constitution. Our intention in publishing a collection of contributions of recognized international experts in this field, entailing some refreshing approaches of new-coming researchers, is to give an overview of the most outstanding contemporary interpretations of this fundamental phenomenological theme. The last years have seen a number of conferences on the topic of timeconstitution and a great number of excellent discussions can be found in monographs and articles. It thus seems to be the right time to concentrate these insights in a thematic collection of articles. This is the background of our enterprise of a book concentrating on analyses of time-constitution in which the leading researchers in this difficult field can present their views. Nevertheless, we are quite conscious of the fact that the theme of time-constitution is not only considered to be complicated but it also does not belong to the core themes that are investigated by many
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phenomenologists. No one, however, would reject the central importance of this research. Therefore we decided to publish all articles in English to give the discussion the most effective dissemination. Let us shortly characterize the contributions to this volume. The contribution of Rudolf Bernet provides a short historical and systematic overview of the analysis of time-consciousness developed in the Bernau Manuscripts. It investigates where these manuscripts make significant progress when dealing with problems that had remained unsolved in the texts of Husserliana X, and where they prepare themes of the C-Manuscripts. Four fields of new or renewed theory-formations in constitution are discussed: The constitution of immanent time objects; a genetic analysis of the emergence of all acts of intentional consciousness; a new understanding of the present now in terms of a process of fulfillment in the tension between retentions and protentions; and new analyses of specifically noematic temporal characteristics including the theme of individuation. These new insights have decisive consequences for some well-known technical issues in Husserl’s phenomenology of time: Concerning the use of the schema “apprehension - apprehensioncontent” in analyses of (different kinds of ) temporal objects; the infinite regress argument arising from the search for an absolute foundation of time-consciousness; the distinction between a passively lived-through temporal stream and the modification it undergoes when it becomes an object of reflection. Besides emphasizing where and how progress has been made, this contribution also points out remaining difficulties. The essay of John Brough intends to serve as a partial primer for the central theme of the “absolute time-constituting flow of consciousness” and to discuss some of the difficult and perplexing questions that surround it. It starts characterizing three levels involved in timeconsciousness: first, the primal level of the absolute flow; second, the level of immanent temporal unities or experiences, such as acts, which the flow constitutes; and third, the level of transcendent objects in world time constituted by the acts. The connections among these levels are examined, as well as the structure of the absolute flow that enables it to constitute both itself and immanent temporal experiences. This is followed by a consideration of a series of issues concerning the flow, many of which arise from Husserl’s sometimes paradoxical statements about it: Whether and in what sense the flow can be said to have a temporal character;
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the difficulties in finding a vocabulary suitable for describing the flow; whether the consciousness belonging to the flow is intentional in character and how it differs from the objectivating consciousness of acts such as perception; the sense in which the flow and what it constitutes are distinct but inseparable, and whether Husserl introduces needless complexity into consciousness by distinguishing between the absolute flow and the stream of experiences it constitutes in immanent time. The essay concludes with some reflections on the absolute flow as the living present or nunc stans, formulations that capture the constant and centering role of the flow in our conscious lives. Nicolas DeWarren frames his attempt with the question, whether and how a phenomenology of sleep is possible. If sleep is the complete absence of experience, including the self-experience of consciousness itself, how can phenomenology have access to it? The article wants to respond to Jean-Luc Nancy’s challenge that a phenomenology of sleep is impossible in direct and indirect manner. To do this it first offers a sketch of an indirect phenomenology of sleep investigated in Husserl’s employment of the distinction between sleep and wakefulness as a metaphor, starting with the metaphorical characterization of retentional consciousness. The author argues that Husserl’s phenomenology of time-consciousness would remain incomplete without an account of “sleep-consciousness”, especially of dreamless sleep. Following Husserl’s genetic account of sleep, falling asleep and waking up, he proposes a suggestion how to understand the sense in which consciousness constitutes itself as sleep, namely as the complete absence of itself. The contribution concludes drawing an analogy with Husserl’s investigations of imagination: In sleep and in imagination consciousness induces within itself its own suspension and loosens the connections to the world, practical interests and affects. The paper of James Dodd outlines a reading of the C-Manuscripts that aims to fix how Husserl formulates the problem of death from a phenomenological perspective. The paper explores an approach to the question “What can death tell us about time?” by considering first what life has to tell us about time, with the working thesis being that the problem of death bears precisely on how egoic life is conscious of itself as a “whole,” or how the whole of a personal “life” is a given unity of sense for an ego. This approach illuminates why Husserl pursues the themes of death, birth, sleep and sedimentation, since all of these themes form
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the basic parameters of Husserl’s conception of egoic life. This paper is to be understood as a preliminary exploration of possible ways to approach Husserl’s late writings on time. It concludes with the suggestion that Husserl takes a very different course than other phenomenological philosophers, like Sartre and Heidegger, who lay much more emphasis on the “ecstatic” character of lived time. Saulius Geniusas wants to provide a systematic account of the problematic of birth, death, and sleep in Husserl’s C-Manuscripts. He argues that for Husserl, the full constitution of human finitude rests upon a threefold disclosure of birth, death, and sleep as limit-phenomena, intersubjective phenomena, and paradoxical phenomena. Then he treats the central topic of the transcendental necessity of the phenomena in question. His resulting thesis is, that in the absence of birth, death, and sleep, subjectivity could not be conceived as a world-constituting subjectivity. Therefore to accentuate the distinguishing features of Husserl’s analyses, he brings them into a polemic with Heidegger’s notion of authentic temporality. Klaus Held situates Husserl’s analyses of time in a tension of alternative points of view we can find already in Greek philosophy. In his Timaeus Plato recognized two aspects of time, the past and the future, but not the present. In contrast, Aristotle’s analysis of time in the Physics took its orientation from the ‘now’. It is the latter path that Husserl first follows with his conception of the ‘original impression’ (Urimpression). But as we can learn from certain parts of the Bernau Manuscripts, here the present loses significance because of a novel interpretation of protention. This development, which revitalizes Plato’s understanding of time, is furthered in Heidegger’s late lecture Time and Being: the present can be understood on the basis of the ‘withdrawal’ which determines the mutual relation between the arrival as authentic future and the having-been as authentic past. The paper of Dieter Lohmar addresses some of Husserl’s attempts to answer the question how the objective time of the world is constituted on the basis of the experienced subjective time. Although this task is introduced already in the Lectures from 1904/1905, we may find acceptable attempts to answer this question only in the Bernau Manuscripts. The first step of this solution concerns my own past that does not only appear in the form of singular static pictorial memories but rather in short narrative stories raised by memories that already own an internal order of
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time. But these internally ordered stories are not yet ordered externally, somehow they are still lying “side by side”. Thus they lack an objective, synthetic coordination in time. This synthetic unification of my narrative memories in an objective unity and order is the first step towards objectivation of time. Nevertheless, this first synthetic unification is done only by myself and thus we have not yet reached an intersubjective-objective order in time. The objective order in the full sense we are searching for necessarily depends on communication, critique and agreement with other persons. The communicative ways, authorized subjects and rules of this common constitution of objective time in a community is discussed by Husserl only in the late C-Manuscripts. Therefore, based on suggestions and elements from these two sources - and exceeding both - what follows is a discussion of the contribution of common intersubjective constitution to the formation of a full objective time of the world. The contribution of Yves Mayzaud opens with a dichotomous consideration of Husserl’s phenomenology of time. On the one hand, Husserl unveils contradictions and the opaqueness of the objective time, discovers retention, and interprets transcendental characteristics of time. On the other hand, he conceives of time as continuous and it seems that he leaves no space for forgetting. This holistic conception of time leads Husserl to the idea that consciousness forms a totality. It is therefore always threatened by the shadow of solipsism. Against this threat, this essay explores the possibilities of a description of the experience of time through a phenomenological monadology. James Mensch’s article discusses Husserl’s controversial schema of interpretative intention, contents-there-to-be-interpreted, and the resulting intentional object. One central problematic of time-constitution is how we are to understand our retention of just past time. This shortterm memory is the basis of our consciousness of extended time, but such time-consciousness is fundamental for our apprehension of every temporally determinate object. Thus, the question of the schema concerns the very basis of Husserl’s theory of how we grasp our world. Although Husserl severely criticizes the schema, he never abandons it. In fact, we find him continuing to employ it in the C and B manuscripts on time-consciousness from the 1930’s. Mensch shows in detail how Husserl applies the schema to our apprehension of time. This includes a crucial limitation he imposes on the schema with regard to the lowest level of such apprehension. But this schema also determines what Husserl means
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by retention and temporal constitution. After making clear how his use of the schema overcomes the objections that have been brought against it, the implications are discussed that thereby arise regarding the priority of appearing as such. The contribution of Stefano Micali discusses the temporalization of the absolute flow of consciousness. He starts with the relationship between the time of the intentional acts and the absolute pre-phenomenal flow of time constituting consciousness. In this regard, John Brough draws a distinction between the intentional acts and the specific dimension of the absolute flow of time-consciousness. Dan Zahavi questions the validity of this distinction: the inner time-consciousness should not be regarded as an additional flow aware of the intentional act, but it is nothing but the pre-reflective self-awareness of the act. Despite these differences, a common presupposition characterizes both of the above-mentioned interpretations of the absolute time-constituting flow: the absolute flow is indifferent to the acts; it always flows in the same way, the same form. Micali shows that the validity of this thesis may be challenged from two different angles: Considering an essential ambiguity of Husserl’s configuration of the absolute flow to be found not only in the Lectures but also in the Bernau Manuscripts. And by taking into consideration Husserl’s analyses of specific temporal experiences, as they are lived during the time of unclear phantasia and the experience of the radically new. Liangkang Ni discusses the relation of “time” and “genesis” starting with the Logical Investigations where Husserl did not put both in any, not even an opposite, relationship. Only through some fragmental statements can we realize Husserl’s concentration on “analyses of time” and his exclusion of “analyses of genesis”. But his attitude toward the analysis of “time” and “genesis” changed in the Lectures. Here Husserl tried to grasp their immanent relationship. Later, in the period of the Cartesian Meditations, the connection of “time” and “genesis” found its expression in a discussion of the relationship between static phenomenology, which takes “crosswise-intentionality” as its theme, and genetic phenomenology, which takes “longitudinal-intentionality” as its theme. It is likely that this thought led Husserl to consider “time” as “the universal form of all geneses of egology” in the Cartesian Meditations. Starting from here, particularly in the Crisis, the historical dimension of the relation of time and genesis came into Husserl’s horizon. Now the problematic relation
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concerns the way in which history is studied, i.e. the immanent relationship between history, time and genesis, and the possible connection and difference between the “form” and “content” of his phenomenology of history. Luis Niel analyses the way Husserl presents the problem of the I in some of the Bernau Manuscripts in its relationship to temporality and to the stream of consciousness. By giving an account of the commonly misunderstood meaning of the methodical suspension of the I he characterizes it as the necessary center and pole of the stream of consciousness. We can neither identify it with a moment of the stream nor with the stream itself and we can understand its special temporal character as ‘supra-temporal’. From the point of view of its givenness the I appears as an ‘object-I’, objectified through reflection. But we also recognize that this ‘object-I’ is not the original I-pole of my consciousness, namely the ‘primal-I’. This ‘primal-I’ (Ur-Ich), which as an ‘operating I’ should not be confused with other egological levels, appears as the necessary original ‘mine-ness’ of all my experiences. Finally it turns out that the primal-I is always given together with the stream of consciousness as the innermost original intentional primal-tension. The contribution of Lanei Rodemeyer discusses the reliability of the contents of retention and recollection. While most analyses of Husserl’s phenomenology of inner time-consciousness focus on the structures of the layers of constitution, we should not forget that they are the utmost foundation for all phenomenological research and for the relation of consciousness to its objects. But the fact that I can make mistakes, that I can think I am recollecting when I actually am not, forces us to consider not just the structure of inner time-consciousness, but its content as well. How could any noetic act be incorrect? Then the paper takes up the intersection of Husserl’s analyses of recollection and belief in order to identify how apodictic acts of consciousness can be mistaken. For this purpose three items are discussed: The relation of the content of consciousness with its activity; the importance of the context of an experience to how I take it up as actual or not; the relation of retention and recollection with regard to their content. The resulting thesis is that at this level no experience can be taken in isolation, but every meaning and temporality of each experience must be taken up in light of the horizons of its context.
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Tetsuya Sakakibara thematizes the difficulties of the phenomenological reflection on the living present in the C-Manuscripts. Following Husserl’s manuscripts chronologically, Sakakibara tries to exhibit the special mode of these reflections on the living present in those manuscripts, and how he understands these reflections. It turns out that the reflections upon the living present are based on the self-touching or inner primal consciousness of the functioning Ego. Wavering between epistemological and ontological perspectives in those manuscripts, Husserl finally reaches what is best named an epistemological-ontological method of reflective exhibition grounded on the self-touching consciousness. The special characteristics of this unique method are clarified in the last section of this contribution. The essay of Ichiro Yamaguchi treats the topic of intermonadic temporalization in simultaneous reciprocal awakening. Husserl persistently strives to deepen his analysis of the problem of the infinite regress, not only in his Lectures from 1904/1905 but also in the Bernau Manuscripts. His central concern in this regard seems to be the proper interpretation of the character of retentional intentionality as passive egoless intentionality. Such an interpretation must continue to maintain the distinction between egoic and egoless intentionality. This distinction leads to the latter distinction between egoic and intermonadic temporalization of the temporal stream of the living present given in the C-Manuscripts. The final solution of the problem of infinite regress is found in the concept of the reciprocal awakening between the empty shapes of the drive intentionality as primal affection and the primal impression (primal hyle) in the process of intermonadic temporalization. This unconscious temporalization in genetic phenomenology can establish a cooperative, but limited relation between phenomenology and neural science. Dan Zahavi’s contribution wants to examine the relation between Husserl’s notion of inner consciousness (self-consciousness) and his theory of inner time-consciousness. He argues that the distinction between reflective and pre-reflective self-consciousness is crucial if we are to understand Husserl’s analysis of time. Moreover, the article claims that the latter analysis contains Husserl’s most profound contribution to our understanding of the pre-reflective self-manifestation of subjective life.
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We would also like to express our gratitude to Klaus Sellge from the Husserl Archive in Cologne who spent a lot of time and effort on the texts of the present collection, as well as to Dr. Saulius Geniusas and Jasmin Dücker who carefully corrected the English text of this introduction.
CHAPTER I
HUSSERL’S NEW PHENOMENOLOGY OF TIME CONSCIOUSNESS IN THE BERNAU MANUSCRIPTS Rudolf Bernet Abstract. This paper has no other ambition than to provide a short historical and systematic overview of the analysis of time-consciousness developed in the Bernau manuscripts. More specifically, it investigates where these manuscripts make a significant progress when dealing with problems which had remained unsolved in the earlier texts of Hua X, and where they pave the way for to the later C-manuscripts. Four main areas of renewal are signaled out: (1) a better account of transcendental constitution and how it applies to the meaning of immanent temporal objects, but not to the self-awareness of the temporal flux of consciousness; (2) the renewal of the meaning of transcendental constitution through a “genetic” analysis of the emergence of all acts of intentional consciousness; (3) a better account of the consciousness of a present now in terms of a process of fulfillment in which retentions and protentions are interwoven; (4) a fresh interest in specifically noematic temporal characteristics and their contribution to a phenomenological ontology, especially with regard to individuation. These new insights have decisive consequences for the treatment of all the well-known technical issues in Husserl’s phenomenology of time: the use of the schema “apprehension – apprehension-content” for the intentional consciousness of (different sorts of ) temporal objects; the infinite regress arising from the search for an absolute foundation of time-consciousness; the distinction between a passively (and unconsciously?) lived-through temporal stream and the modification it undergoes when it becomes an object of reflection. Emphasizing where progress has been made, the paper, however, also points to the remaining, and possibly structural, “Aporien” that Husserl himself admits of in his Bernau manuscripts.
I. Despite their considerable size, Husserl’s so-called “Bernau Manuscripts” were written over a relatively brief span of time. Husserl stayed in Bernau ∗ An
earlier version of his text was first published as Rudolf Bernet: Die neue Phänomenologie des Zeitbewusstseins in Husserls Bernauer Manuskripten. In: Die erscheinende Welt. Festschrift für Klaus Held. Ed. by H. Hüni and P. Trawny, Berlin 2002, 539–555. English translation by Mark Green and the author.
1 D. Lohmar, I. Yamaguchi (eds.), On Time - New Contributions to the Husserlian Phenomenology of Time, Phaenomenologica 197, DOI 10.1007/978-90-481-8766-9_1, C Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2010
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in both August and September 1917 as well as February and March 1918. The general theme of the texts, which were written in those less than five months or so, was consistently paraphrased by Husserl with the heading “Time and Individuation.” The motivation for this renewed preoccupation with the problem of time shortly after his relocation to Freiburg was influenced by Edith Stein’s project of editing the earlier time analyses. A first edit of these earlier manuscripts, which consisted of, above all, the lectures of 1904/1905, but also included some texts from the following years until 1911, was jointly revised by Husserl and Stein during her presence in Bernau in the summer of 1917. But, as usual with Husserl, this revision soon led to new investigations, which in turn demanded all of Husserl’s attention. Much to the dismay of Stein, Husserl now had very little time and interest remaining for the engagement with the earlier time manuscripts, and a couple of months later and after several similar experiences, she gave notice to quit her assistantship with Husserl. For exactly how long Husserl regarded the manuscripts developed in Bernau as merely a complement and continuation of his earlier texts on the consciousness of internal time cannot be reconstructed with certainty. It is certain, however, that Husserl was conscious of the new direction that his engagement with the problem of time had taken in Bernau. No later than his second stay in Bernau at the beginning of 1918, Husserl spoke quite frequently of a new “great work,” the contents of which he characterized in a letter to Martin Heidegger on March 28, 1918, as follows: “Time and individuation, a renewal of a rational metaphysics based on principles”.1 A few days later, he described his project even more clearly in a letter to Roman Ingarden on April 5: “For I am working not on a mere phenomenology of time – which cannot be treated separately and purely for itself – but on the colossal problem of individuation, of the constitution of individual (thus “factual”) being in general, and that according to its essentially basic formations.”2 Then, eight solid years later, in 1926, Husserl contacted Heidegger with a request to prepare his time manuscripts for publication in the Jahrbuch für Philosophie und phänomenologische Forschung. In doing so he probably hoped at first that Heidegger would consider not only the earlier texts, but also the Bernau Manuscripts. However, because Heidegger did not want to get involved in editing stenographic research manuscripts, Husserl only handed over Stein’s edited version of the earlier texts. With
I.
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that, the separation of the Bernau Manuscripts from the corpus of the earlier analyses of time was also physically accomplished. When, one year later, in September 1927, Husserl tried to get Ingarden involved in the publication of his time analyses, the project concerned exclusively the texts from Bernau. After this attempt also failed, Husserl finally delivered, probably a full year later near the end of 1928, the material of the Bernau Manuscripts to his assistant Eugen Fink. Meanwhile, in April of the same year, Heidegger had published Stein’s edition of the earlier texts making only small changes and adding an “Introductory Remark,” in which he refers to a “later publication” of the “continuing studies of time-consciousness in connection with the problem of individuation, especially those undertaken since 1917.”3 In the manuscripts from Bernau, compiled by Husserl and handed over to Fink, the problem of individuation, however, is not the major topic. It cannot be said with any great certainty for which reasons and with respect to which publication plan Husserl left out in large part those texts on the problem of individuation, which he had written during his second stay in Bernau. However, these more ontologically oriented time-analyses from Bernau, which centered on the problem of the individuation of different kinds of objectivities, were in fact discovered in Husserl’s Nachlass, and some of them were incorporated, together with the manuscripts entrusted to Fink, into the Husserliana volume of the Bernau texts which was edited by Rudolf Bernet and Dieter Lohmar.4 Eugen Fink occupied himself with the Bernau time-manuscripts again and again in the years from 1929 to 1937. Husserl tried to assist the faltering advance of the editing work by granting more and more liberty to his assistant concerning the use of his texts. There was soon talk of a publication that would be supplemented by Fink’s own texts and appear under both names. In fact, both Husserl and Fink were intensely preoccupied with the problem of time in the beginning of the thirties, in conversation with each other and in independently producing new texts. Though it was never abandoned, the effort to publish the Bernau Manuscripts receded into the background. Husserl composed numerous manuscripts dealing with the relationship of time-consciousness to hyletic pre-givenness and egoic performances, to sleep, death, and waking, to intersubjectivity and trans-generative historicity, etc. His preoccupation with time thus took a decisive turn in these texts, best known as “The
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C-Manuscripts.”5 Despite the fact that Husserl himself considered these last time-manuscripts as a continuation of the Bernau investigations, it did not lead him to think that both groups of manuscripts should be blended into a single publication. Not only the considerable size of each group, but also their systematically differing points of departure suggested that Husserl’s middle and late texts on the problem of time should be published separately. Therefore, the publication of the Bernau Manuscripts and the C-Manuscripts as two different volumes in Husserliana edition complies with Husserl’s own wishes. Additionally Fink’s own work on the time-problem did not remain fruitless. “Time and Temporalization,” the treatise which was based on the Bernau Manuscripts and to be jointly published by Husserl and Fink, was transformed with Husserl’s consent (though he could not hide his disappointment) into a new book on time with Fink as the sole author. However, Fink never published any such text. According to his own account, he willfully destroyed the manuscript of his own book. In 1969, he handed over Husserl’s original Bernau Manuscripts, which were entrusted to him at the end of 1928, to the Husserl Archives in Leuven, where they were filed in the Nachlass as the “L-Group.” They presently form the core of the Volume XXXIII of the Husserliana edition which includes a large selection from all the manuscripts written in Bernau and presents them in a systematic order.
II. If, following this short sketch of the history of the genesis of the Bernau time-manuscripts, we now turn to their systematic content, it seems appropriate that we situate it in the context of both the earlier manuscripts edited in Volume X of Husserliana and the later time-analyses of the C-Manuscripts edited in Volume VIII of Husserliana-Materialien. Husserl’s earlier texts on the phenomenology of time-consciousness take their point of departure from the description of the perception of temporal objects (a constant tone) or time-objects (the duration of the tone). In his engagement (which is completely missing in the Bernau Manuscripts) with the writings of Brentano and Meinong, and also with James, Stumpf, Stern, etc., Husserl’s conviction that the perception of an
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enduring object does indeed normally occur in an enduring act of perception, but that the duration of perception alone does not yet explain how the perception of an objective duration is possible, ripened. As with his predecessors, Husserl’s analysis of the perception of a temporal duration came to a head with the question of whether and how a present act is able to perceive a temporal extension which exceeds the actual present. In addition Husserl’s insight that a duration can be presently grasped only when the present time-object is simultaneously grasped with its preceding and now past givenness, still owed much to his discussions of views defended by his contemporaries. For this present grasping of a past which is intimately connected with the present grasping of a present, Husserl first used the name “Primary Memory,” but soon after he coined the term “Retention.” With regard to content, he differed in some significant ways from Brentano and Meinong, in that he understood this retention neither as an act (in the mode of phantasy) of representation (Brentano), nor as a categorial act of a subsequent synthesis (Meinong), but instead as a modality of the perception itself. Thus Husserl wanted, on one hand, to cling to the distinction between the present (primary-impressional) grasping of the present tone and the present (retentional) grasping of the past tone, but on the other hand, he wanted both graspings to still be understood as non-independent moments of the same act of present perception. This was and remained Husserl’s fundamental intuition, the analytically elaborated determination of which admittedly still occupied him for several years after a first failed attempt in the Time Lectures of 1904/1905. The investigation into the essence of the present grasping of a futural tone, which Husserl called “Protention,” remained a minor point. The topic of protention, and especially its interlacing with retention, first received the attention it deserves in the Bernau Manuscripts. Husserl’s preoccupation with the essence of intuitive phantasy and its distinction from the acts of recollection, which spanned years and even extended into his time at Bernau, also played an essential role in the advance of his determination of the essence of retention. From it resulted the insight that the retentional consciousness, in contrast to phantasy and recollection, is indeed not an act of representation [Vergegenwärtigung], but nevertheless is a modified consciousness of a (former) original present. The retentional consciousness of the past is
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therefore neither a reproductive representation of the past like recollection, nor a simple making-present [Gegenwärtigung] of the present like the original perception, but is the modified perception of a past. It was not easy for Husserl to precisely determine the essence of this perception of the past in the framework of his doctrine of intentional consciousness, and the related difficulties also worried him in the Bernau Manuscripts again and again. Problems resulted especially from the application of the schema of the intentional apprehension of a sense-datum, which was borrowed from the phenomenological determination of the external perception of spatial objects, to time-consciousness and therefore also to the retentional perception-consciousness. In reference to the latter, one of the questions that arises concerns how a present apprehension of a similarly present sensation should succeed in retentionally perceiving a present that belongs to the past. Husserl’s various attempts to solve this puzzle ultimately led him again and again to the same point, namely to the givenness of the sense-datum supposedly implicated in retentional consciousness. It soon became obvious that the modification, which characterizes the present retentional consciousness of a past present, must concern not only the apprehension but necessarily also the apprehended sense-datum. Otherwise, it is impossible to understand why a sensation can allow for a perceptual apprehension of something present in one case and, in the other case, allow for a retentional apprehension of something past. The “phantasma,” that is, the modified sense-datum of an apprehension in the mode of a phantasy, volunteered itself as a model for the modified content that underlies retentional apprehension. However, a more thorough investigation of phantasy-consciousness proved that this model contains its own peculiar puzzle, one which precisely concerns the essence, that is, the mode of givenness, of this phantasma. The parallel investigations of retention and phantasy, which continued through the Bernau Manuscripts, soon led to the insight that the difficulties connected with the phenomenological determination of the phantasma are fundamentally the same as those which concern the determination of the modified sense-datum in retentional consciousness. Thus identifying the sense-datum motivating a retentional apprehension with a phantasma helped no further, and it simultaneously threatened to blur the distinction between the presenting retention and the representing
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phantasy. Only when one can cling, on the one hand, to the differentiation between the phantasmal and retentional modifications of the contents of apprehension, and also, on the other hand, account for the circumstance that both sense-data concern a modified, sensorial consciousness, of which the general essence must still be clarified, can the phenomenological analyses of retention and phantasy stimulate each other. On closer inspection, the task concerns not only retention and phantasy, but also the consciousness of an unmodified sense-datum that underlies a perceptual apprehension. Husserl called the givenness of one such unmodified, i.e. originarily present sensation, “primary impression [Urimpression]” in the early texts and “primary presentation [Urpräsentation]” in the later Bernau manuscripts. The first decisive step towards to a clarification of the essence of modified or unmodified givenness of the sensorial content which underlies an intentional apprehension is already to be found in Husserl’s earlier texts on time-consciousness, and the insights acquired in them are never called into question in the Bernau Manuscripts. Of whatever kind the intentional apprehension of the sense-datum implicit in retention and phantasy (and also already in perception) may be, that is, if it is a question of a perceptual, retentional, or phantasmal apprehension, it is certain, in any case, that the apprehended sense-datum is itself given; and therefore there must be a modified or unmodified consciousness of it. Thus in the end, the difference between a present sensation and a retentionally given sensation depends on the different consciousness of these sensations. Husserl named this inner consciousness of the sensation “absolute consciousness” in the earlier texts and then in the Bernau Manuscripts the “originary process [Urprozess]” or “originary stream [Urstrom].” The sensations were called “immanent time-objects” in the early texts and as such they were distinguished from the transcendent objects belonging to objective time, like, for instance, the tone of a violin. The Bernau Manuscripts more simply called these immanent time-objects temporal “events [Ereignisse]” and the inner consciousness of them “livedexperience [Erlebnis].” This alteration in terminology is already a first indication that it was no longer self-evident for Husserl in Bernau that (modified and unmodified) sensations are given in the originary process as objects and that the originary process itself had the form of an objectifying intentional consciousness.
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The introduction of the “absolute” consciousness in the earlier texts involved many problems, which still bothered Husserl in Bernau. A first difficulty arose with the exact determination of the nature of this “absolute” consciousness in its relationship to the “immanent time-objects.” In the manuscripts from the Nachlass published in Hua X one can trace how Husserl finally arrived at a two-fold insight on this matter. First, it soon became clear to him that the so-called “absolute” consciousness of the sense-data was a kind of intentional consciousness; that is, the sense-data could not belong to the “absolute” consciousness as “reelle” constituents. Otherwise the difference between a modified and an unmodified, i.e., between a retentional and a primary-impressional consciousness of a sensation, would have become unintelligible. Husserl’s second new insight, resulting from the introduction of the transcendentalphenomenological reduction, consisted in the new characterization of the relationship between “absolute” consciousness and sense-data as a relation of constitution. Similarly as a transcendent object is constituted in the apprehension of a sense-datum, the sensation is also constituted in the “absolute” consciousness as a (present, past, or futural) immanent time-object. Then, in the Bernau Manuscripts, both these insights were again subjected to thorough examination, and admittedly, it seems without conclusive results. In many of these Bernau texts Husserl began to doubt again whether the relationship between the “originary process” and temporal “events” is really a matter of transcendental constitution, and whether this “originary process” and these “events” really belong to two different levels of consciousness. This doubt had its source above all in the question of whether the “events” in the “originary process” really come to prominence and grasping as immanent objects. With this, the first insight was also called into question again, namely the designation of the originary process as a kind of intentional consciousness. Incidentally, these doubts and questions still bothered Husserl in the late texts on time of the C-Group. On the one hand, this seems to confirm the impression that no final characterization of the connection between the “originary process” and temporal “events” is advanced in the Bernau Manuscripts. On the other hand, however, it is unmistakable that those later texts of the C-Group develop a doctrine that, along with other doctrines, can already be found in the Bernau Manuscripts.
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Put succinctly, this doctrine consists in the attempt of a radical separation between egoic and pre-egoic, i.e. hyletic, time-processes. The indepth investigation of the difference between an egoic and actively performed temporalization, on the one hand, and an anonymous and passively occurring, material or hyletic temporalization, on the other, leads Husserl in the C-Manuscripts to deny that this pre-egoic flowing stream can be ascribed any original constitutive performance. According to this view, one can only speak of a constitution of temporal objects when there is an active involvement of the transcendental ego. In order to acquire a constitutive signification, the pre-intentional hyletic originary stream thus needs to undergo a thorough modification which consists in a subsequent performance of an egoic act of reflection on it. This new model of the originary process admittedly has its ground not only in the separation between active and passive forms of consciousness, but also in the problem of the infinite regress, which lurks behind Husserl’s phenomenology of time-consciousness, both in the early texts as well as in the Bernau Manuscripts and in the later time-manuscripts of the C-Group. It can already be gathered from the early texts published in Hua X that there are, in fact, different forms of such an infinite regress. A first form arises from the fact that each newly emerging “primary impression,” or each new “primary presentation,” modifies the mode in which the former primary impression is given, transforming it into a retention of a past primary impression. A third new primary impression then modifies not only the previous (second) primary impression, but equally the retention of the first primary impression which is connected with it. This first primary impression is therefore now given under the form of a modification of a modification. With the fourth new primary impression, the givenness of every single past primary impression is modified once more, and the givenness of the first primary impression now has the mode of the modification of a modification of a modification. As long as the originary process remains lively, i.e. as long as new primary impressions surface in consciousness, this complicated process of a continuous and multidimensional modification of the modification of the givenness of each past primary impression carries on, potentially ad infinitum. Thus, in the latter case, the retentional grasping of the initial primary impression would be tied to a running-through of an infinite series of modifications nested into one another.6
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This first regressus ad infinitum is comparatively harmless because it does not call into question the possibility of grasping a first primary impression. However, the Bernau Manuscripts reveal that it became more and more doubtful for Husserl whether such a process of an infinite modification of a retentional past really represents a phenomenologically verified finding. In the course of his new description of time-consciousness in the framework of a genetic phenomenology, Husserl increasingly concerned himself with the consequences the constantly (with each reiteration of retentional modification) growing distancing from the present has for the retentional givenness of the past. He described how the primary presentations belonging to a far-distant past fuse together and thereby not only lose their clear distinction from one another, but also their affective allure on the present ego. The Bernau Manuscripts from 1918 dedicate detailed investigations to this phenomenon, which is distinguished from retention and named “fading-away [Abklang].” In the absence of an active turning-towards and grasping on the part of the ego, the retentions directed at a distant past soon die off, and with that the process of their continual modification also potentially comes to a standstill. Dead retentions can become newly awakened and rise up again, but this does not immediately do away with their character of indistinctness or haziness. The second form of an infinite regress concerns the awareness of the “absolute consciousness” or of the “originary process.” We have seen that Husserl characterizes the intentional consciousness of a transcendent time-object as an intentional apprehension of a pre-intentional sensedatum. This sense-datum is then, in its turn, experienced by a deeper consciousness, namely by the “absolute consciousness” or “originary process.” The exact determination of this originary process still bothered Husserl very much in the Bernau Manuscripts. Time and again the question surfaced as to whether the so-called “absolute” consciousness should, indeed, be understood as an independent level of consciousness, whether it really concerns an intentional and transcendentally constitutive consciousness, and whether the intentionality of this consciousness still has the form of an intentional apprehension of a pre-intentional apprehension-content. The further question then also arises, both in the earlier texts and in the Bernau Manuscripts, as to the nature of the consciousness that makes us aware of the flow of this “absolute consciousness”
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or of this “originary process.” If the latter consciousness still requires a further consciousness for which it is given, then it loses not only its “absolute” character as an “originary process,” but one also falls prey to a form of infinite regress, which would precipitate the whole edifice of the levels of consciousness resting on each other into an abyss. The risk of such an infinite regress, which is connected with the consciousness of an “absolute” consciousness, was not only formulated with sufficient clarity already in Husserl’s early texts, but Husserl also succeeded in finding an attractive solution to the difficulty. The core of this solution lies in the supposition that the “absolute” consciousness must necessarily and simultaneously be a consciousness of the givenness of immanent time-objects and a consciousness of its own flow. This solution did not remain a mere hypothesis but on the contrary, Husserl tried to demonstrate in a painstaking analysis of retentional consciousness two points: first, due to the continuous change of the time-perspective (or “time-adumbration”), the unity of an immanent time-object, with its respective time-position, comes to prominence in the continuum of the retentional modifications, and second, a consciousness of the flow of the continuously self-modifying retentional consciousness itself also arises by means of the “nesting [Verschachtelung]” of each retention with all the other retentions. Therefore, the flow of the “absolute” retentional consciousness entails a double intentionality, of which one is directed to immanent time-objects and the other has the form of a self-reference, i.e. of a self-awareness of the flow. Husserl termed the former direction of the retentional intentionality “transverse-intentionality [Querintentionalität]” and the latter “longitudinal intentionality [Längsintentionalität].” Finally, Husserl also specifically stressed that both these intentional directions in the course of the flow of the continuous retentional modifications belong to one selfsame process and therefore are “inseparably” connected with one another.7 This attempt at overcoming the danger of the infinite regress related to the consciousness of the “originary process” was taken up again and more widely developed in the Bernau Manuscripts. In accordance with the earlier texts, a clear distinction between the retention of an immanent object and the retention of the originary process is made. However, Husserl does make a significant advance by now paying more attention to protentional consciousness. This newly awakened and long overdue interest in the
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contribution of protention not only to a consciousness of the “originary process,” but also to the consciousness of novelty (which is preoccupying Husserl with increasing intensity), is reflected in the new time diagrams one finds in the Bernau Manuscripts. Specifically the precise investigation of the intertwining of retentional and protentional continua of modifications resulted in significant new insights. Husserl was no longer satisfied with the suggestion that each primary presentation is embedded in a bilateral horizon of retentional and protentional phenomena, but instead he analyzed, often in microscopic detail, the role of protentions within the continuum of the retentional modification and the influence of retentions on the determination of the contents of the protentions. This new discovery of the function of both protention within retention and retention within protention resulted from a more dynamic analysis of time-consciousness that was linked with the development of a genetic phenomenology. This new perspective is made apparent by the fact that, for example, “primary presentation” (or the former “primary impression”) is now no longer understood as the original core or “source-point” of time-consciousness, but instead as a mere limit point in which the continua of retentional and protentional modifications intersect. In such a genetic analysis, the originary process shows itself to be more than a mere mechanical process of continuous modification resulting from the pushing-back of the present into the past. On the contrary, this originary process, as the life-process of consciousness, is governed by passive tendencies and anticipations, by forms of the increasing and weakening of the intuitive fullness of different phenomena, by the lived-experiences of an incessant “fulfillment [Erfüllung]” and “emptying [Entfüllung].” For the understanding of the phenomenon of an inner awareness of the originary process these new investigations led Husserl to no longer consider the emergence of such a self-consciousness to be exclusively a matter of retention, i.e. of a retentional “longitudinal intentionality.” According to the Bernau Manuscripts, this self-consciousness of the originary process rather arises from the experience of a present intuitive fulfillment, i.e. by virtue of the consciousness of the continuous transition of retentional protentions to their intuitive realization. In this dynamic, flowing process of fulfillment, the flow of consciousness itself comes to a present appearance through the awareness of the fact that what is presently given is the same as what one had already anticipated in the past as something
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futural. The present lived-experience of a temporal fulfillment has therefore in reality the form of a conscious awareness of a becoming-present of a past anticipation. Unlike the earlier texts, which ascribe the selfawareness of the originary stream of consciousness to a merely subsequent retentional form of consciousness, the Bernau Manuscripts emphasize the possibility of a self-consciousness essentially anchored in the flowing present. It must be admitted, however, that this new doctrine concerning the consciousness of the originary process does not obtain throughout all the Bernau texts and that it was again the threat of an infinite regress that made Husserl consider alternative, or rather, competing conceptions. The new model of an originary self-awareness of the temporal flow of consciousness still takes for granted that the originary process is an independent level of intentional consciousness, responsible for the constitution of immanent time-objects such as sense-data and even the acts of their intentional apprehension. We have already mentioned that this understanding of the originary process is seriously called into question in several of the Bernau texts. At the end of his detailed discussion of the difference between an implicit perception and the givenness of immanent time-objectivities in the originary stream, Husserl comes to the conclusion that the hypothesis of an originary process that would necessarily remain “unconscious” cannot be considered as a credible alternative to his new account of the self-awareness of the originary process. However, even if he does not allow there to be any such unconscious originary process, the questions still remain regarding the nature of an ungrasped originary process and whether such a process can be ascribed a transcendentally constitutive performance. But if the latter is not the case and if a subsequent egoic grasping, thus an act of reflection, is required in order to bestow a constitutive performance on the originary process, then both its independence and intentional character become questionable. Eventually, nothing would be left of an original self-consciousness of the originary process. Alternative determinations of the originary process are possible but again face all the difficulties connected with the possibility of the awareness of the originary process and the threat of an infinite regress. In the Bernau Manuscripts, Husserl’s work on these matters cleared at least two different paths. A first path leads him again into the vicinity of Brentano’s well-known model of inner consciousness, for which he
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had, despite severe criticism, already shown much sympathy in his earlier texts. According to this path, the so-called “originary process” would in the end be nothing other than an accompanying phenomenon of the egoic performance of intentional acts in which transcendent time-objects are constituted. Instead of intentionally intending these acts as immanent time-objects, the originary process would be nothing more than an inner, non-independent and implicit, awareness of the subjective performance of these acts. The primary process would thus be a form of intentional consciousness in which, however, no temporal “objects” are intended. Only a subsequent act of reflection would turn the performance of the act into an intentional object. It seems, however, that what remains undecided in the Bernau Manuscripts are the questions of whether and how, within this intentional act of reflection on the original act-performance, the difference between the consciousness of the act and the consciousness of the (originary) consciousness of the act becomes apparent. A second path, taken by Husserl in Bernau, or at least discussed in detail, consists similarly in a return to an earlier doctrine. It concerns nothing other than the use of the “apprehension – apprehension-content” schema not only for the determination of how the originary process constitutes immanent time-objects, but also for how the originary process itself, and the primary presentations, retentions and protentions which animate its flow should be understood. However, with this Husserl once more runs the risk of the infinite regress, and it is a characteristic of the relevant Bernau Manuscripts that the matters of applying the schema “apprehension – apprehension-content” to time-consciousness and of exorcising the risk of the infinite regress go mostly hand in hand. Nevertheless, the difficulty of the infinite regress, which emerges anew again and again within the Bernau Manuscripts, cannot exclusively, and without further ado, be blamed on one or the other, more or less convincing model of the originary process. It presumably concerns a much more fundamental problem involving the system of Husserl’s basic approach to a phenomenology of time altogether. Perhaps it is simply the case that there can be no account of the origin of time which does not already presuppose time. This sort of consideration is also not completely foreign to the Bernau Manuscripts, and it is met with, at least rudimentarily, in Husserl’s treatment of the phenomenon of “novelty” and especially the question of the possibility of a “first” primary presentation.
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III. Our exposition of the systematically embedded place of the Bernau Manuscripts in the problematic horizon and unresolved difficulties of the earlier texts on time-consciousness must not give the impression, however, that these texts would be little more than a mere supplement to Hua X. After all, the years between the last early texts on timeconsciousness and the first Bernau Manuscripts, viz., between 1911 and 1917, saw the publication of the first book of Ideas.8 This work, as is wellknown, contains not only a systematic portrayal of the method of the phenomenological reduction and the transcendental idealism connected with it, but also a detailed investigation of the intentional consciousness from the point of view of the noetic-noematic correlation. It also introduces the pure ego, which the Logical Investigations still considered to be phenomenologically undetectable. All these new findings found their way into in the Bernau time-manuscripts. Though Husserl was compelled quite frequently, especially in the treatment of the constitutive function of time-consciousness, to reflect on the essence of the phenomenological reduction and transcendental idealism, the discussion of the constitution of objective time is given conspicuously less attention than the analysis of the constitution of immanent timeobjects by the originary process. The Bernau Manuscripts also develop, for the first time, a description of time-consciousness in specifically noematic terms. Far from contenting himself with some general remark about the correlation between the forms of noetic intending of time-objects and the time-modalities of the noematic sense corresponding to them, Husserl dedicated detailed and thorough investigations to the specific nature of these noematic time-modalities and their modifications. This led him further, through his engagement with the question concerning the temporal individuation of different sorts of intentional objects, to the previously mentioned ontological turn in his phenomenology of time. In this context, the Bernau Manuscripts investigate questions such as whether the modes of temporal givenness of an intentional object belong to its noematic sense or not, and whether, in this respect, objects of experience differ from the objects of phantasy and from the ideal objects. Finally, the Bernau texts also take up the question concerning the relationship of time-consciousness to the pure ego, which, after the publication of Ideas,
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could no longer be avoided. The relevant investigations revolve particularly around the question of an egoic temporalization of events and the becoming-temporal of the pure ego itself, and also around the relation between the hyletic temporality of the originary stream and the temporal lived-experiences accomplished or undergone by an active or passive ego. However, the inclusion of the (still “static”) transcendental phenomenology of Ideas is not the most decisive advance the Bernau Manuscripts make beyond the earlier time-texts; it is rather the newly introduced and consistently developed transition to a “genetic” phenomenology. Thus, the breakthrough to this genetic phenomenology did not first happen, as is generally assumed, in the lectures on “Transcendental Logic” of the winter semester of 1920–1921,9 but is already in full force in the Bernau time-manuscripts of 1917–1918. This also explains why the reader of the texts from Bernau quite often feels, especially with the treatment of the problem of recollection, reminded of the better known description in the Analyses of Passive Synthesis. Needless to say, it is no coincidence that Husserl’s new genetic phenomenology first emerged from his reflections dedicated to the essence of time-consciousness. In his genetic time-analysis Husserl no longer takes it for granted that the intentionality at work in time-consciousness is an egoic actintentionality with an objective correlate, like a typical static examination of the correlation would have it. Though such act-intentionality plays an important role in time-consciousness and in its constitutive function, Husserl is now more interested in its arising from pre-intentional tendencies, inclinations, and inhibitions, which characterize the intentionality of a passively flowing originary process. Furthermore, this originary process, as a life-process, is not simply an automatic process; it has a goal and the tendency to draw near to this goal. This determination of the originary process of life as striving toward intuitive givenness forces Husserl, as already mentioned, to a new, dynamic reformulation of the process of temporal fulfillment. The passively experienced, hyletic originary process stands therefore at the source of the egoic acts of turning-towards, perceiving and grasping. However, it is not only the subject of the egoic performance that is born from this originary stream, but also each present givenness. In fact, the consciousness of the being-present of a givenness arises, as was
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indicated above, from the interplay between the retentional and protentional intentionality of the passively experienced originary stream. With this new insight, the privilege of the present as the most originary dimension of time-consciousness could not remain unquestioned by a genetic phenomenology. If each present has a genesis of its emergence, and thus is a present having-come-to-be, then one understands even better why Husserl engages in such a detailed way with the question of whether there can be something like a first primary presentation. The attentive investigation of the intertwinement of passive and active, anonymous and egoic, intentional performances in time-consciousness finally lead Husserl in Bernau to the discovery of a secondary form of passivity, which characterizes the acts of the ego which have become mere habits. As one would expect, it is above all in the framework of the new genetic analysis of recollection that the Bernau Manuscripts deal with these habitually performed achievements of time-consciousness. Their analysis concerns, in particular, the difference between acts of remembering that are habitually performed and serve a practical aim and acts of remembering that are actively performed and serve the theoretical aim of an ideal exactitude. Even more than the analysis of recollection, the treatment of the problem of temporal individuation shows that, as the already quoted letter from Husserl to Ingarden has it: “phenomenology of time [. . .] cannot be treated separately and purely for itself [sich nicht rein für sich ablösen lässt].” If the task of this phenomenology is to account for the constitution of the temporal determinations of objects in transcendental consciousness, then it must also pay attention to the ontological nature of the temporal modalities of these objects. Modes of time are, according to Husserl’s own formulation, modes of being or existence. However, not only the present-being, past-being or futural-being are constituted in time-consciousness, but also, more generally, the individuality of the being of all (empirical) objects. The individuality of an object of experience ultimately always depends on its temporal givenness and especially on its “first” and thus “unique [einmalig]” present givenness. However, Husserl soon reflected on the problem concerning the possible or impossible individuation of ideal objects. It belongs to the nature of such ideal objects that they can “always” be apprehended and that their meaning involves no necessary reference to a privileged first or unique form of
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givenness. Does this mean that only empirically real objects have an essential reference to time and to a temporal individuation? But then how do we account for the temporality and individuation of the objects of a phantasy? If phantasy-objects, in their mode of being, occupy an intermediate position between empirically individual and ideal objects, then the examination of their temporality will also evince new insights in the difference between the (necessary) individuation of empirical objects and the (contingent) individuation of ideal objects, and more generally, into the difference between “facts” and “essences.” This explains why Husserl returns time and again to the phenomenological analysis of phantasy-time in those Bernau Manuscripts which have an ontological orientation.10 It is easy to realize that the individuation of a general essence must not be confused with its instantiation in empirical examples, but Husserl is not satisfied with this purely negative insight. He tries, therefore, to arrive at a positive characterization of the sort of individuation that applies to ideal objects and he does so by examining how phantasy-objects become individual entities through their subjective givenness in phantasy-acts as well as by their inclusion in phantasy-worlds. The investigation of the subjective givenness of ideal objects, as well as of their inclusion in possible logical “worlds,” leads then to results which are not only relevant for Husserl’s project of a “rational metaphysics,” but may also be of interest for today’s logicians. Notes 1. Edmund Husserl, Briefwechsel IV. Ed. by K. Schuhmann, Dordrecht 1994, 130. 2. Edmund Husserl, Briefwechsel III. Ed. by K. Schuhmann, Dordrecht 1994, 182. 3. Edmund Husserl, Zur Phänomenologie des inneren Zeitbewusstseins (1893–1917) (Hua X). Ed. by R. Boehm, The Hague 1966, xxv. English translation by James S. Churchill in: Edmund Husserl, The Phenomenology of Internal Time-Consciousness. Ed. by M. Heidegger and trans. by James S. Churchill, Bloomington, IN 1964, 15. 4. Edmund Husserl, Die Bernauer Manuskripte über das Zeitbewusstsein (1917/1918) (Hua XXXIII). Ed. by R. Bernet and D. Lohmar, Dordrecht/Boston/London 2001. 5. Edmund Husserl, Späte Texte über Zeitkonstitution (1929–1934). Die C-Manuskripte (Hua Mat VIII). Ed. by D. Lohmar, Dordrecht 2006. 6. Incidently, it is not difficult to realize that the same infinity applies also to protention. Namely, insofar as each protention fulfilled by a present primary impression was already implicated in an earlier protention, and this earlier protention likewise was anticipated in an even earlier protention, and so forth, the grasping of the process of becoming of the actual present also implies a passing-through of a potentially infinite series of protentions nested into one another.
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7. Hua X, Text Nr. 54. English translation by John Barnett Brough in: Edmund Husserl, On the Phenomenology of the Consciousness of Internal Time (1893–1917), Dordrecht 1991, 379–394. 8. Edmund Husserl, Ideen zu einer reinen Phänomenologie und phänomenologischen Philosophie. Erstes Buch: Allgemeine Einführung in die reine Phänomenologie (Hua III,1). Ed. by K. Schuhmann, The Hague 1976. English translation by Fred Kersten in: Edmund Husserl, Ideas Pertaining to a Pure Phenomenology and to a Phenomenological Philosophy. First Book: General Introduction to a Pure Phenomenology, Dordrecht 1982. 9. Edmund Husserl, Analysen zur passiven Synthesis (1918–1926) (Hua XI). Ed. by M. Fleischer, The Hague 1966. English translation by Anthony J. Steinbock in: Edmund Husserl, Analyses Concerning Passive and Active Synthesis. Lectures on Transcendental Logic, Dordrecht 2001. 10. Cf. Rudolf Bernet: Real Time and Imaginary Time. On the Husserlian conception of temporal individuation. In: Husserl and the Logic of Experience. Ed. by G. Banham, London/New York 2005, 217–236.
CHAPTER II
NOTES ON THE ABSOLUTE TIME-CONSTITUTING FLOW OF CONSCIOUSNESS John B. Brough Abstract. Husserl’s phenomenology of time-consciousness is an effort to understand conscious life in its identity with temporal awareness. Central to this understanding is what Husserl called the “absolute time-constituting flow of consciousness.” This essay intends to serve as a partial primer for the flow and to discuss some of the difficult and perplexing questions that surround it. It begins by collecting evidence that Husserl distinguished three levels involved in timeconsciousness: first, an ultimate or primal level, the absolute flow; second, the level of immanent temporal unities or experiences, such as acts, which the flow constitutes; and third, the level of transcendent objects in world time constituted by the acts. The essay then examines the connections among the levels, as well as the structure of the absolute flow that enables it to constitute both itself and immanent temporal experiences. This is followed by consideration of a series of issues concerning the flow, many of which arise from Husserl’s sometimes paradoxical statements about it. Among these: whether and in what sense the flow can be said to have a temporal character; the difficulties in finding a vocabulary suitable for describing the flow; whether the consciousness belonging to the flow is intentional in character and how it differs from the objectivating consciousness of acts such as perception; the sense in which the flow and what it constitutes are distinct but inseparable, and whether Husserl introduces needless complexity into consciousness by distinguishing between the absolute flow and the stream of experiences it constitutes in immanent time. The essay concludes with some reflections on the absolute flow as the living present or nunc stans, formulations that capture the constant and centering role of the flow in our conscious lives.
It is was probably inevitable that Edmund Husserl would open his 1905 lectures on the consciousness of time by referring to Augustine’s Confessions. Augustine’s profound investigations of time took their start in an equally profound humility in the face of their task. We use the term “time” with great familiarity, Augustine says, and we are confident that we know what it means, until, of course, we are asked to explain it, and then our confidence crumbles; or, as Husserl puts it, “we get entangled in the most peculiar difficulties, contradictions and confusions” (Hua X, 3). What Husserl called the “wonder” of time-consciousness is perplexing 21 D. Lohmar, I. Yamaguchi (eds.), On Time - New Contributions to the Husserlian Phenomenology of Time, Phaenomenologica 197, DOI 10.1007/978-90-481-8766-9_2, C Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2010
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indeed. In fact, he writes, it is “the most difficult of all phenomenological problems” (Hua X, 276), but also “perhaps the most important in the whole of phenomenology” (Hua X, 334). Husserl devoted enormous energy over three decades to unravelling the mystery of time-consciousness. Three volumes of Husserl’s writings, together comprising well over a thousand pages, are devoted directly to the topic, not to mention extensive passages in other texts. It is safe to say that no other philosopher has been as determined or as prolific in the pursuit of the nature of temporality. Despite this, there is no single Husserlian work that gives a comprehensive and final account of his position. Rich and illuminating though it is, Husserl’s analysis of timeconsciousness is very much a work in progress. What we have are notes, sketches, and the texts of lecture courses from different periods of his long career. Terminology remains unsettled; ideas and themes surface, submerge, and resurface, sometimes rejected, sometimes seemingly in contradiction with one another, sometimes evolving, but all too often without receiving the finished treatment the reader would like to find. All of this leaves the commentator with much to do. Fortunately, however, he or she is not reduced to stitching together random shreds and patches of text in hopes of forming a coherent whole. In fact, threads of continuity run through Husserl’s labyrinthine analyses, and these can serve as guides to his central concerns. I will focus in this essay on what I take to be the most important of these continuities: Husserl’s idea that there are “three levels of constitution” involved in time-consciousness, and particularly his notion of “the absolute time-constituting flow of consciousness” (Hua X, 73), the deepest of the levels. If, as Husserl says, time-consciousness is the most difficult problem in phenomenology, then surely the role and nature of the absolute flow is the most difficult problem in the phenomenology of time-consciousness. This rich but daunting notion appears in various formulations in each of the key periods in which Husserl actively investigated temporality. Let me marshall some evidence for this claim. I. A Survey of the Levels of Time-Consciousness Husserl initially broached the conception of three connected “levels of constitution” involved in time-consciousness in a text written between 1907 and 1909, in which he distinguished:
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1. the things of empirical experience in objective time . . .; 2. the constituting multiplicities of appearance . . ., the immanent unities in pre-empirical time; 3. the absolute time-constituting flow of consciousness (Hua X, 73). A few years later, in 1911 or 1912, he offered a similar division, with different wording and in reversed order: 1. the internal consciousness, the experiencing,1 2. the experience,2 3. the intentional object of the experience (Hua XXIII, 326).3 It is interesting that in the lectures on time-consciousness from 1905, written only a short time earlier, no such tripartite division appears. Husserl’s investigations of temporality in the 1905 lectures focused exclusively on the constituted experiences [Erlebnisse], such as acts and sensory contents, which fall on the second level in the enumerations above. This, he noted in retrospect (Hua X, 127), conformed to his procedure in the Logical Investigations, in which the distinction between the experiencing or internal consciousness of immanent contents, and the contents themselves, did not enter the picture (Hua XIX/1, 362). Experiences formed a “closed field” (Hua X, 127), which the phenomenologist could study without taking into account any other dimension of consciousness. When, however, Husserl discovered the level of the absolute flow in the years immediately following the 1905 lectures, it became clear that a thorough account of time-consciousness would have to venture further, reaching to the flow itself and the role it plays in the constitution of experiences in immanent time. Where only simplicity originally appeared, phenomenology came to find complexity, a common occurrence, Husserl notes, in the unfolding of the phenomenological enterprise (Hua XXIII, 17–18). Of course, Husserl could still exercise the option of restricting his investigations to the closed field of experiences, as he did in Ideen I (1913), where he purposefully left out of account “the enigma of the consciousness of time” (Hua III, 198). The little he did say about temporal awareness in that work, however, confirms the distinctions he made
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earlier. He observes that experiences such as acts, emotions, and so on, yielded by the phenomenological reduction, might appear to compose a kind of “absolute” for the purposes of phenomenology, but that “in truth” they are not “what is ultimate.” They instead have their “primal source in what is ultimately and truly absolute” (Hua III, 198), which, presumably, is the absolute flow of time-constituting consciousness. In Husserl’s second major set of texts devoted to temporality, the “Bernauer” manuscripts from 1917 to 1918, the “truly absolute” neglected in Ideen I returns as a theme, although Husserl now replaces the phrase “absolute flow” with “primal process” and other language. Nevertheless, it is clear that he continues to maintain the division of levels. Thus he distinguishes “the ‘external’ object,” a house, for example, from “the immanent object,” the act of perceiving the house, and the latter from “the primally constituting process” that constitutes the act (XXXIII, 191). Leaving out the level of external objects and focusing on the other two levels, he writes that “. . . immanent temporal objectivity is itself constituted and refers us back to the internal consciousness and its primal process. Only here we surely have a radical demarcation. This primal process is process, but no longer constituted in the same way as the objects belonging to immanent time” (Hua XXXIII, 122). He observes in another text that in the phenomenological reduction one can go back to the level of immanent being with its form of immanent time (level 2), and from there “regress still further . . . to the original consciousness constituting immanent temporal objectivity” (Hua XXXIII, 281). He also stresses the constitutional ligatures binding the three levels, referring to “the primal living [Urleben] in which the experience [Erlebnis]-manifold belonging to phenomenological time . . . becomes constituted” [level two], which in turn accounts for the constitution of spatio-temporal objects transcendent to consciousness (Hua XXXIII, 268). The levels also appear fleetingly in the Cartesian Meditations (1929), in which Husserl refers to the “all-embracing consciousness of internal time” whose correlate is the immanent temporality in which experiences begin and end and have their temporal order (Hua I, 81). But it is in the C-manuscripts (1929–1934), Husserl’s final reflections on timeconsciousness, that the distinctions win renewed prominence, receiving a variety of formulations, as in this text from 1930 in which Husserl develops the distinctions in terms of three senses of flowing: “(1) the
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experiencing flow, the pretemporalizing flow; (2) the flow of immanent ‘experiences’ constituted as hyletic unities and as acts . . .; (3) the worldtime in which everything real ‘flows’ – the flow of time, becoming, etc.” (Hua XXXIV, 180, note 1). Husserl claims that the “experiencing flow,” the first level above, represents “a deeper constitution” (Hua Mat VIII, 297) with respect to the other levels, “a flowing underlying basis” (Hua Mat VIII, 47). The evidence is compelling, then, that for the better part of thirty years Husserl differentiated three levels involved in time-consciousness. But why does he make these distinctions, particularly the one between the absolute flow and the immanent temporal unities it constitutes? What do the distinctions tell us about the nature of time-consciousness, and what roles do they play in our conscious lives generally? I will sketch out a possible reply to these questions in the present section, and then in subsequent sections draw out some implications of the notion of the absolute flow. It should be noted at the outset, however, that the levels are not simply dimensions of time-consciousness. They embrace, from the fundamental perspective of temporality, the entire domain of conscious life. To explore them is to explore what it means to live as a conscious human being. On the most obvious level, the consciousness of time is the consciousness of transcendent objects and events that appear in a succession of phases or that endure, such as orchestras playing in concert halls, trains rushing into stations, houses standing in the midst of gardens. Such objects are given in the temporal modes of now, past, and future, and in relations of simultaneity and before and after. They can exist without our being aware of them, but when they do enter our field of consciousness, they do so as the objects of intentional acts or experiences [Erlebnisse], such as perception, memory, or anticipation. I perceive people now bustling about on the platform of the railroad station. I anticipate that the train I am boarding will soon depart. I remember its arrival a short time ago. Perception, memory, and expectation are thus time-constituting acts, perception presenting its object in the temporal mode of the present or “now,” memory re-presenting its object as past, and expectation re-presenting its object as future. Collectively, these acts constitute mundane objective time and the temporal objects inhabiting it. They are instances of “temporalization” (Zeitigung), a synonym for
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time-consciousness that Husserl introduces and uses extensively in the Cmanuscripts, here applied to the constitution of world time. World time is a single time or form in which all external temporal objects have their position. Phantasy, which Husserl describes as “perception ‘as it were’” (Hua XXIII, 287), is a time-constituting act as well, but the time it constitutes is fictional time. Its objects do not fit into the real time of the perceived world, although they derive their fictional sense only in contrast to it. But what about the act that perceives the train, or remembers or anticipates it? Is there also awareness of it, and is it, too, a temporal object or unity? To ask these questions is to open up the issue of the relation between the second level and the ultimate level of time-consciousness. Husserl’s reply is that there is indeed an awareness of acts or experiences, and that it is an awareness of them as temporal. They are, in his technical language, “erlebt,” “experienced.” Erleben, or “experiencing,” is another name for the absolute time-constituting flow of consciousness. In earlier texts particularly, Husserl used “internal consciousness,” “sensing,” and “originally impressional consciousness,” along with assorted variations, as synonyms for this ultimate and original level of time-constitution (cf., e.g., Hua XXIII, 326, 289, 259). Still other terms emerged in later texts, as we shall see. The acts and sensory contents experienced through the ultimate flow are unities in “immanent” time. Husserl also describes immanent time as “subjective,” because it is the time of acts belonging to the conscious subject, and “transcendental,” because the acts inhabiting it are usually conscious of transcendent temporal objects and events, such as houses and trains. “. . . Every experience is ‘consciousness,’ and consciousness is consciousness of . . . But every experience is itself experienced, and to that extent also something of which there is consciousness [bewusst]” (Hua X, 291). This being-experienced is not something incidental; all experiences, all acts of consciousness, are necessarily experienced. Unlike external transcendent objects, which can exist whether one is conscious of them or not, the being of experiences is to be perceived (Hua XXXIII, 191), or, more precisely, to be experienced. To be conscious, then, is to be selfconscious, in the sense that in perceiving a train, one is not only aware of the train, but also of the act perceiving it.
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We are not, however, aware of the act and its object in the same way. As Husserl says of prereflective experience in Ideen I: “When in the cogito, we are not conscious of the cogitatio itself as an intentional object” (Hua III, 77); or as he expresses it in the Cartesian Meditations: “perceiving straightforwardly, we grasp, for example, the house and not the perceiving. Only in reflection do we ‘direct’ ourselves to the perceiving itself and to its perceptual directedness to the house” (Hua I, 72). It is reflection, then, that makes another act into an intended object. But this does not mean that there is no consciousness of acts and of other immanent contents before reflection. Experiencing is precisely the nonobjectivating awareness of the Erlebnisse, including intentional acts. Experiencing is not an act of consciousness directed toward another act in the way in which perception or reflection, which is essentially self-perception, is directed toward or means its object (Hua X, 289). Moreover, reflective acts are optional; the subject can freely undertake them or not. Experiencing, on the other hand, is not a matter of choice; it necessarily accompanies every act. When one does choose to carry out a reflection, the reflective act is an intentional experience that objectivates or is directed toward what it reflects upon, and is itself experienced. If experiencing were equivalent to reflection, then every act or experience would necessarily be known through an act of reflection, which would itself be the target of another reflective act, and so on ad infinitum. Experiencing is, rather, a primal, implicit, nonobjectivating form of self-awareness; it is not an act that has a thematized or meant intentional object. Reflection, as a higherlevel form of self-awareness, presupposes experiencing. It is precisely this experiencing that Husserl has in mind when he distinguishes a final and deepest level in time-consciousness, the absolute flow. “. . . All time originates from temporalization, and all temporalization originates form primal temporalization” (Hua XXXIV, 300). Experiencing is the primal temporalization from which all time and all time-consciousness originally springs. II. The Structure of the Time-Constituting Flow Time-consciousness turns out to be a complicated phenomenon. On one level, it embraces the region of transcendent temporal objects intended in acts of perception, memory, and expectation. It also includes two levels
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belonging to consciousness itself, the first made up of constituted experiences, which include intentional acts, and the second consisting in the experiencing or constituting of these experiences as unities in immanent time, that is, as beginning, lasting for a while, and then ending. Like transcendent objects, the immanent temporal unities are experienced (not perceived) in the modes of now, past, and future. Husserl sometimes describes his investigation of these levels as an inquiry into what he calls the “amazing structure” of time-consciousness, and particularly of the absolute consciousness or primal flow (Hua Mat VIII, 7). His structural analysis reveals that “there is one, unique flow of consciousness” in which both unities in immanent time and the unity of the flow of consciousness itself “become constituted at once” (Hua X, 80). This constitution occurs through the complex structure that Husserl calls the absolute flow’s “double intentionality” (Hua X, 80). This key notion probably has its roots in Husserl’s discussion of secondary memory. The act of memory is conscious not only of a past object or event, but also of the past act that originally intended the object. In fact, it is through the medium of remembering my past perceiving of the object that I am able to remember the past object. “. . . [Having] been perceived belongs fundamentally to the essence of memory” (Hua X, 57). Thus when I remember a train rushing into a station, I remember it as I originally perceived it, that is, in a certain setting, from a certain angle determined by my body’s position, under definite lighting conditions, and so on (cf. Mat VIII, 90). This is ordinary memory’s double intentionality, and Husserl finds a kindred double intentionality in the absolute flow. Husserl focuses particularly on retention in his discussions of the flow’s double intentionality. On the model of secondary memory, retention retains not only the past phases of an immanent unity such as the act of perceiving the train, but also the past phase of the primal flow in which it was originally experienced. The double intentionality of the absolute flow entails that the flow has phases, one of which will be the “actual momentary phase of the flow” (Hua X, 83), the phase that is living and actual at the moment, while others will have elapsed or have not yet become actual. The flow, Husserl writes, “always and necessarily” possesses “the phase of actuality, and the series of phases that have preceded the phase of actuality or that will follow it (those that are not yet actual)” (Hua X, 83). Each
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momentary phase of the flow possesses three modes of internal consciousness or experiencing: primal impression (or “primal sensation” in some earlier texts), retention, and protention. Primal impression is the immediate consciousness of the now-phase of an experience, say, of the now-phase of an act of perceiving a house. Retention is the consciousness of the just elapsed phases of the act, but it achieves its consciousness of the elapsed act-phases mediately, that is, by being conscious of the just elapsed phase of the experiencing flow. Protention, too, is a relation of phase of consciousness to phase of consciousness, in this case not to phases that have elapsed but to phases still to come. As Husserl puts it in the Bernauer Manuscripts, in both retention and protention “we have mediate intentionality, and to every mediated intentionality belongs the double ‘direction’ of intentionality” (Hua XXXIII, 10). Setting this structure into motion, so to speak, gives one a sense of why Husserl called it “amazing.” When the currently actual phase of the flow elapses and yields to a new actual phase, the new phase retains the just elapsed phase of the flow and, along with it, its primal impressional, retentional, and protentional moments. Retaining the primal impressional consciousness involves retaining, as just past, the phase of the experience– the first phase of the act of perceiving the house, for example–which the primal impression had originally made conscious as now. Here the mediation vividly shows itself. I retain the elapsed phase of the act of perceiving precisely by retaining the elapsed phase of the absolute flow that originally constituted it. Furthermore, in retaining the just elapsed phase of the flow, the new phase of the flow also retains the retentional moment of that just elapsed phase, which in turn retains the phase preceding it along with its primal impressional and retentional moment, and so on, until the retention of a particular experience finally fades away. Retention is therefore “an expression used to designate the intentional relation . . . of phase of consciousness to phase of consciousness, and these phases of consciousness must not be regarded as temporal objects themselves” (Hua X, 333). For this reason, Husserl describes retention as “retention of retention” (Hua X, 82; Hua XXXIII, 9, 47); and since each of the retained phases of the flow was originally conscious of a phase of an experience through its primal impressional moment, those elapsed experience-phases are retained as well. In this way, an act is constituted as an experience in immanent time.
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In a text dating from 1911, Husserl characterizes this double direction of intentionality as the flow’s Längsintentionalität and Querintentionalität. The terms are difficult to translate, but if one thinks of the flow of constituted experiences in immanent time as a line running above the absolute flow constituting them, then one might translate Querintentionalität as “vertical” intentionality, insofar as it refers to the flow’s intentionality as, so to speak, directed “upwards” toward the constituted experiences running their course in immanent time on level two. The Längsintentionalität, understood as the flow insofar as it reaches out from its actual phase, through retention and protention, toward the phases of itself that are no longer actual or not yet actual, might be translated as “horizontal” or “lengthwise” intentionality. In any case, Husserl insists that the two intentionalities are inseparable, living through each other and “requiring one another like two sides of one and the same thing” (Hua X, 381), a theme to which we shall return later in the essay. Thanks to its double intentionality, and particularly its Längsintentionalität, the flow reveals itself in its flowing: “The flow of the consciousness that constitutes immanent time not only exists but is so remarkably and yet intelligibly fashioned that a self-appearance of the flow necessarily exists in it, and therefore the flow itself must necessarily be apprehensible in the flowing” (Hua X, 83; cf. Hua XXXIII, 117). Through its retention of elapsed phases of itself as they slip away and its protending of phases yet to come, “the flowing consciousness . . . is necessarily the consciousness of itself as flowing” (Hua XXXIII, 48). The absolute flow, unlike the flow of acts it constitutes, does not require a second flow in order to appear; “on the contrary, it constitutes itself as a phenomenon in itself. The constituting and the constituted coincide . . .” (Hua X, 83). In the C-Manuscripts, Husserl develops this idea of the flow’s self-constitution in terms of two forms of self-temporalization. One is “the self-temporalization carried out in the flowing itself – retentionalizing”; the other is “self-temporalization through memories” (Hua Mat VIII, 115). The latter, one can assume, is the ordinary notion of self-temporalizing. In a memory I bring some past portion of my life into the full light of consciousness, thus becoming explicitly aware of my being in time. This form of self-temporalization, however, is episodic. I carry out acts of memory only sporadically; and when I do, my memory
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depends on the first form of self-temporalization, which is continuous, nonepisodic, and primal. It is important to stress that this “originally time-constituting process” (Hua XXXIII, 127), operating through the absolute flow’s double intentionality, is not one more kind of conscious experience alongside others, such as perception, memory, phantasy, judging, and so on. Rather, it underlies them all and makes them possible. Furthermore, the absolute time-constituting consciousness is not something that does something in the sense in which a Cartesian mental substance performs acts of perceiving or doubting. Rather than saying that it carries out experiencing or temporalizing, it would be more accurate to say that the flow is experiencing. “The absolute is nothing less” – and, we can add, nothing more – “than absolute temporalization” (Hua XV, 670). Its existence, its life, is to experience. This means that primal impression, retention, and protention do not belong to the flow as properties. They are the primal flow in its various ways of constituting. Retention, for example, is the absolute flow experiencing what has just elapsed. Hence if one asks what the absolute flow is, one has to respond that it is all of the ways in which consciousness constitutes time on the primordial level. Husserl aptly describes the “eidetic structure” of this primal process as “the first and deepest law of the genesis of consciousness and at the same time as the original constitution of objectivities” (Hua XXXIII, 281).
III. The Absolute Flow, Temporality, and Language “The last time actually to be called time is ‘immanent time,’ behind which, however, there still lies the time-constituting flow and the succession belonging to it” (Hua XXXIII, 179). Husserl insists that this flow is not itself temporal; it is not a new level of time and not something in time that could properly be said to appear in the modes of now, past, and future. In fact, in his struggle to analyze the flow and the ways in which it constitutes immanent time, Husserl admits that “for all of this, we have no names” (Hua X, 371). There are several reasons why language falters here. One is that Husserl has already exhausted the trove of temporal terms in describing the unities constituted in immanent and transcendent time. He is left in the
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position of speaking of the constituting flow “in conformity with what is constituted,” essentially borrowing the language of objective time and applying it to the flow, even though the flow “is absolute subjectivity” and not “‘something in objective time’” (Hua X, 75). Husserl does try to use language that avoids the most common temporal predicates, referring to phases of the flow as “preceding” or “following” the actual phase, rather than as now, past, and future (Hua X, 83). Furthermore, since the flow exists as a flow of successive phases, Husserl can say that it is “like a temporal flow” (Hua Mat VIII, 269) and has a “quasi-temporal order” (Hua X, 82); and since it constitutes immanent, phenomenal experiences without itself being phenomenal or immanent in the sense of what it constitutes, he can also claim that it enjoys a “pre-phenomenal or pre-immanent temporality,” which “constitutes itself intentionally as the form of the time-constituting consciousness and in it itself” (Hua X, 381). Yet because this form is neither world time nor immanent time, we cannot legitimately apply temporal predicates to it. As Husserl writes in the C-Manuscripts: “. . . at bottom, the primal time is not seriously time, but only the pre-stage of time . . .” (Hua Mat VIII, 117). It is not really time at all; it is “primal flowing,” which, as “constant primal constituting,” is “pre-time” because it generates temporality without itself being a temporal flow, a continuous succession of objects (Hua Mat VIII, 269). It is interesting that when Husserl applies temporal language to the flow, he often engages in something resembling negative theology or even the analogical predication of Aquinas. For example, he refers to the absolute flow as “primal change.” Now change is ordinarily a mark of the temporal, but Husserl immediately cautions that this primal change “is not in any time,” although “time first of all originates in it” (Hua Mat VIII, 12). Or he writes that “the absolute itself is [the] universal primal present,” but lest this present be confused with the present or now of immanent time, he adds that it is “not a temporal modality” (Hua XV, 668). His frequent use of prefixes–“quasi-,” “pre-,” “primal,” and so on– also alerts the reader not to take the terms to which they are attached in their usual sense. Another reason why language finds itself in such difficulty here is that it is trying to capture the elusive “deeper constitution” (Hua Mat VIII, 297) that accounts for the consciousness of acts in immanent time, which themselves constitute objects in world time. The introduction of
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the absolute flow leads us “into the phenomenological depths, into questions of the deeper How of this constituting” (Hua Mat VIII, 407). This is new territory: “we push forward to the ‘primal phenomenon,’ which has never before been exhibited, much less systematically explicated, in which everything . . . has its source” (Hua Mat VIII, 145). When Husserl made this remark in 1932, he had, in fact, already been struggling for over twenty years to exhibit the workings of this “primal phenomenon.” His statement is really an admission about how difficult it is to penetrate these depths and catch the primal flow in action. “As pre-being, [the flow] is inexperienceable, unsayable; as soon as the unsayable and inexperienceable is displayed, hence experienced and made into the theme of a statement, it is precisely ontified” (Hua Mat VIII, 269). As pre-temporal, the flow is also pre-being; it is not being in time. To display it, to “say” it, is to “ontify” it, which makes it a being in time and in that sense falsifies it, a situation that obviously poses difficulties for anyone, including the phenomenologist, who reflects on the flow and tries to snare it in words. The phenomenologist who does manage to penetrate the innermost sphere of consciousness encounters something “ultimate, no longer constituted, no longer a concrete unity . . .” (Hua XXXIII, 179). This is the “absolute timeless consciousness” (Hua X, 112) whose moments–primal impression, retention, protention–escape time just as completely as the experiences they constitute fall into time. Husserl therefore writes that “the consciousness of the now is not itself now. The retention that exists ‘together’ with the consciousness of the now is not ‘now,’ is not simultaneous with the now, and it would make no sense to say that it is” (Hua X, 333). They simply occupy different levels, one as “acquiring” and “productive” temporalization (Hua Mat VIII, 50), the other as what is acquired, produced, temporalized, and experienced in the modes of now, just past, and future. Finally, we noted in the last section that Husserl claims that the absolute flow is self-constituting, or, as he puts it in the C-manuscripts, “self-temporalizing.” He cautions, however, that “‘self-temporalization,’ understood as the achievement of the primal flowing, is a dangerous term. The flowing, as flowing, does not temporalize” (Hua Mat VIII, 118). At first glance, Husserl’s claim that the flow temporalizes itself combined with his denial that it temporalizes is certainly puzzling. There is
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a solution to the puzzle, however, and it lies in the primal flow’s nontemporal character. “Self-temporalization” is a dangerous term because, taken literally, it suggests the transformation of the nontemporal flow into something temporal. In its primary sense, after all, temporalization “is the constitution of what exists in temporal modalities” (Hua Mat VIII, 274). Husserl is trying to avoid the idea that by constituting itself the flow becomes an object or unity co-existing in immanent time with other constituted unities. Self-temporalization in that sense occurs exclusively through memory: “my own being as existing in time comes about only through memorial consciousness or consciousness-of, as intentionality” (Hua Mat VIII, 119). This does not, however, preclude a pre-memorial self-awareness or self-temporalizing on the part of the flow that does not constitute it as a unity in time, but does make it conscious of itself as running off in a “quasi-temporal order” of phases, and as possessing a “preimmanent temporality” (Hua X, 381).
IV. Objects and Experiences, the Flow and Intentionality We noted earlier that the absolute flow of experiencing is not objectivating consciousness. One might assume, then, that Husserl would withhold the term “object” from the experiences that the flow constitutes. But this is not the case. Husserl often refers to the Erlebnis as a temporal “object” (frequently using “Objekt” and occasionally “Gegenstand”). In 1905, for example, he writes that “[i]t belongs to the essence of the perception of a temporal object that it is a temporal object itself” (Hua X, 232), and that “the perception of a temporal object must be a temporal object and . . . both coincide as far as their phenomenal extension is concerned” (Hua X, 226). Husserl’s texts, particularly from the early and middle periods, are so replete with references to experiences as immanent temporal objects that the term’s presence could hardly have been a slip of the pen. Whatever he may have meant by “object” in these cases, there seems little doubt that Husserl intended to use the term. If an experience, the perception of a house, for example, really is an object, it follows that the experiencing of it would be a kind of intentionality, conceived according to the model of the relation of intentional act to intended object, only in this case with the relation pushed down
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into consciousness and played out in terms of one level of consciousness constituting another. And, in fact, Husserl writes that “all constituted unities and the experiences constituting them lead us back to the internal consciousness and the time-constitution being carried out in it as intentional performance” (Hua XXXIII, 179). The absolute flow’s internal consciousness of an act in immanent time apparently does precisely what an objectivating intentional act does: it constitutes an object. The fact that the object is an act and immanent to consciousness would make it no less an object. But matters are not that clear cut. Husserl seems to vacillate over whether retention, primal impression, and protention, the three moments of consciousness belonging to the absolute flow, are truly intentional. There is no question that he takes them to be cases of “consciousness-of.” In retention, he writes, “one is conscious of a just past and not a now”; and in protention, “one is conscious of a future, but not of a now or of a just-past” (Hua XXIII, 315). But is this consciousness-of intentional? In earlier texts, Husserl often explicitly describes retention as intentionality. He apparently does so because he does not want retention to be taken as a content loitering in the present: “Retention is not a modification in which impressional data are really preserved, only in modified form: on the contrary, it is an intentionality with a specific character of its own” (Hua X, 118). It is the consciousness of the just past, not the preserving in the present of a deceased content. In some later texts, however, he flatly denies that the consciousness belonging to the flow is intentional at all. In 1930, he writes that “the most original temporalizing consciousness,” which constitutes acts and other unities in internal time, “is not consciousness proper, not an ‘intention’” (Hua Mat VIII, 113). But then, at about the same time, he refers to “the flow intentionality, the ‘consciousness of ’ in the sense of these retentions and protentions as opposed to consciousness . . . understood as act-consciousness, which is a unity constituted in the flowing consciousness” (Hua XXXIV, 179). He adds that it is the constituted acts that are “‘intentions in the authentic sense’” (Hua XXXIV, 179), their authenticity presumably deriving from the fact that they are directed toward or “mean” an object. Two years later, in 1932, he asks: “What kind of intentionality runs under the flag of ‘retention’? Is it really an intentionality? I have a continuous mingling of modification. . ., but authentic intention is surely absent” (Hua Mat VIII, 122). On the
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other hand, he senses the paradox of affirming that primal consciousness is consciousness-of and yet not authentically intentional when he takes note of “the problem of this inauthenticity and why it [the ‘most original’ consciousness] is also classed as ‘consciousness of’” (Hua Mat VIII, 113). Husserl’s ambivalence about labeling primal impression, retention, and protention as forms of intentionality no doubt reflects his concern that experiencing not be understood as objectivating consciousness. Retention “is not a looking-back that makes the elapsed phase into an object” (Hua X, 118). And although it is true that “we owe it to retention that consciousness can be made into an object” (Hua X, 119), it will be objectivating acts such as reflection and memory, constituted by the primal flow of which retention is a moment, that will do the making. This is why Husserl had reservations about his own use in earlier texts of “immanent perception” to characterize our internal consciousness of acts in internal time. “Perception” ordinarily refers to an act that objectivates its correlate, and hence if experiencing were literally perceptual, an infinite regress would be unavoidable. Husserl therefore cautions that when he uses “perceiving” as a synonym for internal consciousness, “perceiving here does not signify being turned toward something and grasping it in an act of meaning!” (Hua XXIII, 307, note 1). Its use emphasizes that internal consciousness, even in its retentional and protentional forms, is presentational, not re-presentational. Perhaps one can negotiate this shifting terrain by keeping in mind that Husserl steadily maintains that primal impression, retention, and protention are modes of consciousness-of. To the extent that intentionality, in the broadest sense, means consciousness of something, it is reasonable to say that primal impression, retention, and protention are forms of intentionality, even if the intentionality is of a special, nonobjectivating sort. Intentionality would then be a genus with species, among which would be the forms of nonobjectivating awareness belonging to the absolute flow. This would seem to be in keeping with Husserl’s remark that “we have consciousness-of in different senses and in different founding levels” (Hua Mat VIII, 112). We can say, then, that if “intentionality” refers to the objectivating of something, then the absolute flow and its moments of primal impression, retention, and protention are not instances of intentionality. On the other hand, if intentionality means being conscious of something in any sense, then they are instances of intentionality.
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Finally, if experiencing or internal consciousness does not objectivate, it might be assumed that it does not “posit” either; and, in fact, Husserl does write that “every experience is sensed, is immanently ‘perceived’ (internal consciousness), although naturally not posited” (Hua X, 128). Typically, however, this is not Husserl’s last word on the matter. Experiencing, he says, is indeed “consciousness that actually posits” (Hua XXIII, 424) in the sense that “its correlate is the characteristic of actuality belonging to every experience” (Hua XXIII, 338, note 2). When I am having an experience–perceiving, judging, wishing–my experience is an actual conscious event running its course in internal time; it really (reell) exists, and I experience it as really existing, which means precisely that I posit it. This positing, like the experiencing to which it belongs, is necessary (Hua XXIII, 429), although it does not have to be explicitly carried out (Hua XXIII, 469). To have an experience simply is to posit it. Of course, the actuality of the posited experience is not worldly actuality, but it is actuality nonetheless. Hence one is aware of a perception “in internal consciousness as posited, just as it itself posits what is perceived” (Hua XXIII, 469). Even acts, such as phantasy, which do not posit mundane objects, are nonetheless posited themselves, since they are actual experiences (Hua XXIII, 469).
V. Acts as Discrete Experiences Regardless of how one finally settles the issue of whether and in what sense experiencing is intentional, calling the experienced act an “object” is not the happiest terminological choice. Fortunately, Husserl also employs another term, “unity,” to describe the experience. “Unity” is free of the freight carried by “object.” In the C-manuscripts, for example, he refers to the “passive temporalization of unities, in which case we cannot speak of objects” (Hua Mat VIII, 335). He also occasionally refers to the experience as an “individual” (Hua XXIII, 331). These terms help to keep intact what appear to be certain essential features of our acts that the otherwise unfortunate term “object” implies. The first of these is that in our waking lives we ordinarily experience a plurality of acts, either simultaneously or in succession. Thus in a single moment, or in rapid succession, I may hear music on the radio, look
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at my computer screen, puzzle over what Husserl really meant when he wrote this or that, anticipate a trip I will take in a few months, remember last summer’s vacation, and worry about whether I will ever finish this essay. Although these could not all be attentive acts at once, they are all “doings” of consciousness, different ways in which consciousness comports itself. I am conscious of them prereflectively in their multiplicity, and I experience them as beginning, lasting for a time, and ceasing. Their beginnings and endings may not always be crisp, but I am aware of them nonetheless. This means that I am conscious of my experiences as distinct from or demarcated from one another in immanent time. Indeed, they would not be temporal unities if I were not conscious of them in that way. Our prereflective consciousness does not present us with a kind of homogeneous porridge in which every moment is like every other moment. I am prereflectively aware that my memory is different from the perceptual act that I experience as coexistent with it, or from the act of phantasy that succeeds it. In the absence of that difference, I would have no awareness of coexistence or succession. One may conclude, then, that even if Husserl did not intend to classify acts as genuinely objects before they become targets of reflection, he still gives every indication of taking them to be originally experienced as discrete. But one might object that this is really a distinction without a difference, for–so the argument would go–it is again only in reflection that experiences appear as discrete. This raises questions about whether experienced acts can be said to enjoy any preobjective discrimination from one another, and whether they can be said to be experienced preobjectively as beginning, enduring, and ending. Numerous texts indicate that Husserl held that there is indeed preobjective awareness of experiences as in some sense distinct. With respect to memorial acts, for example, he writes that “different memories occur as discrete entities [Diskretionen], as individual experiences, which, like other experiences, undergo their retentional modification. This modification does not produce new memories but continuous retentions of one and the same memory” (Hua Mat VIII, 132). Elsewhere Husserl expands on the sense in which memory, and any other kind of act, is experienced as a distinct unity by describing it as “a unitary act, and as such, as an ‘experience’ that begins, continues, and ends–existing in immanent temporality precisely in the manner of something enduring” (Hua Mat VIII, 194). In fact, Husserl even defines
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an experience as something that enjoys a distinct status: “ ‘Experience’ is everything enduring in immanent temporality and enduring in its particularity, that is, everything that stands out, whether originating from reflection or not” (Hua Mat VIII, 194). If experiences were not thus distinct from one another prereflectively, reflection’s ability to pick out its objects would be mysterious indeed. In the absence of prominences, of peaks and valleys in prereflective experience, there would be nothing to guide reflection in making its objectifying cuts. The reflective sorting out of my current act of memory and a perception simultaneous with it and an act of judgment preceding it would be arbitrary. Furthermore, the consciousness of an act as an object depends on having two acts–the original act and a new act of reflection directed toward it–which implies a prereflective awareness of the reflective act as distinct from the act that is its target. A helpful way of viewing the discreteness of experienced acts is to compare them to waves, which Husserl does on at least two occasions. Dan Zahavi cites one of these, a passage from an unpublished manuscript (L I 15 2b), in which Husserl writes that “an act is nothing independent; it is a wave in the stream of consciousness.”4 In a later text, from the C-Manuscripts, Husserl writes that the flowing and constant consciousness I have of the world in my waking life embraces a plurality of awarenesses. Hence “there is constantly a flow, which contains in itself all these particular flows as, so to speak, its waves” (Hua Mat VIII, 362–363). Acts, then, are not like flotsam bobbing on the sea of consciousness, which they would be if they were independent objects; they are the waves of consciousness. To carry the metaphor of the wave further, waves may be the sea and not flotsam on the sea, but they are still demarcated from one another, and are perceived as beginning, rolling along for a while, and then subsiding or breaking on the shore. Waves may not be things, but as any sailor or surfer knows, they can become prominent and stand out, enjoying a fleeting individuality. Now if acts are like waves, they too have a unity and distinctness in relation to other acts. Just as waves are discrete moments of the sea, so experiences are discrete moments of consciousness. Furthermore, if one thinks of actual waves, it is obviously appropriate to say of them that they are perceived in temporal modes–as now, for example, or as just past. If acts of consciousness are comparable
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to waves, they will be experienced in temporal modes. Indeed, if acts were not given as now, past, and future, we could not experience them as discrete unities with their fixed locations in immanent time.
VI. Inseparability of the Flow from What It Constitutes The advantage of the wave metaphor is that it allows Husserl to preserve the distinction between the constituting level of internal consciousness and the constituted stream of immanent acts, but to do so without separating them. Whatever Husserl may have meant by the distinction between a constituting level and a constituted level within consciousness, he did not conceive of the two as separable, as if they could be pried apart and exist in isolation. There is one consciousness whose “surface” level is the flow of diverse acts and experiences, but this level is supported and constituted by the “phenomenological depths” (Hua Mat VIII, 407) of the absolute flow. The depths and the waves are moments of the same sea, and the ultimate flow and the acts are moments of the same consciousness; but the waves dancing on the sea’s surface are distinct from its depths, and the passing acts through which I live are distinct from the abiding flow that constitutes them. Mundane temporal objects, on the other hand, are not only distinct but also separable from the acts of consciousness that intend them, in the sense that they can exist whether one is conscious of them or not. The absolute flow and the immanent temporal objects it constitutes, by contrast, are mutually dependent moments of a single, indivisible consciousness. The flow could not exist or present itself independently of the experiences it constitutes, for it simply is the experiencing of experiences and would be nothing without them. By the same token, experiences are what they are only as experienced. Hence what Aristotle said of mind is equally true of the primal flow of time-consciousness: “before it thinks, [it is] not actually any real thing.”5 Not that the flow is ever a real thing in the sense in which the individual “soul” in empirical time is a real thing; the point is that the flow is real and actual only when it is experiencing something. Otherwise, it is a mere abstraction. Husserl does describe the flow as a form, but it is not a form that could exist separately from its “matter” (hyletic data and acts).
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When Husserl refers to the flow as form, he has in mind a flow that is always filled, that is always conscious of something; and also a form that is infinitely accommodating and can “inform” or be conscious of an inexhaustible array of experiences. The flow is nothing until it experiences some act or content. The inseparability of the flow and what it experiences, however, does not mean that the two are identical. They remain distinct from and irreducible to one another. As Husserl writes in the Bernauer Manuscripts, “here we surely have a radical demarcation” (Hua XXXIII, 122); and in the C-Manuscripts he says flatly that “there is a distinction between my pure subjectivity taken simply and my pure experience-flow” (Hua Mat VIII, 244). The inseparability of the two levels reflects the inseparability of the two intentionalities that constitute them, which “are inseparably united, requiring one another like two sides of one and the same thing, and are interwoven into the one, unitary flow of consciousness” (Hua X, 381). Ultimately, there is a single consciousness, an inexhaustible spring of conscious life with two dimensions, which constitutes itself on the one hand as the stream of its experiences in immanent time, and on the other as the primal flow of experiencing.
VII. The Question of Unwarranted Complexity Our discussion of the absolute flow to this point might give the impression that, when all is said and done, Husserl has postulated a kind of needlessly elaborate time-constituting machine. The distinction between the flow of experiencing and what is experienced, between two dimensions of immanence within consciousness itself, would seem to be an unnecessary complication.6 Perhaps a simpler account, working only with the level of the flow of experiences, would be more faithful to the phenomena. In that case, my prereflective experiencing of acts as immanent temporal unities would occur through the acts themselves. Each act would be intrinsically self-aware, and the consciousness of acts as coexisting or succeeding one another would come about, not through a distinct absolute flow, but through acts being aware of other acts. No distinct absolute flow would be required.
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It seems odd, however, to say that acts constitute other acts by experiencing them prereflectively. Indeed, it is not at all clear what that would mean. If I am simultaneously remembering and judging, it hardly makes sense to say that my act of judgment experiences my memory as an event coexisting in immanent time, or vice versa. Furthermore, collapsing the two levels together and awarding to the act the functions that Husserl assigns to the flow would entail that the fundamental time-constituting structure of primal impression, retention, and protention would belong exclusively to the act. The act would therefore retain elapsed phases of itself, and it would also retain other acts, implying that my present perception of a snow-covered mountain would somehow retain my just past act of remembering a hot day at the beach, or that my act of phantasying a pink elephant would retain my just past act of thinking the Pythagorean theorem. In addition, since the consciousness belonging to acts is objectivating, it is reasonable to assume that the retentional and protentional moments supposedly intrinsic to acts would be objectivating as well, in which case the act’s retentions and protentions would make an object out of the act itself and out of any other act of which it is conscious. In that case, there would be no preobjectivating experiencing of acts at all. It is also difficult to understand how any one act or even several acts could account for the abiding awareness I have of my conscious life as an ongoing flow of successive and coexistent experiences. It is true that there are acts of memory and expectation through which I am conscious of what is past and future, but I am not always remembering or expecting, while my internal consciousness of my experiential life as stretched out in immanent time is always there. Indeed, my acts of remembering and expecting are dependent on it. It would seem, then, that acts are not originally constituted by themselves or by other acts, though I am aware of them in nonobjectivating experiencing. If this experiencing does not originate in the experienced act, then it is plausible to locate its source in the absolute flow. There is a further objection that might be advanced here. As we have seen, Husserl claims that the flow is aware of itself in its flowing. In that case, the flow would experience or constitute both itself and immanent temporal unities, and the latter, if they are acts of the appropriate kind, would be conscious of transcendent temporal objects. In the example of the perception of a house, there would be consciousness of the
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house, of the perception, and of the flow that constitutes the perception. The objection would be that, phenomenologically, there simply is no such awareness of the flow in addition to our awareness of the act and its object. Husserl again seems to have introduced needless complexity into a fairly simple, straightforward phenomenon. Husserl, however, does not claim that there is a consciousness of the flow that takes place in separation from the consciousness of the immanent experience. The inseparability of the flow and the experiences it constitutes means precisely that the flow is conscious of itself only in the process of being conscious of immanent unities (cf. Hua XXXIII, 44–48). In that process, I am aware of myself as something more than my particular acts, and in that sense I am aware of the absolute flow. I am the flow; the flow is my living, irreducible to a particular act or set of acts, no matter how extensive. “The distinction between my pure subjectivity taken simply and my pure experience flow” remains (Hua Mat VIII, 244).
VIII. The Living Present, the Nunc Stans, and the Primordium “I am–I live, and my living is an unbroken unity of primal flowing temporalization” (Hua Mat VIII, 3). Husserl’s phenomenology of timeconsciousness is an effort to understand conscious life in its identity with temporal awareness. With his notion of the absolute flow, he discloses the deepest structure of conscious life, its ultimate ground and source. In the C-manuscripts, Husserl’s late texts on time-consciousness, he privileges a set of formulations that focus the investigation on this temporalizing life. The most striking of these is “the living present,” which he also characterizes as the “standing, flowing present.” “Present” in these phrases does not signify “a temporal modality” (Hua XV, 668), that is, a way of appearing in which temporalized acts or objects present themselves. It refers to the absolute temporalizing flow. He employs the term with great frequency in the late texts to describe the flow, suggesting that when he declared in 1911 that “we have no names” for the flow, what he really meant was that the cornucopia of names he in fact had never proved to be completely adequate. “Living present” signifies what Husserl earlier called “the actual momentary phase of the flow of consciousness” (Hua X, 83), the phase in
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which I exist and am conscious of the flow of my life. The living present is where I am always “standing.” Husserl accordingly calls it the “nunc stans, the standing ‘present,’” again with the caveat that “the word ‘present,’ as already referring to a temporal modality, is, properly speaking, just not suitable” (Hua XXXIV, 385). The nunc stans is the moment from which consciousness radiates, reaching out to what is, what has been, and what will be. Two things stand out about the nunc stans: it is not locked up in itself, and it is not static. “I exist, actually and concretely, as a constant present; this is my concrete being. It is, however, concrete flowing” (Hua Mat VIII, 129). What “stands” with respect to this present is precisely that it does not stand still. Furthermore, because it is the living moment of the absolute flow and possesses the three-fold structure of primal impression, retention, and protention, it reaches out beyond itself toward what has been and what is yet to be. “In each present, taken as a phase, and hence in the standing, enduring present, I exist in such a way that I transcend my present being” (Hua Mat VIII, 129). A central tenet of Husserl’s phenomenology of time-consciousness from the start was that “consciousness must reach out beyond the now” (Hua X, 226) to phases that are no longer living. Material things are locked in themselves; they have no transcendental life. They cannot play host to other things. The primal consciousness, on the other hand, is an “ultimate transcendental event” (Hua XXXIII, 29). Everything finds its origin there: “Times, objects, worlds of every sense ultimately have their origin in the primal flowing of the living present . . .” (Hua Mat VIII, 4). As “transcendental subjectivity” (Hua Mat VIII, 6), the living present “carries in itself everything conceivable” (Hua Mat VIII, 22). It is “omniscient consciousness, so to speak” (Hua XXXIII, 46), but omniscient in the sense of Aristotle’s passive intellect; that is, unlike a divine intelligence or Hegelian Absolute, already in the possession of the knowledge of everything, the living present is merely the potentiality to experience all things. In Aristotle’s language, it “can have no nature of its own, other than that of having a certain capacity.”7 Because it is sheer experiencing and not identical with a particular act or set of acts, the primal present can be open to everything. “. . . Time and world are temporalized in the absolute, which is the fixed but flowing now” (Hua XV, 670). To live in the primal present, and in living in it to reach out beyond it, is to live in presence and absence. The living present is consciousness’s
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way of escaping the present and reaching the absent, the no longer and the not yet, the past and the future. The nunc stans, far from being a hermetic moment, is the gateway to the flowing life of consciousness and to everything that exists for it and in it, both present and absent. Passing through the gateway in memory and expectation, we can travel anywhere in the flow. Such journeys in time, however, always take their departure from the living present, the phase of consciousness in which we actually live. In the C-manuscripts, Husserl introduces yet another term – “primordium” – to refer to the living present. “Primordium” captures the living present in its role as the primal source of conscious life. The “‘primordium’ in its first temporalization,” Husserl writes, is the “creation of temporal transcendence” (Hua Mat VIII, 131). It is a “flow, a standing flowing,” that originally constitutes “in marvelous fashion” past, present, and future through its primal impressional, retentional, and protentional moments (Hua Mat VIII, 129). The living present, the nunc stans, the absolute flow, and the primordium are all names for the “primal level, . . . the primal ground on which all higher levels are founded” (Hua Mat VIII, 4).
IX. The Living Present as Standing and Flowing “In reflecting on myself transcendentally, I find my primal flowing present as transcendental primal temporalization: as the primal flowing (the primal association) in its ‘constancy,’ in its standing and abiding flowing, in which immanent time, itself again flowing, becomes constituted” (Hua Mat, 347). The living present or nunc stans both flows and abides. Husserl discusses this standing, flowing present in terms of the characteristics of form, constancy, and centering. As for the latter, I am always centered in my flowing conscious life. This is one of the senses of standing, and it is intrinsic to the meaning of the living present and the nunc stans. The living present centers me without freezing me in place, which would leave me with no past and no future, or always with the same past that never becomes further past and the same future that never passes into presence, which would not be an authentic future at all. The future becomes
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present and recedes into the past because I am centered or standing in the flow, experiencing it in its very process of flowing. This makes possible memory and expectation. “Standing in the concrete present and its enduring, we can return in its field to parts understood as past presents” (Hua Mat, 293). If one is to remember or anticipate, one needs a fixed place to stand in the midst of the flowing. Husserl’s description of the flow as standing or abiding also points to the underlying constancy of our conscious lives in contrast to the unities it constitutes. The individual temporal unity, whether immanent or transcendent, is either changing or unchanging (Hua X, 74). It can move from change to rest and from rest to change, and can change more quickly or more slowly. In the case of the absolute flow, however, there is no question of change passing over into rest, or of variations in the “acceleration of change (to use an image)” (Hua X, 74). Rather, “we necessarily find a flow of continuous ‘change’; and this change has the absurd character that it flows precisely as it flows and can flow neither ‘faster’ nor ‘slower.’ If that is the case, then any object that changes is missing here; and since ‘something’ runs its course in every process, no process is in question” (Hua X, 74). We really cannot speak of contingent change and duration on this level, for no act in immanent time or event in world time runs its course here (Hua X, 370). Nothing “remains unchanged for even an instant” (Hua X, 74). This explains why Husserl says both that the flow is “the originally time-constituting process” (Hua XXXIII, 127) and that it is not a process. The flow is not a process in the sense in which an individual event–a train entering a station or the act of perceiving the train–is a process. Events, immanent or transcendent, can begin, accelerate, slow down, and end, which the primal process as continuous, unvarying flowing cannot do. The “primal process is process, but no longer constituted in the same way as the objects belonging to immanent time” (Hua XXXIII, 122). The flow abides, and its “standing signifies being constant as ‘process’–the process of primal temporalization” (Hua XXXIV, 385). The absolute consciousness flows but never finally flows away, never begins and ends as an individual act does. It is always there. The third characteristic of the flowing present’s standing character is its status as “absolutely identical abiding form” (Hua Mat VIII, 54). The flow may not be a contingent flow and its flowing may never cease, but as Husserl observes as early as 1911, it possesses something abiding: “What
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abides, above all, is the formal structure of the flow. That is to say, the flowing is not only flowing throughout, but each phase has one and the same form” (Hua X, 114). That identical form is the structure of primal impression, retention, and protention, which each actual phase of the flow, each living present, possesses, and through which the flow “constitutes immanent time with immanent temporal ‘experiences’ as unities existing in time” (Hua XXXIV, 386). Considered in abstraction from what fills it, the form of the flow is not flowing (Hua Mat VIII, 58). It is “standing.” On the other hand, it never actually exists without being filled, and “the filled form, that is, the primal phenomenon, is flowing” (Hua Mat VIII, 58).
X. Time-Consciousness and Conscious Life: Some Concluding Thoughts There is no beginning and no end to conscious life, in the sense of a beginning and end of which we are or could be aware. Consciousness in the fundamental sense is something deeper than the having of particular acts of consciousness, which do begin and end. To say that I am a conscious being is, of course, to say that I perceive or remember or imagine. But it is also to say something more than that. My conscious life is not exhausted in any one of these experiences or in a multitude of them. The drawing to a close of an act of perceiving or imagining is not the drawing to a close of my conscious life. My life as a conscious being continues and is constantly open to ever new experiences. A fundamental sense of protention, understood as my immediate openness to what is not yet now, is that I am not identical with any one of my present or past acts or experiences. Furthermore, as we have seen, I do not merely exist as flowing; I am aware of this open, streaming character of my conscious living. It is flowing for me: “I exist as flowing present, but my being for myself is itself constituted in this flowing present–the living present also constitutes itself as living present . . .” (Hua Mat VIII, 56). My acts are caught up in the flow of temporalization. They begin and end (Hua Mat VIII, 98), while the flow of consciousness does not begin and end, at least not in the sense of doing so consciously. There is a certain disengagement of consciousness from its acts, then, which is really to say a disengagement
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of consciousness from itself, or of its constituted dimension from its constituting dimension. “The beginning of every act already presupposes the flowing underlying basis and what is already constituted in it as a unity” (Hua Mat VIII, 47). This flowing, unitary ground manifests itself in the very process of constituting the fleeting acts it experiences. I may not be aware of myself or even exist apart from the acts I constitute, but I am always and abidingly aware of myself as more than my acts. Thus I can voluntarily undertake an act, as when I consciously attempt to remember or imagine something. I cannot, however, voluntarily end or begin being conscious. Even if I were to commit suicide, the cessation of consciousness entailed by my suicidal act could never be experienced as a cessation. I can, of course, be aware that a particular instance of imagining is over because I am conscious that it has ended. But this entails that my consciousness did not end when the imagining ended; if it had, I could not be aware that there had been an end to the act. The unceasing flow is the condition for the awareness that something has ceased. Without the absolute flow, there would be no consciousness of discrete acts and contents with their beginnings and endings. Natural death may signal the end of consciousness, but in the absence of consciousness, one could never be aware that consciousness had ended. “It is evident that the concrete ceasing, the natural ceasing of the vitally flowing present, is not conceivable as a fact, as something existing, as something that could be experienced” (Hua Mat VIII, 96). It is “pure nonsense” to think that I could again and again identify this ceasing as ceasing, that I could say “that the ceasing had ceased and after ceasing had a past, and so on” (Hua Mat VIII, 96). One could not experience such a ceasing without the flow that is supposed to have ceased. There is a paradox here, Husserl notes: “existing vitally in the flowing present, I must unquestioningly believe that I will live when I nonetheless know that my death is approaching” (Hua Mat VIII, 96). It is simply “‘inconceivable’ for me that I should cease transcendentally” (Hua Mat VIII, 97). Husserl ties this to the fact that “the transcendental, flowing present has of apodictic necessity in every phase the invariable form: the presumption of the future . . .” (Hua Mat VIII, 97 note 1). In that sense, the living present is the ground of hope. There is much more to Husserl’s account of the absolute flow than these remarks convey. They do not, for example, address the flow’s relationship to the Ego, to other transcendental subjects, and to association,
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about which Husserl has much to say in his later texts and which deserve to be treated in their own right. What I have sought to show through these “notes” is something more basic: that Husserl’s phenomenology of time-consciousness, far from being a construction remote from the phenomena, discloses, in rich and subtle ways, the dynamic and multifaceted structure of our conscious lives. Notes 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6.
This would be level 3 in the text from 1907 to 1909. This would be level 2 in the text from 1907 to 1909. This would be level 1 in the earlier text. Dan Zahavi: Self-Awareness and Alterity. Evanston, 1999, 77. Aristotle, de Anima, III, 4, 429a . Dan Zahavi offers a persuasive argument that there are no compelling phenomenological grounds for maintaining that there are two levels within consciousness. I am not finally convinced by his position, but he certainly shows how complex the matter is, and that it demands the most nuanced of investigations. Cf. Zahavi, Chapter 5, 63–90. 7. De Anima, III, 4, 429a .
CHAPTER III
DEATH AND TIME IN HUSSERL’S C-MANUSCRIPTS James Dodd Abstract. This paper outlines a reading of Husserl’s late writings on time and temporality (above all in the C-manuscripts) that aims to fix how Husserl formulates the problem of death from a phenomenological perspective. The guiding question to this end is: what can death tell us about time? The paper explores the possibility of approaching this question by considering first what life has to tell us about time, with the working thesis being that the problem of death bears precisely on how egoic life is conscious of itself as a “whole,” or how the whole of a personal “life” is a given unity of sense for an ego. This approach also promises to illuminate why the theme of death is pursued by Husserl in conjunction not only with the question of birth, but with that of sleep and sedimentation as well, since all of these themes form the basic parameters of Husserl’s conception of egoic life. This paper is meant to be a preliminary exploration of possible ways to approach Husserl’s late writings on time, and concludes with the suggestion that Husserl takes a very different course than other phenomenological philosophers, such as Sartre and Heidegger, who lay much more emphasis on the “ekstatic” character of lived time.
One of the most striking aspects of Husserl’s reflections in the C-manuscripts1 is a recurring meditation on death. To be sure, Husserl’s engagement with the problem of death is neither extensive nor by any means exhaustive; more, it does not even receive in these pages a sustained, independent treatment. The manuscripts in which these meditations on death occur are loosely collected under the heading of an investigation into the “origin of time” (Ursprung der Zeit), and death only becomes relevant here in connection with the problem of time. It is this connection that I wish to explore here, and ask: in what sense does death become important, not only for itself, but precisely in connection with a reflection on time? What can death, in other words, tell us about time? The question of the origin of time asks after the basis, or the ground, of our consciousness of time. From what emerges our sense of the passage of time, what aspect or capacity of our lives yields that distinct awareness of being in time that is such a patent feature of human self-awareness? If we think of the question of the “origin of time” in this way, it might strike us 51 D. Lohmar, I. Yamaguchi (eds.), On Time - New Contributions to the Husserlian Phenomenology of Time, Phaenomenologica 197, DOI 10.1007/978-90-481-8766-9_3, C Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2010
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as obvious why death plays an important role. It is important in the same way that birth is important: together, birth and death, marking a beginning and an end, show that “our time” is such that it both “begins” and “comes to an end.” The origin of our consciousness of passage, therefore, is related in a fundamental way to our consciousness of “having begun” and of being on the way towards an “end.” However obvious, such a suggestion remains obscure. One might always object: perhaps death tells us nothing about “time,” since what begins and comes to an end is a life “in” time, not time itself. To describe my life with such phrases such as “my time,” the “time given to me,” is just an expression; time is indifferent to life, and with that its passage is something quite distinct from the beginning and ending of life. Yet on the other hand such an objection does not settle the matter; it just points to the first question we need to ask about death. That is, we need to ask not only whether death has something to tell us about time, but whether life has something to tell us about time. And in fact I would argue that, for Husserl, it is precisely on the basis of his way of understanding how life has something to tell us about time that consistently leads him to a meditation on death. To show how Husserl finds his way to the problem of death, we need to reconstruct, at least in rough outline, some essential aspects of the more general problem of the consciousness of time. Fortunately, by and large Husserl’s reflections in the C-manuscripts are consistent with the general development of his analyses on time since 1905, thus the ideas that have become familiar in the secondary literature on the topic—such as retention, protention, world-time (Weltzeit), Erlebniszeit, the living present (lebendige Gegenwart) the distinction between memory as recollection and originary time-consciousness, and so on—still provide the basis of discussion in the texts from the 1930s that we will be considering. These texts have much in common in this respect with another important group of manuscripts on time, the so-called Bernauer manuscripts that date from 1917 to 1918 (Hua 33), in that in both Husserl can be seen undertaking a concentrated effort to clarify the analyses that he had originally outlined in 1905 (Hua 10); and in fact Husserl originally intended these two groups of manuscripts to form the basis of a projected book on time that never materialized.2 Again, since much of the earlier material on time is relatively well known, we will not recapitulate these analyses in toto;
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but we do need to recall some essential aspects in order to orient our discussion of death. Let us do this by way of an example. I am playing violin in a string quartet; we are at a particular place in the progression of the performance, which we can mark as a particular “now” (say the beginning of the Andante con moto in Schubert’s “Death and the Maiden”). At this moment, this now-place in the performance, it happens that I am not actively playing but silent, waiting for “the moment” when I am to come in and play the part intended for me. My stance here is complex, even though I am not actually doing anything. I am not simply listening passively; I have taken up a particular position in the event of the performance itself; insofar as I occupy this place waiting for a moment intended for me, I am oriented to the situation as a performer and not a mere spectator. But to occupy this place is to be put under a demand: more is expected of me than simply listening, simply occupying the moment, and accordingly the “now” has relative to my perspective a particular shape, form, and structure. Yet that does not change the fact that I am “right now” doing nothing, that I am passive, though in a very specific sense, one defined precisely by the composer for whom my silence “at this moment” before I begin to play my part of the Andante is itself part of the work “Death and the Maiden.” I am, in other words, playing a scripted passivity, an organic part of the work, of the whole of the performance projected as an event in time. I am in a position at all to wait for the “right moment” to enter into the unison of performance with my colleagues only given, or on the basis of, a sophisticated perception of the temporal order of the performance. It is a perception of time thanks to which I stand in relation to my task; as such, this perception orients me to something that has a very definite manifestation in the world: the piece of music that we are playing, from the perspective of the momentum that builds before I enter the Andante, for an audience which, in its turn, is oriented in a quite definite manner to the whole of the performance and this moment within it. The audience, too, has a sense of time comparable to my own, thanks to which it will be in a position to judge whether or not I will succeed in entering the fusion of music “at the right time”. Here we can recall some terminology of Husserl’s. Both the intersubjective character and the objective manifestation (all of the aspects of the
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performance that lend themselves to being projected by the composer in accordance with definite patterns) point to the fact that the performance as a temporal duration is something “in the world.” The event of the performance as such, as the space of complex orientation to things and activities, constitutes something “worldly.” The time I am oriented towards, or the time I perceive in order to play, is what Husserl calls “world-time” (Weltzeit); and the “moment” in which I am oriented both to the “now” where I linger in my performance of a scripted passivity, as well as to the “right moment” or the “now” where the score calls for the modification of my performance into an activity, belong to what Husserl calls the present of the world (Weltgegenwart).3 We can speak, for Husserl, of a perception of time to the extent that this present of the world in which I stand appears to me. Yet this world-time appears on the condition of the particular manner in which I have set myself up within it, or have opened to it, as it were; it is not an appearance indifferent to my involvements with things (or even with time itself, as that which I turn towards in order to “see”). To use a Heideggerean expression, the time of the performance is best understood as the “time for”—the moment I am waiting for is precisely that moment in the score set aside “for” my entrance. In Husserl’s language, the coming moment gains its weight in accordance with the interest (Interesse) that constitutes the activity of a subject. Either way, the point is that the world-now is illuminated in light of its capacity to be the space of manifestation of an event which, for its part (here the performance), is a unity of appearance founded explicitly on the active achievements of my perceptual and active life and those of others. That “moment” of the Andante that I and my audience anticipate is founded in our mutual consciousness of what it is that I am doing—playing this part “now” in Schubert’s “Death and the Maiden.” In general, world-time is a horizon of encounter inhabited by subjects thanks to the distinctive accomplishments that constitute the very order of experience as such. To “perceive” world-time is to intuit time as the horizon-bearer of the active accomplishments of subjectivity engaged in this or that experience of something or other “in the world.” Here we should be cautious. The notion of “accomplishment” (Leistung), so important for Husserl here and elsewhere, is often ambiguous. But before pursuing the consequences of this ambiguity, we can employ this example towards an initial formulation of the relation
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between life and time. The possibility for the present of the world to bear the manifestation of something is dependent on the accomplishments of life, of experience as a living orientation to what is visible in world-time. Such time is thus in an important sense immanent to concrete activity: I do not witness, from the outside, the approaching moment of my performance of the Andante on the basis of the world, as if perception merely confirmed something that has already been accomplished. Instead, I perceive the coming moment itself as an immanent, constituent dimension of the pursuit of the interest that defines the accomplishment of a particular orientation in the context of the concert event itself. The present of the world is something at all perceivable only by my taking up residence, so to speak, in the events that comprise this present itself, or better: only by that unique accomplishment of “living” the performance, the walk, the reading, and so on. “Life” thus shows us something about “time,” since in the end it is only life that allows us to intuit the potential of time to make something manifest. What I accomplish in the span of duration between the now of my scripted passivity and the anticipation of my moment in the Andante is not merely marking off of a passage of “time” as the distance between a “now” and “another now,” but rather: I inhabit the very order of the performance as an event in which the structure of the appearance of the musical piece perceptually unfolds in a manner that is shaped by the way I inhabit it. Thus if I fail, if I come in at the “wrong time,” I do not simply mark off “another” interval between times (say, two beats longer than the score called for), but I disrupt a pattern of manifestation, I fail to support the manifestation of the piece—I “ruin” the performance, “waste” the time for its appearance. In this sense life accomplishes a posture that orients itself towards something given, but it also accomplishes the appearance of the being of time as what makes the given visible at all. To return to the point we began making above, just what “accomplishment” means here is ambiguous. The ambiguity lies in the sense in which the accomplishment at issue is something “subjective.” On the one hand, Husserl often uses the term Leistung to refer to what is accomplished “in” a lived experience, for example in that act of looking “forward to”, as in the case of the anticipation that constitutes the “now” of my passive performance in relation to the “now” of the right moment of the Andante at which I aim. The “right moment” is manifest to me as the terminus of the modification of
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my activity thanks to the temporal unity of lived experience as a “looking forward to. . .”. Thus what is achieved is in this sense “subjective”; the moment in question has being only thanks to a subjective posture. This does not contradict the fact that the moment-looked-forward-to is situated in world-time, its focal point resting in the duration of the performance, but again this is only thanks to that unity of act in which life realizes subjectively the implicit phenomenal possibilities of world time. On the other hand, this accomplishment is “subjective” in another sense. Let us look again at our example. What am I conscious of, when I am aware of something like that moment when I am expected to join in the ensemble by playing the first notes of my part of the Andante? So far, all that we have emphasized is that I am aware of the moment across the temporal distension of its anticipation. I see it “coming,” my bow hovering above the strings, and in this sense it is something “temporal.” Yet I am also aware of where I see it from, so to speak; my consciousness of the coming-now is embedded in my awareness of the present that belongs to the act of perception itself. I do not come to the fact of seeing only afterwards, or in reflection; in my performance of scripted passivity I perceive both what is subjectively accomplished, thus visible, as well as the present being of this subjective accomplishment itself. This means that we must distinguish between, to use Husserl’s language, what the accomplishment of sense accomplishes, and the “accomplishment” itself: Schon das müssen wir ja unterscheiden: das, was Akte als Sinnleistungen zustande bringen, in welchen Aktverflechtungen und Aktfundierungen immer, wodurch dann der jeweilige abschließende Akt seinen Sinn als geltenden (dem aktiven Ich geltend) “in sich trägt”, andererseits das strömende Sein der Akte selbst, der Aktverflechtungs- und Aktfundierungseinheiten selbst. [MAT 8, 5]
Husserl wants to argue that the event-character of lived experience, its “strömendes Sein,” is phenomenologically distinguishable from the event-character of the world temporalized, thus manifest, “in” experience. The accomplishment of the appearing of the world is distinct from all worldly appearance, even if we take “worldly appearance” to designate something subjectively accomplished. This means that if we were not able to fix, in a sufficiently precise manner, the distinction between the subjectivity of the temporal manifestation of my anticipated striking the violin with my bow, and the temporalization of the accomplishing subjectivity
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of this temporal manifestation itself, then there would be a fundamental ambiguity at the very core of Husserl’s account of what it means for something to “happen.” What, one might ask, makes this distinction a properly “phenomenological” distinction? Why is it that we can speak of the being of a lived experience as an “event” at all, as something that is different from an “event” such as a concert performance of “Death and the Maiden”? We can take another step in elucidating this distinction by considering again the manner in which subjective performance “achieves” the event of the performance itself. Let us look at our example of “Death and the Maiden” from another perspective. Consider two music students listening to the concert from the back of the hall. While listening, they are reading the score for “Death and the Maiden,” following each note performed by reading its representation on the page. As with the case of a performer in the quartet and the rest of the audience, our two students represent a distinctive orientation towards the potential for time to make manifest, and with that a distinct manner in which time is being inhabited. For them, the performance unfolds “along with” the unfolding of their comprehension of a written score. Both streams of consciousness-perception of the performance on the one hand, intellectual comprehension and imagination on the other—occur at the “same time.” Following a number of Husserl’s analyses we could argue that, in a subjective sense, this is a case of two “events” separated by the field structures germane to “listening” (as founded on an acoustic field of sensations) and “reading” (as founded on specific patterns of meaningcomprehension). More, we could even pursue the thought of the same, “ideal” object (Schubert’s work “Death and the Maiden” as a cultural objectivity) being explicated in two different modes of instantiation.4 But what I want to emphasize in this example is the phenomenon of following the unfolding of the performance through the reading of the score. This points to something important: the music heard by the students lends itself to being apprehended through, or tracked by, the score written on the page (including my scripted passivity). The concert is open to being read—which is more than just the fact that it was scored by Franz Schubert. The simultaneity of these two different types of accomplishment not only come together in terms of the unity of an object, but
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also in terms of the unity of an event that lays the ground for objective unity. That is, it is not simply a case of an identity of content, of the fact that the intentional objectivity of the one maps on to the other. The students are deeply immersed in reading the score, and it is not a question of mapping the content of one mode of perception (listening pure and simple) with another (reading in a comprehending way a string of symbols written on the sheets)—these are music students, not accountants. One is inclined to say that there is instead one perception that fuses what would or could otherwise be separate (one can read without hearing, hear without reading). Why is this so? What is it about the temporal form of simultaneity that would allow for a perceptual given to be open to another, very different mode of apprehension without disintegrating? The element of “simultaneity” in this example points to the potential for modification: to follow the flow of music as a perceptual object through the reading of a score is to follow it in a “modified” fashion. To be sure, the event of the performance is and remains on some level indifferent to the reading of the score, and in fact the modified perception is dependent upon the relatively more “original” experience of straight listening. Yet the perception of the performance through the score is not simply an extension of raw perception, but as a perception we have something more, richer and more complex. Likewise, when in reading a score one turns to pick up an instrument, or sit down at the piano, in order to “actualize” what is only indicated, this is similarly a case of submitting what is grasped and understood to a modification, now through the translation of sign into sound. Or again if I take what I listen to and reinscribe it into an understanding of what it is that I heard, by allowing the memory of the performance to color my reading of the text of the score. For Husserl, the varied possibilities of modifications such as these are tied intrinsically to visibility: it belongs to the visible, the perceived, to be open to becoming a visibility of another kind. This does not, in this case anyway, amount to a suspension of one visible for another; the perceived is instead enriched, or at least the event is revealed in the light of a density that results uniquely from the subjective realization of its potential for modification. Thus when Husserl speaks, as he often does in manuscripts and lecture courses such as Analysen zur passiven Synthesis (Hua 11), of a “fusion” of perceptual content, such fusion rests on a fundamental potentiality
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for modification that belongs to the being of all of that which is “in time.” The most primitive, universal structure of all such being is that of retentionalization (Retentionalisierung) itself: in the phase-continuum of the retentional past, each phase is the modified “just-past” of that impressional moment that “replaces” it in the flow. The displacement of the impressional moment belongs to the structure of its modification in retention, thanks to which it is constituted as a content of consciousness; more, as originally modified, the displaced is now “open” for further modifications, the primal form of which is the phase-continuum of the perpetual modification of the retentional stream itself. This idea of modification as a displacement that in turn establishes the presence of content is an essential part of Husserl’s understanding of time, and its chief characteristic is the idea of a content made available in the form of an ever-progressive enrichment of content through ever more complex forms of modification. The temporality of what is “experienced” is characterized in this way by what I would suggest we think of as a kind of “density” of enrichment, one that makes possible the becoming of a given event, a given moment, of a multiplicity of modifications.5 Let us return to the distinction that we considered above, namely between the temporalization of the accomplished sense (the experienced) and that of the experiencing of the experienced. The suggestion, then, would be that the temporality of the “experiencing of what is experienced” is likewise characterized by a certain density. If so, then we could argue that “experiencing” is manifest as something that “appears” in its own sense, not to be confused with the density of the accomplishments that this accomplishing “trägt in sich,” bears within itself. What is open to modification, in other words, would be not simply the contents of consciousness, but consciousness itself, or the being that corresponds to the second sense of the “subjectivity” of accomplishment that we distinguished above. Another way of thinking of this is to formulate it in terms of a distinction between “experience” as the brute act of “living through” (Erleben) the duration of manifest being, and “experience” as something that of which the subject is conscious as the event of its living through a duration. The latter sense of “experience” would emphasize the act-character of consciousness as something concretized in the manner of a given unity (Erlebnis) within the flow of subjective life.
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But what does it mean for a lived experience, in the second sense of Erlebnis, to be a constituted unity of subjective life? This question is of the utmost importance for Husserl, for the sense in which the temporalization of content manifest in duration is also something that is itself temporalized—in what Husserl in C 2, Text Nr. 1 calls the “Zeitigung aller Zeitigungen”—has far reaching consequences, in particular with respect to the theme of sedimentation. Take for example a question that Husserl poses in the course of a reflection on sedimentation from D 14, a related group of manuscripts from the 1930s on the problem of the unconscious:6 Was allein kann sich “sedimentieren”? Doch nur die intentionalen Erwerbe, die konstituierten Einheiten. (Sehen wir davon ab, dass eigentliche, Seiendes konstituierende Konstitution aktiv ist.) Aber können sie sedimentiert sein ohne eine gewisse “Sedimentierung” ihrer Konstitution? [D 14, 5b]
That is, could the content of a lived experience be “sedimented” without that lived experience itself as constituting subjectivity being sedimented in turn? If we, following Husserl, want to answer in the positive, then we need to be clear about just in what sense the life of the ego is temporalized, and with that open to the modification of sedimentation itself. It is more or less clear what it means to say that the contents of consciousness are open to sedimentation: when my performance as a violinist has come to a close, the duration of the entire event comes to close, and with that gradually “darkens” into the more and more distant passivity of the past. My brilliant success at hitting the right note at the right moment is open to such a modification thanks to its having been lived through, that is, thanks to a temporalization through which it has become available for sense enrichment and modification in the form of a conscious content as such. Sedimentation, the darkening of the given into the passivity of the past, is a special case of such modification: here, the originary “having” of content itself becomes modified according to that strange pattern of having something in a non-active, “empty” manner that nevertheless retains the characteristic of availability, though now in the form of a re-activatability. Now in what sense does the temporalization of constituting consciousness also provide the conditions for its own “self-having” as a content, one which is in turn open to the
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modification of that being-available in a non-active, empty manner that is sedimentation? I believe that it would be a mistake to assume that Husserl has a definitive answer to this question. At their best, manuscripts such as the C-manuscripts represent a series of attempts to formulate the question more precisely. Yet we can at least formulate the following hypothesis. First a preliminary thesis, one basic to Husserl’s conception of consciousness since at least the Ideen: the temporalization of every act of consciousness embeds that act in the unity of the being of the stream of transcendental consciousness (Bewusstseinsstrom) as a whole, as a nonindependent part of the same.7 Thus when Husserl at the end of Text Nr. 2 in C 3 states: “Jeder Akt liegt im einheitlichen Strom des transzendentalen Lebens, darin ein strömend-verströmendes Sondermoment” (MAT MAT 8, 6), the question has to do with the character of the “Sonderheit” of the act as embedded in the stream. Next, the hypothesis: the embeddedness of the act in the stream is constituted in terms of a fundamental contrast, thanks to which the act “stands out” from the stream in a manner that is comparable with but not reducible to intentional objectivity itself (not every Sondermoment is necessarily an instance of an intentional objectivity). Thus the associative-temporal contours of “given being” that consciousness follows in the recollection or reactivation of sense is not limited to the intentional objectivities of lived experience (the duration of the concert, the “right moment” that I faced as a challenge, the musical score of “Death and the Maiden”), but includes the life of constituting consciousness itself that is fused with, though distinct from, such contents. This would mean that the “life of consciousness” is not simply an activity contrasted with the inertia of its content, but that it itself, in its temporal embeddedness in the stream of consciousness, is subject to its own intrinsic inertia. Here we can begin to see how death could possibly emerge as a theme in the context of these reflections, namely, as a special instance of such a contrast. Death would be an instance in which the contrast is not between an individual act and the life of consciousness, but rather between this life as a whole and the flow of its life as such, or the transcendental streaming of its self-manifestation. Let us look closer at what this entails.
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In order to fix just what “life as a whole” could mean for Husserl, a key factor will be the status of the I. There are two senses of the I that are important here (cf. Hua MAT VIII, 19-20): first (1) the I as the polarization (Polarizierung) of all intentional activity; second (2) the I as that into which the entire field of lived experiences itself has matured as personal being or “personality” (Persönlichkeit). Both senses of the I work together, in that any instance of (1) forms the material basis for the movement of (2). Thus relative to our example, I am not simply the “I” that performs, the spontaneous center of an act, but a concrete “person” for whom this performance is assimilated into the unity of an existence that is in turn assimilated into a world. But what does “polarization” mean here? The aim is to describe a mode of lived experience basic to worldly consciousness. The argument is that in order for the order of the world to be visible at all, lived experience must not only be embedded as a moment in the stream, but it must take a certain “shape,” and that what is “shaped” is again time. But what does the I contribute to the shape of time, such that something like a “world” can appear? Let us return to a point already made above: what I am conscious of in being conscious of time is the potential for things to become manifest. But that very being-conscious of this potential for manifestation is possible only if I bring what appears together, specifically into a proximity that constitutes the course of an unfolding duration. The music students, for example, bring the live performance into the orbit of the written score, resulting in the perception of an acoustic animation of Schubert’s written score as a complex unity of perceptual sense. Proximity is defined by a pole that marks what is closest, thus the idea of the I as a pole of synthesis. The functioning of the synthesis of polarization, of the realizing the potential of manifestation through the temporalization of proximity, is a universal aspect of egoic life. The unity of personality (Persönlichkeit, das eigentliche, menschliche Ich) is reached when the richness that proximity makes possible matures into a field of experience that cannot be reduced to the immediate contents of simple acts, or even the duration of a sequence of acts taken as individuated “Sonderheiten.” This brings us to the second sense (2) above, and the point that the life of a “person” brings into proximity not simply this or that set of intentional contents, but a rich field of content, a Lebensfeld—life as such, as opposed to collected
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heap of act-unities and their sedimentations. The person is a higher order modality of temporal density than what can emerge as the consequence of the polarization of this or that intentional act. The double sense of the I is a key element in Husserl’s account of the origin of what it is to have a world (Welthabe),8 and with that the constitution of a shared present of the world (Mit-gegenwart) with other subjectivities. To “have a world” for Husserl is to have a present (Gegenwart), not as an absolute given presence, but as that peculiar set of temporal tensions that open up a possible field of intentional modifications, which in turn ground not only the horizon of possible interest, but more importantly the conditions for the coalescence of personhood. This open character is not, as in Heidegger, a question of a tension with respect to the question one is to “oneself”—where the being of the Da of Dasein is the temporalization of the future as a confrontation with the past—but instead has to do with a present, a Gegenwart that is the ground for the formation of the I as a kind of open legacy, one that “takes hold” as a progressive concretization of a form of life. Thus to speak of “life as a whole” as contrasted against the being of the stream in which it is embedded is to speak precisely of the “life of a person.” But in what sense is this “life of a person” something that stands out in contrast, that is so to speak a higher order formation of that “Sonderheit” that, according to the hypothesis articulated above, is the constituted character of every act of consciousness? Here the concept of sedimentation takes on critical importance. For what is time and its temporalization? Temporalization (Zeitigung), as we have seen, constitutes the content of consciousness as open to modification; time is the original modification that opens the door to modification in general. The same holds true for egoic life as such: life unfolds in the horizon of its potential for modification, this is the origin of its phenomenality. Yet all temporalization, thus all phenomenality, brings with it sedimentation. Sedimentation is a stiffening, an immobilization of the mobility and fluidity of modifications. Sedimentation, in other words, represents the temporal inertia, the taughtness of givenness that, in the case of a personal life, characterizes the Lebensfeld as a whole. But if so, then sedimentation is a dimension of the very proximity that the I effects as the unfolding unity of a life of lived experiences, which in turn implies that the actuality of life bears within it its own modification as something
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inactual, a kind of undoing of the event of life itself. Sedimentation—if we can be convinced that it accompanies the individuation of egoic life in its entirety, as a “whole”—thus provides us with a partial determination of the contrast hypothesized above of the “whole of subjective life” with the being of constituting subjectivity itself. The sedimentation of constituting subjectivity is not its death, however. Could death be conceived as a comparable contrast of the whole of life with its ground? Is death a kind of ultimate darkening of existence, its complete “sedimentation”? I would argue that this is in fact Husserl’s guiding question in his mediations on death in the C-manuscripts, and it explains why death is consistently approached in conjunction with a series of reflections on the phenomena of birth and sleep.9 Why are such phenomena of interest for Husserl? They are important because birth, death, and sleep all represent key structures of the temporalization of egoic existence, and are essential for any transcendental thematization of the full field of world-experience.10 And this in two ways: first, as breaks or ruptures (Brüche) within the unity of the density of meanings that make up the accomplishments of “conscious, waking life”, they represent limits within which egoic accomplishments (Leistungen) can take shape and mature into something like a personal existence (Persönlichkeit). Second, and more important, birth, death, and sleep represent those modalities thanks to which these limits are visible to the I of such a life, and with that essential to the very fabric of its phenomenality. Consciousness is not simply limited by birth, death, and sleep, but is conscious of itself as having been born, having slept, and facing death. But what does this have to do with Husserl’s approach to egoic life as the function of polarization, or with that “inertia” of the density of meaning that we ascribed to sedimentation? Perhaps we again need to ask what sedimentation means. Husserl often speaks of sedimentation as the progression of un-differentiation—and in that sense a loss of definiteness, articulateness of content. Here one might be tempted to think of sedimentation as a fading memory: walking home from the concert, my anxiety about being able to hit that “right moment” is slowly “forgotten.” This is in fact a misleading way to put things; sedimentation is not simply a forgetting, a fading away of something remembered. Sedimentation is a kind of loss, but one that sustains and preserves content in a unique way. In an interesting text from the C-manuscripts, Husserl tries to express
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this with the metaphor of Durchscheinen, “shining-through.”11 On the one hand, temporalization represents, as we have seen, the origin of content or “appearance”; but on the other hand, the self-enriching passage of the temporalization of appearance is always a progression “through” its own darkening. Temporalized content is the richness in differentiation that it is thanks to its own becoming-undifferentiated, or to the distance and compression as a modification of the proximity of egoic differentiation. This means that the modification of sedimentation does not simply erase a given content, removing it from the proximity of egoic life; instead, differentiation unfolds in the space of its own becomingundifferentiated. Passage, and with that distance, belongs to proximity, and thus to egoic life as such. But passage is also compression (thus the geological metaphor of “sedimentation”); modification of sedimentation thickens the translucency of content-rich consciousness, and establishes a uniquely constituted distance through which something like “consciousness of” is possible at all. Husserl is here searching for a way to describe the ballast, so to speak, that gives appearance its uniquely lived character: “Das Gute des Bildes [des Durchscheinens—JD] liegt darin, dass es auch die Seite ‘Verdeckung’, das Undifferenziert-Werden, das schließlich Ganz-unanschaulich-Werden, Durchschimmern, Durchgeahnt-Werden symbolisiert.” (Hua MAT VIII, 87) How does this bear on the problem of my consciousness of death? Again, the sedimentation of life and its contents is not death. But just this gives us an important basis for questioning death, though a negative one. Not all loss is death; but then what is death? For Husserl, the chief characteristic of death is that it is a break, suspension, or loss that cannot, like sedimentation, accompany the appearance of things. Things do not shine through my death; in this sense my death is effectively unexperiencable, unimaginable. It does not thicken my experience, nor does it provide a distance across which content and its life can shine. In this sense death represents a break that does not, so to speak, have a transcendental profile, and in this sense it is a question whether it is an appropriate theme for transcendental reflection at all. “Nur das ist ‘undenkbar’ für mich, dass ich transcendental aufhöre. Aufhören als Mensch in der objektiven Welt, sterben, während Andere leiblich fortleben, das bedarf einer anderen, nicht hierher gehörigen Auslegung.” (Hua MAT VIII, 97; cf. Hua XI, Beilage VIII:10) This passage occurs in C 4, Text Nr. 21, where Husserl then
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goes on to argue that it is just this lack of a transcendental profile that sets the parameters for a phenomenological perspective on death: “Aber es schon vorauszusehen, dass ‘Sterben’ mit der ‘Undenkbarkeit’, Unvorstellbarkeit des Aufhörens eines transzendentalen Seins verträglich sein muß.” (Hua MAT VIII, 97) Perhaps we now have the tools to ask our initial question in a more precise way: what is the origin of the meaningful density of my death? What brings something like “my death” close to me, into the proximity of an accomplished life? Following Husserl’s strategy, perhaps we can turn to the distinction between death and sleep in order to focus the problem even more. Like sleep, death is a total modification of waking life; both mark a passage into what is not experienced (assuming dreamless sleep). Sleep and death are in turn distinct from sedimentation: neither are instances of a mere darkening and lapsing into an obscurity that forms the mute background of ossified temporalization to the activities of a waking, conscious I, but are temporal unities of a duration of a kind of non-experiencing itself. The period of sleep is a duration of time in which “I do not experience,” and my death is the inauguration of the being of a time in which “I am not.” But for all that death is radically different from sleep: Der Tod ist kein Schlaf; im Moment, wo er eintritt, ist mein ganzes weltliches Dasein, mein Ich-bin zu Ende. Ich kann nicht mehr eine Erinnerung an das, was ich war, was ich erfahren, gedacht, entwerfen, für die Zukunft vorgehabt hatte, haben, denn wesensmäßig setzt die mundane Widererinnerung voraus, daß ich meine mundane Gegenwart habe, in der ich für mich menschlich-leiblich bin. (Hua MAT 8, 103)
In death my time is no longer lucid for me; nor can it be recuperated, as can those periods of sleep that, upon waking, form a synthetic unity of alternations of periods of wakefulness and sleep that constitute what Husserl in D 14 calls a “fundamental distinction (Grundunterschied) in affectivity.” (D 14, 10b) Death, in other words, is a passivity through which no formations of interest are borne to be reawakened and rediscovered; death represents instead a total darkening of the very atmosphere of my existence, not its thickening or ballast but its expiration and infinite dissolution. To awake from such a darkening would be to emerge as “another life” entirely.
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But this would also mean that death is alien to sedimentation in a way that sleep is not. Like sleep, the unity of sedimented, constituting consciousness comes to rest only in a life that either activates it or leaves it dormant in the “night of the sedimented” (D 14, 4a). In C 16, as in D 14, Husserl experiments with the striking phrase of “der Tag im Heute” or alternatively “der Tag im Abend” to describe this coming-to-rest of a unity of life (here the “day”) in the form of an unconscious legacy borne by the wakefulness of egoic life: Der Tag ist ein beständig fortströmendes Leisten, Erwerben, jede Phase enthält die Erbschaft der ganzen Kontinuität der früheren, der Abend hat den Totalerwerb des Tages in sich, natürlich zum größten Teil im jeweilig letzten Modus des Unbewußten, des Abend-Horizontlichen, Weise, in der Abend eben Abend des Tages ist. (Hua MAT 8, 309)
In light of these contrasts between death, sleep, and sedimentation we can perhaps formulate a preliminary answer to our question of what death can tell us about time. If the analysis of temporalization is intended to illuminate the fundamental structures according to which consciousness is both a consciousness of the world and conscious of itself as a life manifest in its living, then perhaps death does not tell us much at all. For death is an interruption that does not feed back, so to speak, into the shape of one’s life; it does not represent any modality of temporalization that would enrich waking life. The proximity of life to itself, the shining of content through its own passage into darkness, is not supported by death. Our awareness of death would, according to such a line of thinking, be a paradoxical awareness at best, its significance not lived but only thought, or understood. Death is a mystery, the presence of which we feel in the silence of those who have left us, though it is never a silence that we can live and intuit as our own. To be sure, Husserl does arrive at such a conclusion, or any conclusion; manuscripts such as C 17, where Husserl takes aim most directly at the problem of death, only sketch a bare beginning. Yet I would suggest that, taken as a whole, the meditations in the C-manuscripts on death, birth, and sleep tend in this direction. What are we to make of such a tendency? It is useful here to recall two other phenomenological philosophers who give death a far greater role than Husserl, precisely in relation to the theme of time—Martin
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Heidegger and Jean-Paul Sartre. For both, death illuminates the fundamental ecstatic character of lived time.12 That is, the negativity that we are aware of in our awareness of death is fundamental to the temporal-ecstatic structure of temporal existence itself. To be sure, neither argue that personal death is something experienced as a unique event; but for both death is essential to the event character of existence. Thus for Heidegger, Dasein is a being-towards-death, towards its own impossibility as that which circumscribes the horizontal character of the whole of its existence. Death, illuminating Dasein’s capacity to be a whole (Ganzseinkönnen), is constitutive of the manner in which Dasein confronts itself as a question, whether authentically or inauthentically. For Sartre, death represents the extreme limit of the transcendence of For-itself as the detotalizing negation of the constant assimilation of its freedom into the In-itself, or the triumph of a past that ceases to be negated by a being who, nevertheless, must ultimately “be” this past: Everything happens as if the Present were a perpetual hole in being—immediately filled up and perpetually reborn—as if the present were a perpetual flight away from the snare of the ‘in-itself’ which threatens it until that final victory of the in-itself which will drag it into a past which is no longer the past of any For-itself. It is death which is the victory, for death is the final arrest of Temporality by the making-past of the whole system or, if you prefer, by the recapture of human totality by the In-itself. (BN 208)
For both Sartre and Heidegger, Husserl’s analysis, or at least our reconstruction of it, with its tendency to minimize the constitutive role of death in the ecstatic character of temporalization, would essentially miss the point. Yet it is also clear that in both Sartre and Heidegger, what is driving the emphasis on the importance of death is imported from outside of a strictly phenomenological analysis of temporalization—in Heidegger’s Sein und Zeit, it is the problem of authenticity (Eigentlichkeit); in Sartre, it is the ontology of the For-itself and the In-itself. Yet even in Husserl, the meditations on death also cast a wider net, including everything associated with the teleology of egoic life and even a notion of “authenticity” (Echtheit).13 For all three, the issue of death is approached not as a phenomenologically isolated problem, but precisely in terms of the philosophical question of the meaning of human existence.
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Thus perhaps the question “what does death tell us about time?” is poorly formulated. The question should rather be: what does death tell us about ourselves? Notes 1. Edmund Husserl, Späte Texte Über Zeitkonstitution (1929–1934): Die C-Manuskripte, Vol. 8 (Dordrecht: Springer, 2006), hereafter Hua MAT VIII. There is a small but growing literature on these manuscripts. See Jocelyn Benoist, Autour De Husserl: L’Ego Et La Raison (Paris: J. Vrin, 1994), pp. 13–27; Toine Kortooms, Phenomenology of Time: Edmund Husserl’s Analysis of Time-Consciousness, Vol. 161 (Dordrecht, Boston: Kluwer, 2002), pp. 227–288. For a perceptive discussion of the themes of birth and death in these texts see Anne Montavont, De La Passivité Dans La Phénoménologie De Husserl (Paris: Presses universitaires de France, 1999). 2. See Hua MAT VIII, xiii-x (Lohmar, “Einleitung des Herausgebers”). 3. Cf. EU § 64(b). 4. Cf. EU § 65. 5. Cf. EU § 25. 6. D 14: “Wachheit, Schlaf, Unbewußtes.” Selections from this manuscript will be published in an upcoming edition of Husserliana under the title Grenzprobleme der Phänomenologie. 7. Cf. Hua 3, 202:24–203:20. 8. Cf. C 3, Text Nr. 13, Section (e): Hua MAT VIII, 53–60. 9. See in particular C 17, Nr. 94: Hua MAT VIII, 417–429. The same complex of investigations is pursued in D 14. 10. Cf. Hua MAT VIII, 427. 11. C 3 Text Nr. 20(e), Hua MAT VIII, 87–88. 12. Jean-Paul Sartre, L’Être et le Néant, Essai d’Ontologie Phénoménologique (Paris: Gallimard, 1943); English: Jean-Paul Sartre and others, Being and Nothingness: An Essay on Phenomenological Ontology (London; New York: Routledge, 2003), hereafter BN; Martin Heidegger, Sein und Zeit (Tübingen: M. Niemeyer, 1957). 13. Cf. C 17 Hua MAT VIII, 435 f.
Bibliography Benoist, Jocelyn. Autour De Husserl: L’Ego Et La Raison. Bibliothéque d’Histoire De La Philosophie. Paris: J. Vrin, 1994. Heidegger, Martin. Sein Und Zeit. 8. unveränderte Aufl. ed. Tübingen: M. Niemeyer, 1957. Husserl, Edmund. Manuscript D 14: “Die Bedeutung der Scheidung von Wachund Schlafperioden für die Lehre von der lebendigen Gegenwart. Das Rätsel des Unbewussten [. . .]” Vor 1930, 1934. Unpublished. Husserl, Edmund. Erfahrung und Urteil. Untersuchungen zur Genealogie der Logik. Philosophische Bibliothek. 7. Aufl. ed. Vol. 280. Hamburg: Meiner, 1999. Husserl, Edmund and Rudolf Böhm. Zur Phänomenologie des inneren Zeitbewusstseins (1893–1917). Husserliana Vol. 10. Haag, Netherlands: Martinus Nijhoff, 1966. Husserl, Edmund, ed. by Walter Biemel. Ideen zu einer reinen Phänomenologie und Phänomenologischen Philosophie. Husserliana Vol. III. Neue, auf Grund der
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handschriftlichen Zusätze des Verfassers erweiterte Auflage ed. Vol. 3. Haag, Netherlands: M. Nijhoff, 1950. Husserl, Edmund, ed. by Dieter Lohmar. Späte Texte über Zeitkonstitution (1929–1934): Die C-Manuskripte. Husserliana Materialien Vol. VIII. Dordrecht: Springer, 2006. Husserl, Edmund, ed. by Dieter Lohmar and Rudolf Bernet. Die “Bernauer Manuskripte” über das Zeitbewusstsein (1917/1918). Husserliana Vol. XXXIII. Boston: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 2001. Husserl, Edmund, ed. by Margot Fleischer. Analysen zur passiven Synthesis : aus Vorlesungs- und Forschungsmanuskripten 1918–1926. Husserliana Vol. XI. Haag, Netherlands: M. Nijhoff, 1966. Kortooms, Toine. Phenomenology of Time: Edmund Husserl’s Analysis of TimeConsciousness. Phaenomenologica. Vol. 161. Dordrecht, Boston: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 2002. Montavont, Anne. De la passivité dans la phénoménologie de Husserl. Epiméthée. 1 éd. Paris: Presses universitaires de France, 1999. Sartre, Jean-Paul. L’Être et le Néant, Essai d’Ontologie Phénoménologique. Bibliothèque Des idées. Paris: Gallimard, 1943. Sartre, Jean-Paul, Hazel Estella Barnes, Mary Warnock, and Richard M. Eyre. Being and Nothingness: An Essay on Phenomenological Ontology. Routledge Classics. [Etre et le néant.]. London; New York: Routledge, 2003.
CHAPTER IV
ON BIRTH, DEATH, AND SLEEP IN HUSSERL’S LATE MANUSCRIPTS ON TIME Saulius Geniusas Abstract. A threefold concern guides the following analysis. First, I aim to provide a systematic account of the problematic of birth, death, and sleep in Husserl’s late manuscripts on time. I argue that for Husserl, the full constitution of human finitude rests upon a threefold disclosure of birth, death, and sleep as limit-phenomena, intersubjective phenomena, and paradoxical phenomena. Secondly, I engage in the question (central to Husserl himself ) of the transcendental necessity of phenomena in question. This engagement culminates in the realization, that in the absence of birth, death, and sleep, subjectivity could not be conceived as a world-constituting subjectivity. Thirdly, so as to accentuate the distinguishing features of Husserl’s analyses, I bring them into a polemic with Heidegger’s notion of authentic temporality.
The recently published C manuscripts,1 which contain Husserl’s late reflections on time-constitution, mark the emergence of the problematic of birth, death, and sleep into the critical scope of Husserl’s phenomenology of time. In a slightly different context, Husserl had already briefly addressed this problematic in a manuscript from 1922 to 1923, published as an appendix to the Lectures On Passive Synthesis.2 Yet most of Husserl’s analyses of birth, death, and sleep were composed in the late 1920s and early 1930s.3 All in all, Husserl’s analyses of birth, death, and sleep extend over more than two hundred pages. This might well be only a speck of dust in the Nachlass of the most prolific philosopher of the twentieth-century, yet the emergence of these themes at the margins of Husserl’s phenomenology is by far not only of marginal significance. These analyses in an important way complement a number of themes central to Husserl’s phenomenology, such as the reduction, constitution, and arguably most importantly, the relation between subjective temporality and objective time. Within the latter context, Husserl’s analysis of birth, death, and sleep discloses a unique perspective on the problematic that obtained central significance in post-Husserlian phenomenology: the problematic of finitude. The following analysis addresses this problematic. 71 D. Lohmar, I. Yamaguchi (eds.), On Time - New Contributions to the Husserlian Phenomenology of Time, Phaenomenologica 197, DOI 10.1007/978-90-481-8766-9_4, C Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2010
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In Husserl’s phenomenology, birth, death, and sleep emerge as transcendental problems. That is, while addressing these themes, Husserl’s central question is that of how subjectivity constitutes its own finitude. Put paradoxically, for Husserl, my own finitude is my own accomplishment – not, however, in the sense that subjectivity itself brings about its own emergence and disappearance, but rather in the sense that subjectivity learns to recognize its own worldly being as finite. If my finitude relied only on the mere factuality that I was born and that I will die, it would be no different from the finitude of other animate beings. One of the central differences between my finitude and that of all others relies on the fact that I recognize myself as finite. Yet this recognition is by no means innate; it rather rests upon more basic intentional accomplishments. The unique feature of Husserl’s engagement in the problematic of finitude consists in its aim to disclose those transcendental accomplishments on the basis of which subjectivity recognizes itself as finite. In what follows, I will aim to illuminate the distinguishing features of these rudimentary intentional accomplishments. On the basis of Husserl’s analyses, I will argue that the full constitution of human finitude rests upon a threefold disclosure of birth, death, and sleep as limit-phenomena, intersubjective phenomena, and paradoxical phenomena. Such a threefold phenomenality of birth, death, and sleep will allow me to engage in a question that has continuously guided Husserl’s analyses of these phenomena: Are birth, death, and sleep accidental occurrences in the constituted world, or is there a sense in which one could speak of their transcendental necessity? So as to convey the distinguishing features of this problematic in Husserl’s phenomenology, the concluding section will bring Husserl’s analyses into a brief polemic with Heidegger’s notion of authentic temporality.
I. Birth, Death, and Sleep as Limit-Phenomena As the introductory remarks suggest, the inimitable feature of human finitude pertains to the fact that I recognize myself as finite. Yet on what basis rests my assurance that my worldly being does not stretch into infinity? My memory does not extend as far as my own birth; my intuition does not reach my own death. Experience does not corroborate the certainty
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of my finitude. Even worse, each experience carries the assumption that it follows foregoing experiences and that it will be followed by subsequent experiences. And yet, despite such a seemingly infinite extension of experience, I nonetheless know that my being has its beginning and that it will come to an end. Where does this knowledge come from? It is almost a matter of philosophical platitude to escape this embarrassment by stating that my awareness of my finitude exclusively relies on my experience of others. True, I cannot experience my own birth, death, or sleep, yet it is only I, a human being, who can “experience” the birth, death, and sleep of others. I see others come to this world and leave it and I know that in this regard, my nature is the same as theirs. According to such a view, the beginning and the end of the existence of my fellow human beings is the source of evidence on which the recognition of my own finitude rests. As Voltaire puts it, “The human race is the only one that knows it must die, and it knows this only through its experience. A child brought up alone and transported to a desert island would have no more idea of death than a cat or a plant.” One of Husserl’s significant contributions to the problematic of finitude consists in the disclosure that human subjectivity, even when taken in transcendental isolation from all others, is already aware of its own finitude. In contrast to Voltaire, Husserl’s analyses reveal that a human being, transported to the “transcendental island” of his or her own inwardness, is already aware of birth, death, and sleep, even though this awareness is only a preliminary understanding. Husserl’s qualification of birth, death, and sleep as limit-phenomena is meant to disclose the manner in which subjectivity experiences them in the confines of the transcendental sphere of ownness. Admittedly, such a likening of the sphere of ownness to the transcendental island of inwardness is dangerously equivocal. As Husserl formulates the problem in Cartesianische Meditationen, when I abstract from others in the common sense, I remain “alone.” But such solitude is not radical because it leaves untouched the natural sense of the world, which already entails the sediments of intersubjective constitution.4 The transcendental sphere of ownness thus cannot be conceived as my solitary being that occupies a piece of the objective world. We are in need of a much more radical modification than the aforementioned abstraction. The name Husserl reserves for such a radical modification is that
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of a primordial reduction.5 This reduction places in brackets not only the presence of others, but also all horizonal implications established on the basis of otherness. It is of central significance that this reduction leaves untouched not only my transcendental subjectivity, but also my own body (Leib) as well as my primordial world. The primordial reduction thereby reveals that even though my own self, as well as the world I find myself in, entail numerous dimensions of sense established in virtue of intersubjective constitution, the suspension of these constitutive accomplishments does not render the ego, the body, and the world devoid of sense. Precisely because the primordial reduction does not bring about the annihilation of the ego, the body, and the world, but rather discloses the manner in which we are primordially conscious of them, one obtains the means to pose the question of finitude when the presence of others and the effects of intersubjective constitution are put out of play. Let us consider “The Finitude of the Primordial Ego” as an exemplary account of the limit-phenomenality of birth, death, and sleep.6 Husserl himself has qualified this text as possibly the best presentation of limit-phenomena.7 Here Husserl’s analysis takes its departure from the factuality of the world, as given within the primordial reduction. The primordial world is the transcendental correlate of my continuously and unanimously streaming world-experience. Within such a correlational framework, one cannot help noticing that the phenomenality of the world directly depends upon its manners of givenness, which never present the world in one and the same way. This “universal apriori of correlation” indicates that the sense in which the primordial world is given undergoes continuous modifications and amplifications. Now precisely because the unity of the world admits of a continuous accretion and remodeling of sense, I can always compare its present manner of givenness with its preceding manifestation and recognize that the world, as it was given to me, for instance, in childhood, did not yet entail numerous dimensions of sense that subsequent experience suffused it with. This means that each present experience of the primordial world is already shot through with dimensions of sense that exceed pure phenomenality. These excessive dimensions of experiential sense derive from a genesis that rules over experience itself. To be conscious of this genesis is to be aware of the deficiency of sense from which world-experience is not immune. Being guided by the possibility of such a deficient
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world-presentation, I am invited to perform a new reduction within the domain of primordiality.8 This new reduction discloses how experience instigates pure phenomenality in the absence of all horizonal implications that stem from past experiences. Such a disclosure of the sanctuary of pure phenomenality within the primordial world can be considered subjectivity’s dim awareness of the dawning world-experience. On a number of occasions, Husserl has described such a consciousness of birth as awakening. Within the primordial world, the ego has experiences of awakening and these experiences provide one with a clue of how one can envision birth as a limit-phenomenon. One should not, however, be misled by this metaphor. To be conscious of awakening is to be already aware that the I that awakens is the same I as the one who had earlier fallen asleep. Not being conscious of the unity of my life, I would either conceive of my former self as another ego, or I would not be conscious of my former self at all. In either case, not being conscious of a unified self, I would not be conscious of sleep. Yet the I that awakens into this world is not conscious of the unity that spans its life. The sleep from which this I awakens is essentially different from ordinary sleep. The exceptional character of my primordial awakening (Urerwachen) consists in the fact that this awakening has no counterpart in a foregoing falling asleep. So as not to lose sight of this inimitable phenomenality of birth, Husserl qualifies it as awakening from primordial sleep (Urschlaf ).9 Just as consciousness of my birth, so also consciousness of my death needs not to be derived from my experience of others, since it is already phenomenal within the primordial reduction. Just as in the case of birth, so also in the case of death, my consciousness of sleep procures its givenness as a limit-phenomenon. While the phenomenality of birth is interceded by my direct consciousness of awakening, my awareness of death is corroborated by my direct consciousness of falling asleep. My consciousness of death is transcendentally more rudimentary than my awareness of the death of others: the phenomenon of death is already given within the primordial reduction as a dim awareness of a dreamless sleep from which I will never wake up. Yet the hindrance encountered in the discussion of birth reemerges in Husserl’s analysis of death. Just as the common sense of awakening is coupled with the sense of a foregoing falling asleep, so the common experience of falling asleep motivates one to assert that there is no final
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sleep over which life does not triumph.10 Yet as we have seen, once the experience of awakening is coupled with the recognition that my present experience entails dimensions of sense that derive from an experiential genesis, I come to the realization that this genesis itself must have had a beginning and that this beginning must have consisted in awakening from primordial sleep. Similarly, so as to obtain the sense of death as a limit-phenomenon, I must couple the experience of falling asleep along with some other experiences I undergo still within the primordial world. These other experiences are those of the diminution of powers (Kräfteeinschränkung) and of taking sick (Erkrankung). These experiences bring about the dilapidation of my body (Leib), which in its own turn gives rise to the constriction of the experienced world. When I couple such experiences with that of falling asleep, I obtain an awareness of my death as a limit-phenomenon.11 Thus already within the domain of the primordial reduction, I am aware of my own finitude. My own life is given to me as finite because I am aware of my own birth and death as limit-phenomena. I am conscious of my birth as the first awakening from the primordial sleep; I am aware of my own death as the sinking of my life into primordial sleep. This I know still in the absence of others. We are now in the position to ask: are birth, death, and sleep, when conceived as limit-phenomena, accidental occurrences in the primordial world, or are they, on the contrary, transcendentally necessary? Clearly, within a phenomenological framework, the question of transcendental necessity does not suggest that birth, death, and sleep are ultimate principles from which one could deduce particular laws that would rule over experience. Rather, this question suggests that the limit-phenomenality of birth, death, and sleep is inscribed in each and every experience in such away that in their absence, it would remain inconceivable how experience could have obtained some of its most fundamental components. Let me begin with the limit-phenomenality of sleep. Without sleep, subjectivity would not be aware of the past and the future as autonomous domains of givenness. Admittedly, Husserl’s notion of the extended present already entails subjectivity’s rudimentary awareness of the immediate past and the immediate future. As Husserl’s early analyses of timeconsciousness show, the immediate past and future, conceived as the past and the future phases of the temporal object, are directly perceived, rather
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than being represented by memory or anticipation. While retention constitutes the just-having-been, protention constitutes the just-to-come. The just-having-been and the just-to-come are inseparable from the now-phase of the temporal object, which itself is constituted by the nowperception. In virtue of this inseparability, one is in full right to speak of a direct perception of the immediate past and future phases of the temporal object. Yet clearly, this immediacy significantly curtails the phenomenality of the past and the future. At this level, consciousness is aware of the past and the future only inasmuch as they fall within the confines of the extended present. Through memory and anticipation, consciousness obtains the past and the future that stretch beyond the confines of the extended present. The possibility of memory and anticipation rests upon such experiential breaches (Erfahrungslücken) that sleep exemplifies. There is a curious dialectic inscribed in the phenomenality of memory and anticipation. Memory presupposes the initial sedimentation of the past and its subsequent retrieval.12 This loss and this repossession are rendered conceivable in virtue of such limit-phenomena as sleep. Thus Husserl writes: “In jeder Wachheit übersteigt es [das Einzelsubjekt] seine Schlafperiode, in seiner Wachheit frühere Wachheit ‘wieder’ wach machend, und das gehört zum Wesen der Wiedererinnerung” (Hua Mat VIII, 437).13 In contrast to the past, the future is not established on the basis of a loss of what has been entailed in protention. Yet this difference notwithstanding, just as in the case of memory, so also in the case of anticipation, an intuitive emptiness must lie at the intersection between what is presently given and what is anticipated. In the absence of such experiential breaches, consciousness of the future would not be possible. Yet is sleep really necessary for the emergence of memory or anticipation? Surely, I need not wait for the next morning to obtain memories of the past day, just as I need not limit anticipation to the projection of the future that follows my awakening from sleep. One thus needs to render the constitutive significance of sleep more precise. For this purpose, one needs to distinguish between memory and anticipation as given within the sphere of wakefulness and as given to consciousness that embraces a plurality of wakeful periods along with the interruptions of sleep. In the case of wakeful consciousness, experiential breaches are relative in that the emptiness inscribed in them can be, at least in principle, always
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transformed into intuitive fullness. In the case of a consciousness that spans a plurality of wakeful periods, experiential breaches are absolute in that they can never obtain intuitive fullness. This means that in the case of wakeful consciousness, both memory and expectation constitute the past and the future as far as they belong to the horizon of the present. On the other hand, consciousness that spans a plurality of wakeful periods procures the past and the future beyond the horizon of the present. One can thus say that the constitutive significance of sleep consists in disclosing the past and the future as autonomous domains of givenness. The question of subjectivity’s past and future brings us close to the constitutive significance of birth and death as limit-phenomena. In the absence of birth, experience could not unfold as a continuous accrual of new horizons of sense. Consider a hypothesis, entertained by Husserl himself,14 of a primordial subjectivity that has not been born and that is not going to pass away. At first glance, such a hypothesis seems perfectly conceivable: it only requires that one reduce experience to wakefulness and that one bracket the phenomena of awakening and falling asleep. One thereby obtains a notion of wakefulness that extends into infinity. Yet can subjectivity’s past be truly limitless? With this question, one stumbles into a difficulty that will call for a dismissal of the hypothesis in question. The difficulty pertains to the very nature of experience. Each and every experience entails a peculiar style of inheritance (Vererbungsstil ): as each experience “flows in,” there is a sense in which it does not “flow away.” Subjectivity retains it as a habitual possession, as a new type of experience that continues to guide subsequent experiences. Such a continuous accrual of new horizons of sense implicates an experiential genesis that rules over subjectivity’s wakeful life; and as we have already seen, birth is a limit-phenomenon that forms a necessary dimension of sense without which such an experiential genesis is inconceivable. Thus the hypothesis of a primordial life with a limitless past is indefensible because it comes into irresolvable conflict with the continuous augmentation of new horizons of experience. This means: birth is a necessary transcendental phenomenon because in its absence, the horizonal genesis would remain inconceivable. Having considered the hypothesis of a life with an endless past and having rejected it for the spelled out reasons, Husserl abruptly asks: “Sollte dann nicht der Tod von Innen gesehen in diese Fragerichtung
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einzubeziehen sein und die Mannigfaltigkeit der Todesweisen konstitutiv eine Rolle spielen” (Hua Mat VIII, 423)? Yet in contrast to the rhetorical nature of the question, it does not lend itself to a positive response. Surely, it is not sufficient to characterize experience as a progressive accrual of new horizons of sense; it is just as true that experience brings about a no less continuous loss of horizonal frameworks. Yet while the hypothesis of an infinite past comes into conflict with the genesis of experience, the hypothesis of an infinite future does not lend itself to an analogical dismissal. The loss of horizonal frameworks of sense neither instigates nor even intimates a complete annihilation of all experiential horizons. Here there is no room for necessity.
II. Birth, Death, and Sleep as Intersubjective Phenomena A common strategy employed in phenomenological analyses of death consists in drawing a sharp distinction between our personal experience and intersubjective experience as two incompatible sources of our awareness of finitude. On the basis of such a distinction, one commonly privileges one of the sources for generating the proper phenomenality of death while degrading the other source for the supposed reason that it gives rise only to an improper understanding. We find such a strategy most forcefully expressed in Heidegger’s Sein und Zeit. Heidegger argues that the experience of others gives rise only to an inauthentic notion of everyday-being-toward-death and contrasts this notion with the authentic existential concept of death, which does not stem from secondhand knowledge, but rather derives from Dasein’s ownmost experience. We find the same strategy also employed in Levinas’s Dieu, la mort et le temps, even though Levinas’s analysis is directly opposed to that of Heidegger. For Levinas, the meaning of death derives from the death of another person. The different directions of Levinas’s and Heidegger’s analyses notwithstanding, both derive from the same strategy. It is, however, highly dubious that the phenomenality of death itself calls for such a strategy. Seen from the perspective of Husserl’s analyses, this strategy does not release the phenomenality of death but rather restricts its manifestation. For this reason, even though the problematic of finitude is not as developed in Husserl as it is in Heidegger or Levinas,
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in the long run, the Husserlian standpoint could prove advantageous: this standpoint does not demand that one choose between the abovementioned sources of our awareness of finitude, but rather calls for an approach that would incorporate both resources. For Husserl, the full-blown phenomenality of birth, death, and sleep is built upon both personal and interpersonal experiences. Yet at first glance, it seems that Husserl’s manuscripts, far from generating such an embracive account, are rather torn between the tendencies of granting either the personal or the interpersonal experience the status of the sole origin of our awareness of finitude. In direct contrast to the manner of thematizing birth, death, and sleep as limit-phenomena, in some of his other manuscripts Husserl also asserts that our awareness of the themes in question comes from our experience of others. In a manuscript written in 1929/1930, Husserl repeatedly insists that the constitution of my own birth and death is built upon the prior constitution of other egos: “Der Tod der Anderen ist der früher konstituierte Tod. Ebenso wie die Geburt der Anderen” (A VI 14a, 3). In the C manuscripts, Husserl also suggests that the constitution of sleep is thoroughly intersubjective: “Man sieht voraus, dass hier eine Genesis im Spiel ist, die ihre Wege über die Fremderfahrung nimmt, und dass das Kind in früher Kindheit noch keine ‘Vorstellung’ von Schlafpausen, von einer durchgehenden Zeit hat, die subjektiv erfahrbar ist als Zeit, die verschiedene Wachheiten verbindet, die getrennt sind durch Pausen des Schlafes” (Hua Mat VIII, 418). We are not, however, faced here with a contradiction. Not only are the accounts in question compatible with each other; the thematization of birth, death, and sleep as limit-phenomena in fact calls for a complementary account that would disclose them as intersubjective phenomena. Such is the case because the analysis of limit-phenomena does not explain how birth, death, and sleep can be conceived as events in worldly time. Why should subjectivity not conceive of its own birth as the beginning of worldly time, or of its death as the end of worldly time, or finally, of sleep as a breech in worldly time? In this sense, the disclosure of birth, death, and sleep as limit-phenomena lacks the resources to clarify their worldliness. Yet the transcendental sense of birth, death, and sleep consists in their worldly phenomenality. Thus the full-scale phenomenality of birth, death, and sleep escapes the phenomenal framework that guides
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the inquiry into limit-phenomena: “Die primordiale Sphäre kann dafür nicht aufkommen” (Hua Mat VIII, 425). Admittedly, birth, death, and sleep as limit-phenomena already belong to the primordial world. Yet this notion of the world is too restrictive to clarify why birth and death are not the limits of the world itself, but rather events that take place within it. Nor is this framework sufficiently fecund to elucidate why dreamless sleep does not amount to a rupture in time. So as to disclose this phenomenal dimension birth, death, and sleep, we are in need of a broadening of the “being-sense of the world.”15 The primordial world itself provides the motivational resources for such a broadening. Of central significance is the realization that in virtue of the generation of apperceptive horizons of sense, the primordial world splits into the experienced and the practical surrounding world.16 The primordial world entails more than what is actually experienced because each and every experience leaves its own sedimentations, which give rise to the inductive typicality of the experienced world. The primordial world cannot be therefore identified with the field of actual experience; it extends further, embracing the field of possible praxis. The world, as practical, reveals itself as endless – not because it is experienced in its endlessness, but rather because it reveals itself as a never-ending motivated possibility of new experiences. This notion of the practical world as an endless world comes into direct conflict with my awareness of my own finitude. The realization of my own mortality conflicts with the experiential tendency that motivates me to always expect new experiences and new horizons of experiences to follow my actual world-experience. These opposed experiential motivations are not incongruous. They are reconcilable on the basis of the realization that the distinction between the experienced and the practical world calls for the emergence of a correlative distinction between the time of life (Lebenszeit) and the time of the world (Weltzeit).17 Within the conflict between the endlessness of the practical world and the finitude of my own life lies the origin of the distinction between subjective temporality and objective time. Yet the egological account of the distinction between the experienced and the practical world is not without its limits. These limits pertain to the irreversibility between these two notions of the surrounding world: the practical surrounding world manifests an unmitigated and unconditional
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dependence upon the experienced world. The splitting of the primordial world into the dual configuration of the experienced and the practical world is rendered possible on the basis of subjectivity’s awareness of its own facultative possibilities. Yet the phenomenality of sleep is such that with it, subjectivity’s own possibilities are neutralized; birth and death, in their own turn, indicate the generation and the termination of the “I can.” Thus the practical world lacks the self-subsistence it needs to endure in isolation from my actual experienced world. Once divorced from the latter, the practical world turns out to be such that in it, no intention can be fulfilled or frustrated; and thus birth, death, and sleep still lack the conceptual basis on which their phenomenality could be rendered manifest. This recognition that the egological account does not exhaust the phenomenality of the practical world calls for a new standpoint, which Husserl in different manuscripts qualifies as the standpoint of transcendental sociology18 or intersubjective primordiality.19 While the continuous egological broadening of the primordial world takes the form of a perpetual synthesis of my own proximate and distant worlds (Nahwelten und Fernwelten), the expansion of the primordial world into the intersubjective world transpires in virtue of the synthesis of my proximate and distant worlds with those of others. It is of central significance that this synthesis does not only bring about the overlapping of my and the other’s present worlds; my own past, just as my own future, also comes into partial coincidence (Überschiebung) with those of others. In virtue of such a partial coincidence, birth, death, and sleep are rendered phenomenal as worldly. One thereby obtains the phenomenological basis to account for the temporal phenomenality of birth, death, and sleep. As I formulated the problem earlier, the phenomenological thematization of limitphenomena does not account for the worldliness of these phenomena. This meant that birth, death, and sleep as limit-phenomena do not in the strict sense take place in the world, but rather mark its temporal limits. The establishment of the distinction between subjective temporality and objective time overcomes this shortcoming. Within the world conceived as an endless practical-intersubjective horizon, worldly time does not begin with my birth, nor does it run out with my death, nor, finally, does it “temporarily stop” with my sleep. Despite the experiential
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breaches that mark the phenomenality of birth, death, and sleep, these phenomena obtain their worldliness as events in objective time. Let us turn back to our guiding concern – the question concerning the transcendental necessity of phenomena under scrutiny. In the absence of the intersubjective constitution of birth, death, and sleep, subjectivity would not be able to obtain the full-fledged phenomenality of worldly time. While the limit-phenomenality of these themes accounts for how subjectivity can have its past and its future as transcending the horizon of the present, this conceptual framework does not clarify how time can extend beyond the limits of my own primordial experience. Thus it remains unclear how the experiential breaches that lie at the heart of birth, death, and sleep can be conceived as temporal. It is the intersubjective constitution of phenomena under scrutiny that answers this question. My own birth, death, and sleep do not demarcate the limits of worldly time because I am aware that time before my death, amid my sleep, and after my death is lived by others. However, for as long as the memories of others overlap with my own possible memories, they only indicate the inessential limits of my memory on the grounds of forgetfulness. Such memories of others do not extend beyond the boundaries of the potentiality of my own memory. Without the realization that the memories of others transcend the boundaries of my own memories, the constitution of the world cannot be sufficiently carried through. Only if birth, death, and sleep are recognized as not merely accidental, but rather necessary worldly occurrences, can the entrenched breach between my own memories and those of others be established as ineradicable.20 Thus birth, death, and sleep are necessary because in their absence, it would remain incomprehensible how worldly time can extend beyond the limits of my own experience. The intersubjective phenomenality of birth, death, and sleep enriches the foregoing analysis of the peculiar “style of inheritance” that belongs to experience. As Husserl remarks, inheritance is not a mere repetition, but rather an intentional unification, modification, and bringing into coincidence.21 Yet what is unified, modified, or brought into coincidence does not only stem from subjectivity’s foregoing experience: “Wir stehen in der Tradition, durch Andere werden wir anders, ihr Personales in uns aufnehmend, in uns notwendig umbildend [. . .]. Mit der Erweckung der neuen Monade ist erweckt oder vorerweckt die
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elterliche Habitualität [. . .] das alles in sedimentierter Übertragung und sich ‘mischend,’ verschmelzen” (Hua Mat VIII, 436–437). Clearly, for the world to be constituted as a tradition, it is not sufficient for the others in question to be given in direct experience. Here we encounter the significance of the distinction between the direct and the indirect forms of Einfühlung to which Husserl repeatedly returns in the C manuscripts. While the direct presence of others accounts for the temporality of sleep, only the indirect givenness of others, i.e., only the others who are no longer or not yet with us, can account for the full-scale temporality that precedes my birth and follows my death. Only if subjectivity is capable of taking over the habituality of others who are not directly experienced, can the world be constituted as a tradition. It should not be overlooked that the indirect form of Einfühlung is possible only on the basis of birth, death, and sleep as intersubjective phenomena. Birth, death, and sleep are necessary phenomena, because in their absence, the world could not be conceived as a tradition. We are thereby led to an arresting realization: not only my own birth, death, and sleep are necessary events for the full constitution of the world; even subjectivity’s own non-being, as the not-yet and the no-more, is also a necessary transcendental “phenomenon.” If subjectivity performs its constitutive function as a worldly subjectivity, then its worldly non-being is a “Nicht-Fungieren und doch als Funktionelles” (Hua Mat VIII, 442). In the absence of a subjectivity that is no more, the taking over of habituality of others who are not directly experienced would not be possible; in the absence of a subjectivity that is not yet, the transmission of habituality to the future generations would also be unrealizable. In either case, the absence of subjectivity’s finitude would render the constitution of the world as tradition impossible. The intersubjective phenomenality of birth, death, and sleep thereby reveal the inimitable transcendence of the world that lies in its inherent nontransparency. While the transcendence of things in the world is in principle transparent in that it belongs to the domain of my facultative possibilities, the transcendence of the world is in principle non-transparent in that its phenomenality transcends subjectivity’s intuitive capacities. Such an inimitable non-transparency of the world reveals the transcendental necessity of birth, death, and sleep as intersubjective phenomena: in their
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absence, the constitution of the world would not only be an infinite, but also an impossible task.
III. Birth, Death, and Sleep as Paradoxical Phenomena In the previous section I suggested that Husserl’s analysis of such phenomena as birth and death differs from that of subsequent phenomenologists in that it does not exclusively privilege either personal or interpersonal experience as the sole origin of human experience of finitude. Yet here one might see not the strength, but rather the weakness of the Husserlian standpoint. One might argue that precisely due to its ambition to be all-inclusive, Husserlian phenomenology loses the basis to distinguish between the authentic and the inauthentic notions of death. According to such a view, which has its sources in Heidegger’s analysis, Husserlian phenomenology remains indifferent to the traumatism inscribed in the phenomenality of death, which gives rise to the ineluctable need to transform its proper phenomenality into an inauthentic semblance. For such a perspective, the recognition that one’s proper experience generates an essentially different notion of death than interpersonal experience is indispensable if one is to account for the necessary burying over of the authentic phenomenality of death. One is, however, in full right to speak of an authentic phenomenality of death in Husserl’s phenomenology. Such an authentic notion does not derive from the recognition that the phenomenality of death inscribed in one’s proper experience is irreconcilable with the notion of death that stems from one’s experience of others. Rather, the authentic notion of death is itself established on the basis of both personal and interpersonal experience. Such an establishment renders the phenomenality of death essentially paradoxical. The authentic notion of death consists precisely in its paradoxical phenomenality. The phenomenality of death is paradoxical because it stands in conflict with the temporal flow of experience. More particularly, it stands in conflict with the living present as the ultimate phenomenological givenness. As Husserl has it, it is apodictically certain that each and every present has a horizon of the future, and this means that the natural cessation of the living-streaming present is not experientially conceivable.22 Cessation,
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just as inception, is conceivable only as a cessation of something or someone given to consciousness that conceives it. That is, cessation presupposes a non-cessation – a consciousness to which the cessation is given.23 This means that both beginning and end are possible only in process and not as the beginning or the end of the process. Thus the problematic of birth and death point to a more rudimentary immanent time that renders them phenomenal. This conflict between the givenness of immanent time and the inescapability of death inflicts upon death its paradoxical phenomenality. “Aber ist das nicht paradox: lebend in strömender Gegewart seiend, muss ich unweigerlich glauben, dass ich leben werde, wenn ich doch weiß, dass mein Tod bevorsteht” (Hua Mat VIII, 96). Of course, for Husserl the impossibility of cessation is fully compatible with the phenomenality of birth and death. The endlessness of the living present indicates that it is impossible for transcendental subjectivity to constitute its own birth or death. My birth and death, as the inception and cessation of human life in the objective world, do not contradict the endlessness of transcendental life. A detailed inquiry into Husserl’s notion of a non-worldly and non-human life would take me too far afield. Suffice it to indicate that it should not be conceived as a religious claim, although admittedly, it can be seen as a transcendental motive for a religious sentiment. For Husserl, this claim is essentially negative: it indicates the limits of constitution. For the purposes of this analysis, it is of great interest that the splitting of the ego into the transcendental and the human I is a necessary condition for the phenomenality of birth, death, and sleep. Such a rupture indicates the alterity of limit-phenomena to the most rudimentary dimension of experience. Here we reach the fundamental difference between Husserl’s and Heidegger’s analyses of death. While Heidegger invites us to think time on the basis of death, Husserl invites us to think death on the basis of time. For this reason, while for Heidegger authentic temporality amounts to the possibility of impossibility, conceived as pure destruction, for Husserl authentic temporality is the ultimate condition of all phenomenality, including that of destruction. As an ultimate origin of phenomenality, temporality also circumscribes its limits: in sharp contrast to Heidegger, it renders the phenomenon of pure destruction impossible. As a limit-phenomenon, intersubjective phenomenon, and
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a paradoxical phenomenon, death cannot be thought as a pure destruction. As far as death is phenomenal, it is coupled with the impossibility of nothingness. These circumstances make it understandable why in the marginal notes to Heidegger’s Kant und das Problem der Metaphysik, Husserl would write: “Endlichkeit ist nicht absolut.”24 This phrase does not only express Husserl’s disapproval of Heidegger’s reading of Kant. Arguably, it also expresses a fundamental disagreement in regard to what finitude means for phenomenology. The foregoing analysis makes it clear that the nonabsoluteness of finitude cannot mean that birth and death are accidental occurrences in the human world; nor does it mean that birth and death are non-essential limits of human existence. Rather, finitude is not absolute because its presumed absoluteness would stands in conflict with the nascent phenomenological givenness, viz., the temporality of experience. Thus for Husserl, the genuine problematic of finitude pertains to the fact that at the most rudimentary level of experience, subjectivity is still unaware of its birth or of its death. The question how subjectivity comes to recognize itself as finite thereby occupies the central place in this phenomenological reflection. Yet the constitution of subjectivity’s own finitude cannot erase the logic inscribed in the temporality of experience. Thus the very fact that subjectivity recognizes itself as finite means that it constitutes birth and death as paradoxical phenomena. It thereby becomes clear why finitude cannot be qualified as absolute: such a qualification would cover over the paradoxical phenomenality of birth and death. It thereby becomes also clear why the drifting from the authentic notion of death is not out of place in Husserl’s analyses. The covering over of the genuine phenomenality of finitude consists in losing sight of its paradoxical phenomenality. As seen from the Husserlian perspective, even Heidegger’s identification of the authentic notion of death with the ownmost being-toward-death is one of the many flights from the genuine phenomenality of finitude.25 For Husserl, the authentic notion of death lies in a life that cannot help but keep itself at a distance from death while simultaneously recognizing its inescapability. In my analysis of birth, death, and sleep as limit-phenomena, I suggested that the absence of birth would render experience, as a continuous accrual of new horizons of sense, inconceivable. The subsequent analysis
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of intersubjective and paradoxical phenomenality of the themes in question in a significant way supplements this claim. Without constituting itself as finite, subjectivity could not be a world-constituting subjectivity. For how else, if not through the constitution of its own finitude, could subjectivity inhabit world-time? Furthermore, how else, if not through the continuous accrual of intersubjective horizons, could the world be disclosed in its unique horizontality? Should the late publication of Husserl’s analyses of birth, death, and sleep not motivate one to rethink the standard reading of the history of phenomenology, which identifies the problematic of finitude as the point of severance between “transcendental” and “existential” phenomenology? So often the accounts of the history of phenomenology identify the problematic of finitude as a theme that has no place in the framework of Husserl’s phenomenology. As, for instance, Gadamer argues in his “Phänomenologische Bewegung,” the drawback of Husserl’s exclusive preoccupation with essences led him to overlook the “actuality of what is actual,” the “factuality of what is factual,” i.e., our own facticity. Supposedly, in the face of the finitude of the human existence, Husserl’s phenomenology was to encounter its own limit.26 The foregoing analysis makes it clear that in regard to the problematic of finitude, the relation between Husserlian and post-Husserlian phenomenology is to be rethought. This relation is marked by fundamental disagreements and controversies that once again transform finitude into a genuinely questionable phenomenological theme. For at least one thing is not controversial: No worse service could be done to this problematic, in Husserl, Heidegger, or phenomenology at large, than to render it a settled philosophical issue.
Notes 1. Edmund Husserl, Späte Texte über Zeitkonstitution (1929–1934): Die C-Manuskripte, Band VIII, Dordrecht: Springer, 2006. Hereafter: Hua Mat VIII. 2. See “Die Apodiktizität der Wiedererinnerung,” Hua XI, 365–383. 3. The so far unpublished manuscripts D 14, A VI 14a, and K III 11 deserve special mentioning. 4. See Hua I, 95–96. 5. See Text Nr. 9 in Hua XV, 117–131. 6. See “Die Endlichkeit des primordialen Ego” (Hua Mat VIII, 154–167). 7. “Das wird wohl die beste Fassung des Limes-Gedankens sein” (Hua Mat VIII, 159). 8. “Nun vollziehen wir in dieser primordialen Sphäre einen neuen Abbau. . .” (Hua Mat VIII, 424).
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9. See A VII 14, p. 7. 10. “Ich habe in meinem Leben die Schlafpausen, aber doch nur als Pausen denkbar” (Hua Mat VIII, 445). 11. “Das Zerfallensein des ganzen Leibes kann nicht mehr erfahren sein. Nur ein Limes als der des fortschreitenden Zerfallens ist vorgezeichnet, mit dem Ende: Nichts mehr erfahren können” (Hua Mat VIII, 157 Anm.). 12. It is both curious and telling that this dialectical element is already inscribed in the logic of the very words re-collection and Wieder-erinnerung. 13. See also Text Nr. 97: “Meine Vergangenheit . . . ist sie ohne [Schlafpausen] . . . denkbar? (Hua Mat VIII, 445)? 14. Hua Mat VIII, Text Nr. 94, 422–423. 15. “Die Konstitution der Welt, und zwar der primordialen, ist so, dass sich ihr weltlicher Seinssinn, ihr Inhalt als Welt im Fortschreiten des sinngebenden Lebens fortgesetzt erweitert” (Hua Mat VIII, 159). 16. See Hua Mat VIII, 162–163. 17. See Hua Mat VIII, 164. 18. Hua Mat VIII, 165. 19. Hua Mat VIII, 425. 20. See “Problem: Generativität – Geburt und Tod als Wesensvorkommnisse für die Weltkonstitution,” Hua XV, 171–172. 21. Hua Mat VIII, 436. 22. Hua Mat VIII, 96. 23. Hua XI, 378. 24. Husserl Studies, Vol. 11, No. 1–2, 52. Husserl adds this note to p. 27 of Heidegger’s text. On this and following pages, Husserl repeatedly uses the notions Unsinn and Widersinn, until he concludes: “Aber widersinnig ist und bleibt die Sache” (ibid). 25. Thus Husserl writes: “die Zukunftszeit meines Daseins ist eine uneigentliche Zeit” (Hua Mat VIII, 95). 26. See H.-G. Gadamer, “Die Phänomenologische Bewegung,” in Kleine Schriften, Band III (Tübingen, 1972).
CHAPTER V
PHENOMENOLOGY OF “AUTHENTIC TIME” IN HUSSERL AND HEIDEGGER Klaus Held Abstract. In his dialogue the Timaeus, Plato recognized two aspects of time, the past and the future, but not the present. In contrast, Aristotle’s analysis of time in the Physics took its orientation from the “now”. It is the latter path that Husserl follows with his conception of the “original impression” (Urimpression). However, in certain parts of Husserl’s Bernau Manuscripts, the present loses significance because of a novel interpretation of protention. This development, which revitalizes Plato’s understanding of time, is furthered in Heidegger’s late lecture Time and Being: the present can be understood on the basis of the “withdrawal” which determines the mutual relation between the arrival as authentic future and the having-been as authentic past.
I. Introduction Ever since Husserl founded twentieth-century phenomenology and since its radical transformation by Heidegger, time has become and remained its focal point. The following reflections are based on the thoughts which Heidegger developed in his later period, in his 1962 lecture Time and Being.1 These reflections will also refer to Husserl, whose phenomenology of time was until very recently available only in the texts from the Göttingen period which were compiled by Edith Stein2 and which Martin Heidegger edited in 1928 as Vorlesungen zur Phänomenologie des ∗ Reprinted
from: International Journal of Philosophical Studies, 15(3), 327–347. With kind permission of the publishers Taylor & Francis. An earlier version of this paper was published in French as “Phénoménologie du ‘temps authentique’ chez Husserl et Heidegger”, Etudes phénoménologiques, 37/38 (“Heidegger et la phenomenology”) (Brussels, 2004). The German text translated here appeared in 2005 in the journal Interdisziplinäre Phänomenologie (Kyoto/Japan) and in Internationales Jahrbuch für Hermeneutik. Parts of this translation were adapted from a lecture version of this paper translated into English by Alexander Heine.
91 D. Lohmar, I. Yamaguchi (eds.), On Time - New Contributions to the Husserlian Phenomenology of Time, Phaenomenologica 197, DOI 10.1007/978-90-481-8766-9_5, C Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2010
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inneren Zeitbewußtseins (Lectures on the Phenomenology of the Consciousness of Internal Time). Husserl’s manuscripts on the problem of time written in Bernau between 1917 and 1918 were published in 2001, and recently the late 1929–1934 texts about time constitution finally became accessible to a wider readership.3 Phenomenology can be characterized as the quest for original experiences. In this pursuit, Husserl and Heidegger share the same basic distinction in their conceptions of time: time, as the pre-philosophical everyday familiar concept, is opposed to originally experienced time which, in Time and Being, Heidegger termed “authentic time”. This concept connotes time that appears in its own originality. Heidegger uses the term “authentic” to designate a “thing” (Sache – i.e., that which forms an essential field of phenomenology) as it shows itself in what is specific to it. Heidegger endowed the word “authentic” with this basic meaning already in his 1927 Being and Time,4 although the “thing” to which it primarily referred was human existence. He considered “authentic” to be that mode in which existence “resolutely” assumes its own mortality. This existential-analytical use of “authentic” was abandoned by Heidegger at the “turn” of his thinking in the 1930s, but there is still a faint echo of it throughout Time and Being. I will return to this point in the last section of this paper. We find “inauthentic” time in Being and Time and later in Time and Being as that which appears as a succession of presents, a series of “nows”. These “nows” are countable in the phases of all happenings, or to use Aristotle’s term, “movements”. Aristotle’s idea of time as a series of “nows” has been dominant ever since; in Being and Time, Heidegger calls it the “vulgar understanding of time”. Husserl calls it “objective time” because the series of “nows” comprises the unchangeable form in which we encounter all objects locatable in time. Objective time is contrasted with “internal time-consciousness”, investigated by Husserl in the so-called Lectures on the Phenomenology of the Consciousness of Internal Time; in the later manuscripts from the 1930 s, he calls it the “living present”. By that Husserl understands how time is originally experienced in that which is specific to it, allowing us to speak of a distinction between authentic and inauthentic time, although he himself does not use these terms. From the perspective of authentic time – and here Husserl and Heidegger agree in thought but differ in expression – the familiar
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conception of time as a series of “nows” will be explained as a derivative understanding. Accordingly, phenomenology has a dual task: it must not be limited to explicating the features of authentic time, but must also show how inauthentic time is contingent upon or made possible through authentic time. Husserl tries to show this by pointing out how objective time is “constituted” in internal time-consciousness. Both philosophers, despite their fundamental differences, agree that it is the present understood as the “now” from which inauthentic time derives its character as a series of “nows”: the earlier “nows” in the series of “nows” are the present which has been, and the future ones are the present which is yet to come. Since the issue at hand for both thinkers is to explain time as a series of “nows” from the authentic experience of time, they must turn their attention to the role of the present in experiencing authentic time. Therefore Husserl anchors his phenomenology of time in an analysis concerning time-consciousness of a particular present. By taking sensory perception of a presently encountered object as the paradigmatic example, he makes his groundbreaking discovery, which was partly anticipated by Augustine and William James, about the concretely experienced now being not a limit without extension, but rather a field of presence: the consciousness of the present expands through “protention” and “retention” to an extent which depends on the degree of focused attention. The particular immediately present realization of any content of experience, i.e., the “original impression” (German Urimpression) indeed constitutes the “core” of perception; yet, pertaining to it as horizonal environs are the nearest future in its arriving and the nearest past in its departing. The consciousness of the field of presence described above differs substantially from the consciousness of time understood as a series of “nows” in that it is a happening, whereas constituted objective time as series of “nows” has the character of a solid, unmoving form; in this form, the original happening of time is being halted. In various time diagrams which Husserl produced for the Lectures on the Phenomenology of the Consciousness of Internal Time and for the 1917/18 Bernau Manuscripts, he attempts to represent as minutely as possible the happening of the field of presence, the “primordial stream” of time experienced in its originality. To the best of my knowledge, the current phenomenology of time has not yet noticed that the opposition between time as a happening and time as a still form replicates the first major divergence in the philosophical
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understanding of time introduced by Plato and Aristotle. Section I of this article will examine this divergence, Section II will deal with Husserl, and Section III with Heidegger.
II. For Aristotle, in Physics, Book IV, time as “number” (arithmos) of “movement” (kinesis) is certainly tied to the latter5 because counting is possible only in movement; but, Aristotle would regard the idea that time itself was moving as nonsensical. As “number”, time stands still. This view contributed to the modern natural-scientific assumption that time, because of the countability of its positions as a series of “nows”, could be measured exactly. In contrast, Aristotle’s teacher Plato in his dialogue the Timaeus gave time its first definition as an image of eternity; this image was described as “moved”.6 Time is the basic ordering element of the sensible world as it was created by the divine demiurge. According to the radical formulation of the Timaeus, it is not possible to say about the events in the sensible world that they are, but only that they become.7 Accordingly, time as a component of the sensible world can only have the character of becoming, i.e., of movement. Being is reserved for eternity. Deviating from his teacher, Aristotle decided to attribute Being to time by defining it, in the Physics, as something which is. It is the “number of movement according to the earlier and later”. On the other hand, to become means to go through a multiplicity of phases. Consequently, states Plato in his definition of time, aion (i.e., “eternity”, as he introduced it into philosophy) “remains in the one”, in a singularity which excludes multiplicity.8 The conception of time as a fixed form, as a number related to the series of “nows”, is a promulgation of the Aristotelian definition of time, whereas the understanding of time as a happening of the field of presence points back to the Platonic concept of time.9 The Aristotelian definition of time includes the determination “according to the earlier and later” because the series of “nows” countable as a series of movement phases is ordered in such a way that every “now” stands in relation to all previous or future “nows” that come earlier or later. The “nows” in their succession constitute “tenses”, to use a grammatical term. Modern grammar distinguishes between “tenses” and
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“aspects” of time.10 Aspects are conceptual “views” offered by time as a happening; they are the ways in which the “stream of time” presents itself to us. When we observe a stream of water, we can distinguish between the flowing in and the flowing out; thus time appears to us in the two “views”, one as arriving and the other as departing. These two views constitute the basic ways in which time appears because all other possible aspects presuppose them. Without intuiting the philosophical historical connection to Plato, in his distinction of retention and protention Husserl offers an analysis of the mode in which we become originally conscious of time’s happening as it shows itself in the two views of arriving and departing. Protention and retention can therefore be designated as the originary experience of the two temporal aspects discovered by Plato in the Timaeus. The term “aspect” derives from Latin, but it is a translation of the Greek word eidos, which Plato uses in the sentence that follows the definition of time cited above. In that sentence, he states that eide, or the “views” of time, consist of “it was” (en) and “it will be” (estai).11 Although, in the same sentence, Plato distinguishes these views from the “parts (mere) of time”, i.e., the temporal periods which designate countable positions in the series of “nows”, i.e., tenses, traditional interpretations of Plato have ignored this distinction. Instead, it has been assumed without any discussion that Plato’s “it was” and “it will be” designate the past and future tenses respectively.12 Of course, these tenses relate to “it was” and “it will be”. However, they do not designate the tenses themselves, but give expression to them in their emergence, their becoming: “it was” characterizes the happening of time as the departing into the past, while “it will be” refers to the same happening as the arriving from the future. This connection holds a vital clue for the phenomenological explication of the “thing” called “time”. For, in the sentences following the definition of time, Plato explicitly excludes that which is termed “it is” from the aspects of time. In contrast to the views “it was” and “it will be”, “it is” refers to the aspect of “the present”. Plato reserves “it is” for eternity, which consists of nothing but the present as what “remains in the one”. In this way, eternity as well offers us a view, an eidos. Specifically, as expressed in “it is”, this view shows itself as the present of the eternal beings or Forms, which Plato names not only by the term idea but also
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by the semantically related word eidos. The one view of the present of the Forms is contrasted to the becoming of time in the sensible world, showing itself in two complementary aspects.
III. If we now look at Husserl’s analysis of the field of presence from the Platonic perspective, we will immediately notice that, besides the original experience of the aspects of time in protention and retention, Husserl allows for a core of present which he terms original impression (German Urimpression) or original presentation (German Urpräsentation). Addressing this “now core” in the second Bernau Manuscript (following the order of the respective Husserliana volume), he explicitly states that here consciousness has an original experience of reality, i.e., Being: “Only Being-now is ‘Beingreal’.”13 This means that Husserl includes “it is” in the aspects of time. The nexus of happening which shows itself in the two views of arriving and departing as they are originally experienced through retention and protention is, according to Husserl, anchored in the “now core” as its centre, and it is exactly from the perspective of this centre that authentic time appears as a field of presence, as a respective “living present”.14 This means, however, that Husserl sets himself in fundamental opposition to Plato’s realization that time, experienced as happening, offers only the complementary aspects of arriving and departing. This makes the assumption of an originally impressional “now core” within the field of presence appear questionable from the beginning. But, at first, there are two arguments in favour of positing such a core of the present. Firstly, only the emergence of ever new “now cores” seems suitable for answering the question which cannot be avoided if time, as an objective series of “nows”, is to be explicated as a derivation from the authentic experience of time in the field of presence. The question is, Why is consciousness, when, owing to “the comet’s tail of retention”, it explicitly remembers something past, capable of identifying this piece of the past by locating it in a specific temporal position? The only possible answer appears to lie in the assumption that this capacity was available for consciousness because the localization of everything that happens in
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and for it is originally anticipated in the emergence of the ever new “now cores”. Secondly, the retentional-protentional original happening of time appears insufficient for explicating the intentional consciousness-ofsomething. Consciousness is dependent on meeting some determinations of content – moments of hyle. Consciousness originally encounters such hyletic determinations even prior to all explicit references to objects, as it realizes that, within the field of sense, certain differences or similarities come into relief. Abstaining from the data-pointilism of the empiricist tradition, Husserl nonetheless remains indebted to this tradition as he borrows the concept of “impression” from it. The original impressional presence of hyle is said to happen for consciousness in the “now core” of the field of presence; it is in respect of the “data” given in this fashion that Husserl speaks of the original impression. Yet, how very problematic the assumption of the originally impressional “now core” within the field of presence is can be illustrated from Husserl himself, specifically from a phenomenological reflection stemming from the concept of idealization that becomes essential for his thought at the time of the 1936 Crisis-treatise.15 The “now core” is the point of intersection between retention and protention, that is to say, a limit, an unexpanded “in-between”, which simultaneously connects and separates that in between which it stands. The task of looking for the original experiences always prompts Husserl’s phenomenology to ask whether that which it analyses is given to consciousness in intuition; for the originality of experience means intuitional self–givenness. If we ask this question in regard to the originally impressional “now core” as the presumed limit within the field of presence, the answer will be that the limit is not experienced in intuition, but is simply a product of an operation of thinking. The name of this operation is “idealization”. It is comparable to the mathematical operation of approaching a limit or limes: for example, we can infinitely extend in our mind a series of numbers created by successive bisection of the respectively attained numbers – 1, 1/2, 1/4, 1/8, etc. – and then pretend that it will eventually come to an end, that is, that it will at some point reach the limit – limes – on which it is closing in. Because our mathematical consciousness can never reach that limit (in the present example, the numerical value 0), it is impossible that it could
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be intuitionally given to consciousness in this way, as could, for example, the values 1/2 or 1/4. Despite this non-intuitiveness, however, the assumption of the limit is reasonable because we did nothing but imagine the series as having been “run through to the end”16 in strict accordance with the law of its creation, as Husserl says in Supplement II to the Crisis.17 In a similar fashion, we can imagine how we have come to assume that there is an unexpanded limit between protention and retention. We narrow down the scope of the field of presence (which emerges through the protentional and retentional stretching of consciousness) in an infinite process of thinking tending toward the ever “thinner” “now” and then imagine this process as having reached its end. Only with such a non-intuitional operation, but never with an intuition as is demanded by phenomenological analysis, can we justify the assumption of an originally impressional “now core” within the field of presence. The truly questionable nature of this assumption lies, according to Husserl, in that it inverts the foundational relation between intuitional givenness and non-intuitional being-thought. An intellectual assumption may as well appeal to reason, as is the case with the operation of idealization, but this assumption must be anchored in the intuitional givenness that founds it. Only protention and retention are intuitionally given in the field of presence. They make us aware of the field’s scope on the basis of which we imagine it as ever “thinning” in the process of idealization. In that sense the non-intuitional consciousness of the originally impressional limit is founded in the intuitional retentional-protentional consciousness. Husserl inverts this foundational relation. He views the “original impression” as the presence of something as it is being given in an unexpanded moment. This “view of the present”, as we could say with Plato, creates the centre for the field of presence, because the impressional “now”, as the limit between retention and protention, keeps these two extensions simultaneously together and apart. By being the arriving and the departing in the originally experienced happening of time, retention and protention only form the environs for the “now”; they receive their determination from the originally impressional centre of the “now” and in that sense are “founded” in it. However, in some of the Bernau Manuscripts, Husserl attempts to invert the relation again between the original impression on one side and retention-protention on the other. Instead of deriving protention
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and retention from the “now core” of the present, he derives this core from the relation between protention and retention. As a result, for the first time, it is possible for phenomenology to fulfil a central task of philosophy after the end of metaphysics. Saying “now” gives us human beings the impression that time offers us a view of the present. Therefore, claims Aristotle, we originally experience time in saying “now”. In the Timaeus, Plato had already unmasked this impression as illusory by explaining that time is an image of eternity, and so it is eternity which offers us the view of the present. After the end of metaphysics, which had arisen from the Platonic assumption of eternity, philosophy came to face the task of explaining the existence of the present in a way that does not involve Plato’s retreat to the concept of eternity. In section III of this paper, I argue that the later Heidegger provides essential clues for such a task when he claims, in Time and Being, that only the “mutual relation” between the future as “arriving” and the past as “having been” manages to “accomplish” the present.18 Meanwhile, Husserl’s explanation concerning the consciousness of the “now” based on the interplay of protention and retention involves the basic concept of his analysis of intentionality, which he introduced in Logical Investigations, namely, the concept of “fulfilment”. This concept also allows him to concentrate more closely on protention, which he almost completely neglected in favour of retention in the earlier texts. As the term “protention” (which is formed in analogy to “intention”) already indicates, both intention and protention tend toward fulfilment.19 In the opening section of the first Bernau Manuscript, Husserl states that consciousness can originally experience a new “now” only because this “now” is experienced as the moment in which a protention comes to fulfilment: “The ‘now’ is constituted through a form of protentional fulfilment.”20 Every “present experience of fulfilment” thus appears as “a consciousness of the becoming-present of something which has been anticipated in past protentions”.21 In every protention something is being anticipated, some continuation or modification of the presently ongoing experience of certain singular intentionally given occurrences. In this manner consciousness always contains some “prefigurations” of the contents which it may encounter through future original impressions – it has a horizon of expectation. No
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subsequent experience can fade out of this horizon, even if some new contents might first prove highly surprising to consciousness; even the wholly unexpected can only be understood as being unexpected because it happens to correspond to some prefiguration and is thus integrated into the horizon of expectation. In this sense, intentional consciousness always necessarily proceeds to some fulfilment, that is to say, a congruence with some prefiguration. Protention is the original extension of consciousness into some possible fulfilments contained within the coming original impressions. However, the question arises of what is “protended” by consciousness in its striving for fulfilment. Because of its retentionally created past, consciousness is guided in its protentionality by specific prefigurations for the continuation of its intentional life. These prefigurations may pertain to the continuation of perceiving an individual object but also – without objectification – to the continuation of givenness of specific hyletic contents in their individual determinacy. Also, a continuation of the style of being perceived or being given might be prefigured. The protentions which emerge from all such prefigurations are broadly speaking immediate “expectations”.22 That which can be protentionally anticipated in these “expectations” as possible future experiences can be differentiated much more exactly than has been outlined here.23 However, in order to continue our reflections, it is crucial to address the following question: What allows Husserl to assume that all protentions exhibit a tendency toward fulfilment, i.e., that protention is in this sense fundamentally a “tendential consciousness”?24 An answer to this question has to begin with the consideration of the mutual relation between protention and retention. Every protention remains retentionally stored in consciousness because it is not only specific “impressional” fulfilments which are retained, but also those protentions which provide for their anticipation. Since every protention is directed not only toward its next fulfilment, which can be accomplished in the short run, as it were, but also toward an empty horizon beyond this fulfilment, all these protentions form a continuum. In Husserl’s words, “empty consciousness” indeed becomes “shortened” (because every fulfilment is being accomplished in the short run);25 yet, this “shortening” presupposes an identity in all the protentions, and this identity of the empty horizon, which cannot be reached in any individual protention,
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guarantees continuity of the retained chain of protentions. From this position, Husserl can now claim that protention “does not even lose its essential character as protention in the position of fulfilment”.26 Since protentions remain in consciousness qua protentions, in retention, they can motivate ever new present protentions. Consciousness is thus, in its entire temporal extension, characterized by a process of “modification” “such that it is not only retentional continuity, but equally protentional continuity”.27 Along with the proceeding of retention, consciousness is continuously permeated with protention. This means, as Plato would say, that the entire stream of consciousness – just like the respective field of presence – presents itself in two complementary views. In every position there are, on the one hand, a protentional tendency for fulfilment, which extends into the infinity of the empty horizon, never completely fulfillable, and, on the other hand, a retentional storing of what has been fulfilled in the ever new iteration. These two sides form an inseparable unity as they mutually enable each other: the retained protending motivates new protentions, and these make the chain of implied retentions ever longer as their particular fulfilling becomes retentionally stored in the shape of having-been-fulfilled. At this point, we can describe the “now core” within the field of presence more accurately. It is still a point of intersection between retention and protention; yet, it is no longer understood as a mere product of idealization, but as the intuitionally experienceable location within the happening in the field of presence, wherein the “continua of retentional and protentional modification intersect”28 because the specific currently protended fulfilling turns into fulfilment. When used in exact terms, “fulfilment” is a misleading concept, however, because what immediately follows is indeed the “having-fulfilled-itself”, which can in principle only take place by being retentionally stored. The term “fulfilment” may sound as if an originally impressional “now core” were given to consciousness as the present even “before” the “now core” sinks to the having-fulfilleditself. This way the “now core” would be in possession, albeit a short-lived one. For this very reason it might appear as the domineering point of connection from which and to which the internal time-consciousness divides itself into the protentional and retentional sectors. This appearance is invalidated by the new understanding of the “now core” which can do without the untenable assumption of an originally
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impressional view of the present in which the original happening of time would have its central point of cohesion. However, this definition of the “now core” is based on what we have just intimated in our discussion of the prerequisite for protention: the living consciousness has a continuous tendency toward fulfilment, and with every new original impression some protentionally anticipated fulfilment takes place. This prerequisite appears justified because consciousness, no matter where we may encounter it, always already has a past which supplies us with prefigurations, thus allowing for the “short-lived” fulfilments mentioned above. Initially, the assumption of a fundamental protentionality of consciousness essentially agrees with Heidegger since, in Being and Time, he proposed the well-known thesis that “the primary phenomenon of original and authentic temporality [would be] the future”.29 Here, “future” is understood as “coming-toward-us”, from the German Zu-kunft; it is understood as arriving, as it is by Plato. Husserl could agree to this thesis in so far as, from the Bernau Manuscripts onward, protention is of vital importance to him for the understanding of the constitution of time as a series of “nows” already because of its tendency toward fulfilment. But Husserl’s prerequisite that every new original impression means the fulfilment of some prefiguration reveals yet another implication which stands in radical opposition to Heidegger: if every content which becomes the originally impressionally present contains a fulfilment, then everything that consciousness encounters is somehow protentionally “expected”; nothing is strictly speaking “new”. One may object to that by saying that something completely unexpected, something thoroughly surprising, may indeed happen in our lives. Husserl concedes at various points in the Bernau Manuscripts, albeit hedgingly, that something of the kind could happen. It seems conceivable that a completely surprising event could suddenly surface in the field of presence. For example, the reflections in § 4 of the first text begin as follows: “the event itself can “occur” and constitute a conscious present for me without premonition, without any specific expectation. A special problem arises here, namely, the problem of how the starting point and starting stretch present themselves originally.”30 Here the “starting point and starting stretch” designate the phase E0 from which a new event E begins – in contrast to phases E1 , E2 , E3 . . .31 En , which are
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the “mediating points”32 through which the event that began at the starting point E0 passes.33 In all such mediating points “a timeconstituting stretch [has already] passed”,34 meaning that a horizon of hyletic protentions fulfillable in the short term has opened. However, a problem arises because the starting point E0 cannot be prepared for by any hyletic prefiguration from the retentional supply of the event E which is yet to follow. Consequently, for a protention which precedes the beginning E0 of an event E, one can conceive a limit case in which there is no horizon of being fulfilled in the short term because this protention does not lean in on any hyletic prefiguration. This kind of protention lacks the ability to utilize particular hyletic fulfilments to “shorten” the “empty consciousness” running into infinity. Since this “expectation” could not be directed toward an impending fulfilment through some hyletic givenness (“datum”), it would need to be related to the empty horizon which continues to remain open. Such a protention would thus need to be unconditionally “empty”. Surprisingly, Husserl is able to assume a protention which is directed toward “fulfilment” even for such a limit case; to this end, he makes the following distinction: “the ‘expectation’ aims not only at the new datum, but also at the coming retentions and retentions of retentions, etc.”.35 This means that even if no fulfilments in the short run could be protentionally anticipated, it would still be possible to protend the futural alteration of the protended fulfilling into the retained havingbeen-fulfilled and, based on this, the prolongation of the retentional continuum.36 Thus, at the very least, a fulfilment was protentionally anticipated which consisted of nothing but the continuation of the intentional retentional-protentional structure of life as such. However, “fulfilment” in the phenomenological sense usually implies intuition, or originary givenness of what is “expected”. Is it still possible then to speak of the protention’s tendency toward fulfilment if the anticipated fulfilment consists of nothing but a continuation of the retentional continuum? “Is the protention, the preview, intuitable, and what happens if nothing of the previewed content arrives (if this ever occurs)?”37 It is noteworthy that Husserl, in the Bernau Manuscripts, evades a definitive answer to the question: Can consciousness encounter entirely new events in the field of presence? He seems to be content
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with the explanation that only “we”, the phenomenological observers of internal time-consciousness, can make an entirely new beginning with our analysis, notwithstanding this consciousness itself, which we encounter as always already “in progress”: “as a beginning, we only have the beginning of observation, we always find ourselves inside an infinite process and take up one phase of it”.38 Still, in an objection to this passage, Husserl remarks: “It is not so simple to find a solution here. [. . .] And the beginning as an irruption of an entirely unexpected event?”39 At this moment, “genetically” – i.e., as a problem of “genetic phenomenology” which takes shape more and more clearly in the years after the Bernau Manuscripts – “the task arises of making comprehensible how, prior to the completed formation of a constitutive process, i.e., prior to being conscious of a temporal object, such a being-conscious, such a constitutive process, can and must occur at all. In other words, an explication of the idea of an awakening ego, an ego whose life starts, and how it must necessarily become living consciousness. Yet, whether this idea designates a possibility?”40 Despite such questions and concerns, Husserl’s theory ultimately amounts to the thesis that the consciousness of the field of presence never starts entirely anew. The “starting point” of such consciousness is already embedded in the retentional-protentional stream of consciousness, meaning that the “new” can always only occur as a response to certain prefigurations emerging from the retentional sedimentation of previous protentions and their fulfilments. There is no possibility that absolutely “new” events could emerge. However, it is intriguing that Husserl repeatedly becomes concerned about this possibility; in this concern, one recognizes a simple question, which he himself bypasses: Can a fulfilment consisting of nothing but the continuation of intentional life as such even be protentionally “expected”? Can there be a protention that would be entirely “empty” concerning possible contents of its “fulfilment”, i.e., entirely free of any prefiguration regarding its intentional content? As an original form of intentionality in time-consciousness, every protention is related to the yet unknown contents of occurrences which may, in the future, themselves become an object of intentions. However, the continuation of intentional life is not necessarily such a single occurrence
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which can be objectively intended. The continuation is “expectable”; yet, what is “expected” here has no objective character. What is “expected” can only be the continuation of the world as the horizon for the infinite multiplicity of single occurrences toward which the intentions of the intentional life to come direct themselves. Phenomenology is methodologically grounded in the radical break with the pre-philosophical “natural” attitude, as Husserl correctly emphasized over and over again. The “natural” attitude remains unnoticed prior to the transition to philosophy. It is the basic attitude in which there are unquestioned taken-for-grantednesses. Despite his repeated emphasis on the break with the basic attitude, Husserl’s concept of protention does not sufficiently reflect the most decisive break with natural takenfor-grantedness. He fails to consider those troubles of human existence in which the natural confidence in the continuation of one’s existence and its world-horizon ceases to be self-evident. This happens every time our mortality becomes apparent in the moods or attunements which move us to the depths of our existence. Such deep moods embrace all concerns of life and relate to the world-horizon as a whole. The mode of existence for which such moods elicit readiness is characterized by Heidegger in Being and Time with the term “authentic existence”, which I mentioned at the start of this paper. In Being and Time, anxiety (German Angst) appears as the deep mood that prepares us for authentic existence. Later, when Heidegger was making a transition to the “turn” in his thought and after the “turn”, he spoke also of other deep moods and called them fundamental moods.41 Since the horizon-like whole of the world is revealed to us in the deep moods, they cannot be related to a future which could be protentionally “expected” because the tendency of the protentions toward fulfilment is related to the possible contents of objectively intendable occurrences within the worldhorizon. This means, however, that a phenomenology which considers the experience of time given in the deep moods and the “authentic existence” facilitated through this experience must admit of the possibility of a future which may radically surprise a human being. This possibility would end up overturning Husserl’s basic assertion that everything the future may offermust from the outset accord with the space of tension between protention and fulfilment.
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IV. Now we can understand the primacy of the future in Heidegger in the sense that the deep moods, which can themselves lead to “authentic existence”, inhere in a surprising future of a wholly different kind from the one of the protentional prefiguration. In this case we may presume that the determination of “authentic time” from Heidegger’s late lecture Time and Being also cannot do without going back to the existential understanding of “authenticity”, although he clearly avoids this return with much deliberation, limiting the understanding of “authentic time”42 to the time within its own original specificity.43 The first indication that a reference to authentic existence becomes factually inevitable in Time and Being too, during the determination of what is “specific to time”, is found in the fact that in the course of his lecture Heidegger makes an ostensible detour by bringing man into play: man is the one who is “immediately concerned”44 with the presencing of something present, but also with the absencing.45 We human beings experience this absencing in the duality of the “havingbeen”46 and the “future” understood as arriving. The absencing that we meet in the “having-been” is the past in its irretrievable nature. The absencing marking the “future” is the irreversible unknownness of the surprise that this future has in store for us. As we saw at the end of section II, however, only that which eludes protentionally anticipated fulfilment is entirely unknown and surprising, namely, the future as something to the arrival of which the deep moods are open and to which we respond with the mode of existence called authenticity. As discussed in Time and Being, the fact that it “concerns” man in the way just explained belongs indeed to the “absencing”. What does it mean concretely to say that the dual absencing concerns us “immediately”? To speak of something “concerning” humans only makes sense by looking at us as acting beings. If the “havingbeen” concerns us “im-mediately”, it can only indicate, in a concrete phenomenological way, a kind of irretrievable past – even if Heidegger does not express it in that way – which we do not encounter in our actions as farness that we have to recall explicitly through the “mediation” of recollection. Such an immediate way of having a past is possible: it is habit as a legacy living in our actions. Corresponding to this, but
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in a wholly different way, is a surprising “arriving” which “immediately concerns” us. This is, again in the phenomenological concretion, an “opportunity”47 experienced through acting. Whether a specific opportunity offers itself for acting in a particular situation or whether it is denied to us as acting human beings is hidden in the irreversible darkness of the surprising future. Still, opportunity is characterized by being “within reach”, meaning that it lies “immediately” ahead. As for our guiding question about how important the present is for authentic time, it is vital to observe that Heidegger, when discussing the “mutual relation” between the two ways of absencing (having-been and arriving), also speaks of the present, but tries to explain it by way of this mutual relation. This should remind us, not in content but in structure, of Husserl’s tentative attempt in the Bernau Manuscripts to deny the “now core” its primary position in the field of presence, which, as “original impression”, it is said to hold in order to explain it by relying entirely on the relation between protention and retention. The relation between the “having-been” and the “future” in Time and Being can be seen as twofold because it is a “mutual relation”, the relation of the future (the arriving) to the having-been and vice versa. In Heidegger’s terms, the first relation consists in the arriving “handing over and bringing”48 the having-been. “To hand over” implies a distance over which something is given. The distance is the unbridgeable gap separating the surprising, dark future from the present. The handing over relates to the role of man in the taking-place of presence: presencing is given to man; it is a gift. The handing over of this gift needs man as its recipient, but the gift does not “reach” us because of our involvement. We are dependent on the fact that the giving occurs by itself.49 It is from this giving that we receive presence. What is handed over by arriving, however, is not immediately a presencing bearing the character of the present, but an absencing in the form of the “havingbeen”. In concrete phenomenological terms, this means that we human beings always carry habit on our backs, as it were, which becomes apparent when opportunities arise for us in acting. Only through the occurring of such an immediate arriving do we “have” habits, and it is in this sense that the arriving “brings” the having-been. The German verb erbringen (English “to bring”), which sounds almost like erzeugen (English “to produce”), is avoided by Heidegger when
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he defines the reverse relation, that of the having-been to the future understood as arriving; in his words, the having-been “hands over future . . . to itself ”.50 Rendered more concrete, this means that habit, in order to function as habit, needs the future, which reveals itself in the form of opportunities for man in acting. This dependency of the having-been on the arriving shows unmistakably that time (German Zeit) still “brings itself forth” (German zeitigt sich) from the future (to use the terminology of Being and Time) even in Time and Being. Arriving and having-been are congruent in that they are both ways of absencing and so retain a distance from each other which the handingover bridges. The handing-over brings them “nearer” to each other, brings them into nearness. This “nearer-bringing nearness”51 is the authentic “essence” of time, with “essence” (German Wesen) being understood almost always in late Heidegger in the grammatical sense not as a noun, but as a verb: “essence”, as the happening of “essencing”.52 However, the two ways of absencing do not constitute a symmetrical relationship. The way of absencing in the arriving, as Heidegger says, consists in the nearer-bringing nearness “[keeping] open the arriving from the future” concretely experienced by man in the uncertainty which determines his acting when he finds out about whether or not an opportunity is given to him in a particular situation. The uncertainty emerges because that which is offering us an opportunity remains hidden. Despite its immediate nearness, it is not the present; what has become the present is no longer opportunity. Therefore Heidegger can quite literally say of the “nearerbringing nearness” that it “keeps open the arriving from the future by withholding the present in the coming”.53 Completely different from the absencing as such a “withholding”54 is the absencing experienced in the form of the “having-been”. The “nearerbringing nearness,” according to Heidegger, “keeps the having-been open by denying it the arrival as the present”.55 This should be understood in the sense that the having-been is refused an entry into the happening of the future, of the arriving; for unlike the arriving, which, figuratively speaking, opens that which lies “before” us, the having-been irrevocably remains “behind” us, behind our backs. Even if we turn around we cannot change the fact that we always have something “in the back”. This is precisely the case with the having-been; habit is denied meeting us “from the front”, that is, in the mode of arriving. Our gaze is directed at
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the arriving when we consider a new opportunity; a habit, on the other hand, which is an object of attention, has already in principle lost its characteristic as habit. Heidegger gives a phenomenologically appropriate description of the having-been when he says that it is “denied” occurring in the mode of arrival. In this definition, the having-been is characterized on the basis of the arriving, which confirms once again that even in this late text Heidegger retains the primacy of the future. The arriving is happening, and from this happening the authentic “essence” is defined, that is, the happening of “authentic time”. Thereby my original thesis is corroborated in that Heidegger, like Husserl in his concept of the happening of the field of presence, sees “authentic time” as happening and can thus be considered a successor to Plato. Plato explained our impression that we primarily experience time in saying “now”, i.e., in the experience of the present, as an image of the present eternity. Heidegger, on the contrary, explains the present through the mutual relation of the arriving and the having-been, the relationship that “brings presence”.56 In conclusion, we must ask how this is to be understood. The present of which Heidegger speaks in Time and Being cannot be the “now” as the expansionless limit within the succession of “nows”, that is, within inauthentic time; thereby he would have to abandon the description of the “thing” or “object” of his lecture, that is, of “authentic time”. It is rather the present as a dimension that time keeps open as the nearness which brings the absences “arriving” and “having-been” nearer together by precisely keeping them irrevocably apart through the “withholding” and the “denial”.57 The nearer-bringing is at once preservation and elimination of farness. By the nearer-bringing “handing over”, that is, by bridging a distance, a space or a dimension is kept open, namely, the “space of time”, which is also familiar in everyday German (Zeitraum), and which creates a “location” where everything occurring in time finds its “place”. “Space” or “dimension” indicate apartness. In everyday life and in science we understand this apartness as a measurable expansion; in time, however, the measurable expansion indicates the length of a period of time in the series of “nows”, the extent of which can be defined according to the Aristotelian definition of time by specifying the number of phases. We can measure the series of “nows” if we interpret individual “nows”
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as presents which we have in our possession for a short term, as it were. If, however, the expansion of the present “constitutes” itself through the diametrical opposition to such a possession, that is to say, through withholding and denial as the radical withdrawal of possession, a completely different meaning of “dimension” comes to light. Heidegger’s reasoning, even if he doesn’t explicitly say so, comes down to the assertion that there is an “authentic present”, the essence of which is the apartness of the “space of time” withdrawing from our possession, which is handed over by the nearer-bringing removal. Heidegger follows Plato in saying that time denies us the aspect and therefore the possession of the present. He pursues this understanding to the end by radicalizing it as he abstains from Plato’s refuge in thinking that the present can be possessed in the form of eternity. This abstention, however, demands an explanation of why Plato is taking refuge in eternity so that we would no longer need this refuge. This explanation can be found in Husserl’s conception of idealization. Plato failed to see that the aspect of time as arriving implicates, within the experience of the deep moods, the possibility of a radical surprise. He keeps to the possibility of anticipating what comes toward us and arrives, just as it was explained by Husserl later on phenomenologically from the inner connection of protention and fulfilment. Complementary to protention as the originally experienced arriving is retention, or, as Plato would say, the aspect of departing. Because there is no aspect of time of the present, no “it is”, and because arriving is not separable from departing, the objective of arriving, which is fulfilment, can only lie in infinity, whose arriving is ever nearing but is never reaching it. We can now consider this infinite happening of the arriving of fulfilment as “run through” and thus attain a “view” of fulfilment which escapes any worldly intuition and is open only to intellect. The mode of being of the Forms offers us this kind of “view”; it offers us access to the present “it is” that transcends the complementariness of arriving and departing, i.e., ultimately, the interrelation of withholding and denial. By assuming the eternal presence of Forms (Greek ideai) as “remaining in the one”, Plato carried out the first and fundamental “idealization” in the history of philosophy and science.58 As a result of this idealization, eternity now appears as the authentic present, available to us through the intuition of Forms as a spiritual possession, in contrast to the merely
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apparent, inauthentic present. It is thus not by chance that Boethius, in his well-known definition, attributed later on to eternity the character of possessio, the possession of life.59 In this way, Plato’s idealization as the institution of classical metaphysics of time and eternity prevented us from asking the question about an “authentic present”, whose “essence” is to be withdrawn from our possession. From Husserl onward, phenomenology strove to get back to the original experiences by calling all idealizations in question. With the new definition of the present as a “dimension” created by the interplay of two ways of absencing and thus withdrawn from possession, Heidegger brought on its way the post-metaphysical answer to the first and most influential idealization in the history of metaphysics. Translated by Alexander V. Kozin Notes 1. In Martin Heidegger, Zur Sache des Denkens (Tübingen: Niemeyer, 1969); On Time and Being, trans. J. Stambaugh (New York: Harper & Row, 1971). Page numbers refer to the German edition (henceforth Time and Being). 2. Historical-critical edition by R. Boehm, Husserliana (Hua), Vol. X (The Hague: Kluwer, 1966). 3. Historical-critical edition Die Bernauer Manuskripte über das Zeitbewusstsein, ed. R. Bernet and D. Lohmar, Hua, Vol. XXXIII (Dordrecht/Boston/London: Kluwer, 2001) (henceforth Bernau Manuscripts). 4. Martin Heidegger, Sein und Zeit, 8th edn (Tübingen: Niemeyer, 1957) (henceforth Being and Time). 5. Physics 219b2. 6. Timaeus 37d5. 7. Timaeus 27d5–6. 8. Timaeus 37d6. 9. Regarding the relation between the Aristotelian and the Platonic theory of time, see also my ‘Zeit als Zahl. Der pythagoreische Zug im Zeitverständnis der Antike’, in P. Rohs (ed.) Zeiterfahrung und Personalität (Frankfurt a.M., 1992). One of the lines of thought featured in this essay is given an in-depth treatment in my paper ‘Generative Zeiterfahrung’, in Edith-Stein-Jahrbuch, Vol. 2, ‘Das Weibliche’, ed. J. Sánchez de Murillo (Würzburg: Suhrkamp, 1996), translated into English as ‘Generative Experience of Time’, in John Brough and Lester Embree (eds.) The Many Faces of Time (Dordrecht: Kluwer, 2000). 10. In modern Indo-European languages, linguistic forms which denote the past, present, or future tenses form those words which designate a happening, namely, verbs; in some languages, that is not possible, but it is quite frequently possible to change these words in such a way that they express different aspects. 11. Timaeus 37e3. 12. This glaring but common error was first noticed by Gernot Böhme in his study Zeit und Zahl. Studien zur Zeittheorie bei Platon, Aristoteles, Leibniz und Kant (Frankfurt a.M.: Klostermann, 1974).
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13. ‘Jetzt-Sein ist allein “Wirklich-Sein” ’, Bernau Manuscripts, p. 41. 14. By using the formulation ‘the living present’ for a book title in 1966 (Phaenomenologica, Vol. 23: Lebendige Gegenwart. Die Frage nach der Seinsweise des transzendentalen Ich bei Edmund Husserl, entwickelt am Leitfaden der Zeitproblematik (The Hague: Kluwer, 1966)), I myself followed the primacy of the ‘now’ in Husserl’s philosophy of time. In 1981, I questioned this primacy, albeit incompletely, in my investigation ‘Phänomenologie der Zeit nach Husserl’, in Perspektiven der Philosophie. Neues Jahrbuch, ed. R. Berlinger et al., Vol. 7 (1981). During the same period of time, Jacques Derrida, partly relying on Emmanuel Levinas’s critique of Husserl, also problematized the questionable role of the present in Husserl’s understanding of time. On the status of the resulting problem, see Rudolf Bernet’s excellent analyses in his essay ‘Die ungegenwärtige Gegenwart. Anwesenheit und Abwesenheit in Husserls Analyse des Zeitbewußtseins’, Phänomenologische Forschungen 14: ‘Zeit und Zeitlichkeit bei Husserl und Heidegger’ (Freiburg/Munich, 1983), and in his Editor’s Introduction to E. Husserl. Texte zur Phänomenologie des inneren Zeitbewußtseins (1893–1917) (Hamburg: Meiner, 1985). See also by the same author: La vie du sujet. Recherches sur l’interprétation de Husserl dans la phénoménologie (Paris: Presses Univ. de France, 1994), pp. 189–241. Helpful also are John B. Brough’s ‘Translator’s Introduction’ to his translation E. Husserl: On the Phenomenology of the Consciousness of Internal Time (Dordrecht/ Boston/ London: Kluwer, 1991) and the renewed discussion of the entire problem in Husserl, which incorporates the contributions of the above-mentioned authors, by Lilian Alweiss, ‘The Enigma of Time’, in Phänomenologische Forschungen. Neue Folge, Vol. 4, 2. Halbbd (Freiburg/Munich, 1999). On a different occasion, I would like to comment on the investigations regarding the problem of time in Husserl by Toine Kortooms and Lanei Rodemeyer which appeared in the Phaenomenologica series in 2002 and 2006. 15. Historical-critical edition with the complete text and supplements, Die Krisis der europäischen Wissenschaften und die transzendentale Phänomenologie. Eine Einleitung in die phänomenologische Philosophie, ed. W. Biemel, Hua VI (The Hague: Kluwer, 1954) (henceforth Crisis). 16. In German, ‘als durchlaufen’. 17. Regarding the structure of this idealizing operation, see esp. Crisis, p. 359. 18. Time and Being, p. 14. 19. It is possible to emphasize the dynamic character of this tendency with Augustine’s distentio animi; the verb corresponding to ‘protention’ would be ‘to protend’ (from Latin tendere, ‘to span, to extend’). If, however, we emphasize that a ‘protention’ anticipates contents of intentional fulfilment, i.e., that consciousness possesses these contents in advance, ‘holding’ them in it, the corresponding verb would be ‘to protain’ or ‘to protenuate’ (from Latin tenere, ‘to hold’). 20. ‘Das Jetzt ist konstituiert durch die Form der protentionalen Erfüllung.’ Bernau Manuscripts, p. 14, cf. p. 4. 21. Rudolf Bernet, one of the editors of Bernau Manuscripts, offers this apt formulation in the Introduction to the volume, p. XLII. 22. Regarding the usage of the concept ‘expectation’ (German Erwartung), see Bernau Manuscripts, Text No. 1, § 3, pp. 8 ff. 23. On the basis of these manuscripts, Dieter Lohmar, the other editor of Bernau Manuscripts, developed the necessary distinctions in his essay ‘What does Protention “Protend”?’, Philosophy Today, Supplementary Volume, Conference of the Society for Phenomenology and Existential Philosophy (2002). Since all ‘expectations’ in question refer to specific contents (Hyle), they form a group which Lohmar designates ‘H-protentions’. 24. ‘Tendenzbewußtsein’, Bernau Manuscripts, p. 25. 25. Ibid., p. 9. 26. ‘Ihren wesentlichen Charakter als Protention selbst an der Erfüllungsstelle nicht einbüßt’. Ibid., p. 12. 27. ‘Durch die es nicht nur retentionale Kontinuität ist, sondern zugleich protentionale Kontinuität’. Ibid., p. 24.
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28. Bernet, ibid., p. XLI. 29. ‘Das primäre Phänomen der ursprünglichen und eigentlichen Zeitlichkeit [ist] die Zukunft.’ Being and Time, p. 329. 30. ‘Das Ereignis selbst kann ohne Vordeutung, gar ohne spezifische Erwartung “auftreten”, sich für mich bewußtseinsmäßig als Gegenwart konstituieren. Das gibt ein besonderes Problem, das der Urpräsentation für den Einsatzpunkt und die Einsatzstrecke.’ Bernau Manuscripts, p. 11. 31. Ibid., p. 15, diagram. 32. ‘Vermittelnde Punkte’. Ibid., p. 11. 33. Ibid., p. 8. 34. ‘[Ist schon] ein Stück zeitkonstituierend abgelaufen.’ Ibid., p. 11. 35. ‘Die “Erwartung” geht nicht bloß auf das neue Datum, sondern auch auf die kommenden Retentionen und Retentionen von Retentionen usw.’ Ibid., p. 7. 36. This possibility allows Lohmar to speak here of ‘R-protentions’ rather than ‘H-protentions’ (ibid.). 37. ‘Hat die Protention, der Vorblick, Anschaulichkeit[,] und wie, wenn nichts kommt, was da vorgeschaut war (falls es das wirklich gibt)?’ Ibid., p. 48. 38. ‘Wir haben als Anfang nur einen Anfang der Betrachtung, wir stehen immerfort in der Mitte eines unendlichen Prozesses und greifen eine Phase heraus.’ Ibid., p. 28. 39. ‘So einfach ist die Erledigung nicht. [. . .] Und ein Anfang als Einbruch eines völlig unerwarteten Ereignisses?’ Ibid. 40. ‘Die Aufgabe, verständlich zu machen, wie sich überhaupt vor der vollzogenen Bildung eines konstitutiven Prozesses, also vor dem Bewußthaben eines Zeitgegenstandes, ein solches Bewußthaben, ein konstitutiver Prozeß bilden kann und muß. Also Aufklärung der Idee des erwachenden Ich, eines Ich, dessen Leben beginnt, und wie es notwendig Bewußtseinsleben werden mußte. Ob freilich diese Idee eine Möglichkeit bezeichnet?’ Ibid., pp. 13 f. 41. Since the speedy publication of the Heidegger-Gesamtausgabe has shown the significant role of ‘fundamental moods’ or ‘fundamental attunements’ in Heidegger’s thought after the ‘turn’, the topic has increasingly become a focus of Heidegger interpretation during recent years. Following the publication of Heidegger’s 1929/1930 lecture course Die Grundbegriffe der Metaphysik. Welt – Endlichkeit – Einsamkeit, GA 29/30, in 1983, a series of texts regarding this problematic has appeared, among which is my contribution ‘Grundstimmung und Zeitkritik bei Heidegger’, in O. Pöggeler and D. Papenfuss (eds.) Zur philosophischen Aktualität Heideggers, Vol. I (Frankfurt a. M.: Suhrkamp, 1992) (‘Fundamental Moods and Heidegger’s Critique of Contemporary Culture’, in J. Sallis (ed.) Reading Heidegger: Commemorations (Bloomington/Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1993). Representative of the scope of recent research on this subject are the dissertations from Bergische Universität Wuppertal by Peter Trawny, Martin Heideggers Phänomenologie der Welt (Freiburg/München: Alber, 1997), pp. 68ff, and Boris Ferreira, Stimmung bei Heidegger. Das Phänomen der Stimmung im Kontext von Heideggers Existenzialanalyse des Daseins, Phaenomenologica, Vol. 165 (Dordrecht/Boston/London: Kluwer, 2002), as well as the Albert-Ludwigs-Universität Freiburg Habilitation by Paola-Ludovika Coriando, Affektenlehre und Phänomenologie der Stimmungen. Wege einer Ontologie und Ethik des Emotionalen (Frankfurt a. M.: Klostermann, 2002). 42. Heidegger is playing on words here. The German for ‘authentic time’ is eigentliche Zeit, and that which is specific to a thing is the Eigene of that thing. 43. For a phenomenological commentary regarding the lecture Time and Being, see also my essay ‘Heideggers Weg zu den “Sachen selbst” in P.-L. Coriando (ed.) Vom Rätsel des Begriffs. Festschrift für Friedrich-Wilhelm von Herrmann zum 65. Geburtstag (Berlin: Duncker and Humblot, 1999). A preliminary lecture version of the same ideas can be found in ‘On the Way to a Phenomenology of World’, in Journal of the British Society for Phenomenology, 30(1) (January 1999). 44. ‘Unmittelbar angeht’. 45. Time and Being, p. 13.
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46. ‘Gewesen’. 47. That is, that which the Greeks designated as kairos and Machiavelli as occasione, in German Gelegenheit. 48. ‘Reicht und erbringt’. 49. Time and Being, p. 14. 50. ‘Reicht . . . sich Zukunft zu’. Ibid. 51. ‘Nähernde Nähe’. 52. Time and Being, p. 16. 53. ‘Hält das Ankommen aus der Zukunft offen, indem es im Kommen die Gegenwart vorenthält’. Ibid. 54. ‘Vorenthalt’. 55. ‘Hält das Gewesen offen, indem sie seine Ankunft als Gegenwart verweigert’. Ibid. 56. ‘Gegenwart erbringt’. Time and Being, p. 14. 57. In order to emphasize that nearer-bringing happens as a creation of distance, Heidegger, in some other texts written after the ‘turn’, began to hyphenate the German term ent-fernen, thereby showing the elimination of farness. This is the exact opposite of normal German usage: entfernen normally means the arising of farness. 58. Regarding the significance of idealization for the history of philosophy and science, see my ‘Krise der Gegenwart und Anfang der Philosophie. Zum Verhältnis von Husserl und Heidegger’, in M. Diaconu (ed.) Festschrift für Walter Biemel (Studia Phaenomenologica, special volume) (Bucharest: Humanitas Publishing House, 2003). 59. Consolatio philosophiae, Book V, Prose 6: ‘aeternitas igitur est indeterminabilis vitae tota simul et perfecta possessio’.
CHAPTER VI
ON THE CONSTITUTION OF THE TIME OF THE WORLD: THE EMERGENCE OF OBJECTIVE TIME ON THE GROUND OF SUBJECTIVE TIME Dieter Lohmar Abstract. My contribution is discussing some of Husserl’s attempts to answer the question how objective time (time of the world) is constituted on the basis of the experienced subjective time. Besides that this task is introduced already in the Lectures from 1904 to 1905, we may find concrete attempts to answer this question only in the Bernau Manuscripts. The first step of this solution concerns my own past that does never appear in the form of singular static pictorial memories but in short narrative stories raised by memories that already own an internal order of time. But this internally ordered stories are not yet ordered externally, somehow they are still lying “side by side” and they lack an objective, synthetic coordination in time. This synthetic unification of my narrative memories in an objective unity and order is the first step towards objectivation of time. But nevertheless this first synthetic unification is done only by myself and thus we have not yet reached an intersubjective-objective order in time. The objective order in the full sense we are searching for necessarily depends on communication, critique and agreement by other persons. The communicative ways, authorized subjects and rules of this common constitution of objective time in a community are discussed by Husserl only in the late C-Manuscripts. Therefore, based on suggestions and elements from this two sources – but exceeding both – I discuss the contribution of common intersubjective constitution to the formation of a full objective time of the world.
I. The Development of Husserl’s Analysis of Time The best known presentation of Husserl’s theory of time is to be found in the Lectures on the phenomenology of inner time consciousness, which go back to a lecture in the Wintersemester 1904/1905.1 The attentive reader of the critical edition of this Lectures in Husserliana X will realize quickly that the text published by Heidegger in 1928 is not identical with the lecture from Winter 1904 to 1905. The published text is the result of an extensive and intensive editing work done by Husserl in September 1917.2 115 D. Lohmar, I. Yamaguchi (eds.), On Time - New Contributions to the Husserlian Phenomenology of Time, Phaenomenologica 197, DOI 10.1007/978-90-481-8766-9_6, C Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2010
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At this time Edith Stein, the assistant of Husserl, has made an arrangement of older texts of Husserl centered around the lecture on time from 1904 to 1905 and she brought this arrangement with her when she visits Husserl in Bernau where he stays for holidays.3 This impulse lead Husserl to a new intensive analysis of the problems of time constitution. The theme fascinates him that much that he spends nearly the whole time of this (and the following) holiday time in Bernau on it. Today this phase of his work is documented quite comprehensively in the edition of the Bernauer Manuskripte über das Zeitbewusstsein (Hua XXXIII). In the Lectures Husserl aims at the comprehensive task to enlighten the constitution of time in all its levels. The highest level of the layers of constitution of time is the objective time which Husserl calls “the time of the world” (Weltzeit).4 The conception of the Lectures is that the objective time is constituted on the ground of a subjective time, the so-called immanent time, which is the deepest level of constitution of time. The objective time is somehow “represented” (dargestellt) in subjective time, i.e. events in objective time are presented in a kind of perspective medium the subjective time. Also from the point of view of the development of the phenomenological method the Lectures are presenting something new: For the purpose of the investigation of the different founding levels of time-constitution the objective time is “embrackeded”. Husserl does not call this method here a reduction, but from the systematic point of view it is in fact a reduction. We might say “he simply did it”, i.e. he runs his analyses without using categories of objective time, but he was not reflective aware of the character of this new method. This reflective awareness of the radical new method is to be found only in the lectures on the constitution of thing and space from Summer 1906.5 If we ask for his motives to run the analysis in this way, we might only find the save instinct of the mathematician Husserl who definitely knows that he cannot use the result of a proof in the way of just this proof, otherwise he will commit a vicious circle in this proof. In mathematics we cannot presuppose what we are going to proof and this is also valid for constitutional analysis. This “reduction from objective time” is not identical with the transcendental reduction of the Ideas I, but there is a certain affinity of the two methods.6 I would like to explain the framework of this reduction from the objective time: In the Lectures Husserl tries to go back from a
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product which is the result of a synthetic performance of consciousness to the founding level of experience, which is the subjective time.7 But we should not expect that already the first attempt to analyze this relation will be clear and goal-directed in all aspects.8 In his Lectures Husserl tries to treat several different projects which are not yet differentiated very clear and thus leads to a complex mixture of tasks and methods which is very difficult to read and to interpret. I will try give You an idea of the projects: (1) the analysis of immanent time itself, i.e. – speaking in Husserl’s preferred model – the “flow of consciousness”, and this means the character of time in the inner experience of consciousness itself (the time of the act itself ); (2) the analysis of the subjective time in its function to be a medium of representation for objective time in events and lasting objects; (3) the search for the lowest level of constitution in which on the basis of the pure hyletic streaming (in all fields of sensibility) sensible data together with their duration are constituted; (4) the investigation of specific time-objects like melodies or events (in subjective and objective time); (5) the constitution of the unity of consciousness itself; (6) beside this Husserl works on the conceptual and methodological tools of these analyses of time – and all this tasks are mixed up to a certain extend. This is certainly one of the main reasons for the difficulties we have with the text and the theory of time of this phase. The center of the thematic interest in the Lectures is the description of the subjective mode of time which he calls the immanent time of consciousness (immanente Zeit des Bewusstseinsverlaufes).9 In this phase of his thinking Husserl conceives the relation of objective and subjective time in the model of the constitution of space. That means: In the same way as objects in space are presented to us in a certain perspective (which is due to our spatial relation to the object), the subjective time is a kind of perspective presentation of objective time. Or, viewed from a different point of view: The objective time presents itself to us in a subjective dimension of time. We will find this parallel between the constitution of (objective out of subjective) time and the
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constitution of space at all later phases of Husserl’s analyses.10 We see from this for example that the result of the constitution exceeds by far the basic material of the subjective time.11 But the orientation to constitution of space is only one aspect of the idea of constitution that works in Husserlian analyses. The basic model of constitution in the early Husserl that he holds on until very late analyses is that of content and apperception (Das Modell von Auffassung und aufgefasstem Inhalt). Now there are some interpretations that say that Husserl later on has rejected this model.12 But I don’t think so. The well-known self-critical sentences in relation to the model of content and apperception are to be found in footnotes that probably stem from the years 1917 to 1918, they say: “not every constitution follows the schema content-apperception”.13 Instead of a complete rejection, we can see that in this phase of self-critique Husserl has corrected some important aspects of the basic model of content and apperception and limited the reach of his thesis.14 I regret it, but I can not go into further details of this selfcritique and self-limitation of the model of content and apperception which remains valid until the latest analyses in genetic phenomenology. So to come back to our theme of the relation of subjective to objective time we have to recognize that already subjective time has several characteristics of objective time: Subjective time is extended, continuous and ordered. Thus we have to realize that subjective time is already “time” but only in a first level. Subjective time is – as Husserl writes – a felt time in the sense that it is really and nearly completely given to us. Beside this it is continuous, extended and ordered, but it remains – other than objective time – bound to the sensual presence in perception, memory and fantasy. Husserl writes: “The phenomenological time is already time, the phenomenological events as experiences in this time have their objectivity.”15 But this first-level-objectivity (in subjective time) is not yet the objective time in the full sense. In subjective time we have only a partial and perceptively presentation but never a complete presentation of objective time because the sense of the constituted object exceeds in principle the sense of the representing contents. Objective time also entails the phases of duration I am in fact not aware of and maybe I cannot be aware of them in principle, because there will ever and ever be phases of sleep and there is also objective time before the date of my birth. The sense of objective time exceeds in principle my subjective immanent time.
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In the Lectures subjective time has a double role. On the one side it is the product of a constitution of lowest level and on the other side it is the basic material for the higher level of constitution, i.e. of the objective time. In this last role it gains the function of the experienced content that is apperceived and by this apperception it comes into the function of a presentation of objective time. In this step of constitution subjective time has the same function as sensual contents in intentional apperception (better known as: perception). In the Lectures Husserl therefore supposes that there are to be found “specific temporal contents” (“spezifisch temporale Auffassungsinhalte”) or “temporal data” (“Temporaldaten”).16 Corresponding to the two roles of the subjective time in the Lectures there are two principal tasks to solve in the analysis of time: The first question is how subjective time is constituted in the deepest level of flowing hyletic material – and I will not discuss this question here. The second task is to analyze the constitution of objective time out of subjective time. This second task which entails the constitution of objective time of the world (Welt-Zeit) somehow shifts more and more into the background in the course of the Lectures. It is treated only at the very end of the text in the two short chapters §§ 31–32.
II. The Constitution of Objective Time on the Basis of Subjective Time in the Lectures In a critical overview one might even come to the insight that Husserl does not solve this second problem in the Lectures. But lets take a closer look. In Chapter 30 of the Lectures Husserl distinguishes two components in the complete intentional sense of an object (Gesamtsinn eines Gegenstandes) which is constituted by a “complete apperception” (Gesamtauffassung): (1) the contents that has no relation to time (die ausserzeitlichen Bestimmungen resp. die ausserzeitliche Materie) and (2) the contents concerning the specific “time of this object” (Zeitmaterie), related to his place in time, his Being-now and his past. We are able to register the identity of an object, although in the perception the sensuality that serves as a representation of this object is in flux (and constantly changing). What is it that insures us of this identity? It is a synthesis of coincidence between the intentional contents that has no relation to time. In this conception the consciousness of objective time is
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based in a consciousness of identity and duration of individual objects in the flux of their changing presentation in sensuality. It is the same object, the same objective sense, the same apperception of the object – only the “time of the object” (Zeitmaterie) and the representing sensuality is changing constantly. But the specific “time of the object” and the flowing sensuality are now connected in a particular way. Each actual now creates a fixed point in time. In the Lectures, Husserl insists that the unique sensibility in a special now creates such a fixed point in time (“feste Stelle”).17 The foundation of such a fixed point in time in the actual now does not rest on the temporary character of this now but on the uniqueness of the actual sensual givenness. Husserl writes that “in” this actual now there lies a moment of individuation in which the fixed point in time has its origin.18 The individualizing moment lies in the concrete difference, in the uniqueness of the sensual sensation which we have in this now, and this individual moment makes the difference of this phase of perception from the preceding and following phases. The uniqueness of the sensation that happens “now” makes the difference to other now’s. This uniqueness creates a kind of absolute point in time (“absolute Zeitstelle”), thus it is the origin of all individuality of the “that there” (“dies-da”).19 Thus the origin of individuality lies in sensual intuition. But there are obviously serious difficulties of this conception of individualization and Husserl realizes this difficulties immediately in the context of Chapter 31 of the Lectures: These unique sensual intuition which is conceived as the source of individuality can only be found in the case of objects that are presented by a changing sensual intuition, for example moving objects in space. It has no use for objects that are presented in an equal way “for a period of time” like constant tones, things that are not moving and not changing their perspective givenness if I am moving. These objects do not present itself in different modes of sensible sensations and therefore their individuality cannot be dependent on the differences between former and following sensations. Thus Husserl has no choice but to accept a conception of individualization which is only of limited use: The origin of individuality lies in sensual intuition – but not in all cases. Already in Chapter 31 of the Lectures he has to confesses: “each now has its own sensual content, each other now has a individual sensual content, and he is individually
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different even if the sensation remains the same. The tone c now and later is equal, regarded as a sensation, but nevertheless individually different.”20 Now we see that in cases like the unchanged tone the source of individuality cannot lie in the differences of sensations. Individuality must stem from another source which remains unknown in the analyses of the Lectures. And we may further conclude: Because individuality has not its origin in sensuality in this case then it cannot stem from sensuality in the case of objects that constantly change their appearance too. Thus we see that the conception of the Chapters 31 and 32 of the Lectures do not present a solution for the enigma of individuality. The impracticability of the conception of the Chapters 30, 31, and 32 are not the only argument to convince us that in the Lectures there is nothing reached in concern of the constitution of objective time. There are more problematic points in this conception which I cannot discuss here. But the basic objection against this concept of individualization is that it is too limited and perhaps it characterizes only a sublevel of individualization in the full sense.21 Sensual differences can only be used to make differences in relation to a very small extension of time. But the full sense of individuality is not reached in this concept. This full sense of individuality means the existence of something at a fixed point in the objective time. But already in the Lectures Husserl is clearly aware that the alleged origin of individuality in sensation could not reach the aim of constitution of a unique objective time. In Chapter 32 Husserl realizes that to reach this highest level of time-constitution one needs the contribution of memory: I know that I can reanimate each former phase of time by reproduction of a former realm of time.22 But memory as a phenomenon itself is full of difficulties: Sometimes there are gaps between the parts of time I can remember. Therefore it remains in principle possible that there is no unity in the whole of time based on the experience of memory. On the other hand sometimes we register that there is a kind of close contact between different parts of time (angrenzen) and even a kind of overlapping seems to be possible.23 This overlapping insures us that the times that are in close neighborhood belong together. But this does not offer an argument for a unity of all parts of time in an encompassing unity of continuous time. But at
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least there might be a slight possibility to find a way of constitution for objective time on the basis of such overlapping memories. If we idealize this chain of overlapping parts of time in memory I can imagine it as unlimited. At least the contribution of memory to the constitution of a unique time seems to be obvious, and we might accept it as promising in a very general understanding. So we are not surprised that Husserl goes further on this way in his Bernau manuscripts.24 Now I want to concentrate my investigation on the decisive transition form subjective to objective time – and this step is already done in the Bernau manuscripts.
III. Subjective Time as “History of Perception” and Episode in the BERNAU MANUSCRIPTS In the Bernau manuscripts from 1917 to 1918 Husserl works further on the theme of the constitution of objective time. And also in this phase of his research he connects this question appropriately with the themes of memory and individuation. One of the most important sources for this further work on the constitution of objective time is to be found in text no. 16 of Husserliana XXXIII. This text investigates the “origin of Individuality” and it is relatively well-known because Husserl has added it to his book Experience and Judgement as Supplement I.25 Already this fact – the fact that Husserl takes this piece as a Supplement in the last version of Experience and Judgement – shows Husserl’s high estimation of the text. We will easily find the argument for the extraordinary importance of it.26 In this text Husserl localizes the origin of individuality also in the intuitive, actual perception. But origin can mean different things: (1) the intuitive origin or (2) the first founding of a sense of an object (“die erstmalige ‘Urstiftung’ eines Gegenstandssinnes”) and in the idea of a first founding there is entailed a certain aspect of order in time. The case that is discussed initially in text no. 16 is the intuitive and simultaneous perception of two equal objects.27 But despite of the equality of this two individuals the process of the originary experience of this two objects shows differences in the way of constitution. Husserl
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describes this process as a series of assertions (Setzungen). But what is meant with this assertions? In the first line it is the assertion that the object perceived is real, really existing. But Husserl uses the term assertion (Setzung) in this context in a modified sense, and that is the sense of a “founding act” (Urstiftung) which is somehow a quality of a continuous phase of time or something that is best named the “history of a special, single perception” (Wahrnehmungs-Geschichte). Every new assertion (now-assertion) asserts its contents in the form of a new point in time. That is, the individual difference of this point in time is a correlate of a special founding act [Urstiftung] by a certain mode of givenness, a mode of givenness which has an identical correlate in the continuous retentional changing.28
This says that the first point of givenness of an object (Einsatzpunkt) has a special character. The first attention to an object is somehow grasped differently and later we hold on to this attention. This first intuitive attention on an object marks a special point in time that immediately starts to shift back in the past, and it is this point in time from which on the duration of this object is extending. In this kind of consideration we register certain special aspects: There is a special attention on the differences in the process that we call perception. In perception we have to run through all the parts that belongs to the presentation of the object in a certain way: When I see a house in one perception I start with the roof, skip over to the walls and windows, the door and in the end the path that leads to it. Next time I perceive the same house I start with another part of it etc. We see that each perception has its own way of running through the same object and this makes a difference beside the possible differences in sensuality (for example due to the light). Each perception has its own unique “story of perception” (Wahrnehmungsgeschichte) which I will call here a “history of (1) level”. This histories of perception are already stories, they are memorized as episodes. They have a starting point, the “begin” and a “duration” resp. an extension, and they have already an associative “order” in the dimensions of “first this” and “then that”. This small stories of perception are one important element of subjective time and they form unities that we can identify. Thus they are objectivity’s of lower level. – I understand this analysis as a general acknowledgement of the episodic structure of
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memory which is to be found not only in the case of events but also already in perception. The “small” associative order that characterizes this stories may even be used later on as the basis for a “big” objective order, i.e. in the dimensions of “earlier” and “later”.29 Now the differences of the respective perceptions results in the fact that every perception asserts its object “in the form of a new point in time”.30 The differences in the way of perception and the differences in sensuality enables us to see the differences in this stories of perception, and therefore we are also able to realize the different points in time that are marked by the different starting points. In spite of this differences of the respective stories of perception, and thus in subjective time, the objects of such perceptions remain the same, for in continuous perception we can easily identify them as objects. Perception is an objectivating synthesis for it is essentially characterized by the possibility that different sensuality can fulfill the same intentional intention. I see the same house even if I start each time with another part of it. – We have already seen that the span of time which I begin in the starting point is structured in associations which present a kind of perspective, so the changing presentation is at the same time a kind of steady change in orientation, as a changing way of givenness of the same.31 Now I would like to come back to the properties of the starting point of a “story of perception”, it is especially important to make clear the conditions that enables me to have something like a “starting point”. This assertion is only a starting point because it is at the same time the begin of a continuous action of the subject of perception. Starting at this time I have the object and the first point of his intuitive givenness under control, Husserl speaks of to keep something in one’s grip. i.e. “Im-Griff-halten”. And this activity is extended on the associative order of the whole story. And this subjective activity is the origin of individuality (“der Ursprungspunkt der Individualität.”)32 So this “assertion” or “Setzung” of an individuality is the performance of my subjective activity that I hold on continuously. Thus the actual assertion in the original presence of the object has a kind of lasting effect, and this is his individualization in a kind of small story of perception. This individualization means to insert the
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duration of an object into a small subjective duration which has already some characteristics of the objective duration: Extention, continuity and order.33 The uniqueness of some individual object is at first a uniqueness in the flow of consciousness. The object is the only object of interest and it differs from the objects seen before and after this. The assertion of the starting point of a story of perception is the foundation of the individualizing movement and it takes the object with his duration in this small subjective phase of time. This localization in the framework of a “first this” and “then that” remains completely in subjective immanent time. But even this localization in subjective time can be understood only as a “Proto-Individualization” or a individualization of (1) level. But it is quite obvious that we have not yet reached the integration into the one-dimensional objective time.
IV. Memories of Stories of Perception and Episodes. The Many Pasts and Their Coexistence The assertion of a starting point and the inner order of the many stories of perception must somehow be fixed in performances of our consciousness but we do not hear about the mode of this fixation from text Nr. 16. But we will find some hints on the mode of this fixation in Experience and Judgment.34 In this latest book of Husserl the analysis of the different activities of our consciousness has become the most effective tool of genetic phenomenology. To keep something in one’s grip is an activity of the subject. Thus the assertion of a starting point in the perception of an object and the ordering of the respective story of perception belong both to the class of characteristics that we are aware of only by repeated perception, i.e. pre-predicative experiences, Husserl sometimes calls this implicit knowing “Kenntnis” (sometimes “lasting characteristics” or “bleibende Bestimmtheiten”) but it does not already claim to be knowledge in the full sense.35 But what is pre-predicative experience? Perhaps it is easier to characterize pre-predicative experience first in a negative way: It is not knowledge that we can easily actualize at every moment and it is not yet fixed in a propositional manner. But nevertheless it is somehow a enduring
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knowledge of qualities of an object or event and sometimes it is even possible to make actual propositional knowledge of it. For example, if we enter a friend’s room, sometimes there is a slight feeling that something has changed in his room, it has something to do with the floor . . . but we do not know exactly. And: in the following conversation it turns out that my friend has bought a new carpet. So without being able to know or to speak about the precise character of the difference between my first expectation which rests on former experience of the furniture I have the feeling that something has changed. While knowledge is propositional and can be actualized at every moment the pre-predicative knowledge is more bound to feeling and lively associations, thus the chance to become aware of its contents is dependent on the vividness of my expectations that arise on the basis of former experience. Now we go back to our analysis of the assertion of an individual point in time. We know that we have seen the object at this place in this perspective – and once again at another occasion – “and so on”. But it is obvious that we are not yet able to make up a precise objective order of all this events. For this difficulty there is a good example which may be a kind of paradigm for this problem. If we look at unordered photos from a holiday trip that we have made some years ago, then each of the photos evokes a small story that is well ordered in their parts and events. This is the same as in our “stories of perception” (internal order of an episode). But we realize that it is sometimes very difficult to make the next step in the constitution of this holiday-time: We cannot find the precise objective (or external) order of all this small episodes which comes up while looking at the photos.36 We know this situation quite well: We have a lot of different and separated memories of events/episodes (internally well ordered) but usually the exact order of this unconnected parts is undetermined. In German sometimes we speak of “Erinnerungsfetzen”, i.e. pieces of memories. But the pieces, the short scenes are internally well ordered in the dimension of “first this”, “then happens that” while we miss the bigger, objective order between the episodes itself. If we want to make an objective order of this externally unordered episodes then we have to make a new synthetic step. Exactly this step of a new synthetic unification of internally ordered episodes in the new form of an objective order in a linear time is the
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theme of text Nr. 16.37 This new synthesis results in a (hypothetical) draft of an objective order. The internal order of the remembered subjective parts of time can not really help in this process, because all before and after in this subjective dimension can only help to form an associative order internal to this episodes. And: Even if the episodes might overlap and thus form a chain of a longer extension the sense of this ordering cannot be identified as linear, one-dimensional unique time. – But all this are only negative characteristics. In text Nr. 16 we are supported with an attempt to characterize this synthetic step from subjective time to objective time in positive characteristics, but truly a surprising one. There are, as Husserl describes the internally ordered episodes in memory, many “lines of past” (“Linien von Vergangenheiten”, Hua 33, 293), but this internally ordered lines are lying in a “2-dimensional continuum” and not in the “1-dimensional linear continuum” of the “one time”.38 Conceived in a model, this lines are lying in a plane “side by side” and not yet ordered in a 1-dimensional line.39 This is the yet missing synthetic step. We have to make a guess about the objective order of all this episodes. There are many “lines of past”, a plurality of past’s in our memory of objects in the form of subjectively ordered stories of perception and episodes, Husserl speaks even of a “universe of past’s”. Each perception and each event forms a “line of past” so to say each of them has “their own past”. Even if some of this past’s are overlapping and chained together in longer episodes (visit in the theater, meeting with friends, drinking beer in the pause, ringing at the end. . .), they cannot make up the whole linear past by this method. If we turn back to the example of the photos from a past holiday, we see the truth in the claim that every event has its own past which may suddenly end in forgetting. Husserl therefore writes: “Each Now is [. . .] the source of an infinite continuum of past’s.”40 So we see the realistic sense of Husserl’s diagnosis that we have a “universe of past’s” coming up in our memories in the form of episodes.41 And only if we are able to make a big plan, how all this lines of past belong together these past’s may connect and form a “System of past’s”.42 Each “line of past” shows an object in a certain situation and thus leads back to a first founding (Urstiftung) in originary givenness.43 But we
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have to remember that this big plan may be wrong and others may criticize my ordering and correct my first hypothesis of an objective order. Lets reconsider the elements of this model: There are many unified lines of past but lying “side by side” in a 2-dimensional field. In the first view it only tells us that the many lines of past are not yet externally linear ordered. What comes up in memory are internally ordered stories of perceptions and episodes but they are not yet ordered in objective time.44 Now we see that this model asks for at least three levels of coordination of time. I sum up shortly: 1. We have seen that each “line of past” is extended, continuous, and internally ordered. The elements of subjective time, the memorized episodes are ordered in a 1st level with the means of association, thus in a subjective manner. But they do not connect each other in an objective linear “big system” of time. They are somehow lying “side by side” in a 2-dimensional System until we start to coordinate them in a linear time.45 2. The next step is the synthetic unification of all this lines of past to a linear and 1-dimensional system of time. It is quite independent from the 1st level order. We know that we may also err in this 2nd step of coordination of time. In this coordination I can reach only a kind of objective-order-for-me. Thus sometimes others may correct our idea of this big order. But my first draft is the basis for all higher order coordinations in objective-intersubjective time. 3. As soon as I began to speak about this objective-time-for-me it becomes evident that there is another step of intersubjective coordination left to do: Other persons may correct my first draft, because each person has its own objective-order-for-him. In this coordination of 3rd order we have to coordinate the different drafts of persons with the help of communication to reach an intersubjective-objective order of time, an order-for-us-all. And we immediately realize that in this communicative ordering not every person is allowed to decide and have a word (mitreden): children, animals and madman – no, my wife – yes. But most of the problems of intersubjective constitution of time are discussed only in the late C-Manuscripts of the years 1929–1934.46
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V. The Constitution of Objective Time Out of Subjective Time from the Point of View of Singularization/Individualization of General Objects Perhaps we might once again take a view on the three steps of coordination and unification of time, this time we will take the starting point in the process of “individuation” by which Husserl in some texts of the Bernau Manuscripts means the singularization of general objects into concrete individuals.47 Thus we come back to the case we started with: Two equal objects given to us – how are they to identify as individuals? Husserl’s solution is: If I think of an individual in the full sense, I have to insert this object into a full history of his change and movements in space and time. This insertion into an objective order of time is necessary to have an individual, as we can see in a thought experiment: Think of an object of everyday use, like a cup, a book or a car which I am using but from which there are many identical objects used by others. If I am trying to recognize such an individual object I may err or I may have difficulties to perform this identification. If I am searching my blue car on a big parking log it may easily happen that I recognize the wrong car as my own. To find out which car is the right one I have to re-perform the history of perceptions and events that starts this morning when I came into the parking log: I past by the entrance, than turn to the left, there was a truck that blocks the road, then I turned right, and so on. Nevertheless I can make mistakes in the conception of this past, maybe I can even weave events of past days into my reconstruction. If I believe that I have at last found the right object, I have already performed a synthetic unification of 2nd order of my memories of events. I have inserted this object into a plausible story of its change and its movements. What does the element of plausibility mean in this concern? To stay with our example: If I see a blue car but there is missing a certain scratch at the left door I am very sure that this is not my car. This security depends on everyday knowledge about causality and motivation: Such a scratch may be added without my knowledge – but it will never vanish without my knowledge. I can imagine that my car was brought into a repair shop and that the scratch was fixed there, but I am very sure that no one beside me will pay for this. So even the identification of such everyday objects depends on an extended knowledge of the world and the
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possible change and movements in it, and of their respective probability. We might object that this is an everyday casuistic and that it seems to be impossible that such trivial things can contribute to a deep performance as individuation. But just this is the case.48 All this shows that we can perform an individuation in the full sense only in objective time, because all our considerations to insert an object into a most plausible story of its change and movements rests on objective time and our knowledge of causality, motivations and movements etc. In the end we have to use a comprehensive knowledge of the world. Full individuation rests always also on the localization in the spatial world, the localization in objective time and of a world of commonly shared facts.49 So it turns out that the seemingly trivial “relations of facts” are the ultimate basis of the relations of individual objects.50 The “small history” of a “line of past” in a story of perception or event leads only to a kind of proto-individualization in a subjective and associatively ordered frame. Husserl reaches a similar result in the paragraphs §§ 39–40 of Experience and Judgment by his analyses of the time of fantasy that have only an incoherent and disconnected time (Zusammenhangslosigkeit). He concludes that individuation and identity of individuals including the identification based on this rests on a world of real experience on the ground of the absolute position in time.51
VI. Remarks on Some Problems of the Constitution of Objective Time with the Help of Memory Thus we see that the approach to the necessary syntheses in the constitution of a unified objective time by coordination of my memories is in principle the right way. But we have not yet reached the end of this way because we have not yet understood the essential traits of the coordination (or unification) of the 3rd level, i.e. the coordination of the different drafts of an objective order that are done by different persons. In regard to the problems of this syn-chronization we are already aware of some problems which I will list shortly – but for the sake of shortness I can make only small indications in this direction of research. One important problem of this level of unification and synchronization of my own pasts is the possibility of delusions of my
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memories. My memories can appear to me as being a perfect chain of experienced events without gaps. But nevertheless we know that even such seemingly “waterlight evidences” can be misleading. Remembering is by far not a purely passive process because the revitalization of my past is a sense-oriented process. For example memory uses phantasma for the representation of the past like in the so called episodic fragments of memory. By this means there can well be caused delusions and errors because it is a very active performance of representation by pictures and phantasmatic scenes done by our imagination, an imagination that is not a slave to the past but that is oriented to a unity that makes sense and that remains acceptable for the individual person. Sometimes we simply remember what we like to have experienced in the past or we remember a past with slight corrections that fits better to our picture of ourself. The objectivity of order in events and also in the contents of this events we are looking for is always in a steady process of correction done by me and also by other persons. The example of the photos from a holiday stay long ago show that it is difficult to make a draft or a hypothetical plan of the objective order of all this episodes. But it also makes clear that this episodes themselves are “internally”, due to a still active associative system of references relatively ordered. Thus the hypothetical draft of an objective order of all this events remains a risky undertaking that can easily be erroneous. We know that other persons which also have experienced the whole holiday trip may easily contradict and correct our draft. And living in this still ongoing discussion about the true order of events – which is not only restricted to the holiday trip but entails all events of time and all other subjects for our common world – we perform the transition from an objective-time-forme to the objective-time-for-us-all. This ongoing discussion on the order of time is only a very small part of our communicative activities, but it indicates the transition from a solipsistic to a intersubjective constitution of time, a constitution which has its own rules. Intersubjective constitution in the means of communication rests to a large extend on our ability to speak. But there are some very basic performances that can be achieved also without linguistic means. Another problem are the gaps in my awake life: sometimes each human must sleep. Beside this no one can have actual experience of all things in the world, most events are happening without my actual perception.
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These unseen events can in principle only be actual perceived by other persons but nevertheless I am conceiving of the events in time as if I could have in principle have this experience myself. Thus I rely on the witness of the others and to have this confidence in their stories they must be normal, adults and reliable. A further problem consists in the limits of my own life. Everyone is born at a time and will die. For everyone there is a begin and an end in time for his own fully aware life. But nevertheless we overstep this borderline in our thoughts concerning events in times before our birth and after our death. In regard to this problem Husserl points to experiences which may motivate our confidence to know something in regard to the times before and after this borders. One important way of motivation is the concatenation of generations which points to past and distant pasts: Each human has parents and so on.52 But also in the future direction there are motivating elements of our experience: everyday practice but also our instinctive behaviour point in this direction. All this themes: Begin, end and gaps in our conscious life, form motives of our experience which have aspects that points to future or past events, the specials traits of our intersubjective constitution of the time of the world including the normality of the others that are allowed to engage in this intersubjective co-constitution – all this belongs to the full analysis of the constitution of objective time. All these themes are investigated during 1929–1934 in the C-manuscripts. Thus in this complex task we can find the most important reason why the themes of the C-manuscripts are appearing so different and sometimes also erratic and not connected. Sometimes interpreters view this characteristics as a sign of the old age of Husserl, a sign which points to decreasing intellectual abilities. In my view this is wrong and to defeat this false impression it is sufficient to make clear oneself the connecting theme of this investigations. Notes 1. The Lectures are published in 1928 by Martin Heidegger in the Jahrbuch für Phänomenologie und phänomenologische Philosophie and are now available in Husserliana Vol X, ed. by R. Boehm, Den Haag 1966. I am refering to the edition of the Husserliana in the way (Hua X, page). Husserl’s text Erfahrung und Urteil (Hamburg 1971) is cited (EU, Seite). The theses of this paper are already discussed in several occasions and I would like to express my gratitude for helpful critical remarks
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to Rudolf Bernet, Dan Dalstrom, James Dodd, Luigi Pastore, Alfredo Ferrarin, Lazlo Tengelyi and Klaus Held. An older version of my theses is published under the title: Konstitution der WeltZeit. Die Konstituion der objektiven Zeit auf der Grundlage der subjektiven Zeit. In: Passive Synthesis and Life-world. Sintesi passiva e mondo della vita. Ed. Alfredo Ferrarin. Editioni ETS, Pisa 2006, pp. 55–77. I would like to express my gratitude to Kenneth Knies for his sensitive reading and his efforts to make this text more readable. The original Ms. of the Lectures are to be found in the Husserl-Archives of Leuven under the signature F I 6 and F I 8, cf. Hua X, 385–392. The extension and intension of the reworking in 1917 is easily seen by the fact that around half of the text published in 1928 stems from the reworking of September 1917. Further parts of the original lecture from 1904 to 1905 are published in Hua XXIII and Hua XXXVIII. In a letter E. Stein reports that at the begin of September 1917 Husserl is working in Bernau intensivly on the theme of time: “Ich bin auf drei Tage hier beim Meister, es wird eifrig ‘Zeit’ gearbeitet.” Cf. letter of E. Stein to R. Ingarden from 8.9.1917, E. Stein, Briefe an R. Ingarden, Edith Steins Werke Bd. XIV, Freiburg 1991. In another letter to Ingarden from 6.7.1917 she speaks about her preparations of Husserls manuscripts dedicated to this theme: “Ich habe in der letzten Zeit immer neue Stöße von Manuskripten geordnet und bin eben jetzt auf das Konvolut ‘Zeitbewusstsein’ gestoßen”, also in a letter to Ingarden from 7.8.1917: “Ich habe im letzten Monat Husserls Zeitnotizen ausgearbeitet, schöne Sachen, aber noch nicht ganz ausgereift.” (vgl. a.a.O.). Cf. Vorlesungen, § 1, Hua X, 4. In the present analyses I have not discussed the idealized aspects of exact measurement and infiniteness of exact objective time, which are prominent in the scientific view of time. This idea of time nevertheless has become part of our everyday interpretation of time. The experiential basis of exact time is to be found in natural rythms of day and night and in measuring of working time. The idea of an exact measurement of time is due to an idealization which happens historically at the begin of the modern natural sciences and therefore it is a special developement in our everyday understanding of objective time. Cf. the lectures Die Idee der Phänomenologie (Hua II) and Ding und Raum. Vorlesungen SS 1907 (Hua XVI). Cf. my discussion Die Idee der Reduktion. Husserls Reduktionen und ihr gemeinsamer methodischer Sinn. In: Die erscheinende Welt. Festschrift für K. Held, Hrsg. H. Hüni/P. Trawny, Berlin 2002, 751–771. There is a clear parallel between the function of this “reduction from objective time” and the “reduction from objective space” in the lectures on Die Idee der Phänomenologie (Hua II) and Ding und Raum (Hua XVI) from Summer 1906. For example in Ding und Raum when starting to discuss the constitution of movement Husserl insist on the exclusion of the objectivstic idea that even when I am not registering any sensual movement in my surrounding there is still objectivephysical movement (for example in the physical rotation of the earth and the movement of the whole system). Thus there are very concrete consequences of the transcendental reduction and all its variants in the constitutional analyses concerning space and time. One systematic problem is that on the first view Husserl is trying to analyse two steps of synthesis (streaming hyle -> subjective time, subjective time -> objective time) by the use of only one reduction, the reduction from objective time. But it turns out that in fact he also uses another reduction that leads back from the entities in subjective time to the streaming hyle. Cf. Hua X, 5. The concept “immanente Zeit” may cause some confusion for it seems to denote the time of subjective performances, of acts. To analyze this time of acts is shurely also one aim of Husserls analyses, but in the first line “immanent time” is a name for the deepest level of constitution where sensual data are constituted together with their duration. This level of constitution precedes also the constitution of the time of conscious acts. The use of “immanent” in the denotion “immanente Zeit” (like in “immanente Wahrnehmung”/“innere Wahrnehmung”)
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dieter lohmar evokes somehow the erronous idea that there is an immanent time of acts that forms a necessary intermediate level for the constitution of objective time. Cf. for example Hua XXXIII the discussion of text Nr. 18, § 3. The leading model for the relation of “representation” of the objective in the subjective time is to be found in the perspectival presentation of a real object in my visual field. The constitution of spatial real things in 3-dimensional space functions on the basis of an intuitive given field that has only two dimensions. Thus both cases of constitution reveal that for a lot of other constitutions the material and intuitive basis is not already fulfilling really all sense aspects of the object constituted. There is a kind of neccessary surplus in the synthetic process of every constitution. Cf. Rudolf Boehm: Einleitung des Herausgebers zu Hua X, S.XXXIII ff. and Robert Sokolowski: The Formation of Husserl’s Concept of Constitution. Den Haag 1970, 177 ff. The theory of apperception following the model of content and apperception is mainly to find in § 14 of the 5 th. Logical Investigation. Hua X, 7, Anm. 1. Cf. D. Lohmar: Synthesis in Husserls Phänomenologie. Das grundlegende Modell von Auffassung und aufgefaßtem Inhalt in Wahrnehmung, Erkennen und Zeitkonstitution. In: Metaphysik als Wissenschaft. Festschrift für K. Düsing. Freiburg 2006, 245–260. For this way of interpretation cf. also the contribution of James Mensch to this volume. Husserl writes: “Die phänomenologische Zeit ist Zeit; die phänomenologischen Vorgänge, die Erlebnisse als Erlebnisse in dieser Zeit, haben eine Objektivität.” Hua XXXIII, 184 and text No. 10, together with Beilage V. Cf. Hua X, 6 and 10. This fixed point in time is somehow kept, he is “im Fluss der Modifikationen als der eine und selbe individuelle Objektpunkt festgehalten”, Hua X, 66. Husserl writes that “in” the actual now there lies a moment of individuation, i.e. the source of a singular point in time (“ein stetiges Moment der Individuation, in dem die Zeitstelle ihren Ursprung hat”, Hua X, 66). Husserl writes: “dieselbe Empfindung jetzt und in einem anderen Jetzt hat eine Verschiedenheit, und zwar eine phänomenologische Verschiedenheit, die der absoluten Zeitstelle entspricht”; in this absolute place in time there is the source of individuation, the “Urquell der Individualität des ‘dies’ und damit der absoluten Zeitstelle”, Hua X, 66. Husserl writes: “jedes Jetzt hat seinen Empfindungsinhalt, jedes andere Jetzt einen individuell anderen, möge er materiell auch genau derselbe sein. Absolut dasselbe c jetzt und später ist empfindungsmäßig gleich, aber individuell ein anderes.”, Hua X, 67. So we might try to make the best of this situation in accepting a difference between the full-form of individualization by localization in objective time and a pre-form of individualization on the level of subjective time in the differences of unique sensations in the flux. But this would only be appropriate in the framework of genetic phenomenology. Cf. Hua X, 70. Cf. Hua X, 70 f. However neither in the Lectures nor in the Bernau manuscripts – beside the extensive discussion of memory in the Bernauer – there is a discussion of the grave problems of memory: My memories can deceive me and I can only try to overcome this deceptions with the help of other persons. There are unavoidable breaks, intermissions and gaps in my presence due to sleeping. There are difficulties connected with the begin and end of my experience – my birth and my death. Husserl’s late C-manuscripts from the years 1929–1934 will offer a discussion of some of these central themes. Cf. Hua XXXIII, text no. 16 “Das zeitliche Strömen und die Konstitution von individuellem gegenständlichen Sein”, 289–298. This text is to alarge degree identical with the Beilage I of Erfahrung und Urteil. It has the titel: “Das Erfassen eines Inhaltes als ‘Tatsache’ und der Ursprung
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der Individualität. Zeitmodi und Urteilsmodi.” (EU, 460–471). The text is based on manuscript D 5/Bl. 6a–12b from 1917 to 1918. On the process of composing Experience and Judgement cf. my article: Zu der Entstehung und den Ausgangsmaterialien von E. Husserls Werk “Erfahrung und Urteil”. In: Husserl Studies 13 (1996), 31–71. Cf. Hua XXXIII, 291 ff. “Jede neue Setzung (Jetztsetzung) setzt ihren Inhalt in Form eines neuen Zeitpunktes. Das sagt, die individuelle Differenz des Zeitpunktes ist Korrelat einer gewissen Urstiftung durch einen Gegebenheitsmodus, der in der kontinuierlichen Wandlung der zu dem neuen Jetzt gehörigen Retentionen durch allen Wandel ein identisches Korrelat erhält;” Hua XXXIII 291. Cf. the analyses in EU, 208. Hua XXXIII, 291. Husserl writes: “dem Wandel selbst entspricht die stetige Änderung der Orientierung, als Wandel der Gegebenheitsweise des Identischen.” Hua XXXIII, 291. Hua XXXIII, 292. Beside this individualization may also mean something like “singularization” in which we transform something general into something singular. If we perceive an object we have to use a kind of concept that entails the properties of the object meant. In his genetic phenomenology Husserl uses the idea of a type by which we can conceive a concrete object that will be the same in all following changings of this perception. It is the same object that shows up first at the begin of this story of perception. This is a kind of singularization of something general that is now given to me as the “only object of this kind” and this singularization is the most radical character of individual beings (der “erste und radikalste Charakter des individuellen Daseins”, Hua XXXIII, 292). We might interpret the process of perception which starts at this starting point as a kind of “realization” of a general idea in concrete intuition. In all perceptions directed to the same object there are essential common traits that are denoted by Husserl as “individual essence” (“individuelles Wesen”). This essence or species is transformed in perception into a concrete individual object. We might even say that the identical general is singularized in this process (“ein identisch Allgemeines vereinzelt”, Hua XXXIII, 290). But this entails a metaphorical use of “werden” or “wird” as “come into being” in the sense that an object comes into being in perception (an object “erwächst”, Hua XXXIII, 291) as an individual concrete object. This process is interpreted as “individualization” of a typical general idea in this concrete perceived object. Cf. for example EU, 237 and D. Lohmar: Erfahrung und kategoriales Denken. Dordrecht 1998, Kap. III, 6, (b) and (c), as well as Kap. III, 8, (a). Cf. D. Lohmar: Erfahrung und kategoriales Denken. ibid., Kap. III, 4-III, 7. Cf. Hua XXXIII, 298. Cf. Hua XXXIII, 292–295. Cf. Hua XXXIII, 293. I cannot discuss here the challenging aspect of the different tempo of our subjective experience of time which may reveal in a “stretching” or “concentration” of experienced time. There maybe a way of analyzing this effect in becoming attentive to the different types of protentions (cf. my contribution What does protention protend? Remarks on Husserl’s Analyses of Protention in the Bernau Manuscripts on Timeconsciousness. In: Philosophy Today. Supplement 2003, 154–167). Hua XXXIII, 293. Hua XXXIII, 293. Hua XXXIII, 294. Husserl mentiones about this different past‘s “dass sie alle zurückführen auf den einen Prozess der ursprünglichen Präsentation, dass jede eindeutig zugeordnet ist in einem ursprünglichen Jetzt mit seinem Inhalte.” Hua XXXIII, 293. At this point of argumentation we should be careful of misunderstandings due to holding on to an objective perspective of time. From this point of view it seems possible that memories can
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dieter lohmar overlap. But we know: This objective perspective is exactly what should become clear only from the subjective experiences of our consciousness, thus it has to be embracketet for this constitutional analysis. – We might as well put the perspective of the flow of consciousness in an absolute position, then it seems as if there could be no “side by side” of memories. Some of Husserl’s considerations may be interpreted in this way (“Alle Erlebnisse eines Ich haben ihre zeitliche Einheit; sie sind konstituiert im absoluten Fluß des inneren Zeitbewußtseins und haben in ihm ihre absolute Lage und Einmaligkeit [. . .].” EU, 205). But in setting the flow in this absolute position we do not take into account the difference between the subjective time of the experiences themselves and the time of intentional objects (die “Zeit der Erlebnisse [ist] nicht die Zeit der in den Erlebnissen intentionalen Gegenständlichkeiten”, EU, 205) and we ignore the further neccessary steps of constitution. The absolute position within the flow is only valid in the context of the micro-order of the experiences that pass by and this absolute position can not be claimed outside the borders of this singular line of past. Therefore it appears to me that the descriptions in EU, 206 (“so haben außerdem die konstituierenden Erlebnisse als Erlebnisse im inneren Zeitbewußtsein ihre absolute zeitliche Lage zueinander”), which postulate an absolute position of the experiences in the inner time consciousness, fit only the relations within the internally well ordered episodic memories. The lines of past are episodes that somehow belong to the objects and events that are presented in them. They are stories of this objects and they do not necessary coordinate in one time. – If we ask: Where, in what field do the “lines of past” lie “side by side”? We may only answer: In the concrete subject, in us. This performance based on communication is shortly discussed in EU, 188 f. Cf. Note 33. Think of the case where I recognize a long lost friend, I will generally identify him because of similarity with the one I knew long ago, but I will never stick to this identification if he is still 20 years old. In this case my apperception changes form identity to mere similarity. Cf. EU, 218 f. Cf. EU, 216. Husserl writes, “daß Individuation und Identität des Individuellen, sowie die darauf sich gründende mögliche Identifizierung nur innerhalb der Welt wirklicher Erfahrung auf Grund der absoluten Zeitlage möglich ist.”, EU, 203. The main reason for this is: “Den Phantasiegegenständlichkeiten fehlt die absolute Zeitlage, und so können sich auch nicht wie die Wahrnehmungsgegenstände unter sich Einheit einer Zeit, eine einzige Zeitordnung haben . . .” (EU, 198). Cf. for this theme text no. 27 in Hua XV.
CHAPTER VII
THE METAPHOR OF THE STREAM: CRITICAL APPROACHES Yves Mayzaud Abstract. Husserl offers one of the most thoroughly articulated theories of time in the history of philosophy. Among the many strengths of his theory, he highlights the contradictions involved in the concept of objective time, he explores the nature of retention, and he clarifies the transcendental characteristics of time. However, since he conceives of time as continuous, it seems that he fails to account for the phenomenon of forgetting. Moreover, this failure ultimately leads him to claim that consciousness forms a totality, which one might argue leaves his position vulnerable to the threat of Solipsism. In an attempt to defend Husserl’s position against this threat, this essay explores the possibilities of describing the experience of time by means of a phenomenological monadology.
There are passages in Husserl’s work, where he asks whether the image or the metaphor of the “stream” is justified. Is it the best way to express the givenness of internal intuition? Or is it not perhaps a misuse of words and images? What is a metaphor? Unlike Ricoeur and Derrida, Husserl never raises the question. Metaphor remains a figure of speech, which transfers a normal signification to another object with which that signification is not ordinarily associated. Instead of aiming at an aesthetic effect like the poet, the philosopher uses metaphors to exceed the possibilities of normal language in order to grasp a nameless object. Such objects are common in phenomenological research. Time is an example of such an object, and the stream metaphor is therefore not just a classical trivial image but also a methodological device to grasp the ineffable in ordinary language. Although a metaphor might seem an odd tool for a science that purports to return to “the things themselves”, time simply cannot be grasped without recurring to an image. As Augustine points out, “although I have a basic intuition or sense of time, when asked to define it, I find myself incapable of doing so”. Thus Husserl speaks of time at the beginning of his Vorlesungen zur Phänomenologie des inneren Zeitbewusstseins as “the very old cross” of philosophy.
137 D. Lohmar, I. Yamaguchi (eds.), On Time - New Contributions to the Husserlian Phenomenology of Time, Phaenomenologica 197, DOI 10.1007/978-90-481-8766-9_7, C Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2010
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We would like to assess the value of the stream metaphor. How does it express the meaning of time? Is it appropriate? Can a metaphor be a first step to the monadology? After outlining the basic features of phenomenological time, we will then analyze the stream metaphor and expose its problematic aspects, before concluding with a sketch of a way to transcend its limitations. I. Advantages of the Stream Metaphor Its first advantage is negative: the reduction of objective time. It is a common oversight to neglect the bracketing of the world’s time, which is a fundamental part of the reduction and bears important consequences. In § 1 of his Vorlesungen zur Phänomenologie des inneren Zeitbewusstseins Husserl considers that in the natural attitude every Erlebnis and every object has a place in an objective and unique time. But what is the nature of time? Does time exist as such? By the reduction of objective time to time-consciousness, Husserl questions the classical interpretation of time that is still used by the natural sciences. This classical conception of time stems from Aristotle’s work, who offers his canonical definition of time in his Physics: One might also raise the question what sort of movement time is the number of. Must we not say ‘of any kind’? For things both come into being in time and pass away, and grow, and are altered in time, and are moved locally; thus it is of each movement qua movement that time is the number. And so it is simply the number of continuous movement, not of any particular kind of it.1
Time is understood in terms of the movement of physical bodies. This is an oversimplification of Aristotle’s concept of time, but it accurately represents how the concept is employed in the natural sciences.2 Yet, how can we understand time in terms of movement? This approach, it seems, does not submit time but movement to the reduction. And movement is a fact whose essence belongs to the empirical sphere and therefore must be bracketed under the reduction. Physical movement, then, is no longer understood as the essence of time, since Husserl’s method frees itself from the naturalistic attitude. This, however, leaves him with the task of giving an account of time that does not rely on the principle of movement. But how is it possible to think time
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without movement? He cannot replace physical movement with another kind of movement ensuing from nature – for this would suppose another causality. Therefore, he must turn to a movement metaphor, which is absolutely free from any sort of causality. Let’s consider the following passage from Ideen I where Husserl discusses the stream metaphor: We consider mental processes of consciousness in the entire fullness of the concreteness within which they present themselves in their concrete context – the stream of mental processes – and which, by virtue of their own essence, they combine to make up.3
“Mental processes” is a misleading translation of the term Erlebnis, because it proposes a naturalistic interpretation of the term that is ruled out by the phenomenological reduction. In this context, then, Erlebnis does not refer to a natural process but rather to a phenomenon that is best translated with the word “experience”. The second advantage of the stream metaphor is the discovery of retention. How, indeed, can we describe the structure of the experience of time in terms of immanence? The main result of the reduction of time, or, in other words, the discovery of time itself as the structure of consciousness, is Retention. According to Husserl, retention is a process that begins with an Urimpression: “The ‘source-point’ with which the ‘production’ of the enduring object begins is a primal impression”.4 Husserl describes how the object appears in the following manner: This consciousness is in a state of constant change: the ‘tone-now present’ in person continuously changes [. . .] into something that has been; and always new tone-now continuously relieves the one that has passed over into modification.5
The phenomenological object itself appears in consciousness as a stream. The retention is its form, or the modification of the Urimpression, the first apparition of the object in subjectivity, which flows from the living present to the past. It is an eidetic continuity and a law of consciousness. This is a fundamental postulate for us. Phenomenological evidence does not reveal an eternal sky of ideas, but, on the contrary, consciousness is a continuous succession. The nature of the stream is very important, because it is the very constitutive ground of the existence of consciousness. As Leibniz notes, however, since the monad does not relate to anything outside itself, the stream cannot be characterized by
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movement. To miss this point would be to confuse a qualitative change and a quantitative one. By using this metaphor, then, Husserl considers transcendental subjectivity as something independent from birth and death. Unlike in Leibniz, however, the monad is not hermetic. Husserl explains in Natur und Geist (1919): [. . .] jede sinnliche Empfindung, die in einem Bewusstsein neu auftritt, [ist] ein brutales Faktum, und die Ordnung des Auftretens der Empfindung, die in einem Bewusstsein neu auftritt, [ist] ein brutales Faktum.6
The quantitative change depends on an institution, which is not only the modification of a previous experience but the institution of a whole new horizon of meaning. For an example of such a brute fact, consider the shocking discovery of a gruesome murder scene in a detective novel: someone comes home after a normal day, goes through his doorway, and discovers the crime. Phenomenological investigation in this case does not establish the identity of the murderer. It reveals that the meaning of the event is not instituted by the original impression: rather, the original and passive production of consciousness is a condition of an active synthesis that initiates (stiftet) a new horizon of meaning. Therefore, although there is a breaking point between two contents, the stream’s continuity is not disrupted. It follows that the stream is not a continuous order; instead, each impression generates a new order or a new qualitative level. Furthermore, retention flows backwards. Consciousness is always engaged in an attempt to establish equilibrium: the flow of the stream in the past mitigates the intensity of the new impression. What Husserl describes is a sort of qualitative Homeostasis, the constant tension of consciousness trying to hold together the “genesis spontanea”7 of the living present and the noetical constitution of the object. The third advantage of the stream metaphor is that it attempts to describe human existence without making any naturalistic assumptions. Consciousness is the form of human existence because subjectivity constitutes itself as a structure of noetical capacities (Vermögen), which anchor the I in phenomenality. Indeed, the phenomenon is not just a meaningfulfillment of a meaning-Intention but the fulfillment itself is also the activation of habitualities. For example, according to a law of transcendental generation, with every act of conviction one creates the passive possibility to repeat it. “As long as it is accepted by me, I can ‘return’
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to it repeatedly and repeatedly find it as mine”.8 The subject is not a product of parts, causes or effects: rather it creates its existence. This is an old metaphysical idea that Husserl (1908) develops in an unpublished manuscript: Die erste Entwicklung organischer Wesen bedeutet die erste Entwicklung von wachen Monaden oder das erste Erwachen von Monaden.9
In other words: subjectivity does not persist in time as an organism. It exists – it creates its duration – and from this “awakening” ensues the monad. This awakening is ontological because the being of consciousness consists in the original production of a living present. It is not conscious because it is: it is conscious because, to be simply means “to be conscious”. In his later work, Husserl moves away from this metaphysical view but keeps the idea of the self-constitution of subjectivity as a series (the stream). Time is no longer understood as a movement, but as continuity, a becoming-conscious or a transformation. According to this metaphor, temporality does not have a simple nature, but rather a dual nature: the “impressional” structure of the noetic-noematic. Sound is also a noematic sense, an objective sense that we can consider as an object. But this objectivation is also the way the subject constitutes itself. Husserl uses the stream metaphor to describe this very complex structure of the self-constitution by objectivation. The first description is well known and says: Every adumbration of consciousness of the species ‘retention’ possesses a double intentionality: one serves for the constitution of the immanent object, of the tone; it is this intentionality that we call ‘primary memory’ of the (just sensed) tone, or more precisely, just retention of the tone. The other intentionality is constitutive of the unity of this primary memory in the flow; namely, retention, because it is a still-being-conscious, a consciousness that holds back – because it is precisely retention – is also retention of the elapsed tone-retention: in its process of being continuously adumbrated in the flow, it is continuous retention of the continuously preceding phases.10
This last sentence is worth considering. The stream’s unity implies that the retention of a sound does not disrupt continuity. Rather, the new stream of the object takes part in the whole. This concept leads us to another from Ideen II: Um zu wissen, was ein Mensch ist oder was ich selbst als menschliche Persönlichkeit bin, muss ich in die Unendlichkeit der Erfahrung eintreten, in der ich mich von immer
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neuen Seiten, nach immer neuen Eigenschaften und immer vollkommener kennen lerne: nur sie kann mein Sosein, ja selbst schon mein Dasein ausweisen, ev. auch abweisen.11
Therefore, in 1914–1915, Husserl was convinced that existence is not a movement but an engagement in experience and in the infinity of monadic life. In other words, even if the original impression is a brute fact, subjectivity can develop itself through objectivation. It develops through assimilation of objects, a notion which later in the Cartesian Meditations becomes the self-constitution of transcendental subjectivity. It is not enough for Husserl to say that man is comprised of body and soul – he needs to justify this ontological distinction. For this reason he develops the following thesis: the meaning of the self can only be given by the ego itself. Any other source of this sense would be in contradiction with the noetical a priori.
II. Flaws of the Stream Metaphor Without the image of the stream there is no way to conceive either retention or the self-constitution of transcendental subjectivity. Nevertheless, the metaphor implies some problems that should be emphasized. The first one is forgetting. It is evident in the Analysen zur passiven Synthesis that everything belongs to the stream and everything stays in it. In § 33 Husserl discusses the issue of phenomena of consciousness passing from the sphere of the living present into forgetfulness (Vergessenheit). What does Husserl mean by this? The experience does not disappear, rather, it becomes the “Nullfall der Weckung zu bezeichnen, ähnlich wie der Arithmetiker die Null, das Negat der Anzahl doch mitrechnet zu den Zahlen”.12 In other words: the forgotten (Vergessenheiten) are unities, and this means they are positive. It is always possible to retrieve them from the deepest area of memory. This unforgettable forgotten is a notion that Husserl explicitly defends: Auch hier für Fernerinnerung, vertrete ich die Ansicht, dass jede Wiedererinnerung ihr ursprüngliches Recht hat, und das sagt, es ist wesensmäßig einzusehen, dass jeder Wiedererinnerung auch dieser Gruppe eine notwendige Idee, die eines undurchstreichbaren Selbst entspricht.13
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Therefore we have to suppose that when an original impression appears, it immediately forms an “indelible self ”. This impression is a moment of consciousness, and if we assumed that it just disappeared, such disappearance would constitute some sort of hole or rupture in existence.14 The stream metaphor rules out forgetting. For Husserl, “to forget” always contains the possibility to remember. Immanent time is an irreversible succession of experiences. It would be possible to represent time travel in memory, because nothing in the succession of events is lost. At the same time, it is possible to remember anything that gave us an impression. But this raises an obvious question: are we so sure that time – objective or subjective – is continuous? Moreover, this first problem appears under the form of a Leibnizian series. The development of the monad, according to Leibniz, is governed by the “programs”15 of an original and godly organization. According to Husserl, this metaphysical opinion cannot be assumed. However, there is also a great temptation within his own position to presume that the stream constitutes a series. The idea of a program implies that nothing can be forgotten. Therefore the stream metaphor may potentially conceal a metaphysical assumption in which experience is just an abstract moment of destiny. Another important consideration is the following: in order to avoid the metaphysical assumptions of the Leibnizian view, Husserl highlights the role of experience. He seeks to preserve experience while understanding it as a totality. In § 37 of the fourth Meditation Husserl brings the stream to center stage: Das Universum der Erlebnisse, die den reellen Seinsgehalt des transzendentalen ego ausmachen, ist ein kompossibles nur in der universalen Einheitsform des Strömens, in welche alle Einzelheiten selbst als darin strömende sich einordnen.16
Here the stream is first explicitly recognized as the form of consciousness, and therefore the metaphor is no longer simply an image to express a thought; rather, it is the very form of time itself. At the end of the paragraph Husserl uses the expression “universe of experience”, to justify his use of Leibnizian terminology. Experiences are understood not only as essential moments in the series of consciousness, but they also contain the impression, the quality, the act, or the noema and the noesis. Consciousness is a universe, a whole or a totality; it is the total structure
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of impressions, kinaesthesis, noetical-noematical components, and so on. In the same page, we read: But, within the form, life goes on as a motivated course of particular constitutive performances with a multiplicity of particular motivations and motivational systems, which according to universal laws of genesis, produce a unity of universal genesis of the ‘ego’.17
Husserl, however, is aware of this danger, and advises how to deal with it: [. . .] the constitutive systems (system actualisable by the ego), by virtue of which such and such objects and categories of objects exist for him, are themselves possible only within the frame of a genesis in conformity with laws”.18 And later on: “At the same time they are bound, in their constituting, by the universal genetic form that makes the concrete ego (the monad) possible as a unity, as having particular constituents of his being that are compossible. That a nature, a cultural world, a world of men with their social forms, and so forth, exists for me signifies that possibilities of corresponding experiences exist for me [. . .].19
We can assume that the genesis of the monad or the stream is not just a sum of elements but a totality that possesses its own laws and form. Transcendental subjectivity is not in itself an object of experience. Transcendental idealism is grounded in experience. The development of a world for the I depends on the experience, and not on the I alone. In others words: what cannot be experienced, is not. The universe is the totality in which the world constitutes itself. Husserl’s foundation or ontological justification for this claim is only found in the stream. For Husserl, compossibility does not mean that two worlds can possibly exist together but that, in the universe of experience, one world has many aspects (nature, culture . . .). In this way, Husserl, guided by the thesis that there is no sense (Sinn) outside subjectivity, avoids the metaphysics of Leibniz.20 This approach leads us to the last area we would like to explore: intersubjectivity. First it is important to distinguish between Lévinas and Husserl. According to Husserl the other is always the alter ego. For example he claims: “ ‘Alter’ signifies alter ego, and the ego involved here as I myself, constituted within my primordial ownness [. . .]: as ‘personal ’ ego [. . .]”.21 There is no metacategory or the other in itself. For Husserl, the other is always the other person.
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Furthermore, Husserl is the first philosopher to give special emphasis to the fact that ego and alter ego are always given as a pair (Paarung).22 Unlike Hegel, Fichte or Comte, Husserl does not give an account of two independent beings but rather their relation. In § 51, he describes this relation as a “primal form of that passive synthesis which we designate as association, in contrast with passive synthesis of identification”.23 The two terms of that pair are syntheses appearing in consciousness. The question therefore is not if the other constitutes an “in itself” but rather how he constitutes an “in itself” in me. The appresentational grasp means the body (Leib) without directly reaching the other transcendental subjectivity. Using the expression “Appresentation”, Husserl makes a distinction that has a certain similarity with Kant’s own distinction between the phenomenon and the thing in-itself. The alterity of the alter ego stays concealed, and has no relation with my stream. He can only be grasped through his appearance: he is therefore never entirely given. The primordial sphere would be, through the reduction, the discovery of an original aesthetic, which is not transcendental but the original sphere of the self. In this way it would be similar to a prime number that can only be divided by itself or one. In order to understand this phenomenality, we have to remember Husserl’s definition in the Cartesian Meditations: Now in case there presents itself, as outstanding in my primordial sphere, a body ‘similar’ to mine – that is to say, a body with determinations such that it must enter to a phenomenal pairing with mine – it seems clear without more ado that, with the transfer of sense, this body must forthwith appropriate from mine the sense: animate organism.24
The body is not just an object. Through the pairing it becomes the expression of the other person. And at the same time it implies a phenomenon’s sphere, which proceeds from the modification of oneself. Therefore, it is important to understand that nature and culture are compossible in order to avoid the problems caused by Kant’s distinction. Nature and the primordial sphere are two aspects of the same world, they exist together and are not one behind the other as Kant maintains (world of the laws of nature and the true world of the will). As Husserl points out, “I obviously cannot have the ‘alien’ or ‘other’ as experience, and therefore cannot have the sense ‘objective world’ as an experiential sense, without
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having this stratum in actual experience, whereas the reverse is not the case”.25 In spite of this “tour de force”, the other person, the community and the cultural world remain modifications of oneself, meaning that this phenomenology finds no original phenomenon of the other but only a derived or appresented phenomenon.
III. Time and Monadology The stream metaphor should not be rejected. It is certainly necessary to criticize the notion of metaphor, as Derrida and Ricoeur do, however, we lack the time and space to fully consider the consequences of the transformation from the rhetorical concept to the hermeneutical concept of metaphor. Here we can only make some general remarks on this point in light of what we have argued thus far. Husserl’s primary concern is the conceptual necessity of metaphor. In order to conceive of time, Husserl has to embody it as a spatial form. Two hypotheses are possible: (1) there may be a limit to human understanding, such as the incapability of theoretically objectifying space apart from time and vice versa; (2) or, it is impossible to separate time and space. In this last case the limit would be ontological and not just epistemological. In other words, it would be necessary to assume that the temporalisation of consciousness involves its spatialisation. The series of experiences implies the distribution of objects. There is no impression without a kinaesthetic series. Thus, in this case, it would seem that Husserl repeats Kant. To highlight the difference between Kant and Husserl, we have to make a detour through Leibniz. His monadology is founded on absolute and closed monads, which can not have any relation to others. Time and space are only appearances of a subject, which is never able to understand its internal programming. In other words, if the subject itself is a monad, it is possible to say that time and space are the forms of intuition, or the manner in which the spiritual monad grasps the world. Against this hermeticism of the Leibnizian monad, Husserl claims that monads have “doors and windows”, even if the totality of the stream itself is closed. This possible relation between the monads and the possibility of an opening on the other enables a non-illusory space and
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time. The monad is therefore a part of the foundation of “a unique and closed monads-world”.26 It would be a mistake to interpret this world’s constitution as the construction of an appearance and to suppose that there is something that guarantees existence in the background. The monad is a part of being and the totality of possible monads is the totality of reality. Space and time are no illusion; they are the dimensions of all perspectives on the whole of being, the two forms of consciousness. This implies that the meaning of the world comes from “us”. Unlike Leibniz, who employs an atomistic logic, Husserl divides reality in order to constitute it. In short, Husserl does not offer us a subjective idealism in a Fichtean vein but rather an intersubjective idealism. The reduction of objective time has to be understood as the way to bring out the constitution of the subject, the “atom” of reality. Afterwards, the constitution of common space and time can only be grasped through the explanation of the manner in which reality is structured by the existence of the other and the phenomenon of the Ineinandersein. To solve this question, it would be necessary to leave the metaphor behind. For this reason, we will concentrate our analysis on the monad. The monad is actually no “atom” of reality. This conception would lead us to a new sort of naturalism. If we want to remain in transcendental idealism, it is necessary to use three new metaphors. The first, which comes from Merleau-Ponty, is the beam or the ray. The monad is no part of a whole, but it is a perspective on the world. This perspective is not just a point of view or an optical effect, but a constitutive moment of reality, intermingled with other monads. However, reality is not like a spectrum of colors that emerges from a single ray of white light. Reality is the totality of the possible independent perspectives on it. And therefore, because all the monads are intermingled, for Husserl, being is a beingwith. From a Heideggerian perspective, transcendental idealism stays in the ontical region and misses the true ontological level. Nevertheless, the monad should not be confused with the I. There is an essential difference. The I is the origin and the end of all acts of consciousness, but it is not the stream or the “movement” of experiences. The I is absolutely closed on itself and connected to other monads through appresentation. But is it possible to think the history of the monad based on the same model as the history of the I?
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Leibniz indicates, in article 61 of the Monadology, that the soul “can read in itself only that which is there represented distinctly; it cannot all at once unroll everything that is enfolded in it, for its complexity is infinite”. It is perhaps important to consider whether the stream of consciousness is linear, or if it is an intermingling on itself, where each experience is always in contact with the others: not a development but an envelopment. In this case, a more suitable metaphor would be a net, rather than a stream. This hypothesis assumes that experience consists in a fold. The metaphor of the stream emphasizes the fact that consciousness is made of impressions and constitutes its object from these impressions. From a phenomenological point of view, what would it mean if constitution is understood as a fold? The first consequence would be that, like the stream, the fold would still be given in a horizon. The fold of a material for example is always some location in the totality of the material. The advantages of the stream metaphor are therefore preserved. Moreover we avoid the problems of forgetting and continuity. In fact the fold leads to the idea of a discontinuity. The fold belongs to the material, but it appears as fold, and cannot be reduced to what the stream is. Experience would not be a static unity anymore, like the pearls of a necklace, but a necessary perturbation of the stream. Consciousness would not flow, but rather well up like a spring. And this would make it possible to distinguish between forgetting, repression and the unconscious. With the concept of a fold, we can also avoid the reduction of the alterity of the other person to one’s primordial sphere. To refer to another metaphor, experience is a mirror with no crack. This explains why there is no thing in-itself for Husserl, and why it is possible to reduce all thinkable realities to the transcendental sphere. Husserl does not question the physical reality of the tree, but rather maintains its existence as a tree, the meaning of its being depends on consciousness. In other words, being depends not just on how the I constitutes its objects, but on how it constitutes itself in the monad in a passive way, after having instituted (gestiftet) it. Therefore the noesis and the noema are not just an ideal correlation, neither a relation of determination from the noetical a priori (to the noesis of judgment corresponds the noema of the judged). In the monad, as a perspective on reality, as the reality itself from the absolute existence of one consciousness, there is a relation between the subject and the object
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that is prior to any distinction between interiority and exteriority, the physical and the psychical, etc. The noetical a priori is therefore just one side of the fold, and we have to admit, perhaps against Husserl, that there is a noematical a priori. Besides, in spite of the correlation, each term has its eidetic laws. In short: the concept of the fold allows us to separate, at least partially, phenomenology from the noetical a priori. This concept allows us to differentiate the time of the ego and the time of the monad. The first would appear as a continuous stream in which everything is held back. But this is a transcendental illusion. Psychoanalytical experience shows that the I alone does not determine the constitution of objects in the stream. It is not powerful enough to ensure the flow of a perfect continuity. The phenomenon of the falsification or of the manifestation of memories in spite of what the I wants, the free association between archaic trauma and other objects by color or sound, prove that the temporality of consciousness is neither continuous nor under the control of the noetical source. We have to admit that retention is only effective inside experience and not beyond it. Therefore, the flow is constituted by experiences which are not closed on themselves but folded. In other words, experience is not the development but the envelopment of possibilities. The history of the I is therefore the creation of possible deployments, but it is not a clear and evident consciousness of what is going on in the here and now. Those deployments constitute the individual’s life history, or what Husserl calls “habituality”. With time, or perhaps as time, experiences associate together and form passive conditions of constitution. Afterwards they predetermine the I: one does not create a tree each time one sees it. It is always the same tree and the meaning “tree” still possesses the same possibilities of objectivation (object of art, of the industry, etc.). This is a temporality that never manifests itself in the sphere of original intuition. The habitualities form the background of every active synthesis and every synthesis is the activation of one of them. Temporality is always the deployment of what the monad contains as habitualities or their creation. It is double: active and passive, creation and realization of possibilities. Objective time can be explained by the coordination of this passive life between the monads. The I is always isolated in its own perspective, but monads are bound by the relation of Ineinandersein. This is one of the most important habitualities of the monad, which manifests itself in the
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pairing between subjects. For the subject, the monad is not just life, but also a coordination with the others: Gemäß der in der Bestätigung der reinen monadischen (phänomenologischen) Erfahrung (Selbst- und Fremderfahrung) liegenden Seinswirklichkeit – als evidenter, als von jeder Monade aus notwendige ‘zweifellose’ Gewissheit, ist jede Monade für sich selbst und in sich selbst auf die andere seinsmäßig bezogen. Diese Grundbeziehung des Seins im Füreinander-sein ist evident als Beziehung des Koexistierens in einer intersubjektiven Zeit. Das ist hier nicht objektive, sondern immanent-intersubjektive Zeit des Koexistierens nach allen subjektiven Zeitmodis, danach identifizierbaren Zeitstrecken und Zeitstellen.27
If time is the constitution of habitualities, and if the habitualities of several monads are able to coordinate together, then it is possible to conceive an intersubjective time. If we radicalize our thesis and if we consider habitualities exclusively as intersubjectively oriented, then a monad receives its being and its signification just because it is among other monads and the community of monads becomes an organic totality with its own temporality, which is neither movement, nor stream but the time of coexistence – it is a net, the time of the community. The advantage of the monadology is that it avoids the thesis of a collective subjectivity, or something like the Hegelian notion of spirit. Indeed the community, for Husserl, has a purpose: it restores humanity and in a way brings us closer to God. But the temporality of the community is not the movement of a stream. It is determined by the changes of each monad and each intermonadic relation. In this way there is no measure and no regular rhythm of time but just a happy chaos: the simple opening of a space for the coordination of liberties.28 Notes 1. Aristoteles: Physik, IV, 14, 223a29–33. 2. It is not totally true. The Physic is understanding too, that time is a much more complicated phenomenon as to what it is generally limited. 3. Husserl: Husserliana III/1, Ideen zu einer reinen Phänomenologie und phänomenologischen Philosophie. Buch I: Allgemeine Einführung in die reine Phänomenologie. trans. F. Kersten. Schuhmann K. (ed.), Kluwer Academic Publishers; Dordrecht, Boston, London, 1976, p. 70 4. Husserl: Husserliana, X, Vorlesungen zur Phänomenologie des inneren Zeitbewusstseins (1893–1917). trans. J. Brough. R. Boehm (ed.), Kluwer Academic Publishers; Dordrecht, Boston, London, 1969, p. 29. 5. Ibid.. 6. Ms A IV 16/27b.
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7. Ibid., p. 100. 8. Husserl: Husserliana I, Cartesianische Meditationen und Pariser Vorträge. trans. Dorion Cairns. S. Strasser (ed.), Kluwer Academic Publishers; Dordrecht, Boston, London, 1991, p. 102. 9. B II 2, 14b. 10. Husserliana X, pp. 80–81. 11. Husserliana IV, Ideen zu einer reinen Phänomenologie und phänomenologischen Philosophie. II. Buch: Phänomenologische Untersuchungen zur Konstitution. Biemel, M. (ed.), Kluwer Academic Publishers; Dordrecht, Boston, London, 1952, p. 104. 12. Husserliana XI, Analysen zur passiven Synthesis. Aus Vorlesungs- und Forschungsmanuskripten, 1918–1926. M. Fleischer (ed.), Kluwer Academic Publishers; Dordrecht, Boston, London,1966, p. 154. 13. Ibid., p. 114. 14. It is secondary, but this argument can be found in Descartes when he tries to find a solution to the problem of emptiness. 15. This word is naturally not from Leibniz. 16. Husserliana I, p. 109. 17. Ibid. 18. Ibid. 19. Ibid. 20. Lévinas is probably the one who has best understood the consequences of the metaphor of the stream. He summarizes his critique in two points: 1. The stream refers to the “relation” of the I to himself. Husserl and Lévinas are influenced by Fichte. “Le moi, ce n’est pas un être qui reste toujours le même, mais l’être dont l’exister consiste à s’identifier, à retrouver son identité à travers tout ce qui lui arrive” (Totalité et infini, I, A, 2). 2. The stream means the constant modification of the I: a constant differentiation. It supposes, however, that the difference is never in consciousness but is the negation of the I by the self.
21. 22. 23. 24. 25. 26.
27. 28.
By the metaphor of the stream Lévinas and Husserl avoid the proposition “I am I” of Fichte, and Husserl develops a subtle image: the I modifies the world in such a way that he becomes a part of it. Husserliana I, p. 140. Ibid., p. 142. Ibid. Ibid., p. 143. Husserliana I, p. 127. Ibid., p. 168. We notice here what I have said on the universe: “Und so weitergehend erkenne ich, dass jede Monade, die als konkrete Möglichkeit Geltung hat, ein kompossibles Universum, eine geschlossene Monaden-Welt vorzeichnet, und das zwei Monadenwelten in derselben Art inkompossibel sind wie zwei Möglichkeitsabwandlungen meines ego und ebenso irgendeines vorausgesetzt gedachten ego überhaupt”. Husserliana XIV, Zur Phänomenologie der Intersubjektivität. Texte aus dem Nachlass. Zweiter Teil. 1921–1928. I. Kern (ed.), Martinus Nijhoff, Den Haag, 1973, p. 360. Here I only mean to refer to the original level of the community, before the state and political institutions, which do not appear with the community but after it, in order to structure its expansion and its development.
CHAPTER VIII
RETENTION AND THE SCHEMA James Mensch Abstract. Among the topics of time consciousness, there is, perhaps, none so controversial as Husserl’s use of the schema to interpret our awareness of time. This schema of interpretative intention, contents-there-to-be-interpreted, and the resulting intentional object has been subject to continuous criticism. The reason for all this attention is not hard to see. At issue is how we are to understand our retention of just past time. This short term memory is the basis of our consciousness of extended time, but such time consciousness is fundamental for our apprehension of every temporally determinate object. Thus, the question of the schema concerns the very basis of Husserl’s theory of how we grasp our world. Although Husserl severely criticizes the schema, he never abandons it. In fact, we find him continuing to employ it in the C and B manuscripts on time consciousness from the 1930s. In this article, I show how Husserl applies the schema to our apprehension of time. This includes a crucial limitation he imposes on the schema with regard to the lowest level of such apprehension. I also examine how the schema determines what Husserl means by retention and, hence, temporal constitution. Having shown how his use of the schema overcomes the objections that have been brought against it, I describe the implications that thereby arise regarding the priority of appearing as such.
Among the topics of time consciousness, there is, perhaps, none so controversial as Husserl’s use of the schema to interpret our awareness of time. This schema of interpretative intention, contents-there-to-beinterpreted, and the resulting intentional object has been subject to continuous criticism since Robert Sokolowski published his seminal 1964 article, “Immanent Constitution in Husserl’s Lectures on Time.”1 In what can be fairly called the “Louvain tradition” of objecting to the schema, Sokolowski’s critique has been taken up and amplified by Rudolf Boehm in the “Introduction” to his edition of Husserl’s lectures on time consciousness, John Brough, who translated these lectures, and Rudolf Bernet, who also wrote an “Introduction” to them. More recently, Toine Kortooms and Lanei Rodemeyer have contributed to this critique.2 The reason for all this attention to this topic is not hard to find. At issue is how we are to understand our retention of just past time. Retention or short term memory is the basis of our consciousness of extended time, but such 153 D. Lohmar, I. Yamaguchi (eds.), On Time - New Contributions to the Husserlian Phenomenology of Time, Phaenomenologica 197, DOI 10.1007/978-90-481-8766-9_8, C Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2010
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time consciousness is fundamental for our apprehension of every temporally determinate object. Thus, the question of the schema concerns the very basis of Husserl’s theory of constitution. Unless we understand it, we really cannot grasp the nature of Husserl’s project. While the authors just cited agree that Husserl abandons this schema, they are far less certain when he does this. Bernet, Brough and Boehm assert that Husserl criticized and ultimately abandoned it in the years 1908–1909 when he saw the reduction as ending in an absolute consciousness.3 The schema, however, is extensively employed (and criticized) in the Bernau 1917 manuscripts, a fact which leads Toine Kortooms to date its dismissal at that point.4 Yet, as Dieter Lohmar has shown, Husserl uses the schema in such late works as Formal and Transcendental Logic (1929), Cartesian Meditations (1930), and Experience and Judgment (1939).5 In fact, we find him continuing to employ it in the C and B manuscripts on time consciousness from the 1930 s.6 Given this, one has to agree with Lohmar that Husserl’s criticism of the model is not general, but directed to specific points and ends with a positive result.7 In what follows, I am going to fill this out by showing how Husserl applies the schema to our apprehension of time. This will include a crucial limitation of the schema with regard to the lowest level of such apprehension. I shall also examine how this schema determines what Husserl means by retention and, hence, temporal constitution. Having shown how his use of the schema overcomes the objections that have been brought against it, I will end by noting the implications that thereby arise regarding the priority of appearing as such. I. The Schema The schema that Husserl brings forward in the Logical Investigations is meant to specify the structure of the constitutive act. On each level of constitution, from the lowest to the highest, we find: an interpretative intention, a material undergoing this interpretation, and a constituted object that transcends this material. The first two are immanent with regard to the level, the third transcends it. Thus, according to Husserl, my interpretations of my sensations are what first yield the presence of a perceptual object. In his words:
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It belongs to perception that something appears within it, but interpretation [die Interpretation] makes up what we term appearance – be it correct or not, anticipatory or overdrawn. The house appears to me through no other way but that I interpret [interpretiere] in a certain fashion actually experienced contents of sensation. I hear a barrel organ – the sensed tones I take [deute] as barrel organ tones. . . . They are termed “appearances” or, better, appearing contents precisely for the reason that they are contents of perceptive interpretation [perzeptiver Interpretation] (Hua XIX, 762).8
This signifies that the particular contents of sensation enter into the constitutive process by our taking them as appearances of some object. To take them as such is to place them in a framework of identity in multiplicity. We do so when we continually take them in the same sense. As Husserl writes in describing how “we suppose ourselves to perceptually grasp one and the same object through the change of experiential contents,” “different perceptual contents are given, but they are taken (interpreted, apperceived) [gedeutet (aufgefaßt, apperzipert)] ‘in the same sense’ . . . the interpretation [Deutung] according to this ‘sense’ is a character of experience which first constitutes ‘the being of the object for me’ ” (Hua XIX, 397). What we have, then, is a threefold structure. On the objective side, we have the appearing object. As a one-in-many, it is the intentional object understood as an appearing sense.9 On the subjective side, the side of what is “truly immanent” in consciousness, we have the “contents of perception.” On the same side, we also have the “perceptual acts in the sense of interpretative intentions” (Hua XIX, 397). The acts make the contents intentional by transforming them from senseless sense data into “representing contents” – contents which point unambiguously to the corresponding features of the object (Hua XIX, 609). They do this through assuming that the experiential contents have a single referent, i.e., fit together to form the recurring pattern of perceptions through which a given object exhibits its specific sense. Several things are to be noted in this account of the schema. The first is the equivalence of Auffassung and Interpretation. Later, Husserl will prefer the German term for the English cognate, yet Auffassung will continue to signify interpretation. Similarly the sense of Auffassungsinhalte continues to be that of contents-there-to-be-interpreted. I will translate them accordingly.10 Such contents along with the interpretative intentions are immanent in consciousness. They are really [reel] present in it. The notion of such real or genuine presence is never given up by Husserl.
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It is employed in the Bernau Manuscripts as well as in the late manuscripts on time constitution. In 1931, we find him still describing the “changing moment of sensation” as “really belonging [reell dazugehörig]” to consciousness, as “really there [reell da]”.11 Thus, the notion that Husserl somehow rids consciousness of its contents and sees it, as some commentators have maintained, as a purely intentional structure cannot be textually maintained.12 There is, moreover, a theoretical difficulty with this view. If we empty consciousness of all content, the reduction itself will ultimately come out empty. There will be no founding level for it to reach. This point can be put in terms of the fact that Husserl views the reduction as the reverse of constitution. Through constitution, we build up our world, layer by layer, by grasping the patterns of our experiences and positing their referents. Thus, we pick out objects in our visual field as we move about the world by identifying patterns of perspectival appearing and positing distinct objects as their referents. The experiences that compose a pattern are taken as experiences of some spatial-temporal object. The word of indicates the intentional relation of the experiences to this object. The latter, as a one-in-many, does not have the same sense as these individual experiences. It can exhibit itself through its many sides. The same cannot be said of the experiences themselves.13 It is this difference of sense, i.e., the fact that the posited object is, with regard to these experiences, a one-in-many, that makes the object transcend such experiences. Now, to reverse this move from the constituting experiences to the constituted object is to perform the reduction. The question that the reduction is supposed to answer is that of the evidence for our positing. What are the experiences that justify our assertion of the object? Such experiences are the “contents” of our consciousness. They are what form its streaming. To genuinely rid consciousness of them is to see it as a sheer Sartrean openness, a sheer transparency to what it is not. This, however, is not Husserl’s position.
II. The Application of the Schema to Time Consciousness The application of this schema to our consciousness of time is relatively straightforward. To grasp it, however, it is best to take a moment and listen to a brief stretch of sound or a simple clap of your hands and then
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regard its fading (Verblassen) or dying-away (Abklingen) in the silence that follows. Such fadings form the immanent data in our apprehension of temporal departure. Our experience of such departure, Husserl suggests, is analogous to that of spatial departure, where an object grows smaller and smaller and also more obscure. “In receding into the past,” he writes, “the temporal object contracts and in the process also becomes obscure” (Hua X, 26). We interpret spatial contraction and increasing obscurity as departure in space. Such interpretation is something we acquired as infants as we learned how to make sense of our visual surroundings. Analogously, it can be said that we also learned then to interpret the fadings we experience as temporal departure. The result of this second interpretation is the departing temporal object. Like the perspectivally appearing object, it also transcends “the really immanent content [reell immanenter Inhalt],” which here consists of the fadings and the interpretative intention. As a one-in-many, the temporal object, Husserl adds, “is not really and immanently given” (Hua X, 284). Continuing this analogy, he speaks of the fadings as the temporal perspectives (Abschattungen) of the temporal object. Just as a spatial-temporal object shows itself in different perspectives, each perspective representing its unity, so the temporal perspectives represent the unity of the temporally departing object. They point to it as the one thing that shows itself in the different temporal perspectives. In Husserl’s words, “The elapsed now with its filling does not remain an actually present now but presents itself in the new actually present now in a certain perspective; and each such perspective represents [vertritt], so to speak, what has been in the actual now” (Hua X, 275–276). Strictly speaking, we cannot speak about an individual perspective of a spatial-temporal object. It is only when it is ranged alongside of other such perspectives that a perspectival view can function as a view of the object. As already indicated, the intentional relation is a relation to a onein-many, the many founding experiences intentionally referring to the unity that appears as their common referent. A single experience cannot by itself sustain this relationship. Husserl takes account of this necessity in our apprehension of time when he asserts that the “elapsed duration” of a tone is “represented [repräsentiert] by means of a continuity of fading modifications.” Such modifications are “the flow of perspectives in which the identical tone ‘presents’ itself” (Hua X, 277). The reason why these
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perspectives are perspectives of the departing tone is that they all undergo the same interpretation. In Husserl’s words, the departing tone appears because there is “a unity of interpretation, [Einheit der Auffassung],” one which “grasps the identical and unitary temporal phase precisely in this continuity of perspectives” (Hua X, 283). This grasp is not static, but rather part of an ongoing process. The tone’s ongoing departure is grasped through an ongoing fading. This, of course, presupposes that “the unity of interpretation is preserved,” i.e., that we continue to take the progressive fading of its presence as its progressive temporal departure (Hua X, 283).
III. The Nature of Retention There is a certain ambiguity in Husserl’s use of the term retention. Its most basic sense is that of short-term memory. Even though no sensuous contents are there to sustain an object’s presence, we still have the experience of holding it fast for awhile, our grasp of it getting weaker and weaker. For Husserl, the basic sense of retention refers to this experience. It designates our consciousness of the “fading,” the “dying-away,” the “sinking-down” of what we still hold fast. Beyond this, however, Husserl will also speak of individual retentions. He will describe the continuity of the fadings as a lengthening chain of retentions, one where a retention “changes into a retention of a retention and does so continuously” (Hua X, 27). The change from the retention to the retention of this retention marks the further fading of the retained object. Each retention is, in fact, a further fading. As such, each stands as a “representing content,” one that points to or “represents” the departing object. Husserl, however, is also careful to note that the notion of an individual retention is an abstraction. A retention by itself does not retain anything. It does not point outside of itself. It has no intentionality. The “running off phenomenon” of the fading of some object “is,” Husserl writes, “a continuity of constant changes. This continuity forms an inseparable unity, inseparable into extended sections that could exist by themselves and inseparable into phases that could exist by themselves, into points of the continuity.” This means that the individual “parts,” “phases” or “points” “that we single out by abstraction can exist only in the whole running-off” (Hua X, 27). Thus, the retentions composing the running-off phenomenon do not function individually.
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They only gain their reference to a retained object when they are grasped as part of an ongoing process.14 Husserl makes a number of points regarding these retentions. The first is their dependence on impressions. According to Husserl, “Consciousness is nothing without impression.” Thus, if we successively experience the impressions a, x, y, consciousness can produce the retentions of these. It can move from a to a and from xa to x a , etc.; “but,” Husserl adds, “the a, x, y is nothing produced by consciousness. It is what is primally produced – the ‘new,’ that which has come into being alien to consciousness, that which has been received, as opposed to what has been produced through consciousness’s own spontaneity” (Hua X, 100). Given this, we have to say that “every retention intrinsically refers back to an impression” (Hua X, 34). In fact, it is an “a priori necessity that a corresponding perception, or a corresponding primal impression, precede the retention” (Hua X, 33). As he also puts this: “The primal impression is the absolutely unmodified; it is the primal source for all further consciousness and being” (Hua X, 67). Contrary to what some commentators have asserted, Husserl never abandons this position. Thus, twenty five years later, we find him asserting, “When we speak of a primal impressional core (in a formal sense, of material, of hyle), we obviously come to the deepest level . . . to the hyle in the sense of the Ideen, as the core of the ‘data of sensation’ ”.15 This hyle is externally provided. In Husserl’s words: “The primal hyle in its own temporalization is, so to speak, the core of the concrete present, a core that is foreign to the ego”.16 Yet, it is really – i.e., immanently – present in the perceptual experience. In Husserl’s words: “In the streaming experience, which is called perception, there comes forward the phase-by-phase changing impressional moment as really [reell] belonging to it”.17 Husserl can call this impressional moment or hyletic material both “foreign” and “really belonging” to the perceptual experience since, while it is integral to this experience, it is not something generated by it. Consciousness cannot produce it, but must instead receive it. What consciousness can generate are the retentions. It can also generate the protentions that serve as the material for our anticipating the future. Husserl calls the impressions, retentions, and protentions “time constituting phenomena.” He asserts they are “objectivities fundamentally different from those constituted in time. They are neither individual
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objects nor individual processes, and the predicates of such objects or processes cannot be meaningfully ascribed to them” (Hua X, 74–75). In particular, we cannot ascribe temporal qualities to them. Unlike temporally determinate objects, they do not endure over time; they cannot be considered to be fast or slow or, undergo any change that takes up time (Hua X, 78). This point follows logically from the fact that the constituting phenomena have an ontological sense that is different than that of the object they constitute. Thus, just as an abstractly considered individual perspective of a spatial-temporal object is not itself spatialtemporal and, hence, cannot exhibit itself perspectivally, so also the perspectives of a temporal object have not the latter’s qualities. The presence of a temporal object like a sounding tone is that of a one-in-many, the “many” perspectives consisting of the impressions we have of it, as well as the retentions and protentions we generate. These time constituting phenomena are not themselves unities in multiplicities. If they were, they would be temporal objects. To assert that they are not such is, in fact, to claim that not all being is being in time. There are certain items that are not temporally constituted, that are inherently pre-temporal.18 This point can be put in terms of the limitation of the schema that Husserl employs to describe temporal constitution. To assert that the time constituting phenomena are not themselves temporal is also to assert that this schema does not apply to them. Husserl makes this point early on in the lectures when writes in a footnote that “not every constitution has the schema: content-there-to-be-interpreted – interpretation” (Hua X, 7, note 7). This admission comes after he observes that the sensed content – das Empfundene – is a “relative term.” This relativity follows from the fact that there are multiple layers of constitution and, hence, multiple layers of what counts as a sensed content for our interpretative acts. Thus, what may serve as contents-there-to-be-interpreted (Auffassungsinhalte) on one level might very well be the result of an interpretation of lower level contents. The process of unpacking these levels, that is, of proceeding to ever more primitive levels cannot, however, proceed forever. To avoid an infinite regress, it has to “remain open whether the sensed content is itself already constituted” (Hua X, 7, note 7). It may be that we have reached the ultimate level. If we have, then we cannot apply the schema – i.e., look for even lower level contents that would serve as the basis for the presence of the contents in question. Such contents
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would just be irreducibly there. This is the case with the time constituting phenomena. This means that an individual “[r]etention itself is not an ‘act’ (that is, an immanent duration-unity constituted in a series of retentional phases)” (Hua X, 118). It cannot be since it has no duration. If we were to assert that it did have a duration and, hence, was itself constituted in a series of retentional phases, the question of the constitution of such phases would immediately arise. Their temporal presence would also seem to require their own constitution in a series of retentional phases, and so on indefinitely. Thus, as Husserl observes, once we follow this route, “an infinite regress is unavoidable.” Behind every time constituting consciousness would have to stand another such consciousness, which would be responsible for the former’s being in time. “But,” as Husserl adds, “if every ‘content’ is inherently and necessarily ‘primally experienced’ [urbewußt], the question about a further giving consciousness becomes meaningless” (Hua X, 119). The contents composing this consciousness are immediately or primally experienced. What does this limitation of the schema signify with regard to the nature of such contents? Husserl, having asserted that a “retention . . . is not an ‘act’,” adds that it is, rather, “a momentary consciousness of the elapsed phase” (Hua X, 118). It preserves the consciousness of this phase. What we have in retention is “the change of perceiving [Wahrnehmens] into a retentional modification of perceiving” (Hua X, 118). The retention is a still holding fast to the original impressional consciousness. What we confront on this ultimate level is, thus, a collapse of the distinction between consciousness and content. The contents that are “primally experienced” are consciously experienced – this directly, without any act having the structure of the schema.19 We are not conscious “of ” such contents. There is no intentional relation involving a many-to-one structure here. Our consciousness, on this ultimate level, consists simply of primal experiences, such as the fadings that constitute the retentional series. Each such fading is both an immediate experience and a content-there-to-beinterpreted – that is, a founding content for a higher level apprehension of departure into pastness. In Husserl’s words, in its retention, “the newly occurring remains apprehended, but as modified; and retentional consciousness takes possession of it as a content-there-to-be-interpreted.”20 As the latter, the content is taken along with other fadings as representing the departure into pastness of the original experience.
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The fact that such departure is the result of a constitutive process allows Husserl to say that retention or primary memory gives us a direct perceptual access to the past. As Husserl puts this: “Just as I see being-now in perception and enduring being in the extended perception as it becomes constituted, so I see the past in memory, insofar as the memory is primary memory” (Hua X, 35). This assertion does not mean, to use John Brough’s words, that Husserl has somehow given up the “the prejudice of the now,” that he has abandoned any recourse to “contents really contained in the now of consciousness” in his account of how we grasp the past.21 Husserl is only asserting that our grasp of the past through primary memory is a constitutive process just as our perceptual grasp of the now is. In giving their objects originally, both forms of apprehension can be called perceptual processes. As Husserl puts this: But if we call perception the act in which all “origin” lies, the act that constitutes originally, then primary memory is perception. For only in primary memory do we see what is past, only in it does the past become constituted . . . it is its essence to bring this new and original past to primary, direct intuition, just as it is the essence of the perception of the now to bring the now directly to intuition. (Hua X, 41).
Thus, we distinguish perception of the now from primary memory in terms of their objects’ being either present or past. But we also say that both are forms of perception insofar as both constitutive processes grasp their objects directly. Both present, rather than re-present. They do so on the basis of contents really contained in the now – e.g., primal impressions for perception of the now and the series of fadings for perception of the past.22 IV. The Reply to the Objections Against the Schema The above allows us to understand the two chief objections that Husserl and his commentators raise with regard to the schema. It also allows us to see the force of Husserl’s replies to them. The first concerns the fact that all the contents we retain are present to us now. How can a present interpretation make what is now – for example, the sensuous impressions we are presently receiving from the object and the fadings of the previously given impressions – into “representatives” of both the present and
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the successive moments of the past? As Husserl asks, “can a series of coexistent primary contents ever bring a succession to intuition?” To interpret what are taken to be simultaneous contents as successive would lead to an absurdity of their being grasped as both simultaneous and as successive. As Husserl expresses this objection: Now, if these simultaneous contents were at the same time also apprehensible as successive, then both intuition of co-existence and intuition of succession would be possible on the basis of identical contents. And evidently it would also be possible that the same contents that simultaneously coexist there (and they are always supposed to coexist simultaneously in the consciousness of the now) would at the same time be successive as well, and that is absurd (Hua X, 322–323).
Husserl’s reply to this objection is to deny the assumption on which it is based. It is not the case that contents in question co-exist “simultaneously in the consciousness of the now.” In Husserl’s words: “The flow of the modes of consciousness is not a [temporal] process; the consciousness of the now is not itself now. The retention that exists ‘together’ with the consciousness of the now is not ‘now,’ is not simultaneous with the now, and it would make no sense to say that it is” (Hua X, 333). This signifies, as Rudolf Bernet writes, “one cannot speak at all of simultaneity and contents that are now in absolute [time-constituting] consciousness”.23 Given this, the paradox disappears. We do not have the same contents being apprehended as simultaneous and successive. What we have are primordial, pretemporal experiences – e.g., our experiences of the fading away of tone – that provide a constitutive basis for our positing of the temporal. The second objection to the schema is that it leads to a regress. This objection, which reappears along with the schema in the Bernau Manuscripts, is based on the insight that if we do not limit the applicability of the schema, we never come to a fundamental constituting layer. In the lectures on time-consciousness, the solution is to assert that not all appearing is appearing through time. There is, in fact, an appearing that is prior to and constitutive of time. To assert this, however, is to assert that this primal appearing is not itself temporally constituted. It is to declare that the schema that defines constitution does not apply on the ultimate level. The Bernau Manuscripts embrace the same solution. As Husserl writes there, it not the case that the ultimate contents of consciousness
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“are like immanent temporal givens, which are already constituted by the ‘interpreting’ consciousness.” On the contrary, “[w]hat is really present [Das Reelle] in the innermost sphere is something ultimate, something no longer constituted, no longer a concrete unity from ‘multiplicities’ that are constituted in their turn” (Hua XXXIII, 178–179).24 Given that the constituted transcends its constituting elements, these non-constituted elements are genuinely immanent – i.e., they make up the “innermost sphere” of consciousness. Their non-constituted status means that they do not appear through prior modes of givenness – the modes, say, of a more ultimate time-constituting consciousness. They must, however, appear. As Husserl puts this necessity, if we are to avoid the regress, the ultimately constituting process these elements forms “must not just be ‘self-perceived,’ ‘inwardly apprehended,’ but be such without requiring any further process.” It must be “an ultimate primal process, whose being would be consciousness” (Hua XXXIII, 191). The call here is for a process of temporal constitution, the being of whose elements is their appearing. Such elements must form the basic components of appearing as such. These elements, which are not just contents, but also consciousnesses, are our primary impressions, retentions, and protentions.
V. The Schema and Appearing as Such This limitation of the schema, which involves the collapse of the distinction between consciousness and contents on the ultimate level, does not in any sense signify its abandonment. While not applying to the ultimate level, the schema continues to be applicable to the levels of constitution that arise from this. This is why we find it employed in the published works that Dieter Lohmar cited as well as in the late manuscripts on time consciousness. Its limitation does, however, point to a fundamental position of Husserl’s phenomenology. The collapse of the distinction between consciousness and content implied by it indicates that the primal level of time constitution is that of appearing as such. This sheer appearing is prior to the distinctions we commonly draw between appearing, that which appears, and that to whom it appears. Appearing here is neither the appearing of some transcendent object nor is it mediated by a subject, understood as that to whom this object appears. This point follows
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since the elements that appear are pre-temporal, while both subjects and objects, as existing in time, presuppose temporal constitution. In this positing of an ultimate level of sheer appearing, we find Husserl agreeing with one of his harshest critics, the Czech philosopher, Jan Patoˇcka. It was Patoˇcka who asserted, supposedly in opposition to Husserl, that “manifesting is, in itself, something completely original,” that it “is not reducible, cannot be converted into anything that manifests itself in manifesting” since it is prior to them.25 Patoˇcka claimed that this was the true message of Husserl’s return to the phenomena, a message that Husserl forgot once he came to posit absolute subjectivity.26 Had Patoˇcka been able to access Husserl’s manuscripts on time consciousness, he would probably have had to revise this judgment.
Notes 1. Phenomenology and Philosophical Research, 24:4 (June 1964), pp. 530–551. 2. For Rudolf Boehm’s critique see “Einleitung des Herausgebers,” Zur Phänomenologie des inneren Zeitbewusstseins (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, Hua X, 1966), pp. xxxviii–xlix, lvii–lix). Boehm acknowledges his debt to Sokolowski on Hua X, p. xxxvi, n). John Brough’s critique of the schema occurs, among other places, in “Husserl’s Phenomenology of Time-Consciousness,” Husserl’s Phenomenology: A Textbook, ed. J.N. Mohanty and William R. McKenna [Latham, MD: University Press of America], 1989, pp. 249–289. Rudolf Bernet’s critique occurs in his “Einleitung” to Husserl’s texts on time consciousness, in: Edmund Husserl, Texte zur Phänomenologie des inneren Zeitbewusstseins (1893–1917), Text nach Husserliana, Band X, ed. Rudolf Bernet (Hamburg: Felix Meiner Verlag, 1985), pp. xxxviii–xlix, lvii–lix. Toine Kortooms devotes great attention to this issue throughout his Phenomenology of Time, Edmund Husserl’s Analysis of Time-Consciousness (Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 2002). Lanei Rodemeyer largely follows their lead. See her Intersubjective Temporality: It’s About Time (Dordrecht: Springer Verlag, 2006), pp. 23–30. 3. See Bernet, “Einleitung,” ibid., p. xxxix. Brough, “Husserl’s Phenomenology of TimeConsciousness”, in Husserl’s Phenomenology: A Textbook, ibid. p. 274 and Rudolf Boehm, “Einleitung des Herausgebers”, Hua X, xxxix–xl. 4. As Kortooms writes regarding the view that Husserl abandoned the schema before the writing of the Bernau (or the “L”) manuscripts: “On the basis of what Husserl remarks in the L-manuscripts concerning the applicability of this schema, one may conclude that to speak of a dissolution of the schema, or of its rejection, is at least premature. . .. It is only once he again takes up the notion of absolute consciousness in the L-manuscripts, which indeed can no longer be reconciled with the schema, that he no longer makes use of it” (Phenomenology of Time, ibid., p. 117). 5. D. Lohmar: “Synthesis in Husserls Phänomenologie. Das grundlegende Modell von Auffassung und aufgefaßtem Inhalt in Wahrnehmung, Erkennen und Zeitkonstitution,” in: Metaphysik als Wissenschaft, Festschrift für Klaus Düsing zum 65. Geburtstag, ed. Dirk Fonfara (Freiburg/München: Verlag Karl Alber, 2006), p. 406. 6. See, for example, Ms. C 6, 5a, Aug. 1930; C-Manuskripte, Hua Mat VIII, 111 where Husserl writes: “Der naturalen Zeitigung, und zwar der an sich ersten, der primordialen, entspricht im Kern primordialer Natur sozusagen der Kern der naturalen Zeitigung, d.i. die strömende naturale
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Wahrnehmung (als Kern jeder mundanen Wahrnehmung) usw. In diesem Wahrnehmungskern ist dann beschlossen der hyletische Urkern als Auffassungsmaterial – aber diese ganze Zeitigung ist selbst schon konstituiert, nämlich mit Rücksicht auf die Urzeitigung des Empfindungsmaterials und seiner Auffassung.” Other typical examples can be seen in C 4, p. 9a, Aug. 1930; Hua Mat VIII, 100: “Die pure Hyle ist in einem gewissen Sinne ichlos, die ‘Auffassung’ derselben, wodurch sie Erscheinung von Mundanem ist, ist Ichleistung”; C 6, p. 6a, Aug. 1930; Hua Mat VIII, 112: “Die ‘Stromzeitlichkeit’, in der die hyletischen Einheiten, ihre ‘Auffassungen als’, die ‘Erscheinungen von’ (z.B. von Steinen, von realen Gegenständen überhaupt), aber auch die spezifischen Ichakte als konstituierte Einheiten auftreten”; C 10, p. 4a, Sept. 1931; Hua Mat VIII, 186: “Hier ergibt sich, dass alle Affektion von schon konstituierten Einheiten ausgeht und letztlich werden wir da geführt zur Affektion der immanenten Daten, die freilich immer schon ‘Auffassung’ erfahren haben”; C 10, p. 5a, Sept. 1931; Hua Mat VIII, 187: “Diese Einheit ist freilich auch (in der Anonymität) immer schon und immerfort apperzipiert als ont Ich, aber ähnlich wie alle im Erlebnisstrom passiv konstituierten Momente je in ihrer Weise ‘aufgefasst’ sind, z.B. die Empfindungsdaten in verschiedenen Auffassungsstufen, so dass sie erst künstlich durch Aufwickelung der intentionalen Leistung, durch Abschichtung aller Auffassungsstufungen, hervortreten als passiv gezeitigte Einheiten, als vorseiende – wie schliesslich auch die Auffassungen selbst (gegenüber dem aufgefassten Ontischen)”; C 16, 61b, Feb. 1932?; Hua Mat VIII, 344: “Wahrnehmung von Weltlichem ist es aber als Apperzeption, und da kommen wir auf das Hyletische und die Auffassung, auf den Auffassungskern und die Auffassung-als.” This use of the schema is not limited to the C manuscripts of the 1930s. Manuscript B III 9, written in 1931, also makes frequent use of it. Here are some typical passages: “Im strömenden Erleben, das da Wahrnehmen heißt, tritt das sich von Phase zu Phase wandelnde Empfindungsmoment auf als reell dazugehörig; aber in jeder Phase ist es nicht nur reell da, sondern es stellt dar, es ist, wie wir auch sagen, ‘Abschattung von’, ‘Perspektive von’, und das ist ein wie immer näher zu verstehendes und zu beschreibendes Ergänzungsmoment in jeder Phase. Für dies gebrauchte ich in meinen alten Schriften den Ausdruck ,Auffassung als, . . .” (Ms. B III 9, 55b). “Auf der einen Seite haben wir in jeder Phase unterschieden Empfindungsdaten und ‘Auffassung’, als wir Wahrnehmung als Selbsterscheinung betrachteten genauer als Bewußtsein des ‘Als Selbst da’ Habens und Erfassens des Wahrgenommenen, das eben als wahrgenommen für uns also selbst (originaliter), Erscheinendes bewußt ist” (Ms. B III 9, 57a). “Wir finden dann also Empfindungsdatum, und zwar als Komponente der ‘Erscheinung’, und doch nicht eigentlich als ‘Komponente’, sondern ‘fungierend’ als ‘Repräsentant’, besser: Als Stoff der Auffassungsfunktion” (Ms. B III 9, 57b–58a). In Lohmar’s words, “The testing of the model of interpretation and interpreted content, thus, turns out positively [for the model], even if limitations and refinements were necessary with regard to the already mentioned – and systematically to be expected – problematic cases” (“Synthesis in Husserls Phänomenologie,” ibid., p. 407). Logische Untersuchungen, ed. Ursula Panzer in Edmund Husserl, Gesammelte Schriften (Hamburg: Felix Meiner Verlag, 1992), Hua XIX, 762. We here follow the text of the first edition since it is closer to Husserl’s intent in 1905–1906. This means that in direct perception the theses of the object’s sense and its being are intertwined. The object of a coherent perceptual experience is, in other words, not just grasped as something real, “a real unity.” It is also apprehended as a sense. Thus, as Husserl constantly stresses, all “real unities,” are “unities of sense” (Hua III/1, 120). They are such because of the way they are present to consciousness. In the words of the Cartesian Meditations: “The object of consciousness, in its self-identity throughout the flowing of experience, does not enter into this flowing from outside. It lies included within it as a sense; it is this [sense] as a result of the intentional performance [Leistung] of the synthesis of consciousness” (Hua I, 80). Thus, I shall not follow Brough’s example and translate Auffassung as “apperception.” Ms. B III 9, p. 55b, 1931.
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12. See John Brough, op. cit, p. 253, where he asserts that consciousness “is a tissue of intentionality.” Against this is Husserl’s view that not every experience is per se intentional. According to Husserl, “experience in the widest sense” is “everything and anything that is to be found within the stream of pure experiences, therefore, not only intentional experiences – cogitationes actual and potential, taken in their full concreteness – but all the inherent moments found within the stream and its concrete parts”. “It is easy to see,” he adds, “that not every inherent moment within the concrete unity of an intentional experience has itself the basic character of intentionality, that is, the characteristic of being ‘consciousness of something’ ” (Hua III/1, 74). It possesses this character not by itself, but by virtue of being connected with other such moments and being animated by an appropriate “noesis” or interpretative intention. 13. In Husserl’s words: “Ein Erlebnis schattet sich nicht ab” (Hua III/1, 88). 14. Husserl makes the same point in the Bernau Manuscripts with regard to the primal impression. It also does not have any inherent intentionality. His position is “dass die Urpräsentation eine Ur-Erlebnisphase ist, die in sich selbst noch nicht den Charakter eines intentionalen Erlebnisses hat, aber stetig in ein solches, und zwar in ein Bewusstsein von dem Urdatum, übergeht, das aber in der Weise einer stetigen mittelbaren Intentionalität” (Hua XXXIII, 62). Concretely, this means that the primally presented impressional datum achieves an animating intention, i.e., becomes representing content, through the retentional chains: “Das urpräsente Datum wandelt sich stetig also in ein anderes und immer wieder anderes Datum, das dabei stetig eine ‘beseelende’ Auffassung gewinnt, den Charakter eines ‘Repräsentanten,’ eines ‘Auffassungsinhalts’ ” (Hua XXXIII, 62). The reason for this is that the retentions give the primal presentation a position in time, thus, allowing us to say that the presentation is of this definite content-laden now. It is of the now that through the retentions will appear as departing in time. 15. Ms. C 4, p. 8b, Aug. 1930; Hua Mat VIII, 99. “Wenn wir von einem urimpressionalen Kern (also formal gesprochen einer Materie, Hyle) sprechen, so kommen wir offenbar in der tiefsten Schichte . . . auf die Hyle im Sinne der ‘Ideen’, als Kern von ‘Empfindungsdaten’ ” (Ms. C 4 8b, Aug. 1930; Hua Mat VIII, 99). 16. Ms. C 6, p. 4b, Aug. 1930; Hua Mat VIII, 110. “Die Urhyle in ihrer eigenen Zeitigung ist der sozusagen ichfremde Kern in der konkreten Gegenwart” (Ms. C 6, p. 4b, Aug. 1930; Hua Mat VIII, 110). 17. Ms. B III 9, p. 55b, 1931. “Im strömenden Erleben, das da Wahrnehmen heißt, tritt das sich von Phase zu Phase wandelnde Empfindungsmoment auf als reell dazugehörig” (Ms. B III 9, p. 55b, 1931). 18. What we have, then, in the core of consciousness, is a non-constituted content that serves as the basis for all futher constitution. As Husserl writes in the Bernau Manuscripts: “Das Reelle der innersten Sphäre ist ein Letztes, nicht mehr Konstituiertes, nicht mehr konkrete Einheit von anderweitig konstituierten ‘Mannigfaltigkeiten,’ und es ist, was es ist, nur als ‘Inhalt’ als reeller Kern des urpräsentierenden Bewusstseins, ohne dieses undenkbar.” (Hua XXXIII, 178–179). 19. In Husserl’s words: “Memorial consciousness . . . must not be divided into ‘sensed tone’ and ‘interpretation as memory.’ ” It is rather the direct, “intuitive, primary memory of the tone” (Hua X, p. 312). 20. “Wir beginnen die Aufklärung dieses konstituierenden Bewusstseinsstromes mit der Retention; das Neuauftretende bleibt bewusst, d.i. es modifiziert sich zwar, aber seiner bemächtigt sich ein retentionales Bewusstsein als Auffassungsinhalt. Dieses retentionale Bewusstsein wird ebenso modifiziert mit seinem Auffassungsinhalt usw.” (Hua XXXIII, 10–11). 21. The extended passage here is: “What Husserl, in effect, insists upon is the overthrow of the prejudice of the now, the view that one could not possibly be directly and immediately conscious of the past because it is gone, lost, and that one must therefore gain access to the past through present contents, contents really contained in the now of consciousness. The prejudice of the now amounts to the claim that the only way we know the past is by keeping it around in the
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present in some more or less literal sense. Even the term ‘retention’ might suggest that.” (“Husserl’s Phenomenology of time-consciousness,” in Husserl’s Phenomenology: A Textbook, ed. J.N. Mohanty and William R. McKenna [Latham, Maryland: University Press of America, 1989], 275). Strictly speaking, the perception of the now as a now in time requires not just primary impressions, but also the retentions and protentions that located this now in time. R. Bernet, “Einleitung” in Edmund Husserl, Texte zur Phänomenologie des inneren Zeitbewusstseins (1893–1917), Text nach Husserliana, Band X, ed. Rudolf Bernet (Hamburg: Felix Meiner Verlag, 1985), p. xlviii. “Nur muss dabei scharf im Auge behalten werden, . . . dass damit nicht etwa gesagt ist, dass das jetzt auf der innersten Linie fungierende Reelle ein Empfindungsdatum sei wie das in der Linie immanenter Zeitgegebenheiten, also ein seinerseits wieder vor dem ‘auffassenden’ Bewusstsein schon Konstituiertes. Das Reelle der innersten Sphäre ist ein Letztes, nicht mehr Konstituiertes, nicht mehr konkrete Einheit von anderweitig konstituierten ‘Mannigfaltigkeiten’, und es ist, was es ist, nur als ‘Inhalt’, als reeller Kern des urpräsentierenden Bewusstseins, ohne dieses undenkbar” (Hua XXXIII, 178–179). Jan Patocka, Plato and Europe, trans. Petr Lom, Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2002, p. 24. This means that “showing itself is not any of these things that show themselves, whether it is a psychic or physical object . . . and yet it is still showing of those things” (ibid., p. 22). Jan Patocka, Vom Erscheinen als solchem: Texte aus dem Nachlaß, eds. Helga Blaschek-Hahn and Karel Novotny (Freiburg/München: Karl Alber, 2000), p. 120.
CHAPTER IX
THE TEMPORALIZATIONS OF THE ABSOLUTE FLOW OF TIME-CONSCIOUSNESS Stefano Micali Abstract. One of the most problematic issues with regard to Husserl’s phenomenology of time concerns the definition of the relationship between the time of the intentional acts and the absolute pre-phenomenal flow of time constituting consciousness. In this regard, Brough distinguishes between the intentional acts (such as perception and recollection) and the specific dimension of the absolute flow of time-consciousness in terms of a distinction between two different levels. In the book Self-awareness and Alterity, Zahavi questions the validity of this distinction: the inner time-consciousness should not be regarded as an additional flow aware of the intentional act, but it is nothing but the pre-reflective self-awareness of the act. Despite essential differences, a common presupposition characterizes both of the above mentioned interpretations of the absolute timeconstituting flow: the absolute flow is indifferent to the acts; it always flows in the same way, automatically; the form of the absolute flow is unchangeable. In my essay I will challenge the validity of this thesis from two different angles: (1) I will show the essential ambiguity of Husserl’s configuration of the absolute flow not only in the context of the Zeitvorlesungen 1905, but also in relation to the Bernauer Manuskripte. (2) I will take into consideration Husserl’s analyses of specific temporal experiences: the time of the unclear Phantasia and the experience of the radically new.
The phenomenology of time begins with the exclusion of believe in objective time. The phenomenologist investigates the essential features of a temporal object without assuming the existence of a world time: he aims at the description of the appearing time as appearing (Hua, X, 5). Husserl affirms the possibility to investigate the appearing time in three different directions. It is possible to analyze from a phenomenological point of view (1) the ways of appearance of a temporal object (a temporal object presents itself as now, as past, and as future), (2) the act of consciousness which intends these temporal objects, and (3) the absolute time constituting flow of consciousness. One of the most problematic issues concerns the definition of the relationships between the time of
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the intentional acts (2) and the absolute pre-phenomenal flow of time constituting consciousness (3). In this regard, Brough distinguishes the intentional acts (such as perception and recollection) from the specific dimension of the absolute flow of time-consciousness. This distinction is carried out in the light of the differentiation between a perceptual temporally extended act (2) and an impressional consciousness which experiences these acts as temporal objects (3): Acts of consciousness such as the perception of a house [. . .] are what Husserl calls experiences (Erlebnisse). Now Husserl writes that “every experiences is ‘consciousness’, and consciousness is consciousness of. . . But every experience is itself experienced (erlebt), and to that extend also intended (bewusst). This being intended (Bewusst-sein) is consciousness of the experience.” (Hua X, 291) [. . .] My awareness here is non-positing and non-objectivating; it is really the implicit self-consciousness that accompanies all my acts: I perceive my house and at the same time I ‘experience’ my perception of the house. Now these experiences, immanent to consciousness, are temporal objects or unities just as surely as the houses and melodies transcendent are. They too begin, endure for a while, and end. Furthermore, we experience them as temporal objects – as in part now, in part past, in part to come. (Brough, 1989, 82–83)
The experience of the act as a temporal object is a performance of the absolute flow of time-constituting consciousness. Furthermore, according to Brough, the absolute flow of consciousness carries out another essential function in relation to the intentional acts: the acts do not only have any temporal extension, but they are also necessary in relations of simultaneity and succession. My temporally extended acts, each one an individual unity, stand in temporal relationships with one another, thereby forming ‘the order of constituted unities’ (Hua, 290) which is my stream of consciousness or immanent objective time. [. . .] The flow is the dimension of time-consciousness through which we are conscious of our acts as immanent temporal unities and as objects occupying definite positions in immanent time. It is consciousness of internal time. (Brough, 1989, 83)
Although the absolute flow has not to be conceived as a perpetual process, Husserl still defines the absolute consciousness in terms of a flow of phases. Each of these phases has the triple impressional consciousness in terms of primal impression, retention, and protention: “Isolate a phase of the flow and imagine that it is actual, that it is your awareness right
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now. Through one of this intentional moments, primal impressions, a phase of the act on level two (the perceiving of the house, for example) is experienced as now (the house itself, on level one, is perceived as now through the experienced act-phase)” (Brough, 1989, 84) Protention and retention necessarily belong to the actual phase. It is essential to stress that retention does not only retain the immediately preceding phase of the act intended as a temporal immanent object, but also “the immediately preceding phase of the flow, the phase of the flow which was actual and as just slipped away” (Brough, 1989, 84). Through the retentional Längsintentionalität the flow as absolute consciousness is able to intend or experience the immanent temporal object on level two. In the book Self-awareness and Alterity, Zahavi questions the validity of a distinction between the intentional acts and the absolute flow of self-consciousness in terms of a distinction between two different levels. The inner time-consciousness should not be regarded as an additional flow aware of the intentional act, but it is nothing but the pre-reflective self-awareness of the act. The description of the absolute flow of timeconstituting consciousness is ultimately a description of the pre-reflective manifestation of our acts. The intentional act is conscious of something different form itself, namely, the intentional object. The act is intentional exactly because it permits heteromanifestation. But the act also manifest itself. The object is given through the act, and if there were no awareness of the act, the object could not appear. Thus, apart from being intentional, the act is also characterized by its ‘inner consciousness,’ Urbewusstsein’ or impressional consciousness’, to mention three different terms for one and the same. We are not dealing with a particular intentional act, but with a pervasive dimension of selfmanifestation, and it is exactly this which precedes and founds reflective self-awareness. (Zahavi, 1999, 72–73)
In order to concretely illustrate the way in which the self-manifestation occurs, Zahavi refers to Husserl’s configuration of the double intentionality of the retention. The description of Längsintentionalität is conceived as an analysis of the pre-reflexive self manifestation of consciousness. In this context I would like to stress a common presupposition that characterizes both of the above mentioned interpretations of the absolute time-constituting flow: according to these interpretations the absolute flow is indifferent to the acts. It functions automatically.
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In this regard Brough writes that “the flow is altogether indifferent to what it intends, and considered in itself, is sheer impressional timeconsciousness. [. . .] It is also not a temporal object or unity because it does not begin, endure, change in its duration, and cease: it simply flows, always in the same way, neither faster nor slower, automatically.” (Brough, 1989, 86). Zahavi affirms that the form of the absolute flow is unchangeable: To say that the absolute flow of consciousness is the pre-reflective selfmanifestation of our experiences does not mean to deny the difference between “our singular and transitory acts and the abiding dimension of experiencing, between ‘die Erlebnisse und das Erleben’.” (Zahavi, 1999, 80). Zahavi emphasises the impossibility to separate the pre-reflective selfawareness from the acts: the absolute flow has no selfmanifestation of its own, but is the very self-manifestation of the experiences. It is only due to reflection, that we are able to thematize the acts as enduring object in subjective time. On the prereflective level it is not possible to discriminate the different moments of the stream: “Husserl calls the acts the waves in the self-temporalizing flowing experiencing itself. Prior to reflection, there is no awareness of inner object, and there is no distinction between the giveness of the act and the self-manifestation of the flow. The prereflective self-awareness of the experience is nothing but the perceptual self-manifestation of the flow.” (Zahavi, 1999, 80) But, while the different experiences necessarily change, becoming past or absent, “our self-awareness remains as an unchanging dimension. To use a striking image by James it stands permanent, like the rainbow on the waterfall, with its own quality unchanged by the events that streams through it.” (Zahavi, 1999, 80) Here Brough and Zahavi follow Husserl’s fundamental statement according to which the form of the absolute consciousness has a paradoxical structure: in its continuous change, the absolute flow always maintains the same form and the same speed (Hua, X, 370). The conception of time as a universal and invariant form certainly is a key concept in Husserl’s phenomenology. This thesis has been continuously confirmed throughout all three of the most important steps in his time investigations: the Lectures on the Phenomenology of the Consciousness of Internal Time, the Bernau Manuscripts and the C Manuscripts.
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In the text Nr. 7 of the C Manuscripts, Husserl notes that the unity of the egologic flux has invariant form: Mein zeitlich ursprüngliches Sein, mein Sein als zeitigend-gezeitigter Lebensstrom (und darin als Zentrum, als Ich dieses Stroms), ist konkret als die kontinuierlich erfüllte invariante Zeitform. [. . .] Ich mich besinnend finde mich vor als erlebendes Ich, und sehe ich zunächst ab davon, dass in diesem Erleben eben Welt für mich da ist, so finde ich den allgemeinen Strom meines erlebenden Lebens in seiner abstrakten Formeigentümlichkeit. Auf diesen erlebenden Strom und seine Form kann ich jeweils den reflektiv erfassenden Blick richten und ihn auslegen. Also finde ich nun die Modi dessen, was ich meine egologische Zeitlichkeit nenne, mein ‘jeweiliges Jetzt’, meine kontinuierlich verströmende Soeben-Gewesenheit und ebenso den Horizont des Soeben-kommenden. (Hua, dok., VIII, 148–149)
In his lecture course from WS 1920–1921, Husserl argues that the form of now-phase is identical for all primary sensations, despite the differences pertaining to their individual content. A colour and a sound can differ with regard to their content but not with regard to their temporal form (Hua XI, 127). The phenomenological description of time limits itself to an investigation of the universal and necessary form valid for each temporal object: Sie [die intentionale Analyse des Zeitbewusstseins] erfasst, interessiert sich nur für die notwendige Zeitform aller einzelnen Gegenstände und Gegenstandsvielheiten, bzw. korrelativ für die Form der Zeitliches konstituierenden Mannigfaltigkeiten. (Hua XI, 128)
From this perspective the relation between primal impression, retention and protention are fixed through essential and invariant laws. Among these, Husserl mentions the law according to which primal impression changes into modes of “having elapsed”. Every temporal phenomenon is bound by this law: it starts from a primal impression that undergoes the modification of its movement into the past: “Dem gegenüber lehren wir die apriorische Notwendigkeit des Vorangehens einer entsprechenden Wahrnehmung bzw. Urimpression vor der Retention. [. . .] Die Jetztphase ist nur denkbar als Grenze einer Kontinuität von Retentionen, so wie jede retentionale Phase selbst nur denkbar ist als eines solchen Kontinuums und zwar für jedes Jetzt des Bewusstseins.” (Hua X, 33).
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In this context it seems of great relevance to me to discuss the validity of the thesis of an invariant relation between the inner-moment of the absolute flow, e.g. primal impression, retention and protention. First of all I would like to stress that the universal necessity of a primal impression preceding the retention is radically questioned by the analyses of peculiar “limit-phenomena” (such as schizophrenia1 or trauma2 ). Let us therefore consider more closely the temporal experience of (a) melancholia and (b) insomnia. (a) Regarding melancholia, Binswanger shows a transformation of time-consciousness. The starting point of Binswanger’s analyses lies in the Selbstvorwurf of the melancholic person, which finds expression in the form of a ‘conditional tense’: ‘If I had only not. . .’ Der Melancholische Selbstvorwurf drückt sich sprachlich meist in konditionaler Form aus, wie “Hätte ich den Ausflug nicht vorgeschlagen“, oder “Wenn ich ihn nur nicht vorgeschlagen hätte” [. . .]. Was sagt uns das im Hinblick auf die Auflockerung der Fäden der intentionalen Aufbaumomente der zeitlichen Objektivität? Es sagt uns, dass es sich bei der Rede von Wenn oder Wenn-nicht, vom Hätte-ich oder Hätte-ich nicht um lauter leere Möglichkeiten handelt. Wo aber von Möglichkeiten die Rede ist, handelt es sich um protentive Akte – das Vergangene hat ja keine Möglichkeiten. Hier aber zieht sich, was freie Möglichkeit ist, zurück in die Vergangenheit. Das bedeutet, dass die protentiven konstituierenden Akte zu sog. Leereintentionen werden müssen. Die Protentio wird dadurch insofern selbständig, als sie kein Worüber mehr hat, was ihr zu produzieren übrig bliebe, es sei denn die zeitliche Objektivität der zukünftige Leere oder der Leere als Zukunft. (Binswanger, 1960, 27)
When temporal consciousness exclusively attempts to find the open possibilities in the past, then the primal impression, which Binswanger calls here praesentatio, disappears. The disturbance of one of the moments of the absolute flow of consciousness (in this specific case the retention) implies a disturbance of the whole intentional subjectivity. In my opinion, it is however illegitimate to speak of an empty protention, as Binswanger does in relation to the case of Cécile Münch. In this specific case, the melancholic person is overwhelmed by an unbearable sense of guilt for a decision made in the past. The protentions here are not empty, but oriented to the past, or better, to an (impossible) negation of a particular past event. The protentions are not empty, but follow (anachronistically) the logic of the infinitive judgement illustrated by Kant in Kritik der reinen Vernunft (§ 9).3
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(b) A structural alteration of the relations among impressions, retentions, and protentions are to be found in insomnia. In Le temps e l’autre, Emmanuel Lévinas carries out a phenomenological analysis of insomnia which can help us to describe how time-consciousness changes itself in this experience: L’insomnie est faite de la conscience que cela ne finira jamais, c’est-à-dire qu’il n’y a plus aucun moyen de se retirer de la vigilance à laquelle on est tenu. Vigilance sans aucun but. Au moment où on y est rivé, on a perdu toute notion de son point de départ ou de son point d’arrivée. Le présent soudé au passé, est tout entier héritage de ce passé; il ne renouvelle rien. C’est toujours le même présent ou le même passé qui dure. Un souvenir – ce serait déjà une libération à l’égard de ce passé. Ici, le temps ne part de nulle part, rien s’éloigne ni ne s’estompe. (Lévinas, 1979, 27)
The temporalisation of insomnia involves different aspects. First, there is an invasive feeling of inescapability: it’s impossible to suspend or interrupt the condition of “staying awake.” One not only remains awake, but one also feels that this condition will always persist. The phenomenon of contrast, which, according to Husserl, permits the emergence of the elementary unities in the dimension of passive synthesis, does not function in insomnia. The supposed unity of apperception dissolves: an indeterminate “magma” appears to and dominates the person who is lost in this wakefulness without any aim or project. This radical transformation of the dimension of passive synthesis, which determines a different perception of the world, has a counterpart in the configuration of the time-consciousness. In insomnia, one is forced to experience the eternal recurrence of the same. The primal impression (Urimpression), described in the famous Beilage I of Husserliana X as the moment of creation (Hua X, 105), is out of play in this disturbed state. There is no breakthrough of that which is new and unexpected. A sort of neutralization of the event as such takes place in this condition. It’s thus illegitimate to distinguish the temporal dimension of the present from the future and the past. There is no modification of the primal impression into the retentional continuum since there is no-thing that emerges. An anonymous and indeterminate “phase” overshadows the entire temporal horizon. The analysis of the temporal structures of insomnia and melancholia questions the thesis of an invariant relationship between protention, retention and primal impression. Here I would also like to recall that
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there is no clear determination of an absolute time constituting consciousness in Husserl’s phenomenology of time. If one stresses only the invariable form of the modification of the primal impression into the retentional continuum, then one risks to miss an essential point: Husserl attempted to find different modalities for doing justice to the ambiguous phenomenon of absolute time constituting consciousness. It is well known that the definition of the absolute time consciousness passed through several modifications in the Zeitvorlesungen 1905 (Brough, 1972, 298–326). In this context, the expression “absolute time consciousness” occurs for the first time in the text Nr. 394 : absolute consciousness is conceived as act of perception immanent to a temporal object.5 Husserl became increasingly aware of the difficulties linked to any explanation of time-consciousness by means of the schema “apprehension/apprehension-content.” These difficulties led Husserl to elaborate a different configuration of absolute time consciousness. This configuration is characterized by the double intentionality of the retention and finds its mature expression in the famous text Nr. 54. Each retentional phase holds onto not only what has just elapsed, but also the elapsed flow of retentions. The intentionality focused on the elapsed phases of the immanent object is dubbed “transverse intentionality” (Querintentionalität), while the intentionality directed towards the elapsed phases of the retentional flow of consciousness is called “horizontal intentionality” (Längsintentionalität). The absolute flow does not require a “supplementary” perception-act for emerging in the consciousness6 : “Es ist der eine, einzige Bewusstseinsfluss (evt. innerhalb eines ‘letzten’ Bewusstseinsfluss), in dem sich die immanentzeitliche Einheit des Tones konstituiert und zugleich die Einheit des Bewusstseinsflusses selbst.” (Hua X, 378). In Hua X, there are also tensions between the inner moments of the absolute consciousness (especially between retention and impression): the primal impression is, on the one hand, regarded as fundamental to retention. On the other hand, the primal impression can appear only via the retentional continuum: “In gewisser Weise vergegenwärtigt es aber den früher im Modus des Jetzt bewussten Zeitpunkt dadurch, dass es die Urempfindung vorstellig macht.” (Hua X, 376). In the Bernauer Manuskripten, Husserl develops the relationship among protention, retention, and impression in a different direction,
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opening up new possibilities to think about absolute time-consciousness. In this context the description of the protentional continuum plays a central role: the now-phase does not signify the appearance of the new, the moment of creation that from nowhere emerges, but it is fulfilment of a previous protention: the Urpräsenz is defined as a fulfilled expectation (Hua XXXIII, 7). Each now-phase is a punctual fulfilment of a previous protention with an empty horizon. In the first and second texts of the Bernauer Manuskripte Husserl’s description of the time constituting consciousness does not limit itself to emphasize the essential role of protention for the constitution of a temporal object. Here the primal impression is no longer conceived as the starting point of time-constitution. Rather, it is conceived as the result of the interplay, i.e. the intertwining between protention and retention: “Das Jetzt (bzw. die Urpräsentation) ist Grenzpunkt von zweierlei ‘vergegenwärtigenden’ Akten, den Retentionen und Protentionen.” (Hua XXXIII, 4). On the one hand the protentions are not only directed in each phase of the temporal flux both to the emergence of new primal presences and to the protentional continuum, but they are also directed to the future retentional modifications: the protentions expect the retentional continuum which will hold what has been already elapsed (Hua XXXIII, 7). Wir haben nicht nur eine Folge von Urdaten im Bewusstsein ihrer Folge, sondern darin auch im Bewusstsein der Folge eine Folge von retentionalen Strecken. Auch diese Folge wird ‘ins Protentionale projiziert’, oder vielmehr im Urprozess haben wir eine Folge von solchen retentionalen Strecken, deren jede in einem Urdatum terminiert. [. . .] Diese Urfolge projiziert sich in die Zukunft in Form des protentionalen Bewusstseins, das jede Phase begleitet. (Hua XXXIII, 21)
On the other hand the retentions hold both the primal impressions and the protentional continuum: Given that the retentions hold the primal impressions and that primal impressions are to be conceived as fulfillment of a previous protention, the retentional continuum necessarily includes the protentional moment. In this sense Husserl speaks of three different directions of the retention: Sie ist Retention in Hinsicht auf das abgelaufene System der Urdaten und zugleich Retention hinsichtlich der abgelaufenen Bewusstseinsauffassungen, und damit verbunden erfüllte Erwartung und davon ausstrahlend unerfüllte Erwartung, ein ganzer linearer Horizont, also eine intentionale Steckenkontinuität. (Hua XXXIII, 7).
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Husserl aims at a phenomenological description of the universal form of absolute time consciousness which functions anonymously in all temporal phenomena. In order to achieve this goal, Husserl approaches the absolute flow from different perspectives describing diverse configurations of the relation among protention, primal impression and retention. If we now abandon the assumption that in each temporal phenomenon the same form of the absolute flow pulses, the two above mentioned descriptions of the time constituting consciousness should be no longer regarded as two antagonist descriptions of the same phenomenon: the clarification of the absolute flow in Lectures on the Phenomenology of the Consciousness of Internal Time 1905 could be of great relevance for describing the peculiarity of our pre-reflective temporal consciousness of some specific temporal phenomena – such as melody –, while the temporal structure of the absolute consciousness explained in the Bernauer Manuskripte could be important for the phenomenological analyses of other temporal experiences (for instance some specific forms of melancholia). An essential development of the phenomenology of time will consist in showing that the absolute flow articulates itself in different experiences in different ways. I agree with Zahavi’s thesis according to which the absolute flow always carries out a passive unification of the experience on a pre-reflective level,7 but, in my view, the way in which the intertwining between primal impression, retention and protention comes alive is different in the different experiences.8 It is not to exclude that the assumption of an invariant form is based on the necessity to distinguish the temporal order of the temporal object from the order of absolute flow of time constituting consciousness: Whereas the phases of the temporal object are given sequential – they succeed each other, the primal impression is together with the protentional and retentional continuum. The retentions and protentions are not in a temporal relation, in the empirical sense of the word, with the primal impression: they are not past or future in relation to the primal impression. In this sense Husserl speaks of the absolute time consciousness in terms of a pre-empirical dimension. However, this differentiation does not necessarily imply that the relation between the inner-moments of the absolute flow is fixed in an invariant form. The pre-empirical
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dimension of the time-consciousness should be not necessarily conceived as an unchanging dimension. In order to show that the interrelation between the inner-moments of the flow is not invariant I will take into consideration Husserl’s analyses of two specific temporal experiences: (a) the time of the unclear Phantasia and (b) the experience of the radically new. I. The Temporalisation of the Unclear Phantasia In Hua XXIII, Husserl emphasizes the difference between image consciousness (Bildbewusstsein) and phantasy (Phantasie). The former is rooted in the perception of a present object that, as image, refers to another (absent) object (Hua XXIIII, 82). The phantasy, on the contrary, is not based on the perception of a present object. In § 13 of Hua XXIII, Husserl unexpectedly states that the phantasy has an immediate access to its intentional object: “Vergegenwärtigung [der Phantasie] ist ein letzter Modus intuitiver Vorstellung genauso wie Wahrnehmungsvorstellung, wie Gegenwärtigung” (Hua XXIII, 85). Here phantasizing and perception are regarded as two original modes of representation. If one takes this thesis seriously, then it would be necessary to reformulate the “classic” form of the relation between these two modes of representation established by Husserl: the phantasy would no longer be founded in the intentional act of a given perception, but rather, it should be conceived as an equally original act. Husserl’s investigations of phantasy lead to a distinction between clear and unclear phantasies. In the former case, there is a constitution of a vivid object of phantasy in the flow of the intentional consciousness. On the other hand, the intentional activity fails in the latter case: there is only a shadow of a vision. The object as such has disappeared. Since the flow of consciousness breaks abruptly down into many inconsistent appearances, it is not possible to constitute a coherent object. Only a flow of contradictory “primal sensations” belonging to the horizon of the “phantasy” emerges to consciousness: Bei sehr dunklen Phantasien reduziert sich die Vergegenwärtigung auf einen ganz dürftigen Rest, und fällt dieser ganz weg, wie beim Intermittieren der Phantasmen, so bleibt die bestimmte, aber leere Intention auf den Gegenstand übrig. Mit den dürftigen,
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wieder auftauchenden Resten bekräftigt sie sich und füllt sie sich nach den oder jenen Momenten. Aber zur wirklichen Anschauung wird sie erst, wenn ein reichhaltiges Bild gegeben ist. Die Lücken, die zerfließenden Färbungen, die untertauchen in den Lichtstaub des Phantasiegesichtsfeldes usw., dergleichen wird erst objektiviert, wenn wir wollen, wenn wir dies nach Analogie wirklicher Gegenständlichkeit interpretieren wollen. Sonst bleibt es einfach ohne gegenständliche Interpretation, und darum streitet es nicht und gibt keine doppelte Objektivität. (Hua XXIII, 88)
With regard to Husserl’s analyses, Richir highlights three essential characteristics of the temporalization of the unclear Phantasia: (1) The appearances of the unclear Phantasia have a proteiform character: “Alors que c’est le même objet qui est visé (aperçu) par la conscience, ses apparitions changent sans cesse et ce, de manière discontinue, par décrochages, par exemple aussi bien de formes que de couleurs, comme quelque chose d’ombreux et de fuyant [. . .]” (Richir, 2000, 74). (2) The genesis of the appearances of the unclear Phantasia is always sudden, abrupt and unexpected (blitzartig): the appearence “jaillit en un éclair sans arriver à se stabiliser: elles communique avec l’Einfall qui advient inopinément et qui est en jeu, on le sait, dans l’association libre, comme ce qui vient subitement (à l’esprit).” (Ibid.). (3) The third essential character of the unclear Phantasia lies in the intermittence of the appearances: “l’apparition de phantasia peut disparaître complètement aussi vite qu’elle a surgi, mais, dans sa fugacité même elle peut tout aussi bien revenir, resurgir pour disparaître à nouveau, éventuellement sous une forme tellement métamorphosée (caractère protéiforme) que nous pouvons tout d’abord croire apercevoir un autre objet – le cas limite étant celui d’une métamorphose si complète que c’est bien après, et autrement qu’à travers des objets aperçus d’abord comme différents, que nous reconnaîtrons peut-être le même objet [. . .].” (Ibid.). The intermittence is therefore closely intertwined with the first character: the proteiformal aspect of the appearances of Phantasia. In the light of these analyses it becomes clear that the phantasy-object constitutes itself within an interrupted dimension. The unclear phantasy escapes the dimension of the present: neither retentions nor protentions are
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able to attach themselves to the primal impression that appears by surprise and immediately disappears. The phantasy is therefore characterized by a peculiar temporalization: the intermittence of “phantasms”. This temporalization is not captured by the paradigm of intentionality and calls into question any supposed continuity of time as Husserl understood it. One of the most problematic aspects of the interpretation of the flow as invariant form lies in giving a convincing account for the intertwining between Längs- and Querintentionalität. In this regard, Husserl literally speaks of an intertwining: this relation has to be understood in terms of Ineinander: “Es sind danach zwei untrennbar einheitliche, wie zwei Seiten einer und derselben Sache einander fordende Intentionalitäten miteinander verflochten in dem einen, einzigen Bewusstseinsfluss.” (Hua, X, 381). Here my question is: if the experience of the temporal object in a specific field – such as in the unclear Phantasia – has a specific form of temporalization, e.g. has a specific way to articulate the Querintentionalität, how then is it possible that this kind of temporalization does not affect the Längsintentionalität? How can the relation between Längsintentionalität and Querintentionalität be the same in one case – such as a melody, in which the flow of the temporal phases is characterized by an essential continuity – and in another case, such as an obscure phantasy, in which the temporalization is essentially qualified by the intermittences?
II. The Experience of Something Radically New in the Bernauer Manuskripte In the essay Die eigentliche Zeit bei Husserl und Heidegger, Klaus Held argues that Husserl’s analysis of time in the Bernauer Manuskripte leaves no space for the experience of the absolutely new (Held, 2005). Nothing seems to escape the complex intentional “intrigue” of time-constituting consciousness. The protentional continuum refers to the retentional flow, to the primal impression, and to the future protentions (in their empty and fulfilled forms). The retentions do not only refer to the preceding retentional continuum linked to the primal impression, but they are also related to the already elapsed protentions directed to the emergence of the primal impression. At this point I do not want to
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develop the interconnections between protentions and retentions any further.9 Rather, it is my intention to show how this complex intentional intrigue provides a profound insight into the experience of something radically new. I will devote my attention to one particular aspect marked by a peculiar form of diachrony. In text Nr. 1 of the Bernauer Manuskripte, Husserl notes that the starting point of a temporal process emerges either expectedly or by surprise. But is it actually possible that an event can occur without any protention? This is the crucial question. As soon as unexpected data emerge, they are brought into the retentional continuum at the same time that the protentions are establishing themselves. These protentions are, however, dependent both on the course of primal impressions and on the retentions: we are expecting the continuation of primal impressions in the same way as they have been appearing until now (Hua XXXIII, 13). This kind of projection of the past into the future increases proportionally with the duration of the event. The essential point is that the protentional continuum not only has an impact on the future. At the same time, the protention modifies the already elapsed retentional process. In this regard Husserl speaks of a “Rückstrahlung” of the protention into the retention: “Vielleicht kann man sagen, sowie ein ‘ein kleines’ Ansatzstück abgelaufen ist, ohne voll eigentliche Zeitkonstitution, etablieren sich nach ursprünglicher genetischer Notwendigkeit die Protentionen, die wir brauchen, und das künftige Auffassungskontinuum, das sich nun ausbreitet in der Entwicklung des Flusses, breitet sich nun auch nach rückwärts aus, strahlt zurück auf den abgelaufenen Prozess und erteilt ihm die vordem noch fehlenden Auffassungen” (Hua XXXIII, 11). These missing apprehensions are protentions. In the same paragraph, Husserl even affirms that the later addition of the protention into the retentional continuum should be regarded as an a priori necessity: “Selbst wenn nicht eine konkret bestimmte Erwartung dem Ereignis vorhergeht, so muss doch jeder Urprozess, nachdem überhaupt in einigem Maße Urprozesse konstitutive geworden sind, als konstitutiv app<erzepiert werden>” (Hua XXXIII, 13). As soon as hyletic data emerge, they are apprehended, as if a previous protention was directed at them. These analyses seem of great importance to me because they show the process of normalization that subjectivity attempts to make in order to neutralize the irruption of what
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is unpredictable and therefore destabilizing. This work of neutralization takes place before each form of activity of the consciousness, i.e., at the most passive level of the time-constitution. In other words, with hindsight, what has appeared to the subject as new and destabilizing is treated as if it was already expected, with no trace of the “surprising” and overwhelming moment that has suddenly come from elsewhere. What in the language of Levinas, Waldenfels, and Derrida is called dia-chronic and points to the irreducible alterity of time, has vanished. What has unexpectedly come to the subject is transformed into a coherent temporal order which paradoxically had its origin in the overwhelming (and now neutralized) “new”. The addition of the protention into the elapsed retentional continuum has to be regarded as a self-deception of the temporal consciousness: the temporal consciousness manipulates the course of the flow in order to mitigate the invasive and destabilising character of that which is radically other and new. This attempt, nevertheless, negatively offers an attestation of what is diachronic. The description of the phenomenon of the new in the Bernauer Manuskripte testifies on the one hand the drive of the absolute flow to carry out an original unification forming a coherent temporal order (Hua X, 116). On the other hand, it shows how the relation between protention, retention and primal impression, and therefore between Längsand Querintentionalität, are not invariant, but they are different in the different experiences.
Notes 1. See Fuchs (2007). 2. The traumatized subject is so overwhelmed by a traumatic event that his or her temporal consciousness can not synthesize experience in a coherent way: there is no emergence of a primal impression. What has traumatized the subject can be identified only after the fact through a kind of heuristic retracing of the different symptoms originating from it. The essential delay typical of the temporality of the trauma is not only investigated in the field of psychoanalytical research (above all Freud, Lacan and Laplanche), but it also plays a central role in the philosophy of Levinas and Derrida. 3. See Micali, 2007, 133–145. I would like to mention that in Penser l’Homme e la folie Maldiney has further developed Binswanger’s thesis according to which an essential alteration of the relationships among protention, primal impression and retention takes place in melancholia (Maldiney, 1991). The studies of Binswanger and of Maldiney, from different angles, refer to Husserl’s phenomenology of time and, more precisely, to volume X of Husserliana. In my view, the best conceptual framework to analyse the temporalization of melancholia is not offered by the time-investigations of volume
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X of Husserliana, but by the Bernauer Manuskripten (especially the texts nr. 1 and 2). That is, the primary impression here is not the source of the temporal constitutive process but the result of an intricate intertwining of protention and retention. However, also this framework should be corrected in order to describe the specific temporalization of melancholia. The first time Husserl uses the notion of absolute time consciousness is not in the Zeitvorlesungen, but in his lectures from the semester 1906–1907 (§ 43). See Kortooms 2002, 79–91. See Hua X, 284. “Dans l’intentionnalité longitudinale, la conscience absolue ne s’appréhende donc pas comme un objet, mais dans l’intentionnalité transversale elle appréhende cependant des objets. Puisque les deux fonctions sont dites ‘inséparables’, la conscience absolue se trouve à la source de la différence entre sujet et objet.” (Bernet, 1994, 235). See Zahavi, 1999, 79–81. In this context Zahavi refers to the following text by Husserl: “Der Erlebnistrom mit seinen Phasen und Strecken ist selbst eine Einheit, die identifizierbar ist durch Rückerinnerung mit Blickrichtung auf das Fließende: Impressionen und Retentionen, Auftauchen und gesetzmäßiges Sichverwandeln und Verschwinden oder Dunkelwerden. Diese Einheit konstituiert sich originär durch die Tatsache des Flusses selbst: nämlich sein eigenes Wesen ist es, nicht nur überhaupt zu sein, sondern Erlebniseinheit zu sein und gegeben zu sein im inneren Bewusstsein, in dem ein aufmerkender Strahl auf ihn gehen kann (der selbst nicht aufgemerkt ist, den Strom nicht ändert, sondern fixiert, gegenständlich macht)” (Hua X, 116). It is important to stress that we can become aware of these different features of the absolute flow only through reflection. See Micali, 2008, 189–201.
Bibliography Bernet, Rudolf: La vie du sujet. Recherches sur l’interprétation de Husserl dans le phénoménologie, Paris, 1994. Brough, John: The Emergence of an Absolute Consciousness in Husserl’s Early Writings on Time-Consciousness, in: Man and World, 5 (1972), 298–326. Brough, John: “Husserl’s Phenomenology of Time-Consciousness” in: J.N. Mohanty and W.R. McKenna (eds.), Husserl’s Phenomenology: A Textbook, Washington D.C., 1989, 249–289. Fuchs, Thomas, The temporal structure of intentionality and its disturbance in schizophrenia, in: Psychopathology 40, 2007. Held, Klaus, Phänomenologie der ‘eigentlichen’ Zeit bei Husserl und Heidegger, in: Internationales Jahrbuch für Hermeneutik (Hrsg. Günter Figal) Bd. 4, Tübingen 2005. Hua X: Zur Phänomenologie des inneren Zeitbewusstseins (1893–1917). Hrsg. v. Rudolf Boehm, 1966. Hua XI: Analysen zur passiven Synthesis. Aus Vorlesungs- und Forschungsmanuskripten (1918–1926). Hrsg. v. Margot Fleischer, 1966. Hua XXIII: Phantasie, Bildbewusstsein, Erinnerung. Zur Phänomenologie der anschaulichen Vergegenwärtigungen. Texte aus dem Nachlass (1898–1925). Hrsg. v. Eduard Marbach, 1980. Hua XXXIII: Die ‘Bernauer Manuskripte’ über das Zeitbewusstsein (1917/1918), hrsg. v. Rudolf Bernet und Dieter Lohmar, 2001.
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Hua. Mat. VIII: Späte Texte über Zeitkonstitution (1929–1934). Die C-Manuskripte, hrsg. v. Dieter Lohmar, Dordrecht, 2006. Husserl, Edmund: Husserliana. Gesammelte Werke, Husserliana, Den Haag/Dordrecht 1950 ff. Kortooms, Toine, Phenomenology of Time, Dordrecht/Boston/London, 2002. Lévinas, Emmanuel, Le temps et l’autre, Montpellier, 1979. – Dt.: Die Zeit und der Andere, übersetzt von L. Wenzler, Hamburg, 1984. Maldiney, Henry, Penser l’homme et la folie, Grenoble, 1991. Micali, Stefano: Esperienze temporali, Bologna, 2007. Micali, Stefano: Überschüsse der Erfahrung, Dordrecht, 2008. Richir, Marc, Phénoménologie en esquisses. Nouvelles fondations, Grenoble, 2000. Zahavi, Dan, Self-Awareness and Alterity. A Phenomenological Investigation, Evanston, 1999.
CHAPTER X
HORIZONTAL-INTENTION: TIME, GENESIS, HISTORY – HUSSERL’S UNDERSTANDING OF THEIR IMMANENT RELATIONSHIP Liangkang Ni Abstract. In the first part, the author will discuss Husserl’s understanding of “time” and “genesis” in the Logical Investigations (around 1900), and the possible relation of “time” and “genesis”, though in that work Husserl himself did not put the two into any kind of relationship – not even one of opposition. Only through some fragmental statements can we realize Husserl’s focus on “analyses of time” and his exclusion of “analyses of genesis”. In the second part, the author will represent Husserl’s attitude toward the analysis of “time” and “genesis” in the Lectures (around 1917). Unlike the period of the Logical Investigations, Husserl discussed these themes together in the lectures, and he tried to grasp their immanent relationship. Part Three discusses Husserl’s thought of “time” and “genesis” in the period of the Cartesian Meditations (around 1928). This thought in his manuscripts in 1921 found its expression in a discussion of the relationship between static phenomenology, which takes “transverse intentionality” (Querintentionalität) as its theme, and genetic phenomenology, which takes “horizontal intentionality” (Längsintentionalität) as its theme. It is likely that this thought led Husserl to consider “time” as “the universal form of all geneses of egology” in the Cartesian Meditations. Starting from here, in the fourth part, the historical dimension came into Husserl’s horizon. First and foremost, the historical dimension concerns the way and the sphere in which history is studied, i.e., studies of the universal form of history and the constitution of history for the ego. The fifth part is a further investigation of Husserlian phenomenology of history, especially clarifying the immanent relationship between history, time and genesis in Husserl’s late thought. This part also includes a general review of the theory and practice of his phenomenology of history, and the possible connection and difference between the “form” and “content” of his phenomenology of history.
Time, genesis and history are three different phenomena, but there is obviously an immanent relationship among them. Husserl’s understanding of this relationship has undergone a gradual process in his study of phenomenology. In brief, in the Logical Investigations and his early analysis of inner time-consciousness, Husserl set aside questions concerning genesis and history for reasons of principle, but in his late analysis of time 187 D. Lohmar, I. Yamaguchi (eds.), On Time - New Contributions to the Husserlian Phenomenology of Time, Phaenomenologica 197, DOI 10.1007/978-90-481-8766-9_10, C Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2010
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and Cartesian Meditations, he often combined the three to have a general and coherent analysis, which finally culminated in his phenomenology of history in the Crisis. The present author hereby attempts to trace this tendency of his thought and the reason behind it. This paper also raises the question as to whether his late attempt would succeed or not. In addition, the attempt made here can be seen as a general introduction to Husserl’s conception of genetic phenomenology and the phenomenology of history starting with the phenomenology of time.
I. “Time” and “Genesis” in the Period of the Logical Investigations In the Logical Investigations (1900/1901) Husserl neither delved into “time” nor discussed “genesis” in detail.1 Husserl only speaks about the time problem in the third and fourth investigations, from the perspective of the relationship between wholes and parts, and between independent and dependent moments. Occasionally Husserl remarks that the characteristic of reality can be defined by “temporality” (Zeitlichkeit). (LU2 II/1, A 123) Further discussion on this problem will be made later in detail. Overall, time does not figure as an independent theme in the Logical Investigations, let alone the central theme. Years later, in the lectures on the “main parts of phenomenology and epistemology,” Husserl recalled about the Logical Investigations, “Many essential difficulties that I have discussed at that time are barely touched and not studied further in my publication. Even the whole sphere of memory, and all the problems about the phenomenology of original time-intuition were also in a hushed state therein. Then I was unable to overcome the extraordinary difficulties. They are maybe the most difficult problems in the whole phenomenology. As I didn’t want to fetter myself in advance, I’d rather maintain a strict silence on it” (Hua XXXVIII, 4). It was not until the winter semester of 1904/1905 in the lectures on the “main parts of phenomenology and epistemology” that Husserl finally decided to present his study of time and to discuss it with his students. In the Logical Investigations, Husserl basically attributed the genetic problem to psychology. Whenever he mentioned “genetic explanation,”
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“genetic analysis,” or “genetic exploration,” he always associated it with psychology (LU II/1, A 4, A 8, A 18, etc.). The concept of “genesis” he used in this period basically means “experiential” or “temporally passed (zeitlich verlaufene)”. This partially accounts for the fact that he changed “genetic” into “experiential” or “experiential-psychological” almost without exception in the second version of the Logical Investigations. Husserl understood his use of the concept of “genetic psychology” in the same manner. Therefore, Husserl could straightforwardly declare that “genetic problems fall outside the limits of our task”, and, to a large extent, saw “pure logic” as the opposite of “genetic psychology” or “experiential psychology” (LU II/1, A 208, A 337, Hua XIX/2, 779, etc.). Although “time” and “genesis” do not constitute independent themes in the Logical Investigations, some incidental remarks on these two problems still deserve our attention here: i. From Husserl’s statements, we can see that he considered “time” and “genesis” as two distinct or even opposed themes, falling into two fundamentally different disciplines. The former is purely descriptive: more precisely, it expresses essences and essential laws in a descriptive way. The latter is genetic and explanatory: in other words, it explores the connection of experiential laws from the perspectives of psychological facts, experiential happening, and causality. (LU II/1, A 4–5, A 21, etc.) On the one hand, in the Logical Investigations Husserl considers time in general as an objective and all-embracing unity-form, which he never gave up even in his late period. This form presents itself through “subjective time-consciousness”. (LU II/1, A 336) As a result, for Husserl, time is “not in the time of the world of things”, not experiential time in the sense of physics, but is “a form overreaching all its contents, which remains the same form continuously, though its content steadily alters” (LU II/1, B1 358) throughout the stream of subjective consciousness. In this sense, the pure form of time is opposed to experiential genetic contents. On the other hand, “genesis” carries the character of experience. Therefore, the study of essence cannot be founded on that of genesis. On the contrary, the latter necessarily presupposes the former. In Husserl’s words, “My reference is plainly an immediately given,
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present experience. How this experience, with its evident content, may have arisen; what may be necessarily true of it from the genetic standpoint; what may underlie it physiologically or psychologically, whether in the marginal or the unconscious – all these are interesting themes for enquiry. But it is absurd to seek information about our meaning along such paths.” (LU II/1, A 208) In the Logical Investigations, Husserl ultimately attributed the study of genesis to psychology. ii. Even in psychology, the study of “genesis” cannot be a theme of the first rate. It must play second fiddle to descriptive study in psychology. Husserl explains, “Psychology’s task – descriptively – is to study the Ego-experiences (or conscious contents) in their essential species and forms of combination, in order to explore – genetically – their origin and perishing, and the causal patterns and laws of their formation and transformation. For psychology, conscious contents are contents of an Ego, and so its task is to explore the real essence of the Ego (no mystical thing-in-itself but one only to be demonstrated empirically), to explore the interweaving of psychic elements in the Ego, and their subsequent development and degeneration” (LU II/1, A337, my emphasis). Consequently, the study of genesis does not belong to the sphere of essential psychology or pure descriptive psychology, since for Husserl, “pure descriptive psychological analysis [. . .] is in all cases concerned to dismember what we inwardly experience as it in itself is, and as it is really given in experience, without regard either to genetic connections, or to extrinsic meaning and valid application.” (LU II/1, A 373/ B1 398) The study of genesis can only be a task at the level of experiential psychology. (LU II/1, B1 217) iii. The opposition between “time” and “genesis” parallels Husserl’s opposition between “time” and “temporality”. For Husserl, “temporality” is always a mode of time. In the Logical Investigations, he saw “temporality” as a characteristic of something real and individual: “For us temporality is a sufficient mark of reality. Real being and temporal being may not be identical notions, but they coincide in extension. [. . .] Should we wish, however, to keep all metaphysics out, we may simply define ‘reality’ in terms of temporality. For the only point of importance is to oppose it to the timeless ‘being’ of
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the ideal.” (LU II/1, A 123) Since the individual possesses real being and temporal being, it is opposed to the unreal and timeless ideal. The former is a theme of experiential science; the latter is a theme of pure phenomenology, namely the theme of pure phenomenology of time-consciousness. In his late period, Husserl insists on this distinction. The only change is its expression: the mode of time for the individual is “temporality” (Zeitlichkeit), and the mode for the ideal is “Allzeitlichkeit” (all-time) or “Überzeitlichkeit” (over-time). (EU, 313) iv. Although Husserl kept his view that pure phenomenology excluded the study of genesis in the second version of Logical Investigations in 1913, there is some evidence that he began to soften the opposition between “genetic” and “pure” investigation. In the second version, he changed “genetic” into “experiential” and “experientialpsychological” in many places. We should not see this change as a random act. In fact, we can tell that Husserl had the inclination to combine “time analysis” and “genetic analysis,” or even to see them as the same issue. According to R. Boehm’s narration, in Husserl’s manuscripts on time-consciousness “there are some pages dealing with the time problem in the earlier period.” On the cover of these files, Husserl noted: “on genealogy around 1893 (former articles before these monthly papers)”.3 While the exact date of this note cannot be ascertained today, we can tell, based on what has been said above, that the tendency to no longer oppose the “time problem” and the “genetic problem” can be seen to a limited extent after the first version of Logical Investigations. II. “Time” and “Genesis” in the Period of the Lectures on the Phenomenology of Inner Time-Consciousness As stated above, it was not until the winter semester of 1904/05 in the lectures on the “main parts of phenomenology and epistemology” that Husserl decided to present his study of time and to discuss it with his students. He felt that the time problem could not be avoided; although his results were too immature for publication, “where I kept silent as an
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author can be spoken out as a teacher. It should be better that I tell something that has yet to be solved and can be grasped in the flux under most circumstances.” (Hua XXXVIII, 5) Since the studies of time in this period carried the character “yet to be solved and can be grasped in the flux”, Husserl didn’t publish them even after his assistant Edith Stein sorted them in 1917. It was only in 1926, when Heidegger was about to publish Being and Time, that it occurred to Husserl to ask Heidegger to compile and publish these manuscripts sorted by Stein. The Lectures published by Heidegger in 1928 presents Husserl’s thought around 1917. As a result, this book cannot reveal the concrete progression of Husserl’s thought on time-consciousness from 1897 to 1917. However, we can retrieve the historical context of this development from Husserliana volume X. Generally speaking, the enormous analyses of time-consciousness Husserl had undertaken from 1897 to 1917 maintained, for the most part, his thought on “time” and “genesis” in the Logical Investigations. He still insisted that the studies of time and genesis were themes on different levels, and that the understanding of the former was a prerequisite for understanding the latter. Therefore, in the 19th addition written in 1904, Husserl still insisted, “The genetic problem about origins does not concern the phenomenologist at all” (Hua X,4 188); neither the “originally spatial” nor “the original” from which the “intuition” of objective “time” derives was theme of phenomenology. In the revised version of his lectures on inner time-consciousness in 1917, we can also find his definitive statements in a paragraph: “The problem about empirical genesis is a matter of indifference as far as we are concerned; what does interest us are experiences with respect to their objective sense and descriptive content.” (Hua X, [373]) These lectures are noteworthy because, unlike the Logical Investigations, Husserl began to put “time” and “genesis” together. Especially in § 2 of part A of his lectures on inner time-consciousness, Husserl discussed in particular, “The question about the ‘origin of time’.” Quotation marks were added to the words “origin of time” in the title in order to give prominence to “the difference between the phenomenological (that is to say, the epistemological) and the psychological questions about origins” from the beginning. Although both phenomenology and psychology
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emphasize the question of origin and the tracing back to origin, origin in phenomenology refers to “origins with respect to all the concepts that are constitutive of experience, and thus too with respect to the concept of time”. In this sense, the tracing back to origin in phenomenology means “going back to the phenomenological data,” back to the real (eigentlich) experienced things; but in psychology, it means to go back to “the original material of sensation from which the intuitions of objective space and objective time arise in the human individual and even in the species”. (Hua X, [373]) Thus, the standard by which to differentiate the origin of phenomenology and that of psychology is the apriori essence. The so-called “origin” (Ursprung, Genese), for Husserl as well as for other philosophers who use this concept, not only means the starting point or the generating or unfolding of a phenomenon, but also means “universality,” “cause,” “principle,” etc. Its meaning can be traced back to “αρχη” and “principium” used by ancient Greek and Roman philosophers. Husserl himself, when talking about “originality” (Ursprünglichkeit) in the beginning of Ideas I, said, “We are not talking here in terms of history. In this reference to originality there need not be, and should not be, any thought of genesis along the lines either of psychological causality or of evolutionary history. What other meaning is intended will become clear only in the sequel.” (Hua III/1, 7, note 1) Derrida’s remark on “Grammatology” can be seen as a reply to this question: “the question of origin is coincident with that of essence. We can also say that it is premised on the onto-phenomenological question in a strict sense.”5 In fact, Husserl’s answer to this question lies in his analysis of time: “The question about the essence of time thus leads back to the question about the ‘origin’ of time. But this question of origin is directed towards the primitive formations of time-consciousness, in which the primitive differences of the temporal become constituted intuitively and properly as the original sources of all the evidences relating to time. This question of origin should not be confused with the question about psychological origin, with the controversial issue that divides empiricism and nativism.” (Hua X, [373]) Because Husserl thought psychology “takes experiences to be psychic states of empirical persons, of psychophysical subjects,” and because psychology “follows the becoming, the taking-shape, and the being-reshaped
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of psychic experiences according to natural laws” (Hua X, [373]), the difference between the study of origin in psychology and that in phenomenology, from Husserl’s standpoint in 1917, is not only a difference between the study of experience and that of essence, but also a difference between a natural perspective and a transcendental one. Many hints show that Husserl employed the concept “the study of ‘origin’ ” (Ursprung) to mean the study of real original experience in phenomenology, and used the concept “the study of ‘genesis’ ” to mean the study of origin in psychology. This distinction is helpful in understanding Husserl’s remarks that “the genetic problem about origins does not concern the phenomenologist at all” and that “the question about empirical genesis is a matter of indifference as far as we are concerned.” There is an exception to this explanation in the Lectures: Husserl still used the concept “apriori-phenomenological geneses” in § 25 concerning memory (Hua X, [412]). It is very likely that in this period (1917– 1921) Husserl began to consider “a real idea of genetic phenomenology”. Genetic phenomenology in this sense is no longer a psychology of experiencial causal explanation, but an “apriori grasp of the motivational connection of transcendental consciousness”.6 This is precisely the most important meaning of Husserl’s concept of “genesis” in his late period.7 Here we need to touch upon the Bernau Manuscripts (1917–1918). We can see it as a follow-up of the Lectures (Hua X), since it was formed during Husserl’s revision of the Lectures in 1917–1918. (Hua XXXIII, XX)
III. “Time” and “Genesis” in the Period of the Cartesian Meditations In brief, although Husserl considered “time” and “genesis” in the first edition of the Logical Investigations (1900–1901) and Ideas I (1913), they did not become real themes and had no real connection. While both were mentioned in writing the Lectures and the Bernau Manuscripts (1904–1917, 1918), they were mainly considered in an oppositional relationship. However, when Husserl wrote the Cartesian Meditations (1921–1929) and C-Manuscripts (1929–1934), the immanent relationship between “time” and “genesis” was established.
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This immanent relationship is most obvious in the Cartesian Meditations (1929). Husserl took “time” as “the universal form of all egological genesis”.8 He emphasized a kind of “formal regularity pertaining to a universal genesis”, or the universal unity-form of the conscious flux. This universal genetic form means “this most universal form, which belongs to all particular forms of concrete subjective processes (with the products that are flowingly constituted in the flux of such processes) is the form of a motivation, connecting all and governing within each single process in particular.” (Hua I,9 109) At a first glance, Husserl seems to equate “genesis” in this sense with “constitution”. In other words, he equates the genetic form with the constitutive form, the laws of genesis with the laws of constitution. If we don’t take the basic meaning of “constitution” and “genesis” into consideration, we may see it as a contradictory viewpoint to the statement he made in 1921. He said in a manuscript at that time, “Tracing back to constitution is not tracing back to genesis, which exactly is the genesis of constitution and is active as genesis in a monad.” (Hua XIV, 41) In another manuscript written in 1921, he also explicitly divided phenomenology into: “(1) the universal phenomenology of the structure of general consciousness, (2) the constitutive phenomenology, and (3) the genetic phenomenology” (Hua XI, 340, note 1). That is to say that Husserl established a kind of parallel relationship between constitutive phenomenology and genetic phenomenology in 1921. But if we think carefully about the specific meaning of “constitution” and “genesis” used by Husserl, we will find that when Husserl said the study of genesis is not equal to that of constitution, “constitution” here means the constitution of “objects”. When he said the study of genesis is equal to that of constitution, “constitution” in this context means the constitution of the “ego”.10 The former can be said to be a “direct” constitution, while the latter is a “reflective” one; the former is the theme of static phenomenology, while the latter belongs to genetic phenomenology. It seems that Husserl gave much thought to the relationship between these two kinds of phenomenology in 1921, giving detailed discussions in the two cited manuscripts. He thought one characteristic of static phenomenology was to start from outer perception in order to explore the intentional object’s sensible data, its variations of adumbration and its form of apprehension. In addition, static phenomenology
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analyzes all kinds of intentional relations between the object of perceptual cognition and perceptual cognizing, and considers the essential possibilities of these experiential activities and experiential connections, which may appear in a monad. Of course we can go on to study conscious experience of other types, including memory, phantasy, and sign-consciousness. These are issues of conscious constitution, or to be exact, exploring the transverse relativity between constituting consciousness and constituted objects. But they are not issues of genetic study in a monad. Here, “I can exclude genetic question completely.” (Hua XIV, 38) However, once the question of time was introduced into transverse relativity, it was only a matter of time for the genetic question to be brought into discussion. Thus, the studies of all types of conscious experiences have to take time into consideration. We can explore this situation in two steps. First, as Husserl said, “Every experience has its experiential temporality (Erlebniszeitlichkeit).” (Hua I, 79) Therefore, the factor of time is indispensable to the studies of types of conscious experiences. This is true not only because the objects of perception, memory, and expectation have temporal properties, but also because all acts of perception, memory, and expectation are in the flux of time, so that the acts themselves are temporal. Second, the exploration of these features of time will bring us to a new study of constitution, i.e., the study of horizontal relativity. This study is related to the sequence of time, but goes further. It concerns the sequence of the genesis of conscious constitution and the sequence of conscious objects constituted by consciousness, and the horizontal relativity between acts and objects in genetic sequence: how the former affects the latter and how the latter traces back to the former. Consequently, the study of horizontal relativity includes not only the study of passive genesis, i.e., how one consciousness is motivated by another passively, but also the study of active genesis, i.e., how consciousness actively constitutes cultural products and ideal objects. Thus, Husserl’s understanding of the task of genetic phenomenology is to explore the original becoming (Werden) in the flux of time, to study genetically effective motivations, to account for how consciousness is generated from consciousness, and to explain how the productions of constitution come to be. (Hua XIV, 40–41)
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In light of this, Husserl had enough reason to think that “the primal laws (Urgesetz) of genesis are the original laws of time-constitution, laws of association and reproduction, i.e., laws by which monads themselves constitute a unity for themselves.” (Hua XIV, 39) In another manuscript from 1921, a similar statement appears almost verbatim: “Primal laws of genesis are the laws of original time-consciousness, the primordial laws of reproduction, and then of association and associative expectation. In relation to this there is genesis on the basis of active motivation.” (Hua XI, 344) Even earlier, when revising the Lectures, Husserl had discovered “transverse relativity” and “horizontal relativity”. It can be said that they are the two most universal structures of consciousness in Husserl’s conscious analyses. They can be seen as two components of intentionality, which is the most universal essence of consciousness. Husserl’s lectures on timeconsciousness gave Heidegger a reason to bring time-consciousness into the category of intentionality. Of particular importance is Text No. 54 of Husserl’s research manuscripts, which became § 39 in the Lectures: here Husserl labels the intentionality of time-consciousness as “horizontal intentionality” (Längsintentionalität), in contrast to “transverse intentionality” (Querintentionalität) in general. Heidegger remarks in the preface that “the pivot here is the analysis of the intentional characteristic of time-consciousness and the ultimate clarification of intentionality” (Hua X, XXV). This means the most universal structure of consciousness is intentionality, which can be further divided into horizontal intentionality and transverse intentionality. Therefore, it can be said that the “genetic” problem had already been discussed in Husserlian phenomenology in his early period. What was lacking was only the label of “genetic study”. As a result of the absence of the ego or monad carrying genesis, genetic study is merged in the analyses of inner time-consciousness. We may therefore revise Husserl’s division of phenomenology (Hua XI, 340, note 1) mentioned above. The universal phenomenology of the general conscious structure can now be divided into: (1) constitutive phenomenology, or transversely constitutive phenomenology, i.e., transverse intentionality analytics; (2) genetic phenomenology, or horizontally constitutive phenomenology, i.e., horizontal intentionality analytics. In these two manuscripts of 1921, Husserl had not yet clearly recognized their own relation to static and genetic (or descriptive and
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demonstrative) phenomenology. He only thought that the two kinds of phenomenology all have their universal requirements: universal structure and universal genesis.11 According to the order of research, static phenomenology should lay the foundation for genetic phenomenology, not vice versa. But the results of his research show that genetic phenomenology is not only related to the essential structure of the constituting noesis and the constituted noema, but also related to the unity of universal genesis of the ego (Hua I, § 37), i.e., related to the noesis of the ego (as universal constitutive activities) and the noema of the ego (as the universal being constituted world). In this respect, the laws of genesis are constitutive principles that are more universal. Husserl’s thought in Ideas I is obviously different from that in the Cartesian Meditations. In Ideas I, he called for “the suspending of the material-eidetic disciplines”, and put forward: “If we wish to construct a phenomenology as a pure descriptive eidetics of the essential nature of the immanent formations of Consciousness,12 of the events which under the limitations of the phenomenological suspension can be grasped within the stream of experiences, we must exclude from this limited field everything that is transcendently individual, therefore also all the transcendent essences.” (Hua III/1, [114]) But in the Cartesian Meditations, the following statements prove that he had changed his thought: “The phenomenology developed at first is merely ‘static’; its descriptions are analogous to those of natural history, which concern particular types and, at best, arrange them in their systematic order. Questions of universal genesis and the genetic structure of the ego in his universality, so far as that structure is more than temporal formation, are still far away; and, indeed, they belong to a higher level. But even when they are raised, it is with a restriction. At first, even eidetic observation will consider an ego as such with the restriction that a constituted world already exists for him. This, moreover, is a necessary level; only by laying open the law-forms of the genesis pertaining to this level can one see the possibilities of a maximally universal eidetic phenomenology.” (Hua I, 110) This change of emphasis on the question to be studied is due to the change of Husserl’s understanding of the range of pure phenomenology. And this understanding is in line with the range of phenomenological reduction. We’ll touch upon this question later.
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IV. The Idea of “History” After 1921 In addition to placing “time” and “genesis” in an immanent relationship, the Cartesian Meditations possess another important feature that is related to our topic: Husserl began to bring “history” into the study of “time” and “genesis”. Specifically, he not only pointed out the necessity of paying attention to the question of historical meaning at the end of his “Pariser Vorträge” in 1929 (Hua I, 38–39), but also emphasized in the forth meditation concerning the universal genesis of the ego: “The ego constitutes himself for himself in, so to speak, the unity of a ‘history’.” (Hua I, 109) “History” in this sense can find its basic definition in the Crisis. It represents Husserl’s general understanding of “history”: “history is from the start nothing other than the vital movement of the coexistence and the interweaving of original formations and sedimentations of meaning [Sinnbildung und Sinnsedimentierung].”13 “Sense-constitution” here is related to the theme of “constitutive phenomenology”, according to Husserl. That is to say, the study of sense-constitution is in the sphere of static and descriptive phenomenology. “Sense-sedimentation” is a topic, in a certain sense, of genetic and hermeneutic phenomenology. Therefore, generally speaking, a phenomenology of history includes constitutive phenomenology (as the study of sense-constitution) and genetic phenomenology (as the study of sense-sedimentation). As a result, Husserl could claim in the Cartesian Meditations, “We said that the constitution of the ego contains all the constitutions of all the objectivities existing for him, whether these be immanent or transcendent, ideal or real. It should now be added that the constitutive systems (systems actualizable by the ego), by virtue of which such and such objects and categories of objects exist for him, are themselves possible only within the frame of a genesis in conformity with laws.” and “any historical knowledge concerns some knowledges about ‘form’ and ‘essence’, and is based on these knowledges.” (Hua I, 109) Two conclusions can be drawn from this understanding: first, the study of the phenomenology of history14 is a study of essence; second, according to the categories of object in the sense of phenomenology, the study in phenomenology of history includes the following four aspects: (1) the constitutive genesis and history of transcendental objectivity, (2) the
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constitutive genesis and history of immanent objectivity, (3) the constitutive genesis and history of ideal objectivity, (4) the constitutive genesis and history of real objectivity. The first point means that the real theme of historical theory or philosophy of history is not historical facts. Instead, the primary task of those disciplines is to grasp the “inner structure” or “essential unvaryingness” in the genesis of history, or behind “historical fact” (Hua VI,15 380– 381). Therefore, I. Kern said that the history Husserl discussed “is not actual history of individual apperception, but the universal form or type of history. They are considered by Husserl as apriori or essence.”16 Husserl himself also thought that historical study was characterized by “teleological historical exploration.” Furthermore, the truth grasped by historical study can never be refuted through the “self-proved” quotations from past philosophers’ writings, or through experiencial confirmations of the historical facts, because it presents itself in an evidence of critical general intuition which can make people detect the “meaningful-final” harmony behind the veneer of the development of historical affinity and opposition (Hua VI, 74), “in an unusual sense, namely, in virtue of a thematic direction which opens up depth-problems quite unknown to ordinary history, problems which, in their own way, are undoubtedly historical problems.” (Hua VI, 365) These problems can be called problems of the history of “sense” in Husserlian terminology, or problems of “history of intentionality”17 in Fink’s words. Here we can see the difference between two kinds of historical studies and two kinds of historical ideas: namely, the study of real history, and the study of the universal form of history. According to Ricoeur’s speculation, Husserl’s study of real history, just like the concrete or “case” study that he did to the European history in the Crisis, and the concrete analysis of history which put his own understanding of philosophy and history together, started one year later, i.e., in 1930.18 And the study of universal form of history can be traced back to 1921. Husserl equated the historical study in this sense with genetic study according to essential laws: “all natural apperceptions, all objective reality-apperceptions, themselves with respect to their essence have a history and a genesis according to the primal-laws. Thus, it is a necessary task to identify the universal and primitive laws by which apperceptions are constituted from the primal-apperception, and systematically deduce
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the possible constituents, i.e., clarify every constituent from their origins. This ‘history’ of consciousness (History of all possible apperceptions) does not involve any actual genesis for actual apperceptions or actual types in an actual stream of consciousness or in all actual people’s stream of consciousness – therefore, there is nothing like the development of plants or animals – rather, every Gestalt of apperceptions is an essential Gestalt and has its genesis according to its essential laws. Consequently, it includes in the idea of such apperception that it can be subject to a ‘genetic analysis’.” (Hua XI, 339) Husserl here differentiates two kinds of “history” as well as two kinds of “genesis”. On the one hand, there is actual (faktische) genesis and history; on the other hand, there is genesis and history according to the laws (gesetzliche, gesetzmäßige). This distinction reveals a fundamental aspect of Husserl’s understanding of history: namely, phenomenology – whether static phenomenology, or genetic phenomenology, or the phenomenology of history – is, first and foremost, the science of essence. To put it differently, even in the flowing phenomena such as time, genesis and history, the aim of phenomenology still lies in grasping essential structure. Our earlier analysis of time provides just one example of this belief; genesis and history provide two more. It can be said that, until 1930, Husserl’s understanding of actual genesis and actual history was still Platonic. This attitude finds its expression in Ideas I, which we quoted above: “We are not talking here in terms of history.” (Hua III/1, 7, note 1) It means not talking in terms of history as genesis of reality.19 We can only understand Husserl’s concept of “history” in this way, i.e., as “the vital movement of the coexistence and the interweaving of original formations and sedimentations of meaning [Sinnbildung, Sinnsedimentierung]”. The movement has its laws, which are the essences to be grasped by the phenomenology of history. Let us turn to the second point, viz., the range of historical study. If the phenomenology of history, like general phenomenology, must carry out a reductive method,20 it can only examine the constitutive genesis of two kinds of historical objectivity: immanent and ideal. The constitutive genesis of history with respect to the other two kinds of objectivity – transcendental and real objectivity – should be excluded from phenomenological exploration in a strict sense.
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The first kind of constitutive genesis of the objectivity of history, according to Husserl’s explanation of the phenomenological reduction, does not imply a realm which excludes the natural world, human world, cultural world and their social forms, but a realm which includes them as conscious constitutions in itself in a manner of conscious philosophy. This realm includes not only the natural world, human world, cultural world and other social forms, which form a history of experiential possibilities for the Ego, i.e., the history which is constituted in the immanent realm of consciousness (Hua I, 109), but also the present constitution of the ego and its past and future grasped by reflection, i.e., the history of the conscious constitutive activities themselves.21 In other words, from the perspective of the phenomenology of history, “natural history” and “cultural history” (or “social history”) are, in a certain sense, “histories of noema” (histories of “the signified”), and the “history of mind” means in a certain sense the “history of noesis” (history of “the signifier”). In Husserl’s own words, “past, present, and future, become unitarily constituted over and over again, in a certain noetic-noematic formal structure of flowing modes of givenness.” (Hua I, 109) The idea here is that these two kinds of history are both the history of intentional productions of conscious synthesis and they are included as sense in consciousness itself, instead of being incursions into consciousness from outside. Another kind of theme discussed in the phenomenology of history is constitutive genesis and the history of ideal objectivity. Once this theme becomes possible, the understanding of the ideal since Plato will be radically changed. Even Husserl’s understanding of the ideas as überzeitlich (over-time) and allzeitlich (all-time) will be overturned. We can not unfold this theme here, but leave it to the discussion about its connection with Derrida’s Edmund Husserl’s Origin of Geometry: an Introduction. In any case, in his late period Husserl came up with a view on history that is consistent with his thought on time and genesis. “Consistency” here means first of all methodological consistency.
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V. Concluding Remarks: The Study of History in Connection with “Time” and “Genesis” As stated in the very beginning of this paper, time, genesis and history are three different phenomena, but obviously there exists an immanent relationship among them. It seems that we can give a Husserlian definition of time, genesis, and history: time, the continuous process of conscious activities; genesis, the proceeding process of conscious activities; history, the process of sense-sedimentation as a result of conscious activities. Perhaps the concept of “horizontal intentionality” can be expanded to describe this immanent connection. Compared with “transverse intentionality”, “horizontal intentionality” is pure and formal, as well as an essential, structural element. The meaning of Husserl’s concept “timeconsciousness” is also two-fold: first, consciousness of “Aufeinanderlegen” (superposition), and second, consciousness of “Nacheinanderfolgen” (succession). In a similar sense, Husserl also talked about the two-fold meaning of genesis or the laws of genesis: “(1) laws of genesis in the sense of verification of the laws for conjunction of individual events in the stream of consciousness. [. . .] (2) legalities which govern the constitution of apperception.” (Hua XI, 336) This double meaning is in line with the double meaning of history according to Husserl. From this perspective, there is an immanent connection among time, genesis, and history because the form of time is the pivot that connects transverse intentionality and horizontal intentionality; the form of time includes in itself the horizontally and transversely unobjective directedness on the level of three-fold structure of time-consciousness (i.e., the directedness of retention, protention and primal impression). The form of genesis on the one hand represents the conjunctive form, i.e., the form of horizontal intentionality (the form of sense-sedimentation), and on the other hand represents the form of superimposing. And by Husserl’s definition of history, the form of history finally also covers the two-fold form (the form of sense-constitution and sense-sedimentation) of transverse intentionality and horizontal intentionality.
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Among these three, the form of time is supposed to be the most original and basic, or, to put it differently, the most formalized; the form of history is the most rich and comprehensive, or the most materialized. The connection between time and history is consistent with how historians themselves understand history. M. Bloch held that, “This real time is, in essence, a continuum. It is also perpetual change. The great problems of historical inquiry derive from this antithesis of these two attributes.”22 But Husserl’s idea of history is, in the final word, the dominant idea of the historical study in the European intellectual arena. It came down in a continuous line with the Greek tradition represented by Plato. It is such a powerful tradition that originators of Greek history are under its sway. Both Herodotus and Thucydides, though very different or even contradictory in their historical belief, find their common ground in views of the historical study: the former believes the force that dominates history is outside and the latter believes history determined by human nature. To a great extent, they represent a philosophical-metaphysical view of history, which attempts to excavate the foundation or laws of history from things beyond individual level. Strictly speaking, what’s acting in Herodotus is a meta-physical view of history, and in Thucydides is a meta-psychological view of history. Therefore, when it comes to the contradiction between Herodotus and Thucydides, Collingwood has enough reason to bring these two views of history into the category of Greek spirit and believes that they are in nature “rigorously anti-historical”, and “uncongenial to the growth of historical thought”.23 But what does the “thought of history” mean? When Plato said that pure change cannot constitute scientific knowledge, he in fact set science and history against each other. This is why Schopenhauer was able to say that “science is a system of knowledge always talking about categories while history always concerns itself with the individual. Thus, history is a science of the individual. There is a paradox in it.”24 The feature of history, in his view, lies in that “even the most universal thing in history is just single and individual, i.e., a long time period or a main attribute. And the relationship between it and the individual event is equal to that between the whole and the part, but not to that between the laws and the event; this relationship, in contrast, exists in all actual sciences, because what they provide is concepts but not facts.”25 There is no doubt that
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Schopenhauer’s viewpoint has its reasonable aspect. It reminds people not to confuse science and history. Out of the same purpose, Collingwood once claimed that “it has been necessary to engage in a running fight with what may be called a positivistic conception, or rather misconception, of history, as the study of successive events lying in a dead past, events to be understood as the scientist understands natural events, by classifying them and establishing relations between the classes thus defined. This misconception is not only an endemic error in modern philosophical thought about history, it is also a constant peril to historical thought itself.”26 In light of this line of thinking, if philosophy and science provide ideas that are over-time (überzeitlich), they are extraordinarily difficult to connect with history. Nonetheless, we can identify two such connections. First, ideas are not seen as beyond time but within time, i.e., ideas have their own history. In this way, philosophers can also be researchers of the history of ideas. Second, science primarily studies transverse (synchronous) laws, i.e., the presently given structural and systematic laws, whereas history mainly explores horizontal (diachronous) laws, i.e., the laws of time and genesis from the past to the present. These two points are very close to Husserl’s view of history mentioned above. Putting aside the first point about the genesis of ideas, we can clearly see the similarity between Husserl’s view of history as the history of sense and Collingwood’s view of history as the history of mind. To a certain extent, Collingwood is a phenomenologist of history. Even though Husserl is not a historian and can hardly be seen as a philosopher of history, he has his own view of history and his own historical study. “History” in Husserl’s sense can be brought into the last of the three kinds of history (“original history”, “reflective history” and “philosophical history”) induced by Hegel in The Philosophy of History, viz., philosophical history.27 This idea of philosophical history, which differs from the usual conception of history, may originate from Kant. It seems that Kant’s distinction between “Geschichte” and “Historie”28 influenced not only Hegel but also contemporary philosophers. Kant’s influence can be seen in Husserl’s distinction between “history” and “history of facts” (Faktengeschichte, Tatsachenhistorie) (Hua VI, 386), Heidegger’s “authentic historicality” (eigentliche Geschichtlichkeit) and “inauthentic
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historicality” (uneigentliche Geschichtlichkeit),29 Derrida’s mark on the difference between “Historie” and “Geschichte”,30 and so forth. In the main, the Husserlian understanding of history stated above is basically consistent with Husserl’s understanding of genesis. For Husserl, the historical problem is an extension of the genetic problem, i.e., an extension of horizontal phenomenology of intentional constitution. Husserl himself mentioned two kinds of constitutive phenomenology: “A constitutive phenomenology can regard the nexuses of apperceptions in which the same object is constituted eidetically, in which it shows itself in its constituted ipseity in the way it is expected and can be expected. Another ‘constitutive’ phenomenology, the phenomenology of genesis, follows the history, the necessary history of this objectivation and thereby the history of the object itself as the object of a possible knowledge. The primordial history of objects leads back to hyletic objects and to the immanent ones in general, that is, to the genesis of them in original time-consciousness. Contained within the universal genesis of a monad are the histories of the constitution of objects” (Hua XI, 345). In the latter kind of constitutive phenomenology, we can clearly see the immanent relationship among time-consciousness, genesis and history in the laws of longitudinal constitution of history. This could explain why Husserl explored time-consciousness in the relationship among perception, phantasy and memory in the early period, but discussed it mainly in the relationship among the Ego, monad and inter-subjectivity in the late period. To be specific, Husserl didn’t focus on the ego-problem in any particular section of the Lectures; in the Bernau Manuscripts, only two out of twenty-two texts focused on the Ego-problem. However, in the C-Manuscripts almost every text explored “Ego”, “ego”, “monad”, “individual” or “personality”. Only in this immanent relationship can the problem of time be integrated with the genetic problem and the historical problem to form a significant field of investigation. It is obvious that Husserl didn’t want to equate time with history, since time is first and foremost a form, albeit a flowing form. Therefore, the first question is: what is the difference between formal time, genetic time, and historical time? If all of them are characterized by a kind of intentionality, what is their essential difference and connection? On the one hand, the form of time as perpetual moving from primal impression to retention has
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a form, viz., a flux-form, “the universal unity-form of the flux” (Hua I, 109). The flux-form also implies a genetic form and a historical form. The mode of time described by Husserl also implies a genetic mode and a historical mode: the more experiences there are, the more extended the horizontal line becomes and the deeper the vertical line falls. The primal point of experience will become the deepest sediment, the furthest past. In fact, Husserl’s essential grasp of horizontal intentionality in genetic phenomenology starts from but does not halt at experiential content, just like his essential grasp of transverse intentionality in descriptive phenomenology. In Ideas II, the constitution of physical nature, animal nature and spiritual world, and the constitution of the ego in his late analysis of time, are all themes of ontology, i.e., eidetics, and the eidetic study of genesis and history in this sense. Only the study of genesis and history in the Crisis is close to reality and experience on the level of essence. Only here began Husserl to talk about Europeans as a part of humanity. This development may demonstrate that Husserl in his late period realized more clearly that phenomenology, especially genetic phenomenology and phenomenology of history, is concerned with far more than the genetic form and historical form. This is also true for the problems of the ego and the monad. A monad or an ego only with genetic form is still empty constitution. The study of formal genesis and formal history can be transferred to the material studies of genesis and history, with the former guiding the latter. Clearly, according to Husserl, if phenomenology wants to study experiential genesis and history, it must be led by pure phenomenology, which means pure genetic phenomenology. This requires a phenomenological account of the origin, genesis and historical evolution of ideal objects. Ideal objects and their historical evolution lie behind all experiential presentations and historical facts, but latter are not necessarily metaphysical insofar as they can be grasped through essences or ideations. Just as all the transverse essential structure can be grasped by seeing an essence, so can the horizontal essential structure be grasped ideally. Perhaps we can speak of seeing an essence transversely and seeing an essence horizontally. Although it seems that Husserl himself didn’t employ the concept “horizontally seeing an essence”, it was just on the tip of the tongue in Philosophy as a Rigorous Science. Through criticism on Dilthey’s tendency of empiricism, he pointed out, “a Geisteswissenschaft that is still
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of experience can neither put forward contradictory arguments for something that raises a claim of objective validity, nor put forward favourable arguments for it. If this experiential viewpoint aiming at experiential understanding is changed into essential viewpoint of phenomenology, the case will be naturally different.” (Hua XXV, [326]) He was certain that, “compared with the exploration of nature, the exploration of universal spiritual life even provides more original and therefore more foundational research materials for philosophers. Because phenomenology, as an eidetics, its realm soon extends from individual spirit to the whole sphere of universal spirit; and if W. Dilthey affirms in such a distinct way that psychophysical psychology is not the one which can work as ‘the foundation of Geisteswissenschaft’, then what I want to say is, only phenomenological eidetics is able to provide arguments for a philosophy of spirit.” (Hua XXV, [47]) “Phenomenological eidetics” here obviously includes seeing an essence not only transversely, but also horizontally. In fact, through the interpretation and application of Kant’s “intellectual intuition”, horizontal intuition of life has been carried forward as well in eastern philosophy. It is called “longitudinal intuition” by Mou Zongsan, and is one of his three interpretations of Kant’s concept “intellectual intuition”.31 It is just horizontally seeing an essence in a certain sense, i.e., seeing an essence of spiritual life. In any case, Husserl has pointed out in Origin of Geometry that the ideal essence can have its history, and the history of the ideal essence determines the ideal essence of history. This ideal essence, which lies behind circumstances, language, nation, times, and cultural formations, is also called “inner history” or “universal, historical apriori”. It will lead to the highest historical question: “an universal teleology of reason” (Hua VI, 386). Although Husserl himself didn’t explicitly put forward the horizontal seeing an essence – perhaps like Kant’s unconscious employment of transverse intellectual intuition–Husserl silently applied the method of horizontally seeing an essence.32 We may be able to understand the socalled “critique of historical reason” in this sense: horizontally seeing the essence of horizontal intentionality. Only in this sense could Husserl be a transcendental phenomenologist as well as phenomenologist of history at the same time. That is to say, he is neither as Ricoeur said, “the most unhistorical” philosopher, nor as Merleau-Ponty supposed, finally “gave up the essential philosophy covertly” in the dimension of history.
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It is as a result of Husserl’s focus on the “time” problem and his endeavour in the analysis of time-consciousness that “horizontal intentionality” turns out to be an important theme and is kept active, which thereby leads to the study of the forming and unfolding of the “genetic” problem. Consequently, there are more and more studies of the becoming and development of the Ego, individual and monad, which finally lead to the “historical” problem of the consequences of individual conscious experiences. This “history” includes the history of natural world and cultural world (science and arts, social form, etc.). Finally we can say that the strain between history and philosophy in the philosophy of history can get dispelled through Husserl’s grasp of the laws of horizontal intentionality in time, genesis and history. History is retrospective and philosophy is reflective; both study humanity in a certain sense. In the horizontal grasp of humanity, history and philosophy are in line with each other in terms of intentionality and methodology. In this sense, we could understand what Husserl said in the Crisis: “The problem of genuine historical explanation comes together, in the case of the sciences, with ‘epistemological’ grounding or clarification.” (Hua VI, 381) (Translated by Honghe WANG) Notes 1. Likewise, these issues were not addressed in Ideas I. Although Husserl discussed “the phenomenological time and the time-consciousness” in § 81 of Ideas I, he felt fortunate that he could, in this preparative analysis, put aside “the puzzle of time-consciousness”, which is an “exceptionally difficult sphere of problems” (Cf. Hua III/1, 163. English version: Ideas: General Introduction to Pure Phenomenology. Trans. by W. R. Boyce Gibson, London 1962). With respect to the “genetic problem” and the “historical problem”, Husserl thought, “there need not be, and should not be, any thought of genesis along the lines either of psychological causality or of evolutionary history” (Hua III/1, 7, note 1). 2. English version: Logical Investigations. Trans. by J. N. Findlay, London 1970. 3. Text K I 55 in Husserl’s manuscripts, which was published as Supplement No. 1 in Hua X. Cf. Hua X, pp. 137–151. 4. English version: On the Phenomenology of the Consciousness of Internal Time (1893–1917). Trans. by J. B. Brough, Dordrecht/Boston/London, 1991. 5. Jacques Derrida, De la grammatologie, Paris 1967. Chinese version: trans. by T. Wang, Shanghai 1999, p. 107. 6. Cf. Rudolf Bernet/Iso Kern/Eduard Marbach, Edmund Husserl, Darstellung seines Denkens. Hamburg 1989, S. 179. 7. Other significations Husserl gave to the concept of “genesis” can be found in the seventh chapter, “Statische und genetische Konstitution”.
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8. This is the title of § 37 in the Cartesian Meditations. 9. English version: Cartesian Meditations. Trans. by D. Cairns, The Hague 1977. 10. According to Husserl, “ego” here is different from “Ego (Ich)”: “From the Ego as identical pole, and as substrate of habitualities, we distinguish the ego taken in full concreteness”. That is to say, “Ego” is understood here as the “Ego-pole” of intentional experience, i.e., it comprises “persisting properties”, “the same substrate of habitualities”. By contrast, “the ego taken in full concreteness” means the Leibnizian “monad” subject, i.e., the “Ego” and all its concrete intentional experiences (Hua I, §§ 31–33). 11. Husserl here mentioned the interaction and inter-determination of some relevant laws. Cf. Hua XIV, p. 40. 12. Here “pure descriptive eidetics” or “pure descriptive phenomenology” is “static phenomenology” according by Husserl. For instance, cf. Hua XI, p. 340. 13. Hua VI, pp. 380–381. Here we put aside another definition of history as discussed by Husserl from another perspective, namely that “Die Geschichte ist das große Faktum des absoluten Seins” (Hua VIII, 506). 14. Or as Derrida said, “the history of phenomenology”, cf. J. Derrida, Edmund Husserl, L’origine de la Géométry: Traduction et Introduction. Paris 1962, p. 7. – Derrida also used the term “phenomenology of history” in this book. 15. English version: The Crisis of European Sciences and Transcendental Phenomenology. Trans. by D. Carr, Evanston 1970. 16. R. Bernet/I. Kern/E. Marbach, Edmund Husserl, Darstellung seines Denkens, a.a.O., S. 186. 17. Eugen Fink referred to it as “the problem of origin of geometry as the problem of intentional history” (Hua VI, 364, note 1), when he published Husserl’s manuscripts about the origin of geometry in 1939 (later published as Appendix 3 of Hua VI). 18. Cf. Paul Ricoeur, Husserl et le sens de l’histoire, in: Revue de Métaphysique et de Morale 54 (1949), p. 280. Ricoeur thought that Husserl, this most unhistorical professor, put forward explanations for history because he was forced by history. If “unhistorical” here means that the actual history and genesis was not Husserl’s first object of study, then what Ricoeur said is reasonable. 19. This is a fairly common belief of Husserl’s contemporaries. Ernst Cassirer, the writer of The Phenomenology of Knowledge, made a similar statement: “In Plato’s opinion, pure change cannot constitute scientific knowledge”. (E. Cassirer, Die Logik der Kulturwissenschaften. Trans. by T. Kwan, Shanghai 2004, p. 96) In line with this, Martin Heidegger also quoted Plato in the beginning of Being and Time: “If we are to understand the problem of Being, our first philosophical step consists in not ‘telling a story’.” (M. Heidegger, Being and Time, trans. by J. Macquarrie and E. Robinson, New York 1962, p. 8) Yet this expression only represents one of Heidegger’s tendencies. Another tendency, in which temporality is combined with history in study, showed up in Sein und Zeit and Der Begriff der Zeit in 1924. Cf. Heidegger, Der Begriff der Zeit, Frankfurt a.M. 2004, especially “IV. Zeitlichkeit und Geschichtlichkeit”, S. 85–103. 20. This is the method of transcendental reduction and essential reduction. The essential feature of the study of history in phenomenology mentioned in the first point actually presupposes the execution of the method of essential reduction. 21. Analyses of this question in detail can be found in Klaus Held: Lebendige Gegenwart, Den Haag 1966, II. Teil, C, S. 79 ff. 22. Marc Bloch, Apologie Pour l’Histoire, Engl. The Historian’s Craft. Trans. by Peter Putnam, New York 1953, p. 28. 23. R. G. Collingwood, The Idea of History, London 1961, pp. 20, 28–31. 24. Arthur Schopenhauer, Die Welt als Wille und Vorstellung, II, Stuttgart/Frankfurt a.M. 1987, S. 564. 25. A.a.O., S. 565. 26. Collingwood, The Idea of History, loc. cit, p. 228. 27. Cf. G. W. F. Hegel, Philosophie der Geschichte, Einleitung, Stuttgart 1961, 1–15. 28. Cf. Immanuel Kant, Kants Gesammelte Schriften, Berlin 1902–1923, Bd. VIII, S. 162 ff.
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29. Heidegger, Sein und Zeit, Tübingen 1979, §§ 74–75, and Der Begriff der Zeit, GA 64, Frankfurt a.M. 2004, “IV. Zeitlichkeit und Geschichtlichkeit”. Although the distinction between “Geschichte” and “Historie” can also be found in Heidegger’s writing, this distinction doesn’t correspond with Kant’s. See also Sein und Zeit, § 72. 30. For instance, cf. J. Derrida, Edmund Husserl, L’origine de la Géométry: Traduction et Introduction. Paris 1962, p. 5. 31. Regarding this theme, “The basic meaning of the concept ‘intellectual intuition’ and its different fate in eastern and western thought”, see L. Ni, The Dimension of Consciousness, Beijing 2007, pp. 90–120. 32. In the Philosophie als strenge Wissenschaft, Husserl talked about “durch innerliche Intuition” die in Geistesleben waltenden “Motivation nachfühlen”, or “durch innerstes Nachleben”, or “im immanenten Schauen dem Fluß der Phänomene nachschauend” etc. (Hua XXV, [323], [313]). Actually, they just mean horizontally seeing an essence.
CHAPTER XI
TEMPORALITY, STREAM OF CONSCIOUSNESS AND THE I IN THE BERNAU MANUSCRIPTS Luis Niel Pourquoi une expérience est-elle impossible, impensable, qui ne soit vécue comme la mienne (. . .)? Jacques Derrida, L’écriture et la différence
Abstract. In the Bernau Manuscripts (1917–1918) Husserl analyzes the deepest level of time-constitution in the stream of consciousness. Although the I does not seem to play any important role in these phenomenological descriptions, Texts No. 14 and 15 are an exception. In this paper I analyze the way Husserl presents the problem of the I here in its relationship to temporality and to the stream of consciousness. I begin by giving a brief account of the meaning of the methodical suspension of the I – a procedure which is typically misunderstood – in order to disclose it as the necessary center and pole of the stream of consciousness. As a center and pole of consciousness, the I should not be identified either with a moment of the stream or with the stream itself. Thus, we can reveal its special temporal character as “supra-temporal” (the I “flows above” the stream of consciousness). After determining that the I is not an experience, we reach to the methodological problem of the givenness of this I. Out of this analysis, the I appears as an “object-I”, objectified through reflection. However, with these reflections we also recognize that this “object-I” is not the original I-pole of my life consciousness, namely the “primal-I”. This “primal-I” (Ur-Ich) – which as an “operating I” should not be confused with other egological levels – appears as the necessary original “mine-ness” of all my experiences. Finally, I show that the primal I is always given together with the stream of consciousness as the innermost original intentional primal-tension.
I. Introduction1 The I is not a clear and straightforward topic within Husserl’s phenomenology.2 Quite the contrary: in his different periods of thought, the I was often analyzed and described from a large number of perspectives. From the rejection of the “pure I” in the first edition of the Logische Untersuchungen,3 continuing through many years of research, Husserl 213 D. Lohmar, I. Yamaguchi (eds.), On Time - New Contributions to the Husserlian Phenomenology of Time, Phaenomenologica 197, DOI 10.1007/978-90-481-8766-9_11, C Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2010
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had new insights that led him to see the I as a central phenomenological issue; nevertheless, in almost every period he held firm to the conviction that one should not fall into I-metaphysics.4 Hence, due to his different and progressively developed analyses over the decades, to his deep, yet usually incomplete and sometimes confusing considerations, and to the difficulties lying in the analysis itself, the role and the “position” of this I in Husserl’s thought is not easy to describe. This is especially true if we consider its relationship to the stream of consciousness and to the immanent temporality constituted by this stream. Thus the multiplicity of interpretations among present-day Husserl scholars is not surprising. The problem becomes even worse when the I is analyzed within the frame of the ultimate levels of constitution, i.e. the level of the constitution of time, where there is not, supposedly, any kind of I in play. The following paper focuses precisely on the description of the I within the phenomenological frame of time-consciousness, with the firm conviction that the investigation of these ultimate levels of constitution opens an un-thought-of and rich dimension for phenomenology. The I which we will analyze in this paper is not the I in the common sense of the word, but rather its most original basis. Unlike Husserl’s later writings, such as the C-Manuscripts, his early investigations on time were not concerned with the I (at least not as an explicit issue).5 That is also the case in the Bernau Manuscripts (hereafter: BM) from 1917 to 1918,6 with the interesting exception of texts No. 14 and 15, where a real phenomenological analysis of the I is undertaken within the investigation of time, sometimes exhibiting traces of a metaphysical language. The following article concentrates on the phenomenological analysis of the I carried out in these two texts (No. 14 and 15) from the BM. More precisely, it focuses on the relationship between this I to the stream of consciousness and on the problems which result from this relationship – for example, the relation of the I to time and its position in time, its “nature” and possible intelligibility. By means of these shorts texts about time, the stream of consciousness, and the I, we will follow the trend of this phenomenological description, in order to underline some central phenomenological results. The following theses summarize the outcomes of our analysis: 1. The I as pole is a central and necessary pole of the stream of consciousness.
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2. The I is not to be identified with the stream of consciousness, nor with a moment of it; the I is a necessary center of the concrete life of consciousness, which is found there (i.e. in the stream of consciousness). 3. The I as such is supra-temporal (i.e. it does not have a determined position in time (Zeitstelle) and it should not be reduced to its individuations; it “flows above” the stream). 4. According to the phenomenological principles, the I must be given by intuition and described through reflection: out of this analysis arises an “object-I.” 5. However, this I, “objectualized” through reflection, points to myself, to my own I itself, which is not really an object, but a primal-state-I (Urstand-Ich) or an “operating I”, a living center of every objectivity and every experiencing. 6. This original I discovered through phenomenological description, as self-identical content-less, is to be understood as “primal-I” (Ur-Ich), i.e. as the ultimate level of I-ness (Ichlichkeit), as a necessary original “mine-ness” or necessary life-“subject” of all my experiences, which should not be confused with other perspectives of the I, which arise from “higher” phenomenological levels (e.g. the transcendental concrete ego). 7. This primal-I, in its phenomenological concreteness, is never alone as substrate in itself. On the contrary it is only given together with the original constituting stream of life (both of them making up the concreteness of original life), as a first, innermost and equally original intentional primal-tension between stream and I.
II. The Meaning of the “Suspension” (AUSSCHALTUNG ) of the I and the Reduction to Original Sensuality Already at the beginning of Text No. 14 Husserl executes a “phenomenological reduction” (Hua XXXIII, 274) that must lead to my stream of consciousness. The function of this reduction is not only to suspend the “world” (Hua XXXIII, 275), but to dive deep into the sphere of sensuality as well. In that sense, the first task of this “phenomenological reduction” is overstepped by a further methodical “reduction to ‘original’ sensuality” (ibid.). This reduction (one of the deepest and
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probably most difficult reductions),7 which has already been previously performed although “without a clear designation” (ibid.), leads to a phenomenological description of the “real given” (reell Gegebene), where everything related to my I-ness is to be simply forgotten: “I want to forget now a my-self (Mich-Selbst)” (Hua XXXIII, 274). What still remains after the ‘suspension’ of my I-ness are the “ ‘complete I-less’ sensual tendencies: sensual tendencies of association and reproduction”; in short, the “passive intentionality” (Hua XXXIII, 276). In these texts Husserl repeats several times that within this deepened reduction to passive intentionality my I must be thought “out of play” (ibid.). Yet the problem appears when the question of the sense and meaning of this suspension of my I is posed. In spite of the methodical relevance (cf. Hua XXXIII, 275) of this reduction and the following description of the pure sensuality of the drives and allures which arise from this methodical procedure, this “leaving aside” of my I must be understood as a “mere abstraction” (ibid.). That reduction gives me only one “ ‘abstract’ (. . .) structure of passivity of the original sensuality” (Hua XXXIII, 276) of my stream of consciousness. In other words, “something” is methodically extracted from the concreteness of my ego’s life, namely my I.8 As it will be shown, the concrete of life is my I-life, my I-like stream of consciousness. Even when we can clearly see, due to the phenomenological description, that several syntheses take place without a certain I-involvement, this certainly does not mean that such passive processes are simply I-less.9 And even when no active turning of the I occurs, simply the mine-ness of the passivity means that “some kind” of I is necessarily there. In the concreteness of life, passivity should be always understood in conjunction with I-ness.10 Husserl’s scare-quotes around “complete I-less” tendencies (ibid.) indicate the methodical character of this abstracting reduction.11 We must now turn our attention to this original I that is also found in the passivity of consciousness, and explore the way to it.
III. The I as Pole or Center of My Stream of Consciousness Through the previously analyzed reduction, we have reached the realm of mere sensual elements of my subjectivity, in order to show phenomenologically the possibility of a constitution of immanent time.12
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The problem with this methodical demarcation of my I-ness lies in the fact that – as we are going to show in the following phenomenological description – the wider concrete sphere of subjectivity is not made up of only these mere sensual elements in the immanent time of my stream of consciousness. In addition to it, there is also “something” necessary within this subjectivity, which as center of this stream does not take part in the immanent time of this stream. According to this description of my subjectivity, the concept of subjectivity should be so widely understood as to entail, on the one hand, the subjective flowing of my stream of experiences (i.e. everything which makes up the field of my immanent time) and, on the other hand, the “centering” pole; not only a pole of objectivity, but also a pole of the constituting experiences (Erlebnisse) themselves as well: “Here, it is not only what is intentional (das Intentionale) that is a temporal object (zeitlicher Gegenstand), but also the intending experience (das intendierende Erlebnis), this last one also a ‘pole’ itself, and all these poles lie on coinciding time series (sich deckende Zeitreihen), and all these time series in their unity of coincidence make up the whole experiencing (Erleben), the stream of experiencing” (Hua XXXIII, 279). As is evident from the previous citation, there is an intentional pole-relationship between my intended noematic objects and my intending experiences, but there is also an intentional pole-relationship between my intending flowing experiencing (Erleben) and my subject-pole, i.e. a relationship between the subjective immanent time experiences and my centering I, as identity point, as reference point in which the time-flowing life is centered. The identical I makes up the “central point, the point in which everything this layer is effectively centered” (ibid.). Hence, every immanent object in my stream of consciousness has necessarily an intentional, internal relationship to this central point of my life of consciousness: “Thus, every immanent object is in a peculiar relationship with a distinguished I-object” (Hua XXXIII, 284). As was already mentioned, my transcendental subjectivity is not only my stream of consciousness, but also “something” which, although it is also always found in my stream of consciousness, should be neither identified with this stream, nor considered as a part or a moment of it. This I as continuous center of the flowing life of my subjectivity should not therefore be identified with my consciousness. We have then
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to understand that there is a special intentional relationship between my I and my stream of consciousness. How do they (I and stream) differ from or rather relate to each other? My I is always with my stream of consciousness and lives through it. It is the necessary reference of all my conscious life, even when it is not active: there is no consciousness (at any level) without an original internal-intentional relationship to my I. That is, consciousness is always I-consciousness or, in other words, when I am conscious I am always conscious that it is I who am conscious. In accordance with Husserl’s accurate descriptions, the mistake of considering this I only as center of activity should be avoided. That the I as identity center is always there, does not at all mean that it is constantly active. This I is not a synonym for cogito (qua cogitans): “The I is not continuously throughout its whole immanent time [a] grasping I” (Hua XXXIII, 284). The I is not an act, but rather the center of every act and affection. All acts are acts of my I; the same for affections. Therefore, “even when the I does not enter in specific affections or in action, it is nevertheless constantly there, inseparable from the stream of consciousness and continuously during through it” (Hua XXXIII, 280). According to that and in order to describe it, this I should be abstracted within the whole of transcendental subjectivity (my concrete transcendental ego), i.e. separated from the stream of consciousness, and in that sense considered as content-less, since these contents of the stream make up my life of consciousness itself and are precisely this life. My I lives however, as can be seen from the above citation, through these contents of the stream; and it should be remarked that these are the contents of my stream of consciousness. For that reason, this I, my I, should not be taken as a moment of my flowing and changing stream of consciousness: “The I is (. . .) not a moment appearing to the ‘data’ of the hyletic stream” (Hua XXXIII, 441).13 Consequently, given that it is not a moment of the stream of consciousness, no temporality (neither transcendent nor immanent) should be attributed to it. Everything that lasts has “in every phase of the duration a new content, yet the I has no content in time, nothing different and nothing identical, nothing to be ‘intuited’, perceived, grasped. Only the affections, only the acts, which have appeared in time, have their contents and their durations” (Hua XXXIII, 280). Every content qua experience-content is something
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intuitive (in the broadest sense of the word, i.e. without making any distinction among perceptions, fantasies, recollections, etc.14 ). And since every content is successively presented to consciousness by a primal impression in its interplay with retentions and protentions in timeconsciousness, this content is constituted as temporal object and therefore occupies a certain “position” in time. As we will see, there is a central difference with respect to temporality between the I and the stream of consciousness. Hence, within my subjectivity there is something “being (Seiendes), temporal (Zeitliches), and not everything subjective is something temporal, is something individual as something individualized through a unique position in time. What we do not have in the stream of experiences, above all, is the I itself, the identical center, the pole to which the whole content of the stream of experiences is related, the I which is affected by this or that content” (Hua XXXIII, 277). In this point, the temporality of the contents of my stream with its changeability differs from that always-identical I which underlies it and which neither changes nor is temporal. It should be noted that this I (my I) that we are now analyzing, i.e. this mine-ness of every experience which we discover by descending phenomenologically into the deepest layers of my subjectivity, should not be confused with the concrete personal I. This phenomenological level of description – here reached by executing and intensifying the scope of the phenomenological reduction – is not that of the concrete ego, my monadic ego; i.e. the phenomenological regard (Blick) is not directed now toward my personal I with its history, its habitualities and consequently with changes in time, but toward an I which underlies this personal I (in a lower and more elemental level of constitution) and stays in relation of foundation (Fundierungsverhältnis) to it, as point of identity of my stream of consciousness, as its necessary identity. It is possible to infer from the previous considerations, that this underlying I has a peculiar relationship – not easy to describe – with the stream of consciousness and with the temporality which is constituted there. On the one hand, my I is not to be found in the stream of consciousness. On the other hand, my I only lives through the temporality of my flowing experiences. How should all this be understood, and how can we avoid the paradox?
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That the I is not in the stream only means that the I is neither an experience nor a part of it. If the I were an experience, it should be then considered as “content”, as “part” of the stream, and qua content as something changing and not firm (because the contents are always new, since they are always presented by new primal impressions). Yet if that were the case of the I, the identical center would somehow disappear. The I is not presented by a primal impression, but it is the very same way of being mine of this primal impression. The I, which is here described as the identical background of every experience, does not change at all. Only the experiences (Erlebnisse) of this (my) I change. Thus everything in the pure innerness, everything lived and living in the stream of consciousness “can change, only the I cannot. It is the necessary immanent individuality; the objects change and the affections change, the turning-toward etc. (. . .), hence it changes something, which can precisely change (. . .) we can say everywhere here ‘individual, therefore accidental’, but precisely not with respect to the I (. . .) it is the necessary individual and the only one” (Hua XXXIII, 285–286). It is consequently clear that Husserl opposes the “accidental” character of the flowing experiences qua contents of my stream of consciousness to the “necessity” of the I. The sense of the I, as point of reference of all life, must always remain identical. The changeability of temporality does not concern this very ultimate level of I-ness. To say it again: we are not describing my personal or narrative I, but “something” which underlies it. In this way, Husserl tries to reach the ultimate level of I-ness, and so that which makes up every givenness of experience as mine, i.e. as my experience. We can phenomenologically vary our experience and think about certain cases in which supposedly my I would not be there. So I can deceive myself; I can even forget my whole past, but what essentially remains is the phenomenological fact, that, what it is given (independently of what it is) is always something given to me, as given to my-self. Therefore, fully aside from the kind of the experiences I may have (perception, remembrances, appresentations, etc.), everything I find in my stream of experience is always mine. Even when I, for instance, fantasize that I am somebody else, or when I a read a book or watch a movie and I concentrate on what I see or read, that does not wipe out the constant-Iperspective at all, which is always mine, since even this “perspective from another person” comes always to givenness from my own experience.
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Phenomenologizing [this word does not actually belong to the texts that we are currently analyzing], describing my experience, I not only find in this field of experience my-experiencing-of-something (Erlebenvon-Etwas) and my-experiencing-of, but also that this experiencing is “my”-experiencing. Therefore, the I should be phenomenologically differentiated from these experiences, since the former is the “one” who lives through the latter:15 “Every act has the act-pole, the I, which is not only numerically identical, but also the same absolutely identical sense I (Sinn Ich) for all time-points of time, which is there for it [i.e. the I], of the experiences, which are its [i.e. the time-points] temporal contents[:] something identical with respect to form (ein Identisches der Form), in a certain way something ideally identical, which is temporally ‘localized’ over and over again, according to its acts, its states, and yet is not really temporal” (Hua XXXIII, 280). With this citation, the question again arises: How should this I be considered with respect to its temporality? How is it possible to state, on the one hand, that the I is always localizable in time and, on the other hand and at the same time, to underline that it is not really in time? We arrive, therefore, at the question of the temporality of the I. IV. The Supra-Temporality of the I The I is the “identical pole for all experiences (Erlebnisse) [the noetical] and for everything ontically included in the intentionality of the experiences itself (e.g. intended nature as intended) [the noematical]” (Hua XXXIII, 277). The I is the pole “of every time-series and necessarily as ‘supra’-temporal (. . .) the I, for which time constitutes itself, for which temporality, individual singular objectivity within the intentionality of the sphere of experiences, is there, but which is not temporal” (ibid.). According to Husserl’s statements, we should understand this I as the identical and necessary pole of everything noetical and noematical, as such as not being in time (i.e. in the time series of constituted time) and therefore as “supra-temporal”. But what does this mean? How can I describe this phenomenologically? Due to the fact that this original I is always there, “flowing above” the stream of consciousness in a certain primal-now (Ur-Jetzt),16 independent
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of the “nature” of experiences and consequently from their temporality (its always new and successive “nows”), this I should not be considered as “something” which belongs to this temporal stream. Nevertheless, it could be argued that the I is in time, since it is always there, in every time, together with my experiencing. The I is still somehow in time. This quasi-“paradoxical” temporality of my I should be understood according to a participation or non-participation in the temporality of my stream of experiences. In other words, although my I is always in time (i.e. it always accompanies every experiencing in the stream of consciousness), in a sense that one cannot meaningfully articulate that the I is a sort of “godly entity” which does not have anything to do with the life of my consciousness and could be fully independent of this experiencing; however, parallel to that, one should always consider that this I is a constant “prevailing” (Waltendes) over the stream, flowing above the constant changeability of the experiences. It is “always” me, who lives through my experiences. And according to this “always-there”, one must speak of a kind of “supra-temporality” (or perhaps rather of omni-temporality) of the I.17 The I does not “shrink” to a determinate temporal individuation; from thence arises its special “nature” as well as its “temporality” (or supra-temporality) and its special relationship to the stream of consciousness and to the temporality which is constituted there: “ ‘Some being’ (Seiendes) as something being individually, something bound to position in time and something individualized through it. The I not something ‘being’ in that way” (Hua XXXIII, 278, footnote). My I stands and remains “always” identical over and through my stream of experiences: “The I is ‘staying and remaining’ (stehendes und bleibendes) I, it is not something emerging or vanishing like an experience (Erlebnis). It is not something extended temporally, and thus different in every time-phase and only the same as something changing (. . .) It is also identical in discontinuity” (Hua XXXIII, 280). My experience of happiness at the visit of a friend can disappear after a couple of days, and likewise my fantasy of a possible trip to Italy, or the beautiful remembrance of my childhood vacations; but my original I can never disappear from my stream of consciousness. I can represent my death, but I cannot represent it consciously as not-being-there. In that sense, in the end it is impossible to represent my death, as an absolute
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absence of my I-consciousness, because this conscious I is always implied in the representation itself. Therefore, everything from my stream of consciousness can vanish. The affections, the turning-towards and the position-takings, all these ways of acting (Verhaltensweisen) have “necessary unity in the ‘eternal’ I (. . .), the omni-temporal individual, which [only] through these ways of acting relates to all objects, and can relate to its ways of acting and to itself, and finds itself in time, and so is itself a time-object (Zeitgegenstand)” (Hua XXXIII, 286). But by emphasizing this supra- or omni-temporality of the I, we should not eo ipso forget its continual locatability (Lokalisierbarkeit). As we see in the former citation, the I relates to something, even to itself, only through its ways of acting. “The I, which acts that way, is identical; [however] in the content nothing is something identical” (Hua XXXIII, 287). But now we come to an important phenomenological problem, namely: if my I is to be identified neither with some noematic object nor with my flowing experiences of it, i.e., if my I is not a content in the common sense of the word, how can I then, independent of my experiences, describe it phenomenologically, or, before even this, how can I grasp it phenomenologically?
V. Object-I and Operating-I: The Graspability of the I and the Primal Originality of the I18 With the former question we come up against a very difficult phenomenological problem, namely how can we describe or even grasp certain border phenomena, in our case this original I, the way of access to which is not the same as that of a normal object, precisely because it is not an object, but every object’s opposing pole. Husserl himself saw the difficulties of such phenomenological descriptions: “It almost lies at the bounds of a possible description” (Hua XXXIII, 278, footnote). But, despite these difficulties he still tried to uncover this original I, precisely through its phenomenological description. The phenomenological reduction makes this way possible. We direct this reduction towards the identical I, i.e. in a reflexive turning toward my-self, toward my I, which stands there in its continuous supra-temporality, flowing above each and every experience. But my [phenomenologizing and at the same time
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living] I directs toward itself, toward my I, and takes it-self as an “object”. The reflection directs towards this “operating I (fungierendes Ich), which precisely in this reflection becomes objective (gegenständlich) as the identical center of functions (Funktionszentrum), as the performer of all these performances (Leistungen)” (Hua XXXIII, 278). The I is then considered as an “object” within the phenomenological description, by means of reflective acts. Reflecting, I perceive myself as an object (in my inner perception19 ); i.e. I understand now my original I (which always remains there) as an object of my experience.20 However, when we consider accurately this givenness, we find at the same time that it is a question of a peculiar object, an object that simultaneously does and does not allow us to call it “object”. According to the phenomenological Principle of all Principles,21 despite the limitations of its givenness, this I must be originally given: “Certainly, the I also only exists (ist), as long as it can become an object to itself; also the I is for itself an actual and potential object. But it is however the subject, for whom everything else is [an] immanent object, and at the same time, it is an object to itself, by finding itself as an immanent object in the form of immanent time. As subject for all its objects, it has no fortuitousness (Zufälligkeit), but rather necessity” (Hua XXXIII, 285). From this important passage, we can see that this I as living pole, i.e. as subject, is always something necessary. This living “I-subject” remains at all times the living subject of the intentional relationship, even when, “phenomenologizing”, it (or even better “I”) considers (consider) itself (myself ) as an object-I. This “I-object” (as a result of the “split” (Spaltung)) remains qua phenomenological givenness something accidental, in the sense that qua object of the experience in the reflective attitude it must not necessarily be given. However, this givenness shows “something more original”, which always operates (fungiert) in its liveliness (Lebendigkeit). Reflecting, I find myself, from out of my experience, as my I-object, which refers to my I that always lives through my stream of consciousness and which remains continuously there as “something” necessary. But precisely here lies the well-know problem of the Krisis: the “paradox of subjectivity”,22 namely, I find myself as living subject and at the very same time I consider myself as an object of the living I. Due to these reflections, we have to recognize eo ipso, that we still have not fully reached this original I in its living originality, that “something”
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slips through our fingers; what we find phenomenologically, is something within the boundaries of its temporal and objective givenness, exactly at the limit between its grasping and its graspability. Thus Husserl remarks: “the living source-point of this arriving (Eintreten) [of acts and affections] and so the living point of being (der lebendige Seinspunkt), by which the I itself comes into subject-relation (Subjektbeziehung) with something temporal and becomes itself something temporal and durable, is in principle not directly perceptible. Only reflection, which is something that follows later (Nachkommendes), and only as the limit of what spreads out (Verströmenden) in the flow of time, is the I graspable, from itself as grasping and graspable originary (originärem) I” (Hua XXXIII, 287). Hence, the question remains: How can we then understand this I that I only grasp through its objectivation (Vergegenständlichung), but of which I am aware through the most basic evidences (Einsichten)23 of its always-being-present in the flowing stream, but which I can somehow barely “touch” in its originality because of the radical closeness of its always-being-there? What is then this, my original I? The problem lies perhaps in the question itself, which results from the phenomenological analysis of this “Whatness” (Was-Sein). I myself, “reflecting” as “subject” and “pole” from all my descriptions, analyze and describe my I, and performing this, I consider myself as an object. As was already remarked, it is still a matter of a very peculiar object that does not exactly suit the way of “other” objects. The I is then “not ‘something-being’, but the counterpart for everything existing (Seiendes), not an object (Gegen-stand), but a primal-state (Ur-stand) for every objectivity” (Hua XXXIII, 277). Do we not fall back with this statement to the continuously avoided danger of I-metaphysics? At this point, Husserl perhaps reaches some of the limits between phenomenological description and speculation. Certainly, it should not be forgotten that this “primal-state” is and remains an evidence (Einsicht) of my own description, i.e. a givenness of the intuitability of my experience. But with the givenness of this intuition, something slips away from its originality. Something of it remains out of reach, something which lies beyond our intuitive and conceptual means, these latter building upon the former. Thus we are in a position to differentiate: (1) the “objectI” (Gegenstand-Ich) that we reach by the phenomenological descriptions of my I (in a limited way, due to the “nature” of this “peculiar” object);
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(2) the “primal-state-I” (Urstand-Ich), as a primal evidence (Einsicht), that I [subject] myself am always this “object-I” [object], that I am always my operating I, as subject of my life of consciousness or temporal streaming, a subject which is present24 at all times in the stream of my consciousness, as the permanent and necessary “mine-ness” of the (my) life of consciousness.25 It is nonetheless evident that it is one and the same I that must be analytically distinguished through the reflective attitude of phenomenological description. Concerning the access to this (my) original I or this mine-ness, the problem lies evidently on the very peculiar givenness26 of my original operating-ness, as an object-I to be described through conceptual means: “Strictly speaking, the I should not be named I, nor be named at all, since it has then already been objectified. It is the nameless above everything graspable (Fassbaren), that which is above everything, not staying, nor hanging, nor being, but rather ‘operating’, as grasping, as evaluating, etc.” (Hua XXXIII, 277–278). From this passage, we can see the “nature” of this (my) primal-state-I as operating, i.e. as “something”, which is always there and which “underlies” my experience, as I myself experiencing. In conclusion, following Husserl we find phenomenologically, at the ultimate levels of constitution of my transcendental subjectivity, not only an “operating intentionality” of the stream of consciousness (the so called “longitudinal-intentionality”) but also “correlating” to this an “operating I”. These are probably the two most primitive and original essential structures of my life of consciousness, and the deepest level of experience that phenomenology can reach in its continuous investigation of intuitiveness. Husserl summarizes the phenomenological way to intuitiveness as follows: “When we return to the original constituting stream of life, it has an essential structure, according to which sensual primal impressions appear in an incessant primal emerging (Urentstehen), with accidental (. . .) content. Together with and correlative to it there is only one primal-I (einziges Ur-Ich), which belongs to the stream, not entering in accidentally as it is by an objective datum, but necessarily present as numerically singular subject-pole of I-affections and I-ways of acting, which themselves again underlie the objective constitution of time” (Hua XXXIII, 286).27
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VI. Concluding Considerations: The Intentional Primal-Tension (URSPANNUNG ) Between My Primal-I and My Stream of Consciousness On the basis of the former analyses of these texts of the Bernau Manuscripts, it is now clear that what was called here the primal-I should not be identified with the transcendental ego (as field of experience) that was analyzed in later writings (e.g. in the Cartesian Meditations). The transcendental ego is rather my reduced ego in its transcendental concretion, i.e. an “independent concretum”,28 by which is meant not only this primal-I but also its experiencing, its stream of consciousness in its continual constitution of time as field of experience. All this, analytically separated, makes up the actual concrete sphere of subjectivity. So this primal-I (as pole) should be understood in a certain way as only an abstraction. Specifically, although it is not to be identified with certain singular experiences nor with a moment or a part of it, we experience the primal-I precisely through experience itself, in its necessary relationship with my stream of consciousness, not as being this stream but rather as the way in which every givenness of my experience (in the broadest sense) happens to be always mine. Nor should this primal-I be identified with an active I. The “ego cogito” or the “I think” can evidently appear in addition to it; yet they should not be equated with this primal level of I-ness. The primal-I or primal-state that I can discover phenomenologically throughout a more in-depth description is not simply I-activity but “something” that underlies every activity and even passivity. Consequently, it is not an I-think but just an I-, which by thinking, feeling, or even by passive sensing (Empfinden) is always there. This underlying I is therefore not to be excluded from passivity.29 It is indeed the “minimum” I-ness of my experience, the ultimate level of I-ness, the most inner mine-ness which always underlies all my experiences.30 This primal-I that Husserl discovered in the Bernau Manuscripts is neither a logical a priori nor a transcendental condition in general. It is the result of an in-depth, radicalized and more attentive description of my own experience, as being always mine. I find it in every experience I have (simply for being mine), and I find it phenomenologically in the most fundamental level, in the form of an
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intentional primal-tension between my stream of consciousness and my primal-I. [T]he I lives its original life such that it is continuously an experiencing of ever-new content, extending itself into time, but in such a way that the unity-giving, contentless identical [thing], is not the substrate, but rather the subject of life, which relates to objects, to what is alien to the I, in this and in that way. (Hua XXXIII, 287–288.)
Notes 1. I would like to thank Andrés Colapinto and Elizabeth Mader for their help with English grammar and style. 2. As Dorion Cairns remarks in his English translation to the Cartesianische Meditationen, he prefers to translate the German word Ich as Ego (in capital letter) and the Latin word Ego as ego (cf. Edmund Husserl, Cartesian Meditations, translated by Dorion Cairns. Hague 1973, p. 3, note 1). This tendency to use the word Ego (either in Capital or in lower case) is relatively generalized in the English word. Nevertheless, I think that the difference between the I (Ich) and the Ego (Ego), even when in some texts of Husserl it seems to disappear, has important phenomenological implications. For instance, it is in general very clear in the Cartesian Meditations that the word Ego is used to refer to the concrete transcendental subjectivity as a field, contrasting with the concept of Ich that usually signifies the I as pole, as center-pole of all noematic objectivity and of all noetic life. For this reason I will maintain this difference (I for Ich and Ego for Ego) in English. 3. It is well known that Husserl advanced a “Humean” rejection of the idea of a pure-I in the first edition of the Logical Investigation (1900–1901), in clear contrast to the philosophy of Paul Natorp: “Nun muss ich freilich gestehen, dass ich dieses primitive Ich als notwendiges Beziehungszentrum schlechterdings nicht zu finden vermag” (Hua XIX/1, 374). 4. “Inzwischen habe ich es zu finden gelernt, bzw. gelernt, mich durch Besorgnisse vor den Ausartungen der Ichmetaphysik in dem reinen Erfassen des Gegebenen nicht beirren zu lassen” (Hua XIX/1, 374. Footnote from the Second Edition, 1913). Unfortunately we cannot reconstruct here the whole history of the problem of Husserl’s I. 5. One interesting exception is the brief reference to the I in the “Seefelder Manuskripte”, e.g.: “Wie verhält sich Individualität des Ich und ‘seiner’ Phänomene (. . .) zur phänomenologischen Individualität? Das ist es natürlich schwierig, zu sagen, was das Phänomenologische des ‘Ich’ ausmacht” (Hua X, 253). 6. All translations of the Bernau Manuscripts are mine. I leave all other citations from other texts in the original language. 7. Cf. Dieter Lohmar, Die Idee der Reduktion. Husserls Reduktionen – und ihr gemeinsamer, methodischer Sinn. In: Die erscheinende Welt. Festschrift für Klaus Held. Ed. by Heinrich Hüni and Peter Trawny, Berlin, 2002, pp. 760–761. 8. “Vom Ich als identischem Pol und als Substrat von Habitualitäten unterscheiden wir das in voller Konkretion genommene Ego” (Hua I, 102, my emphasis); cf. Hua VI, 187; cf. Anne Montavont, De la passivité dans la phénoménologie de Husserl, Paris 1999, pp. 53–54. 9. In his excellent book Shigeru Taguchi calls our attention to a misunderstanding in the use of the expression ‘I-less’. In the context of passive synthesis Husserl uses this concept to point out the non-active participation of the I in passive processes (Das Problem des ‘Ur-Ich’ bei Husserl. Die Frage nach der selbstverständlichen ‘Nähe’ des Selbst, Dordrecht 2006, p. 117). 10. Cf. Hua XXXIV, 228.
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11. As a result of this methodical schematizing of the levels of foundation (Fundierungsstufen), we have to distinguish: 1) passive intentionality as sensual tendencies, 2) the irritability and reactions of the I, 3) the realm of the intellectus agens, of attention (Hua XXXIII, 276). 12. All other investigations of the BM take place within the frame of this methodical reduction of the I. 13. “[D]ieses Ich ist das Subjekt aller Erlebnisse und das Subjekt für alle seine Gegenstände als Einheitspol seiner Intentionalitäten; aber es ist nicht selbst ein Erlebnis (. . .) das Ich ist im reellen Strom der Erlebnisse nicht zu finden, weder als Erlebnis noch als Teil, als reelles Moment der Erlebnisse” (Hua IX, 207–208, my emphasis). 14. For this broader and richer understanding of the term “intuition” (Anschauung), cf. Jagna Brudzinska, Die phänomenologische Erfahrung und die Frage nach dem Unbewussten. Überlegungen im Anschluss an Husserl und Freud. In: Interdisziplinäre Perspektiven der Phänomenologie. Hrsg. D. Lohmar und D. Fonfara, Dordrecht 2006. 15. This underlying I is not a synonym for the stream of consciousness. This I rather lives through the medium of the stream: “die Einheit des Bewusstseins und die Einheit des darin befassten intentionalen Erlebnisstromes [ist] das Medium, in dem das Ich lebt” (Hua XIV, 45). 16. The primal-now (a concept further developed by Husserl in some later manuscripts) is the flowing living present, as nunc stans, as the primal-modus, which cannot be modalized. Unfortunately we cannot address this here. Cf. Klaus Held, Lebendige Gegenwart. Die Frage nach der Seinsweise des transzendentalen Ich bei Edmund Husserl, entwickelt am Leitfaden der Zeitproblematik. Den Haag 1966. 17. Cf. Edmund Husserl, Erfahrung und Urteil, § 64 c. On the specific characteristics of the (supra) temporality of the I, cf. Taguchi, Das Problem des ‘Ur-Ich’, 70–71. 18. Zahavi speaks of Husserl’s “patent indecision” in regards to this point: on the one hand, Husserl understands the I as an object (Gegenstand), yet on the other hand, it is not an object at all (Dan Zahavi, Subjectivity and Selfhood. Investigating the First-Person Perspective. Cambridge 2005, pp. 227–228, footnote 6). In my opinion, in this case the problem lies in the essential tension which underlies this phenomenological “something”, that on the one hand must be intuitively given and on the other hand always remains as that ineluctable “instance” to which everything is given. 19. Understood as phenomenological reflection, not as the inner consciousness of itself, that is as self-consciousness or self-awareness. 20. “Dieses Ich ist selbst ein Gegenstand der spezifischen Icherfahrung, in der sich das Ich auf sich selbst richtet” (Hua XIV, 42). “Das Ich ist nur durch eine Reflexion von einem Gegenständlichen des Ich (einem für sich bewussten, für sich irgendwie vorstelligen) gegeben” (Hua XIV, 53). 21. There has been considerable discussion of this central phenomenological principle, mostly in the context of the relationship between static and genetic phenomenology. For certain interpretations the latter would lead to certain overthrow of this principle. On the contrary, I would argue that this principle is never abandoned by Husserl. Even when he considers motivations as our phenomenological leading clues for researching genetic phenomena, a base of intuitiveness (in the broadest sense of the word) as source of validity – and consequently the Principle of all Principles – remains. Unfortunately I cannot address this discussion here. 22. Cf. Hua VI, § 53. 23. Taguchi speaks of a primal-evidence as natural-closeness of the primal-I (selbstverständliche Nähe des Ur-Ich) (Das Problem des ,Ur-Ich’, Kap. VII.2). 24. A comparison with Kant would surely lead to many issues that cannot be addressed here. It should however be noted here that this “accompanying I” is not, as in Kant, a necessary principle that guarantees the synthetic unity of multiplicity (Cf. Immanuel Kant, Kritik der reinen Vernunft. Hamburg 1998, B 134, B 136–137), but is rather the most inner element of my experience, which I precisely discover through inquiring phenomenologically into the experience.
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25. In the excellent Chapter 5, Zahavi speaks very accurately of the “quality of mineness” as the characteristic of the first-personal givenness of experiences (Dan Zahavi, Subjectivity and Selfhood, p. 124). But I disagree with his interpretation of this dimension as an integral part of the structure of the stream of consciousness (p. 125), since, although this primal-I in its concreteness is never separated from the stream, it is nevertheless neither an experience nor a part, a moment or a quality of it, but stays in a sort of intentional “primal-tension” with the stream, making up the first and primal difference within my subjectivity. In that sense, I agree with Taguchi’s understanding of it as “inner difference” and “insurmountable alien-ness” (Das Problem des ‘Ur-Ich’, p. xvii; cf. Chapter VII.3). 26. Jean-Luc Marion speaks of it as a “phénomène saturé” (Étant donné. Essai d’une phénoménologie de la donation. Paris 1997, § 21). 27. Eugen Fink points out this singular primal-I, “das dem Unterschied von ego und alter ego voraufliegt, das erst den Plural aus sich hervorbrechen lässt” (Eugen Fink, Nähe und Distanz. Freiburg / München 1976, p. 223). 28. “Das einzige absolut selbständige Konkretum, das denkbar ist, ist danach das absolute Ego, die konkrete transzendentale Subjektivität” (Hua XXXV, 334). “Indessen ist das Selbst gegenüber seinen Erlebnissen abstrakt, und jeder der ‘ich’ sagt oder ‘mein Selbst’, der meint ein Konkretes. Somit ist das Ich, das in seinem Erlebnisstrom sich auslebt, und in eins mit diesem Strom selbst das konkrete ‘Selbst’ ” (Hua XIV, 49, my emphasis). “The Husserlian ego [i.e. in the former indicated sense] does not account for the unity and identity of consciousness. It is that unity and identity (. . .) The ego is a whole, constituting itself” (John Brough, Husserl’s Ego. Another Thrashing of a Death Horse? SPEP 2005, p. 230). 29. Cf. Dan Zahavi, Self-Awareness and Alterity. A Phenomenological Investigation. Evanston 1999, pp. 144, 152–153. 30. “Alles, was wir Bewusstsein nennen, ist als Lebensmedium des Ich in besonderem Sinn ichlich” (Hua XIV, 51).
CHAPTER XII
A RETURN TO RETENTION AND RECOLLECTION: AN ANALYSIS OF THE POSSIBLE MUTUAL INFLUENCE OF CONSCIOUSNESS AND ITS CONTENT Lanei M. Rodemeyer Abstract. Most analyses of Husserl’s phenomenology of inner timeconsciousness focus on the structures of this aspect of phenomenology. Inner time-consciousness is, after all, the foundation for all phenomenological research and for the relation of consciousness to its objects. However, the fact that I can make mistakes, that I can think I am recollecting when I actually am not, forces us to consider not just the structure of inner time-consciousness, but its content as well. How could any noetic act be incorrect? This paper takes up the intersection of Husserl’s analyses of recollection and belief in order to identify how apodictic acts of consciousness can be mistaken. In doing so, I examine: (1) the relation of the content of consciousness with its activity; (2) the importance of the context of an experience to how I take it up as actual or not; and (3) the relation of retention and recollection with regard to their content. Ultimately, I show that, at this level of analysis, no experience can be taken in isolation. Rather, every experience must be taken up in light of the horizons of its context, both meaningfully and temporally.
I. Introduction Most analyses of Husserl’s phenomenology of inner time-consciousness focus on the structures of this aspect of phenomenology. Inner timeconsciousness is, after all, the foundation for all phenomenological research and for the relation of consciousness to its objects. However, the fact that I can make mistakes, that I can think I am recollecting when I actually am not, forces us to consider not just the structure of inner time-consciousness, but its content as well. How could any noetic act be incorrect? In order to examine this question, I look to the intersection of Husserl’s discussions of recollection and belief. Husserl discusses each, separately and prolifically, throughout his career. However, the answer to the question above lies in where he discusses recollection and belief 231 D. Lohmar, I. Yamaguchi (eds.), On Time - New Contributions to the Husserlian Phenomenology of Time, Phaenomenologica 197, DOI 10.1007/978-90-481-8766-9_12, C Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2010
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together. This analysis will lead us to consider the relation of consciousness with its content, the relation of retention and recollection with regard to their content, and the importance of context to any type of experience.
II. A Review of the Relation of Retention and Recollection As is popularly known, retention is the “holding on” of what has “justpassed” through the primordial impression of the living present. It is, along with the living present as a whole, pre-temporal, for the very fact that its activity participates in carrying out the constitution of temporal experiences, and thus of temporality itself. In its activity, retention both maintains just-experienced content in the present and modifies itself in an ongoing development of “retentions in retentions”. Recollection, likewise, has two aspects to its activity. First, it maintains its content so that it can be re-experienced in the present as memories. Second (and more commonly described in Husserl’s writings on temporalizing consciousness), recollection is that very activity of re-presenting content as “having been” in present consciousness. It has been my contention in the past, and it continues to be so, that this description of how we remember leaves a gap in its explanation of our experiences. It does show how we experience in the present, how consciousness is extended beyond any immediate “now-point” in order to give meaning to the now. It also shows how we carry out fully-constituted recollections, remembering whole specific events. What it does not show, however, is how there are many experiences that are a part of us all the time – not actively remembered, but always quietly in play in our experiences. My ability to speak English, for example, is not something that I actively remember learning, but it must remain present for me as I engage in speaking, writing, and often, even thinking. For this reason, and based on Husserl’s writings, I introduced retention as having two interrelated aspects, “near” and “far” retention, which carry out somewhat different functions. While both aspects of retention participate in the modification of retentions in retentions, “near” retention is focused in the activity of the living present, in present constitution. Basically, it carries out the activities described above for retention as a whole. “Far” retention, on the other hand, maintains the experience of “types” and
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generalities (and, possibly, highly impressive and/or traumatic events) in the living present. This is not an active awareness; rather, this function of far retention participates in, and is an important foundation for, passive synthesis. It holds certain types of experiences in consciousness “in the background”, as it were. These types of experiences are present, at the ready, but remain unnoticed until specifically reflected upon. My abilities to speak English and German, to dance salsa, to scramble an egg never need to be recalled; I simply engage them when necessary. Thus far retention is primarily involved in associations and “general” memories that participate in knowledge we rely upon regularly, but without active recall. It is a passive, yet essential, aspect of our memory, making it possible for us to engage in our everyday world rather effortlessly. Retentions and recollections thus overlap in such a way that: retentions constitute the objects and events being experienced in the living present (near retention); retentions modify themselves in themselves in such a way that the temporal connection from one event to the next can be ascertained in reflection (making the “dating” of a recollection possible, carried out by near and far retention); and then recollection and far retention retain the content of said experiences in different ways. Generalities are held passively in the present by far retention; specific memories are held by recollection until they are relived in the living present (as past). When we recollect a specific event, the activity of recollection takes place in the living present, and the temporal placement of the experience that “has been” can be identified through the interlocking of retentions. Thus we can see how retention and recollection are related to one another, but so far, the description of this relation has focused primarily only on structure.
III. Certainty and Belief in Inner Time-Consciousness In the above descriptions, the question of certainty hardly arises, as we are dealing with the noetic side of consciousness, and as such, with apodictic evidence. Furthermore, the content of our experiences, as content, is also certain in its appearance as such. However, Husserl recognized that there could be a question of certainty even after the phenomenological reduction. How can I be certain, for example, that I am re-living
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a former experience, i.e., recollection, and not simply some phantasy, i.e., imagination? His response, over various texts, vacillates between the belief we have in the originary roots (i.e., perceptual origins) of the experience of a recollection (or lack thereof, in phantasy), and the givenness of the experience itself as recollection or phantasy. The problem is, and Husserl recognizes this as well, that we ourselves are often mistaken in our recollections, and thus neither belief nor givenness seems to provide us with certainty. Given that, whence the certainty in our activities of consciousness? IV. In Ideas I (Hua III) In Ideas I, Husserl describes the notion of “belief” as a doxic modality associated with many of our experiences. It is a characteristic of “belief” in the “being” of what is presented, based in how it presents itself: “In the sphere considered up to now, that which appears perceptually or memorially had the characteristic of ‘actually’ existing simpliciter – of ‘certainly’ existing as we also say in contrast to other being-characteristics.” (Hua III, 214, CW II, 250) It is interesting to note that this doxic modality is not just applied to present perception; rather, it can be attached to any experience, past, present, or future, that has, is, or will be experienced perceptually. Belief, then, is directly connected to any type of perceptually-related experience. In fact, it is the noetic counterpart to the noematic characteristic of “being” that appears with all perceptual experience. In other words, if an object gives itself as perceptual, it has a characteristic of “being”, of “existing”, which is associated with a beliefmode in consciousness. In this discussion, though, Husserl makes the point that this noetic belief-mode can be modified at will, for example, whenever we consider that what we are perceiving might actually be an illusion. Nevertheless, the mode of belief always underlies any modification – even a complete denial of existence – because we are always directing our denial, doubt, or belief at something. Now, while it is not important in the realm of phenomenology to identify whether an experience is real, it does seem important to identify what would motivate a perceiving experience, i.e., the activity of consciousness as perception, when the presented object is not a perceptual one. Or what motivates the activity of consciousness of recollection when the object has no ground
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in perceptual experience. For example, how could I have an activity of perception – or think that I am perceiving – when the content of this “perception” is an hallucination? How can I recollect something that I did not experience perceptually in some way? Both of these examples happen to us rather regularly, and Husserl admits this openly. But, while he does explain how we can correct ourselves, and how we can gain adequate experiences of most perceived objects, he does not explain how my noeses – which are immanent and apodictic – can be wrong. If I say I perceive a person over there and then realize I only imagined it, then was I perceiving, or not? How can I be mistaken about my own acts of consciousness?
V. In the Early Lectures on Inner Time-Consciousness (Hua X) It is interesting to note that Husserl already introduced the notion of belief prior to his work on Ideas I, in his early writings on inner timeconsciousness – and, important for our analysis here, he already is linking belief with recollection (as well as perceptually-related experience in general). In a draft for a lecture in 1905, he writes, “Remembering is intuitive believing; what is ‘believed’ is not the being-now but the havingbeen” (Hua X, 182, my emphasis). Later in the same lecture, he writes, “If I contrast perception and mere presentation, then it is a question of belief or non-belief [Nicht-belief ]” (Hua X, 183). Finally, he asserts, “If I focus my attention merely on the object, disregarding its temporal determination, . . . the object is taken as the identical object that can be given in different times. Belief nevertheless posits it as existing” (Hua X, 185). Thus, recollection has an association with “intuitive believing”, or in other words, with a belief tied to perceptual experiences. And, in fact, it seems to have a positing aspect to it (“belief. . .posits it as existing”), which corresponds with Husserl’s later explanation in Ideas I. In fact, believing seems here to be very much the deciding factor in whether an object is taken up as having perceptual components (whether past, present, or future) or not (“. . . it is a question of belief or non-belief ”). However, while belief seems to be at the will of the ego (I can decide whether or not to posit existence, for example), it also seems, paradoxically, simply to be a part of perceptually related experiences. Do experiences make us
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believe? Or, put more appropriately for a phenomenological analysis: Does the content of our perceptually-related experiences motivate our grasp of said content such that we believe in its “actuality”?1 Since this was written so early, in an analysis that was trying to determine the difference between perception and recollection in a schema-apprehension model, perhaps these considerations are misleading. But Husserl mentions belief again in later writings, not only generally with regard to a discussion of noesis and noema in Ideas I, as we saw above, but also even later, specifically with regard to recollection and phantasy (Hua XXIII) and passive synthesis (Hua XI), both of which are tied with time-consciousness. VI. In Hua XXIII and XI In his writings on Phantasy, Image Consciousness, and Memory (1898–1925), (Hua XXIII), we find Husserl making specific references with regard to belief. We will turn to his later writings on this theme in this text, even though he refers to “belief” throughout these writings, in order to establish his development of this notion over the course of his career. In text number 19, written around 1922 and 1923, Husserl writes: With the idea of actuality we stand in the system of thetically unmodified intentionality, in the intentionality of doxa, of belief. Belief is not something appended to presentations, not a feeling associating itself with them, not a way of being affected, now present, now absent, attending such presentations; on the contrary, it is the unmodified consciousness itself. (Hua XXIII, 557–558)
He says shortly thereafter, In memory, the intention aimed at the objectivity itself becomes fulfilled in a “believed” objectivity itself, in an objectivity that presents itself as intrinsically real; and to the extent that it possesses a sense that remains unfulfilled, the intention continues and becomes fulfilled in ever new actuality. Here I am in a nexus of “actuality” that I do not “make up,” that I do not imagine (as actuality), but “find ”. Only the act of setting out toward the objectivity itself is subject to my freedom. (Hua XXIII, 559)
In the first citation, Husserl is undeniably clear: belief is “unmodified consciousness”. Thus belief resides entirely on the noetic side of the relation. It is not some aspect of the object that affects me, nor an emotion triggered by the experience of the object, nor an added part of the experience. Belief is simply consciousness when it is not modified. Modified consciousness, we can gather from his surrounding discussion,
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is consciousness in the mode of phantasy. (This parallels his discussion of the “neutrality-modification” in his Ideas I.) However, the second citation seems to reveal an objective side to this belief: The object must present itself as real in order for belief to arise. The actuality of the situation is found, not created, and I find my freedom limited when I attempt to change my experience of the object at will (unlike in phantasy, where I am free to change the imagined object in any way, based on its regional ontology). I am free to examine the object in any way I want, but I am not free to avoid the encounter with its actuality. This seems obvious: Recollected objects are recollected, phantasied objects are imagined, perceived objects are perceived. Any experience of an object that is associated with perception (including recollection and anticipation) will include a noetic layer of belief and a modality of being (an aspect that presents as actual). But it does not explain how a recollected or phantasied object might be taken as perceived, or more generally, how the connection between noesis and noema might be mistaken. Further, it does not show how an unmodified consciousness of an object can be associated with, i.e., believe, what is not actual, or, in other words, how my perception of a person over there, which I realize later was only my imagination, could have been experienced in unmodified consciousness. Husserl adds in the same text, The system of reality is a system of belief, and all belief – ultimately, the certainty of belief – is motivated. Anticipation together with indeterminate horizons is constantly present, but all closer determination comes about through actual experience in company with belief firmly motivated in the given nexus. (Hua XXIII, 561)
But this introduces an interesting component here! And, in fact, it was already implicated in one of the longer citations given earlier: The phenomenological understanding of belief does not just include its noetic and noematic relations, but it also points to a certain “nexus of actuality” that motivates such belief. Thus, the object does not “trigger” a belief, nor is belief simply a noetic activity imposed upon certain types of objects; rather, an object can only present itself as “believable” if it is already in a “nexus of actuality”, i.e., in a system that as a whole appears real. What does this mean? In our examination of the relation of consciousness to its objects, we discovered that a mode of belief is always included in the experiences of perceptually-related objects, i.e., objects taken as
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actual. This naturally pointed to the question whether the object alone motivates belief in consciousness, or whether belief is directed toward certain types of objects. In other words, what say does consciousness, and do objects, have in rendering an experience as “actual”? The problem was aggravated by the fact that we could see, and Husserl also identified, reasons for both the noetic and the noematic components to be influential in this relation. Belief can be completely subject to my will, as I can suspend it, doubt it, even apply it (in a qualified manner) to hypothetical scenarios. On the other hand, certain types of experiences, specifically, those related to perception, seem to call for, motivate, belief in advance. Thus, while the evidence pointed to a fascinating interplay of noetic and noematic belief-characteristics, we were no closer to the answer to our question. However, the last two citations indicate a third component in this examination, or more accurately, a broader context: the nexus surrounding the noesis and noema. In static terms, this can be tied to the “background” of the object at hand. However, in a genetic sense, this nexus is replete with meaning: It makes up the referential connections of meaning, the Verweisungszusammenhänge, that are associated with each object and each situation. Belief, then, is “motivated” not just by the perceptual aspect of the object itself, nor by the will of the ego, nor by the simple type of noetic act in play. Rather, all of these are motivated by the nexus of meaning that surrounds the experience as a whole. Given this, it is clear why belief does not seem to “arise” on the basis of one “side” (noetic or noematic) or the other, or why it actually seems to “arise” on both “sides”. It also makes it clearer how we are able to be in error. Belief, then, is part of the horizons of an experience or an experienced object. This point brings us to Husserl’s Analyses Concerning Passive and Active Synthesis (CW IX). Simply, Husserl’s indication that belief is tied to a nexus of actuality (cited above from Hua XXIII), points to his extensive work on horizons and passive synthesis (Hua XI). Here Husserl also discusses belief specifically with relation to recollection, and once again, we can see that belief seems to be motivated by much more than just the noetic-noematic relation: Belonging to the empty horizon of the past, which brings every present of consciousness to a close, is a belief of the past that is essentially fulfillable through chains of rememberings and nothing else. Put more precisely, belonging to the essence of this empty belief of the past is the fact that as a positive belief it cannot in principle be
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annulled . . . As the horizon of belief, it holds up [and] is always and necessarily there in an unbroken manner. A horizon of belief that is adequate to any self-giving intuition is a remembering, and yields a portion of it, that is, it yields a portion of one’s own past going back indeterminately. (Hua XI, 266–267, my emphasis)
Is this “horizon of belief” the same as the earlier-mentioned “nexus of actuality”? Further, how does consciousness relate to this horizon and/or nexus? As of yet, it is not clear how this horizon of belief relates to the nexus of actuality discussed earlier. However, it is clear that belief, in both of these analyses, is reducible neither to a noetic act, nor to the simple appearance of an object on its own. Rather, what we find in both of these texts is an indication of an environment that yields belief. Let us consider, then, whether this “horizon of belief” is founded in consciousness or in the perceived objects of consciousness. On the one hand, these horizons can be the horizons within consciousness itself, and this interpretation seems to be supported by the citation just given. If consciousness is acting within a realm of perception, it creates its own horizons of meaning around the experience, and that horizon would include “actuality” and “belief”. Further, this horizon could also be seen in the realm of recollection: The past experiences of consciousness would maintain their modes of “actuality” and “belief” even after they had passed out of the present. The entire realm of recollection is founded, then, in this mode of belief. As Husserl says above, “A horizon of belief that is adequate to any self-giving intuition is a remembering [. . .] it yields a portion of one’s own past going back indeterminately.” This mode of belief is maintained, furthermore, even when I have conflicting recollections, for I am always directed at “what actually happened”, whether or not the specific recollections I call forth are the appropriate ones for the experience I wish to recall. In this sense, the “horizon of belief” seems to reside in consciousness – but not simply in present consciousness. Rather it resides in consciousness as a whole, and it seems integral to the layerings of passive synthesis. So Husserl can say, Every such consciousness, every evident annulment of a remembering . . . has the typicality of disclosing a muddle of diverse rememberings, and this disclosure has the form of a certain transition of the initial memory into a multiplicity of discrete, completely clear memories that, phenomenologically [understood], are related to one another, and in this relation, are completely concordant. (Hua XI, 268, my emphasis)
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Memories, then, are interrelated with one another and build upon one another. It is important to note, also, that implicit in this discussion are not simply fully-constituted recollections but also far retentions, so that general memories are in play here as well. Nevertheless, consciousness identifies series of “concordant” memories that then verify the “actuality” or “non-actuality” of a specific recollection. Thus, belief resides not simply in how one recollection appears in itself, but rather, in how it appears in the context of related memories (and probably in the context of the present as well). This horizon of belief does not rest only in consciousness, however. As we saw when examining belief in the relation of noesis and noema, belief is connected not just to the network of appearances of an object or experience but also to its fulfillment or lack thereof. This reveals a necessary integration of consciousness and its experiences, including the give-andtake of their relation. This is further what makes recollections “believable” in general, and what makes specific recollections work as confirmations of specific expectations. Husserl explains, In the broader sense, belief is nevertheless the form of the concordant consciousness of the object in general; but consciousness is directed toward an object only by the fact that an intention as a whole, unified in and through harmonizing intentional rays, is actualized, while the other consciousness of the object remains a milieu that can take on the form of a specifically directed intentionality at any time under motivating circumstances. This determines belief as a living belief, and all modalization takes place in relation to it. (Hua XI, 364, my emphasis)
In fact, Husserl makes a similar reference to “harmony” with regard to belief in his work on recollection and phantasy: Constitution of objectivities in perception and in “impression” of whatever kind: impressional constitution = actual constitution. With the institution of an objective sense, a line of harmony and disagreement is instituted. As “actual” institution, the harmony is “actually” conscious, “actually” motivated – everything has the characteristic of impression. Belief [as] consciousness of harmony; unbelief as consciousness of what conflicts with the harmony and is annulled by it, and so on. (Hua XXIII, 565)
At this point, we have three definitions of belief: Belief is “unmodified consciousness”, it is “the form of the concordant consciousness of the object in general”, and it is “consciousness of harmony”. Combining these three definitions, we see belief to be a synthesis of consciousness and
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object such that there is a “harmony” or a “concordance” in play (with regard to different experiences of the object, past and present), which is reflected in the “form” of consciousness as “unmodified”. Given the later texts that we have been examining, it is only in the context of the experience as a whole that this belief can take place. For example, if I am living in a context predominated by perception, a context seen both in present intuition and in reflection on past related experiences, then consciousness will be active in an unmodified way, my experiences will harmonize with one another, and I will believe these experiences to be “actual”. When something happens that disrupts the “harmony” of these experiences, then the belief mode is also interrupted, and I take up a position of modified belief (such as doubt) until I can determine the harmony once again (or I move into a neutrality or phantasy position for a while). Given this, it seems that Husserl’s discussion of the “nexus of actuality” overlaps conceptually very much with his notion of the “horizon of belief”, although their emphasis may lean either on the objective (“nexus of actuality”) or the subjective (“horizon of belief”) side, depending on the specific text. These are brought together even more by parallel discussions of “harmony” and “concordance” with regard to belief in both texts. Thus belief is grounded in the context of an experience, not in any individual object or act of consciousness. As mentioned at the beginning of this article, far retention holds onto our general meanings and “types” of experience. In doing so, it enables us to connect a present experience to a general meaning or type. Structurally, then, far retention is the foundation for passive synthesis, i.e., for the interconnections of basic meanings that take place in our lived experience. Thus, passive synthesis (through far retention) enables the interplay of consciousness with its environment, and it further gives consciousness a position from which it can approach any specific experience. Passive synthesis, then, provides the ground for our experience of belief. Simply put, passively synthesizing consciousness interacts with, and grounds, the horizons and context of every experience, and thus it is the basis for our living in an experience with belief or non-belief. We can now see how it is that an individual noesis can be incorrectly directed at a specific type of noema, or in other words, how I can perceive something that is actually an illusion, how I can recollect something that never actually was perceptually experienced by me, etc.: If the context
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in which I am living at the time calls for perception or recollection (or anticipation, i.e., any perceptually-related of activity), then I perceive, recollect, etc. – even when the object that appears is not a perceived object. However, because this object is not a perceived object, it quickly interrupts the harmony of this context, and I am called to rein in my perceptual activity until I have had a more adequate experience of this object. As mentioned above, this situation also interrupts my belief-mode. I may remain in a qualified belief mode (this object is a probable or doubtful or unlikely perceivable object) until things become clearer, or I may suspend my belief entirely, take up a modified consciousness in an “as-if” mode or neutral position. In the former case, I remain in an overall context of perceiving and belief; in the latter, the context has been changed to imagination, phantasy, or theoretical suspension. To return to our example, I look more carefully into the shadows to see if the person I thought I saw is really there, or to see what it was, perceptually, that led me to think I saw a person over there (perceiving, unmodified beliefmode, though perhaps qualified). Or, I begin to imagine what I would do if there were a person over there, why such a person might be in the shadows, etc. (phantasy, modified consciousness, neutrality-mode). The context, then, is already one of belief or non-belief, which motivates me to take up the objects appearing within this context as “actual” or not. I am able to recognize any incorrect perceptions precisely because they do not harmonize with the current context, motivating me to modify my belief mode in some way. This takes place, furthermore, not only in present consciousness, but also in recollection and anticipation (in other words, in any perceptually-related experience). This is an important interpretation, however, that needs to be worked through more carefully. First, we should confirm whether this position is evident in other works on time by Husserl, specifically, his Bernau and C manuscripts. Second, we need to re-work the relationship of retention and recollection, with consideration of its content and its related beliefmode, in light of this new interpretation. VII. In Hua XXXIII and Husserliana Materialien VIII In the middle and later texts on time consciousness, Husserl continues to speak of horizons, although, in his Bernau manuscripts, we often see a
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focus on the integration of temporal consciousness with itself (as opposed to an integration with meanings that would exceed consciousness). In other words, past consciousness is interwoven with present experiences, so that the “horizon” of my current experience is described primarily in light of the temporal horizon in consciousness. Nevertheless, Husserl very clearly continues his discussion of the horizons of temporal consciousness. And, importantly, these horizons are what distinguish recollection from phantasy: “In phantasy, the horizon is an empty one in general; it is an empty surrounding horizon, [a horizon] only through the apperceptive form. In recollection, the horizon is more or less distinct and explicable in content.” (Hua XXXIII, 138, my translation) It is interesting to note that, while Husserl is definitely focusing on the form of time-consciousness, it is the content of the horizons associated with recollection and phantasy that distinguish them from one another. Content, therefore, remains essential to the distinction between recollection and phantasy. Husserl continues in the same text: “In recollection we have a dark and unlively horizon, which is a guiding thread, an index for further recollections which would unfurl it [the horizon], and whose exhibition would give us again the living horizon out of which the recollected has grown.” (Hua XXXIII, 138, my translation) Recollection, then, is only recognizable as such through its horizon of unrecollected recollections that could be recollected at any time, and which are integrally connected to the experienced recollection at hand. Phantasy, on the other hand, has no such horizon. Its horizon is an empty one pertaining solely to the apperceptions tied in with the immediate content of the phantasy itself. The temporal horizons of these two noetic activities, then, identify the activity for what it is. Recollection is embedded in a context of formerly perceived experiences, any of which could be brought forth; phantasy is not. Thus, similar to his earlier work, Husserl is saying here that recollection can only be taken as such if it is surrounded by related recollections. The certainty, the belief in recollection can only arise out of a horizon of perceptually-related experiences. Without such a horizon, we would not be able to believe this experience to be one of recollection. In another text, Husserl considers these questions again. In the case of pure phantasy or fiction, he says, one thing is missing: “real” time. However, he recognizes that phantasies can have their own time, and in fact, we know that our own experiences of phantasies must play out in
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the flow of consciousness, so they must have some kind of temporality to them. Husserl claims, however, that phantasies, while they may have some kind of time, are without any real or actual place (Örtlichkeit oder Lage). He realizes, though, that this terminology is extremely problematic, and so he turns to a new analysis. But let us consider what he means here: Is it possible that Husserl is attempting not to identify some literal kind of “place” that is absent for phantasies (since we can have phantasies about real places, after all), but that he is recognizing that the time of these phantasies, no matter how real all of the details may be, is itself disconnected, “out of place”? Phantasies may have their time, in other words, but they do not fit into time, i.e., they are not part of the time of perceptual experiences. Thus they are not “real” in the way that perceptually-related experiences are. In the analysis that follows these considerations, Husserl echoes earlier assertions: “[. . .] immanent recollections give me immanent contents ‘again’, they show me their horizons, which, as they unfold, lead to continually connected recollections, terminating in the immediate now and the new perception belonging to it, etc.” (Hua XXXIII, 328, my translation) Thus we see Husserl, once again, showing that the distinction of recollection over phantasy lies in the context of content surrounding any recollection, the fact that it is embedded in an interwoven stream of perceptually-related experiences, while phantasy does not have this context or connection. As noted above, though, the focus here is definitely on the integration of temporalizing consciousness with itself – although the reference to content, specifically to content that has a perceptual relation, is essential. In this way, the form is belied by its content, especially when it comes to our recognition of, and certainty in, that form. Husserl adds in the same text: Essential to every immanent perception is its belonging in a connection of experience; essential to every immanently perceived [thing] is the necessity of its incorporation in an all-embracing temporal object that continually develops itself ad infinitum, which is partially known in a living way and partially determinable in freedom as something in correct and motivated possible recollections, and so on, to the evident givenness of what is coming. (Hua XXXIII, 329, my translation)
All perceptions, then, must be woven into their interconnection with all perceptually-related experiences, taken as able to be recollected, and as having a relation to future perceptual experiences.
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In Husserl’s C manuscripts, written quite late in Husserl’s career, we find that he continues to maintain the position that recollections lie in a horizon of past consciousness, integrated with one another. However, at this point, he regularly indicates the interconnection of my temporalizing consciousness with that of other subjects in his descriptions. For example, he writes: In fact I have my factical field of perception, my factical past- and future-horizon, my factical horizon of my trusted friends, parents, co-subjects in general and the collective factical environment with its openness, according to the openness of the pertinent co-subjects. (Hua Mat VIII, 275, my translation)
Of course, all of these horizons are “factical” (faktisch), but the notion of horizon applies here not only to my past and future, but also to the experiences of others in my environment. In fact, and more pertinent to this discussion, Husserl explains a few lines later that, when I have transitioned to a fictive position, all of my current world experiences are covered over: “This includes my whole past with its past fields of perception and horizons, but also in these horizons the others and their horizons, further also my present [. . .] future, as that which is valid for me now, and calculating the others whom I will encounter in the future.” (Hua Mat VIII, 276, my translation) My horizons and those of other subjects are clearly intertwined in some respect, and, interestingly, an openness to these others arises through the horizons of my own past and future. It seems, however, that Husserl’s concern with the certainty of our recollections, with belief, with the being of past perceptions, has waned in these later writings. Instead, he is focused much more acutely on how these horizons of my past and future play into my present experience of an intersubjective world. This can be seen in Husserl’s introduction of the notions of “inner” and “outer” horizons, notions that we cannot develop in depth here. However, it is interesting to note that recollection is involved in the “outer” aspect of these horizons. In a different manuscript in these later writings, he writes with regard to the “outer” horizon, This horizon includes, roughly speaking, a manifold evident “I can”: I can penetrate into it in the direction of the past or in the direction of the future, or I can penetrate
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into the co-present, guided by the structure of orientation within the perceptual present, penetrating into its manifold directions of orientation in the plus ultra. (Hua Mat VIII, 26, my translation)
Here we see, once again, a connected source point between my recollection and my shared present with other subjects. The “I can” of this horizon opens me up to my past and future, as well as to the co-present of my shared world. Later on in the same section, Husserl identifies the “inner” horizon as focusing solely on the immediate present, a “horizon” that includes a core of absolute presence as well as the just-was and justcoming surrounding the immediate now. Thus the “inner” horizon is that of the living present – primordial impression, retention, and protention – and including the objects that are immediately perceived in that now. These two horizons are interconnected as that which is lived in the “inner” horizon of the living present soon passes into the “darkness” of the “outer” horizon of recollection. (Hua Mat VIII, 24–29) Nevertheless, we recognize the end of Husserl’s considerations of belief with regard to recollection at this point. His focus is on the structure of inner time consciousness with regard to the lived, intersubjective world – a very different subject than the one addressed here. However, with this, we arrive at our final question which we will address briefly in the next, concluding section: How do the living present and recollection – specifically retention and recollection – relate to one another when we take their content (and their certainty) into consideration? VIII. Conclusion: Reworking the Relation of Retention and Recollection in Light of Content (and Context) A new understanding of the relation of retention and recollection must take the horizons of meaning and the context of the experience seriously into consideration. At this point, we must acknowledge that we are at the level of genetic phenomenology, as we have exceeded the simple structural relation of noesis and noema. We have revealed that, in order to explain how mistaken recollections can take place, we must look to the context of the experience as a whole. Basically, the immediate present, even understood as an “inner” horizon, includes openness to the implied “other” sides of a presently perceived object. As such, it is already open to
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a shared world, to objectivity and intersubjectivity. When we introduce the levels of recollection and anticipation, also understood as the “outer” horizon, this shared openness is not only retained, but it can always be relived. Thus the “nexus of actuality” is built into the content of every level of time consciousness when we are dealing with perceptually-related experiences. Further, any phantasy that comes into play is temporally separate, to a certain extent, from the interconnected referencing we find with perceptual experiencing. This is what gives phantasy its freedom as well as its distinguishable quality, i.e., how we know that we are imagining rather than perceiving. This perceptual interconnection is also essential, I would argue, at the level of “far” retention, which provides much of the context and knowledge I need for my lived experiences. Thus, while Husserl argues that the “outer” horizons and the levels of recollection are “dark” or even “sleeping” or “dead”, it seems that these areas are very much alive, maintaining essential horizons and contexts for every present situation – even if we are not presently aware of this activity. The content of a lived experience, then, would be immediately present for me as it is occurring, and it would be experienced as perceptual based on the maintained context of “actuality” made present through far retention and recollection (as I connect this experience to both general and specific past perceived experiences). As the experience continues, but its beginnings pass into retention and recollection, the experience will either resonate positively or negatively with the context of actuality within which I am taking it up. If it resonates positively, I continue perceiving and the experience is uninterrupted. If it resonates negatively, I step back from my experience and interrupt my noetic perceiving activity; I doubt, I question, I examine further, or I imagine, in order to figure out how to continue the experience. This disruption affects my horizons of belief, maintained in retention and recollection, and these horizons are shifted, reexamined, reconsidered until I regain a resonance between what is currently before me and the context within which I am addressing it. It is now a new perceptual experience (with new understanding about the objects around me) or it is a phantasy experience (with a suspended mode of belief and a new, modified, and limited horizon). Both types of experiences are maintained in far retention and recollection (those that resonate and those that do not), so that I am able to work through such moments of interruption quickly,
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efficiently, and with immediate access to the different types of contexts that fit with my lived experience. The nexus of actuality has its own shifts and turns, and it is always able to be suspended – and this is part of the passively present content maintained by my retaining and recollecting consciousness. Thus my present experience is never just present consciousness. Instead, all of temporalizing consciousness – both its activity and its content – is always in play, whether actively or passively. My temporal horizons maintain horizons of meaning surrounding this current experience, and my experiences are always a negotiation between present and horizonal possibilities. It is only given maintained contexts of actuality and perception that I can believe that my current experiences are real, or that I can correct errors in my approach. Thus we see the importance of horizonal consciousness – the nexus of actuality and horizons of belief, maintained within the horizons of past and future – to every individual moment in consciousness, whether perceptual or imagining. We require these horizons in order to be able to recognize our experiences, and to approach them, as the type of experiences that they are. Note 1. We should consider whether Husserl has different meanings in mind when he writes Glaube (first citation given) as opposed to belief (in the latter two citations), referring to the English word, and possibly to Hume’s discussion of belief. Due to the limits of this analysis, we will not be able to consider this here.
Bibliography Husserl, Edmund. Husserliana and Husserliana Materialien volumes: Husserl, Edmund. Ideen zu einer reinen Phänomenologie und phänomenologischen Philosophie. Vol. I: Allgemeine Einführung in die reine Phänomenologie. Husserliana, vol. III. Ed. Walter Biemel. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1950. Husserl, Edmund. Zur Phänomenologie des inneren Zeitbewusstseins (1893–1917). Husserliana, vol. X. Ed. Rudolf Boehm. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1966. Husserl, Edmund. Analysen zur passiven Synthesis: Aus Vorlesungs- und Forschungsmanuskripten 1918–1926. Husserliana, vol. XI. Ed. Margot Fleischer. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1966. Husserl, Edmund. Phantasie, Bildbewußtsein, Erinnerung: Zur Phänomenologie der anschaulichen Vergegenwärtigungen: Texte aus dem Nachlaß (1898–1925). Husserliana, vol. XXIII. Ed. E. Marbach. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1980.
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Husserl, Edmund. Die “Bernau Manuskripte” über das Zeitbewusstsein (1917/18). Husserliana, vol. XXXIII. Ed. Rudolf Bernet and Dieter Lohmar. Boston: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 2001. Husserl, Edmund. Späte Texte zur Zeitkonstitution (1929–1934). Die C-Manuskripte. Husserliana Materialien, vol. VIII. Ed. Dieter Lohmar. Dordrecht/ Berlin/Heidelberg/New York: Springer, 2005. Husserl, Edmund. English translations: Husserl, Edmund. Analyses Concerning Passive and Active Synthesis: Lectures on Transcendental Logic. Trans. Anthony J. Steinbock. Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 2001. Husserl, Edmund. Ideas Pertaining to a Pure Phenomenology and to a Phenomenological Philosophy, First Book. Trans. F. Kersten. Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1982. Husserl, Edmund. On the Phenomenology of the Consciousness of Internal Time (1893–1917). Trans. John Barnett Brough. The Netherlands: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1991. Husserl, Edmund. Phantasy, Image Consciousness, and Memory (1898–1925). Trans. John B. Brough. Dordrecht, The Netherlands: Springer, 2005. Rodemeyer, Lanei. Intersubjective Temporality: It’s About Time. In: Phaenomenologica, vol. 176. The Netherlands: Springer, 2006.
CHAPTER XIII
REFLECTION UPON THE LIVING PRESENT AND THE PRIMAL CONSCIOUSNESS IN HUSSERL’S PHENOMENOLOGY Tetsuya Sakakibara Abstract. In this paper I work on the problem of the phenomenological reflection upon the living present in Husserl’s last analysis of time and try, by following his manuscripts chronologically, to bring out how Husserl carries out his reflections upon the living present in those manuscripts, and how he himself understands these reflections. It will be discovered through this chronological research that Husserl, in his late manuscripts on time, carries out his reflections upon the living present based on the self-touching or inner primal consciousness of the functioning Ego, and that he, wavering between epistemological and ontological perspectives in those manuscripts, comes finally to present an epistemological-ontological method of reflective exhibition grounded on the self-touching consciousness. Lastly, a further epistemological-ontological interpretation will be attempted to clarify what the self-touching consciousness really is and how the reflection is founded in it.
∗ This
paper was originally written in German and the earlier version was presented at the international conference “Husserl Arbeitstage 2001” on October 26–27, 2001 at the University of Cologne, and at an international conference organized by the Korean Society for Phenomenology on September 10, 2005 at the Seoul National University. I thank Professor Dr. Dieter Lohmar and Professor Dr. Nam-In Lee for their kind invitations to the conferences. This contribution includes some important results of my research which I carried out in Germany from October 1995 to September 1996 and in the summer months of 1997, 1998, and 1999, supported by the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation. I owe the Foundation thanks for the financial support. I would also like to express my deepest gratitude to Professor Dr. Klaus Held and Professor Dr. Dieter Lohmar for their kind suggestions and support, which I received during my research in Germany. Last but not least, I thank the director of the Husserl-Archives Leuven, Professor Dr. Ullrich Melle, for the permission to cite words and sentences from Husserl’s unpublished manuscripts.
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I. Introduction Reflection is a fundamental method of Husserl’s phenomenology. He writes clearly in Ideen I: “the phenomenological method operates exclusively in acts of reflection” (Hua III/1, 162).1 Yet, if the phenomenological reflection turns to the deepest consciousness which constitutes all cogitationes, this method gets into difficulties: the reflection itself is a cogito and must be constituted in the same time-consciousness to which it is directed. Besides, the reflection itself is a cogito as attentive and subsequent perceiving (Nachgewahren: cf. Hua VIII, 89), and it can grasp time-consciousness only subsequently. Now a fundamental question arises: whether the phenomenological reflection can at all reach and clarify its final matter, the living actual present of time-consciousness. In Husserl’s phenomenology, the title “time-consciousness” thus indicates the final constitutive yet very difficult subject. It is well-known that Husserl was engaged in a study of timeconsciousness three times in his philosophical life.2 But it was not until the third phase, i.e. in the so-called C-manuscripts and some other manuscripts of the 1930s, that he radically took the reflection upon the “living present” as his subject. There were already some relevant investigations into the C-manuscripts before they were published in 2006.3 In my opinion, however, there are still no investigations that follow the development of Husserl’s time-analysis in the 1930s step by step in a chronological manner. In this paper I will confine my consideration only to the problem of the possibility of the phenomenological reflection upon the living present. I follow and look into the last manuscripts on timeconsciousness chronologically, and bring out how Husserl carries out his reflections upon the living present in these manuscripts, and how he himself understands these reflections. Through these investigations a primal consciousness which touches or comes into contact with itself [sich berühren] non-objectively will be disclosed as a necessary foundation of the phenomenological reflection, and its structure will be clarified.
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II. The Startingpoint of Husserl’s Last Analysis of Time-Consciousness I begin my considerations with a survey of the earliest C-manuscripts of summer 1930 which deal with the “living present”.4 How does Husserl undertake a reflection upon the living present in these manuscripts? He carries out the phenomenological Epoché first, and starts from the “livingly-streaming present (lebendig-strömende Gegenwart)” (Hua Mat VIII, 24), which he clearly defines as the present “in which [he] finds [himself ] in starting his Epoché” (Hua Mat VIII, 108). But since this present in its concreteness includes the horizons of past and future based on retentions and protentions (cf. Hua XXXIV, 166–167), Husserl further carries out “a kind of Epoché and transcendental reduction” (Hua XXXIV, 168) with regard to these “retentional and protentional mental processes” (cf. Hua XXXIV, 167). Through this reduction he finds the “primal being (Ursein)” as “what is absolute and temporalizes itself in itself (das sich in sich selbst zeitigende Absolute)”, in other words, the “absolute streaming” which constitutes the “subjective temporality” in itself (Hua XXXIV, 172). Husserl thus goes beyond “immanent time” as a “stream of mental processes” and back to the deepest dimension of “primal-phenomenal streaming” (Hua XXXIV, 171). Indeed, with regard to this dimension, he writes: The “primally original present (uroriginale Gegenwart) [. . .] still before the reflection” (Hus XXXIV, 165) is an “unperceived (ungewahrte)”, “unthematic” present (Hua XXXIV, 165), precisely because the Ego directs itself toward itself and its present through the reflection (Hua XXXIV, 165). But he says further: “The transcendental Ego is [. . .] already continually able to become aware of what is not attentively perceived, and also to become explicitly conscious of an I-can [-become-aware-of-it] at any particular moment, and also in further iterations” (Hua XXXIV, 165).5 With regard to the unthematic character of the primal-original present before the reflection, Husserl thus takes the view in the summer of 1930 that this present can be thematized through iterative subsequent reflections. The unthematic character of this present, however, is nothing other than that anonymity of “the phase of inner
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consciousness that is actual at any particular moment” (Hua X, 382), to which Husserl was already led in his early time-analysis, and which he could not analyze enough also in the Bernau manuscripts of time.6 In the following I will survey chronologically how Husserl tries to overcome this problem after the summer of 1930.
III. An Epistemological Difficulty with Self-Temporalization and Husserl’s Ontological Approach to It I will first consider a manuscript from “November 1930” (C 3 II: Hua Mat VIII, Nr. 9). It is remarkable that a fine relationship between the primal dimension of absolute streaming and the iterative reflections upon it is to be seen in this manuscript. Husserl says in a passage of the manuscript: “The streaming life [. . .] temporalizes the first immanent sphere, but this life itself is [temporalized] in a temporalization, and so again and again” (Hua Mat VIII, 33).7 It is clear that this means an “epistemological” difficulty which comes from the “self-temporalization (Selbstzeitigung)”. The difficulty is that the streaming life as “something temporalizing (Zeitigendes)” can only be experienced as “something temporalized (Gezeitigtes)” because of its self-temporalization. Nevertheless, Husserl says: If “I see in an originally experiencing evidence”, it is “a fundamental cognition [. . .] of phenomenology that my being is experienced, and to be precise apodictically, in the I-am of the phenomenological reduction, but in such a way that I must run the course of iterative reflections [. . .]” (ibid.). Indeed, the temporalizing cannot be found as a temporalizing, but Husserl tries here to remove this epistemological difficulty in such a way that the temporalizing is to be still experienced as something temporalized in the course of iterative reflections, and it is to be experienced as such apodictically, that is, in the evidence that it must be able to be so experienced, and that we cannot think of it otherwise, nor can it be otherwise.8 It seems to me, however, that this does not solve the problem of selftemporalization. For in a manuscript of “March 1931” (C 3 III: Hua Mat VIII, No. 10–13) Husserl describes the situation that “the temporalization also temporalizes itself at the same time” explicitly as a “paradox” (Hua Mat VIII, 50). In order to resolve this “paradox”, he tries here to
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describe the temporalizing process of the primal-phenomenal streaming (cf. Hua Mat VIII, 50f ). This approach is now to be called ontological in the following specific sense that Husserl will overcome the epistemological difficulty precisely by clarifying the self-temporalizing mode of being of the absolute streaming, which cannot be cognized as such through subsequent reflections. He writes in another passage of the manuscript: “All that is seen is temporalized with eidetic necessity and in streaming temporalization, and the seeing itself in reflection also temporalized and in temporalization” (Hua Mat VIII, 55).9 This description is now to be understood in the following manner: the phenomenological reflection will see a living present and also a reflection upon it in their aliveness. But from the epistemological point of view, it can always find them only as temporalized. Nevertheless, if they are seen as temporalized in the reflection, this points back to the evidence that they were really in temporalizing before the reflection. They must have been in this mode of being “apodictically” in the sense above mentioned: We cannot think of them otherwise, nor can they be otherwise. I will now turn to a manuscript from “August 1931” (C 2 I: Hua Mat VIII, No. 1–5, Hua XXXIV, No. 20). Husserl finds here an Ego of reflection which always remains “anonymous” in the primal phenomenon of streaming, and he describes it clearly as “primal-Ego (Ur-Ich)”, “primal pole (Urpol)”, or “originally functioning Ego (ursprünglich fungierendes Ich)” (Hua Mat VIII, 2). Yet, if such a primal-Ego can be found in the primal-phenomenal streaming, a following question must arise: How is this functioning primal-Ego as primal pole related to the “primal streaming (Urströmen) of the living present” (Hua Mat VIII, 4)? In this manuscript Husserl takes the view that the “transcendental primalEgo” “lives its primal-life as primal-streaming presentation and presence (Ur-Leben als urströmende Gegenwärtigung und Gegenwart) and thus has being in its manner, i.e., being in a primal temporalization (Sein in einer Urzeitigung)” (ibid.). It is clear that Husserl tries here to overcome the problem of the paradoxical situation of self-temporalization also in an ontological manner, i.e., by clarifying the “primal temporalization” or the mode of being of the “primal-life” of the transcendental primal-Ego. With regard to this manuscript, it must still be noted that Husserl here supposes an objection against the “methodology of phenomenological reduction” (Hua Mat VIII, 6). The objection is: The “present”
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which “has become objective and perceived” by reflection is “objective in [. . .] an act which is not in an objective consciousness itself. Thus, what we claim as being ultimately (letztlich Seiendes) [. . .] under the title of primal-phenomenal present is not the ultimate (das Letzte), precisely because it is a ‘phenomenon’ for us” (Hua Mat VIII, 7). It is now clear that this supposition is nothing other than an objection raised against the possibility of the phenomenological reflection upon the living present in the epistemological point of view. But Husserl tries here to cope with this objection by referring to the iterative subsequent reflection again. He says: “How can this anonymity and that of the Ego itself [. . .] be understood? [. . .] How can we justify a method which adopts this primal-Ego, this primal-phenomenal sphere [. . .] anyway? All of this is not a matter of beginning. The method practiced naïvely (die naiv geübte Methode) must go ahead of the justification and the self-understanding of the method, and even that it must be so must be given in insight subsequently”. For “the method in its absolute being is also a transcendental occurrence (Vorkommnis), of course, and belongs itself as such also to the primal-phenomenal, therefore anonymous sphere” (Hua Mat VIII, 7). But now we can ask the following question: Why doesn’t Husserl see any crucial difficulty with his reflective methods here, whereas he is of the opinion that the method is not only subsequent, but that the justification must be also subsequent, so that everything springs from the anonymous sphere of the primal phenomenon? Must we not suppose that this is possible for Husserl, only because he is really conscious of the anonymous sphere of the primal phenomenon in a way other than the iterative subsequent reflection? Actually, Husserl speaks of a “primal present (Urgegenwart)” which is “not objective” but “pre-perceived (vor-wahrgenommen)” (Hua Mat VIII, 7). According to him, this primal sphere of “the primal present (urtümliche Gegenwart)” is “given in the mode of original consciousness (im Modus der Originalität bewusst)” (Hua Mat VIII, 6f ).10 In my opinion, this original mode of consciousness is nothing other than what Husserl calls “inner consciousness (inneres Bewusstsein)” (Hua X, 116ff, 126f ) or more precisely “primal consciousness (Urbewusstsein)” (Hua X, 119, 292; Hua XXIV, 245) since his early time-analysis.11 Certainly, I cannot grasp the livingly streaming present or the primal-Ego which lives this present through the subsequent reflection, so that they must
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remain anonymous for my reflective regard at any particular moment. Nevertheless, I am primally conscious of this anonymous sphere internally, and this original sphere is really lived (erlebt). It seems to me that it is precisely thanks to this inner primal-consciousness that Husserl can assume without any methodological difficulty that the matter of the living present as well as the method itself can be justified subsequently through the iterative reflection. As we will see later, Husserl’s consideration of the inner primalconsciousness goes one step further in a manuscript from the beginning of January 1933. Before I go into this manuscript, however, I would like to sketch Husserl’s further alternation between epistemological and ontological perspectives in the period up to the end of 1932.
IV. Husserl’s Wavering between Epistemological and Ontological Perspectives The previous investigations have shown that Husserl tries to overcome the epistemological difficulty with self-temporalization by an ontological approach to clarify the mode of being of the streaming which temporalizes itself. Nevertheless, it seems to me that the problem has not been resolved only by such an ontological attempt. In a manuscript from “June, July 1932” (C 7/1–5, 7–10: Hua Mat VIII, Nr. 27–29), Husserl says: “When I survey the primal streaming (das urtümliche Strömen) – the Ego in its primality (das Ego in seiner Urtümlichkeit) – [. . .] and identify it as the constantly streaming Ego (das ständig strömende Ego), I do this as onlooker (Zuschauer)” (Hua Mat VIII, 118). When I therefore reflect upon the “primal temporalization (Urzeitigung)” or the “primal self-temporalization of the transcendental Ego (urtümliche Selbstzeitigung des transzendentalen Ego)” (Hua Mat VIII, 117), I function also as “transcendental onlooker” (cf. Hua Mat VIII, 115, 118). If this phenomenologizing of the transcendental onlooker is now taken into consideration, a new epistemological question arises immediately. Husserl asks: Even if I will go back to the primal temporalization and inquire back into it, do I not come to the conclusion that the reached “primal impression” is an “already apperceptive unity”, “a noematic something seen from the point of view of the Ego (ein Noematisches vom Ich her)”,
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and that “the regressive inquiry (Rückfrage)” therefore “always leads to apperceptive unity” (Hua Mat VIII, 118)? Husserl wonders here whether the regressive inquiry must not always lead to a unity which is already apperceived by the transcendental onlooker inquiring regressively, a unity which would then not be a primal phenomenon at all. In the following passage of July 1932, Husserl’s movement between epistemological and ontological perspectives can be noticed clearly: The regressive inquiry must clarify everything here. The stream must be temporalized a priori by the Ego. This temporalizing is a streaming itself [, however]; the streaming is [therefore] in advance all the time. But the Ego is also in advance. As waking Ego (transcendental-phenomenologically waking), it is constantly the Ego of consciousness (Hua XXXIV, 181).12
V. The “Appropriate Reflection” and the Self-Touching of the Ego A half year later – at the beginning of January 1933 – Husserl wrote a manuscript titled “Ego-reflection, Ego-function, and Egotemporalization (Ichreflexion und Ichfunktion und Ichzeitigung)”.13 This manuscript is especially remarkable, because in its first half which thematizes the natural and transcendental reflection in the epistemological aspect, the inner primal-consciousness of the primal present which remains anonymous for the Ego’s reflection (precisely that which I have already brought out in my previous considerations) will be described anew as the self-touching (Sich-Berühren) of the functioning Ego. Then, in the second half of the manuscript, an ontological consideration of the self-temporalization of the Ego will be carried out on the basis of this inner self-touching. I will begin with a sketch of the first half of the manuscript. Husserl writes: “The transcendental Ego-pole (Ichpol)” as that which I find myself to be in the “epoché” and the “transcendental reflection” is certainly “not the living pole, which can be exhibited (aufweisbar) as an anonymous but functioning pole in the appropriate reflection (entsprechende Reflexion), however. It can [also] be exhibited that its functioning is temporalized continuously and is therefore in the field of its consciousness-of for the actually functioning Ego. [But] the functioning
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pole in its original functioning is never in the field of time. The temporalization temporalizes the living cogito streamingly”.14 How is this difficult passage to be understood? What is the “appropriate reflection” upon the living Ego-pole? On the basis of the following text, the above quotation can be interpreted as follows: Since I reach “my concrete function retentively” “in the reflection”,15 the function apprehended by the reflection is temporalized and has become cogito in the field of time. Compared with this, the livingly functioning pole itself as “primal point of actuality (urtümliche[r] Aktualitätspunkt)”16 is not in the temporalized field of time, but it must rather be said that the pole before the reflection “was” a “standing primal-Ego (stehendes Ur-Ego)” as the one functioning anonymously.17 Husserl writes, however: “[. . .] in the nowpoint I come into contact with myself as functioning ([. . .] im Jetztpunkt berühre ich mich als fungierendes)”.18 This self-touching (Sich-Berühren) of the functioning Ego is held also in starting a subsequent reflection and in all further reflections.19 Precisely based on this self-touching, it can be disclosed or inferred regressively in the reflections, and disclosed apodictically in the above mentioned sense of impossibility to think or to be otherwise, that I am a functioning and standing primal-Ego in every nowpoint, although the reflections reach and thematize my concrete function only retentively at any particular moment.20 Just through this regressive disclosure based on the self-touching of the functioning Ego, the living pole can be apodictically exhibited as an anonymous but functioning one, and the mode of being of its self-temporalization can be also exhibited in such a way that the function of the pole is temporalized continuously and therefore becomes objective for the actually functioning Ego. The “appropriate reflection” upon the living pole must be understood as such a regressive disclosure of reflection founded in the self-touching. It is now clear that this self-touching of the functioning Ego means nothing other than that mode of consciousness which was described as “inner consciousness” or more precisely as “primal consciousness” in the early time-analysis and – through and beyond the Bernau manuscripts – is characterized as “pre-perceived” or “given in original consciousness” in the C-manuscript of August 1931. In the early time-analysis, this “primal consciousness” is an inner, non-objectifying consciousness of the present “primal datum (Urdatum)”, which “passes over into retentional modification” (Hua X, 119), and it is this primal consciousness and its
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retentions that make a reflection possible (Hua X, 119f ). Here in the late time-analysis, the inner primal-consciousness is metaphorically but once again characterized as the self-touching of the functioning Ego,21 and the “appropriate reflection” is based on this self-touching and its retentions. Actually, I, when I am waking, come into contact with myself as functioning internally and non-thematically in every now-point, and precisely for that reason – it seems to me – I can say that I come to myself in every subsequent reflection, i.e., to the one who I was just now. If I would not come into contact with myself as functioning Ego at all, I could not so much as know that my reflection upon myself is something subsequent. It is now clear that Husserl must have carried out the appropriate reflection upon the living pole here on the basis of his self-touching or inner primalconsciousness of his functioning Ego. Through this appropriate reflection in the first epistemological half of the manuscript, the Ego which comes into contact with itself internally has been exhibited as the one which remains anonymous but functions. In the second half of the manuscript, a description of the mode of being of this anonymously functioning Ego is given, and the selftemporalization of this Ego is investigated “ontologically” in the specific sense mentioned above. As mentioned earlier, this description is also regarded as an exhibition (Aufweisung) through the appropriate reflection. I would like to sketch it briefly in the following. According to Husserl, “the constant Ego [is] constantly a primal source that is identical, but not through an ‘identifying’, rather as being primally united, being in the most primal pre-being”.22 That the constant and anonymously functioning “primal-Ego”23 must be so, is reflectively exhibited (aufgewiesen) on the basis of the self-touching of the functioning Ego, and starting from this exhibition the process of the self-temporalization of the primal-Ego will be described further. Husserl says first: “The Ego as primal-Ego, as source of Ego in its constancy of a primal-One, is an Ego of consciousness and has a unitary something of which it is conscious as constant streaming of present, and constitutes a temporal unity”.24 Yet, the state of affairs just presented is not so simple: For the functioning primal-Ego first constitutes a “temporal unity” in the streaming,25 and only as a result the primal-Ego “becomes affected” by this unity and “active”, the primal-Ego first “comes into the temporalization and time”26 and becomes self-temporalized to the “Ego
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of consciousness”. This, so to speak, “primary” self-temporalization is not yet “something specifically characteristic of the egoical (das spezifisch Eigentümliche des Ichlichen)”, but rather “the temporalizing carried out in the general consciousness (das im allgemeinen Bewusstsein sich vollziehende Zeitigen)”.27 Only through this temporalizing, the “performances of giving acceptance (Geltungsvollzüge)”, the “active intentions”, and the “performing Ego” itself “in the lower nexus of consciousness” appear as temporalized, and thus the “self-consciousness” or the “Ego of consciousness” becomes constituted.28 Once the Ego itself becomes temporalized primarily and “has an appearance in the field of consciousness”, however, “it becomes affected also by itself and can become active regarding itself, [affected] by its past Ego’s being and Ego’s doing”.29 By remembering its own pastness, the Ego finds itself as the one which inherits itself,30 as the one which has “its history” and whose being is “persisting in self-preservation (Verharren in Selbsterhaltung)”.31 The Ego becomes temporalized to the specifically appertinent Ego this way. Husserl calls this temporalization “secondary temporalization (sekundäre Zeitigung)”.32 So in the second half of the manuscript, the self-temporalization of the primal-Ego to the specifically appertinent Ego is clarified as double temporalization based on the double affection. And, as has already been ascertained, Husserl holds this ontological description of the mode of being of the Ego in its self-temporalization to be an exhibition through the “appropriate reflection” based on the self-touching. From these considerations it becomes clear that Husserl’s way of reflection upon the living present, which had been alternating between epistemological and ontological perspectives since the summer of 1930, has converged here to a unitary method of the exhibition through the “appropriate reflection” founded in the self-touching of the functioning Ego: Husserl first carries out the phenomenological reflection from the epistemological perspective and regressively exhibits the Ego which remains anonymous for the reflection but still functions – based on his inner self-touching. Then he exhibits the mode of being of this pre-being primal-Ego in its selftemporalization ontologically, based also on that self-touching. If an earlier manuscript of September 1931 (C 10) is now referred to, this double procedure of method can be also called “regressive” exhibition or disclosure and “progressive bringing-into-play of ontifying activities (progressives
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Ins-Spiel-Setzen der ontifiz Aktivitäten)” (Hua Mat VIII, 187). Although the “ground” or “reason” of this double procedure is not yet clear in this manuscript,33 the thematization of this procedure in C 10 can be regarded as a preliminary stage of the new idea for the method in A V 5/4-10. VI. Reflective Exhibition and Ontification Even after the manuscript of A V 5/4-10 Husserl still thematizes this method of reflective exhibition repeatedly and goes into the problem of “ontification” in the case of phenomenological experiencing and ideation, the problem which Eugen Fink discusses in his Sixth Cartesian Meditation (Hua Dok II/1, 85, 93). Now I would like to sketch briefly Husserl’s train of thought on this problem. I will begin with the following passage of a manuscript written in “ca. end of August 1933 or beginning of September”: In the “transcendental temporalization”, “an absolutely anonymous being-sense becomes temporalized, which is not already ‘stamped’, but rather has the shape of a proper being-sense only through my stamping as phenomenological researcher. But if the being-sense is exhibited ‘afterwards’ in an apodictic regressive inquiry, it has still the apodictic acceptance of being of what was indeed already and functioned in constituting, but was not ‘pre-given’, not stamped, nor explicable”.34 This passage can be interpreted as follows: The phenomenological reflection will grasp the livingly functioning Ego “afterwards”, but in reality this Ego gets the shape of a proper being-sense “only through my stamping as phenomenological researcher” and thus becomes ontified. In spite of this temporalizing ontification, however, the concerned Ego becomes exhibited apodictically in the subsequent regressive inquiry as the one which was already and functioned in constituting but was not yet ontically stamped. Husserl thus regards the method of reflective exhibition here as such a reflection which indeed ontifies the anonymously functioning Ego but still exhibits it apodictically as the one which must have already been and functioned before the ontifying reflection. How does the reflection exhibit the anonymously functioning Ego in concreto, however? A manuscript which Husserl wrote at the end of 1933, regarding the third and fourth sections of Fink’s Sixth Cartesian
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Meditation (B II 4/51–55: Hua Dok II/1, 203–206), gives us a hint to this point. Husserl writes: “[M]y concrete Ego [. . .] with a phenomenologizing act-Ego that in principle functions anonymously” can be thematized, precisely because I have the “ability to iterate reflection” and therefore the “possibility” to “track down” the “structures” of the “thematizing activities” of reflection “in their essential forms” (Hua Dok II/1, 205). It is now to be expected from the quotation that the reflective exhibition is in concreto an eidetic insight (Wesenseinsicht) which exhibits the structures of the pre-reflectively and anonymously functioning Ego in their essential forms through iterative reflections. In a manuscript written on “February 16. [19]34” (a part of C 13 II: Hua Mat VIII, 269–272), Husserl writes further: “The primal streaming is a constant primal constituting (ständiges urtümliches Konstituieren); the ‘stream of consciousness’ in its primal temporality is constituted in that streaming” (Hua Mat VIII, 269). But the primal streaming is “a ‘pre’-time (‘Vor’-Zeit) which is not yet a form of objects for the Ego living in this stream of consciousness, not given ‘beforehand’ by him as a stream of time, i.e., an objective continuous succession, and not experienced nor able to be experienced as such” (ibid.). “As pre-being (Vor-Sein) it is unable to be experienced unutterable” (ibid.) and remains anonymous for the Ego living in the constituted stream of consciousness. Nevertheless, it “can be exhibited in the regressive inquiry [carried out] by the phenomenologizing Ego, exhibited in a peculiar abstraction and identification which can be produced only from him” (ibid.).35 Although this identification “creates afterwards” a stream of consciousness and an Ego living in it as “objectivity”, the primal streaming can be exhibited by the phenomenologizing Ego all the same. The exhibited streaming, however, which becomes a “subject of a statement” now, is precisely “ontified (ontifiziert)” through it (ibid.). The reflective exhibition is determinated here as such a procedure that thematizes and ontifies the primal streaming in the regressive inquiry, to be precise in a peculiar abstraction and identification which can be produced only from the Ego, and thus exhibits the streaming itself. If we now remember what we expected above, concerning the manuscript from the end of 1933, it becomes clear that the “peculiar abstraction” is an ideative abstraction of the essential form which coincides associatively
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in the primal streaming and functioning, and that the “identification” is nothing other than such a procedure in which the phenomenologizing Ego identifies this essential form, the form which is temporalized and ontified as all-temporal (allzeitlich) through the abstraction, with the form of his anonymous functioning. The primal streaming or the livingly functioning Ego is indeed unable to be experienced and unutterable as such, but through the just illustrated reflective exhibition carried out by the phenomenologizing Ego it can be subsequently exhibited apodictically in its temporalized and ontified essential form. In these three manuscripts cited above, Husserl does not mention the inner self-touching of the functioning Ego any more. But does this not indicate rather that it has already been natural for Husserl that the reflective exhibition is based on the self-touching of the Ego? In the reflective exhibition, the pre-reflective and anonymous functioning of the Ego becomes temporalized and ontified by the reflectively phenomenologizing Ego, indeed. But Husserl probably takes the view that the ontification through the subsequent reflection cannot cause a dangerous “shift or distortion”, so to speak, in so far as the Ego touches its functioning self internally at any particular moment. A piece of supporting evidence for that could be the fact that, as far as I know, Husserl does not see in his manuscripts any crucial methodological difficulty regarding the ontification caused by the reflective exhibition and description.
VII. Summary and an Attempt to Clarify the Self-Touching Primal Consciousness In his remarkable book Lebendige Gegenwart, Klaus Held takes over Husserl’s definition of the phenomenological reflection as attentive and subsequent perceiving (Nachgewahren) and comes to the conclusion that the living present as primal phenomenon remains anonymous and enigmatic for the phenomenological reflection, and that every statement on the structure of this present is nothing other than a “nonphenomenological ‘construction’”.36 In my opinion, however, this critical conclusion can be avoided, if we do not only follow Husserl’s definition of the reflection, but also look at exactly how he carries out the
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reflection in reality. As already seen, Husserl in his late manuscripts on time carries out the reflections upon the living present on the basis of the self-touching of his functioning Ego, while he himself defines the reflection as attentive and subsequent perceiving. Certainly, the self-touching itself is not an objectifying act, but Husserl’s texts show that the “appropriate reflection” upon the living present is carried out subsequently, “grounded” on this non-objectifying self-touching. It seems to me that, precisely because of this “ground”, Husserl can assert rightly that “enigmas” which would remain unsolved even after the subsequent reflection would be “countersense” (cf. Hua VIII, 442).37 In this paper I have worked on the problem of the phenomenological reflection upon the living present in Husserl’s late manuscripts on time and tried, by following the manuscripts chronologically, to bring out how Husserl carries out his reflections upon the living present in those manuscripts, and how he himself understands these reflections. The essential points of my argument can be summarized by saying (1) that Husserl, in his late manuscripts on time, carries out his reflections upon the living present based on the self-touching of the functioning Ego, i.e., on the inner primal consciousness of the Ego; (2) that he, wavering between epistemological and ontological perspectives in those manuscripts, comes finally to present an epistemological-ontological method of reflective exhibition grounded on the self-touching primal consciousness,38 and (3) that he probably takes the view that the anonymity of every present functioning as well as the “ontification” of this “pre-being” present caused by the subsequent reflection do not lead to any crucial methodological difficulties, in so far as the reflection is based on the inner self-touching. In spite of these works and the self-understanding of the late Husserl, we can and must now ask further: Did Husserl sufficiently make clear, in his late manuscripts on time, what this inner self-touching really is, and how the reflection is based on it? In my opinion Husserl did not clarify these matters adequately in his manuscripts. Before closing this investigation I would like to try, with the help of some passages in one of his manuscripts, to present what the self-touching as inner primal
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consciousness can really be, and how the appropriate reflection can be founded in it. A clue to this attempt will be offered by the manuscript C 10 of September 193139 which was briefly mentioned above. Husserl says in this manuscript “that the Ego, together with its affection and its act, already belongs to every living and primal-presenting present (as that of the waking reflecting analyst)” (Hua Mat VIII, 186).40 What this means, however, needs some careful consideration. According to Husserl, it is “only through a suitable reflection [that I know] that the thematic Ego has a functioning Ego behind itself” (Hua Mat VIII, 190).41 And this suitable reflection is the reflection which the “waking reflecting analyst” carries out in his “waking life” (cf. ibid.). The waking life (waches Leben) is now the life in which the Ego-pole, together with the hyletic data and the acts directed to them, is already temporalized at any particular moment (cf. Hua Mat VIII, 189), and in which this Ego, “always already constituted yet anonymous at any particular moment” (cf. Hua Mat VIII, 187), affects the life itself.42 This is precisely what Husserl means when he says “that the Ego, together with its affection and its act, already belongs to every living and primal-presenting present (as that of the waking reflecting analyst)”. While the ordinary reflection directs itself toward the Ego which has been temporalized and constituted in such a way and thematizes this Ego (cf. Hua Mat VIII, 189f ), the “suitable reflection” tries to go beyond this Ego and to reach an Ego which functions behind it and has temporalized and constituted it. Viewed in the ontological perspective, the waking Ego’s life can be determined as such a life that, through its functioning, temporalizes and constitutes an Ego-pole with hyletic data and with its acts directed to them, and that, as a result of being affected by this temporalized and constituted Ego, functions and temporalizes the Ego-pole and its acts further.43 The suitable and “subsequent” (Hua Mat VIII, 190) reflection carried out by the waking Ego tries therefore to go beyond the Ego which has been already temporalized and constituted in its life and to reach a functioning Ego or its life which has temporalized that Ego and functions and temporalizes further by being affected by that temporalized Ego. The suitable reflection can do nothing otherwise, in so far as it is subsequently carried out precisely in the waking Ego’s life. Based on this consideration, the founding (Fundierung) of the suitable or appropriate reflection in the self-touching of the functioning Ego is now to be interpreted as follows:
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Since the functioning Ego, which the appropriate reflection exhibits regressively in the epistemological perspective, has been now exhibited ontologically as the Ego which is temporalizing-temporalized (zeitigend-gezeitigt) in its wakingness, the inner self-touching of the functioning Ego must be – apodictically – the mode of being of this waking Ego. The mode of being of the waking Ego is nothing other than the self-touching or inner primal consciousness, and the waking Ego’s life therefore includes the structure of self-touching in itself. Since the appropriate reflection must be carried out in the waking Ego’s life, the reflection must also be structurally founded in the inner self-touching. Precisely because the waking Ego’s life is temporalizing-temporalized in itself and the Ego always comes into contact with itself as the one functioning in this mode of being, the appropriate reflection can go through and beyond the temporalized Ego and know something subsequently about the Ego which is functioning and temporalizing behind that Ego. The “ground” for that “founding” is therefore to be found in the very mode of being of the functioning Ego itself. In my opinion, this would be a possible attempt of an epistemological-ontological interpretation which still lies along the line of Husserl’s train of thought.44 If this is the case, however, a further problem still remains open: the question whether Husserl, in his late manuscripts on time, dealt sufficiently with the problem of the ontification of the pre-being caused by the reflective exhibition and description. Even if I exhibit and describe something in the appropriate and subsequent reflection based on my inner self-touching, does it not still happen that the verbal predication causes a shift or distortion? If I could be aware of such a difference, however, would this not be possible only based on my inner self-touching? In this paper I cannot go into this problem any more. Further work on this matter remains to be done. Notes 1. In this paper all emphases and additions ([. . .]) in quotations are made by the author. 2. Cf. Alwin Diemer: Edmund Husserl. Versuch einer systematischen Darstellung seiner Phänomenologie. Meisenheim am Glan, 2. Aufl. 1965, 50 ff. 116 ff.; Rudolf Bernet: Einleitung. In: Edmund Husserl, Texte zur Phänomenologie des inneren Zeitbewußtseins (1893–1917). Hamburg, (PhB 362), 1985, xi–lxvii (hereafter: Bernet (1985)), esp. xi–lix; Hua XXXIII, xvii–xix. 3. I mention as remarkable investigations: Gerd Brand: Welt, Ich und Zeit. Nach unveröffentlichten Manuskripten Edmund Husserls. Den Haag 1955; Klaus Held: Lebendige Gegenwart. Die Frage nach der Seinsweise des transzendentalen Ich bei Husserl, entwickelt am Leitfaden der Zeitproblematik.
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7. 8.
9. 10. 11.
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t. sakakibara Den Haag 1966 (hereafter: Held (1966)); Nam-In Lee: Edmund Husserls Phänomenologie der Instinkte. Dordrecht/Boston/London 1993; Ronald Bruzina: The Aporia of Time-Analysis – Reflection Across the Transcendental Divide. In: Phenomenology: Japanese and American. Ed. By Burt C. Hopkins, Dordrecht/Boston/London 1998, 105–132 (hereafter: Bruzina (1998)); Dan Zahavi: Self-Awareness and Affection. In: Alterity and Facticity. New Perspectives on Husserl. Ed. By N. Depraz and D. Zahavi, Dordrecht/Boston/London 1998, 205–228 (hereafter: Zahavi (1998)); Toine Kortooms: Phenomenology of Time. Edmund Husserl’s Analysis of TimeConsciousness. Dordrecht/Boston/London 2002; Shigeru Taguchi: Das Problem des ‘Ur-Ich’ bei Edmund Husserl. Die Frage nach der selbstverständlichen ‘Nähe’ des Selbst. Dordrecht 2006. C 5 (summer 1930) (now in: Hua XXXIV, 162–176); C 3/3–4 (summer 1930) (now in: Hua XXXIV, 185–188); C 3/5–9 (summer 1930) (now in: Hua Mat VIII, 224–229); C 4 (August 1930) (now in: Hua Mat VIII, 89–106); C 6 (August 1930)(now in: Hua Mat VIII, 107–114); C 17/62–67 (August 1930) (now in: Hua XXXIV, 179–184). About the date of the manuscripts cf. Hua Mat VIII, 447 ff. In this article, Husserl’s unpublished manuscripts will be referred to with the archive signature and the page number. “Das transzendentale Ich ist [. . .] schon im beständigen Vermögen, des Ungewahrten gewahr werden zu können, und auch im Vermögen, sich jeweils eines Ich-kann gewahrend bewußt werden zu können und so iteriert”. Cf. Bernet (1985), liii–lviii; Rudolf Bernet: Die ungegenwärtige Gegenwart. Anwesenheit und Abwesenheit in Husserls Analyse des Zeitbewußtseins. In: Phänomenologische Forschungen 14 (1983), 16–57, esp. 41, 55. “das strömende Leben [. . .] zeitigt die erste immanente Sphäre, aber es ist selbst in einer Zeitigung, und so immer wieder”. About this meaning of “apodicticity” as impossibility of thinking or being otherwise cf. Hua XVII, 206, 256; cf. also Tetsuya Sakakibara: Hansei no Genkai to Genkai eno Hansei [Die Grenzen der Reflexion und die Reflexion auf die Grenzen] (in Japanese). In: Riso [Ideal] 648 (1992), 114–127, esp. 121, 126, note 7. “Alles Erschaute ist wesensnotwendig gezeitigt und in strömender Zeitigung, und das Erschauen selbst in Reflexion selbst wieder gezeitigt und in Zeitigung”. Husserl already writes in C 3 III (March 1931): “Every consciousness-of is given itself in original consciousness (jedes Bewussthaben ist selbst original bewusst)” (Hua Mat VIII, 42). In the following passage of the manuscript, Husserl clarifies the concept of originality as follows: “Thanks to [the] analysis, the concept of originality, namely of the perceptual manner of givenness, becomes differentiated [. . .]. We distinguish the primal-impressional manner of givenness of what appears as originarily arising now (des als jetzt urquellend Auftretenden) from the retentional and protentional manners of givenness, and at the same time, we distinguish these impressions, retentions, and protentions, or this whole continuity in its streaming course (diese ganze Kontinuität in ihrem strömenden Verlauf) from what is given originally in it” (Hua Mat VIII, 8). The original mode of consciousness of the primal present, of which it is a matter now, is obviously a non-objective manner of givenness or consciousness of the primal-impression which appears as originarily arising now. In his early time-analysis, Husserl describes this mode of consciousness as “primal consciousness (Urbewusstsein)” (Hua X, 119, 292; Hua XXIV, 245). Compared with this, the concept of “inner consciousness (inneres Bewusstsein)” relates to the primal-impressional as well as the retentional and protentional modes of consciousness. The inner consciousness therefore means a non-objectifying mode of the mental processes in general (cf. Hua X, 116 ff., 126 f.). As a remarkable investigation into the primal consciousness in Husserl’s phenomenology, see Liangkang Ni: Urbewußtsein und Reflexion bei Husserl. In: Husserl Studies 15 (1998), 77–99. “Die Rückfrage muss hier alles klären. Der Strom ist a priori von dem Ego zu verzeitlichen. Dieses Verzeitlichen ist selbst strömendes; das Strömen ist immerzu im Voraus. Aber auch das Ich ist im Voraus, es ist als waches Ich (transzendental-phänomenologisch wach) immerfort Bewusstseins-Ich”.
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13. A V 5/4-10. 14. “Der transzendentale Ichpol”, als den ich mich in der “Epoché” und der “transzendentale[n] Reflexion” finde, ist zwar “nicht der lebendige Pol, der aber in der entsprechenden Reflexion als anonymer, als fungierender aufweisbar ist. Aufweisbar ist, dass sein Fungieren kontinuierlich gezeitigt wird und somit für das aktuell fungierende Ich im Felde ist seines Bewussthabens. Der fungierende Pol ist in seinem ursprünglichen Fungieren nie im Zeitfeld. Die Zeitigung strömend zeitigt das lebendige cogito” (A V 5/4b-5a). 15. A V 5/5a. 16. Ibid. 17. Ibid. This does not mean that the living pole had once been in the field of time. The word “was” indicates only “before the reflection”. 18. Ibid. 19. Cf. A V 5/5a–6b. 20. On the basis of Husserl’s text, I would like to add something more to this point: When I reflect upon myself, it is not “the one who is functioning now (der jetzt Fungierende)”, but the “former Ego” that is grasped as “something objective (Gegenständliches)” (cf. A V 5/5b–6a). But in the “reflecting acts”, “I, the one who is functioning now”, am still always “being with (dabei)” the grasped Ego non-objectively (cf. A V 5/5b), since I always come into contact with myself as functioning, therefore also in the act of reflection (cf. A V 5/5b: “I am functioning [. . .] as reflecting Ego in the reflecting acts, [. . .]”). On the basis of this self-touching, it can be disclosed or inferred regressively in the iterative reflections that I am functioning constantly in every now-point, although I can thematize my concrete functioning only subsequently at any particular moment. As far as I reflect in the self-touching, I cannot think of my functioning otherwise, nor can it be otherwise. As a description of this state of affairs, Husserl’s following statement, which was already partly quoted can be understood: “I, the one who is functioning now, am being with this [reflected] Ego, I coincide [partly] with this, I am the same one (Ich, der jetzt Fungierende, bin bei diesem [reflektierten] Ich dabei, ich decke mich [partial] damit, ich bin dasselbe)” (A V 5/5b; Cf. also A V 5/5a). Husserl describes this functioning Ego more clearly in a subsequent passage: “I am functioning constantly and the same Ego through all my functioning and [therefore also] functioning related to the functioning (Ich bin ständig fungierend und durch all mein Fungieren und Fungieren in Bezug auf das Fungieren dasselbe Ich)” (A V 5/6b). 21. Concerning the way Husserl developed his thought on the inner primal-consciousness, I would like to add the following: In his early time-analysis up to 1911, Husserl did not recognize the possibility to describe the pure Ego phenomenologically. For that reason, the primal consciousness was determined there – without the concept of the Ego – as an inner, non-objectifying consciousness of the present “primal datum”. When Husserl included the pure Ego in the sphere of phenomenological description shortly before the publication of Ideen I and described it there for the first time and then especially in the original pencil-manuscript of Ideen II, the pure Ego was determined as the one which lasts temporally and holds identically through his separate cogitationes. This indicates, however, that the pure Ego with its whole stream of mental processes becomes constituted in the inner time-consciousness (Concerning to this process of recognition and description of the pure Ego, cf. Tetsuya Sakakibara: Das Problem des Ich und der Ursprung der genetischen Phänomenologie bei Husserl. In: Husserl Studies 14 (1997), 21-39). In my opinion, it is in the Bernau manuscripts that the concept of the Ego becomes deeper to that of the one which is not temporal itself, therefore not constituted in the inner time-consciousness, but rather functions and constitutes time for itself. In a manuscript of “the days in Bernau” which consists of “important pages” (Hua XXXIII, 439), Husserl writes clearly: “But now it should be discussed that the Ego as identical pole for all mental processes and for all things included ontically in the intentionality of those mental processes [. . .] is the pole for all time series (Zeitreihen) and as such ‘super’-temporal (‘über’-zeitlich) necessarily, [that is] the Ego for which the time becomes constituted, [. . .] but which is not temporal itself. In this sense, it is therefore not an ‘existent (Seiendes)’, but rather a counterpart for
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t. sakakibara all existents, not an object, but rather the primal state (Urstand) for all objectivities. The Ego should not be called Ego properly and never be called Ego at all, since it has then become already objective. It is something nameless above all apprehensible things, something which does not stand [. . .] nor exist above all things, but rather ‘functions’ (Fungierende)” (Hua XXXIII, 277 f.). All of this lies indeed “almost on the border of possible description” (Hua XXXIII, 278, note 2). Yet, Husserl here describes further in a remarkable manner: “But when the Ego functions and actively looks at and directs itself towards constituted thing [. . .], a temporal composition (Bestand), a ‘noematic’ or some other subjective composition [. . .] becomes granted to this [Ego] necessarily. And this composition as produced by function of the Ego shows to the reflection a direction to the functioning Ego. The functioning Ego now becomes objective as identical centre of function, as the one producing for all these productions (das Leistende für alle diese Leistungen), precisely in the reflection” (Hua XXXIII, 278). This passage makes it clear that the Ego functioning pre-reflectively is described as the condition of the possibility of reflection. But why could Husserl describe the pre-reflectively functioning Ego as the primal state, as the condition of the possibility of reflection, although the method of all phenomenological descriptions should always be based on reflection? Must we not suppose that Husserl comes into contact with himself as functioning before and in the reflection somehow and is therefore primally conscious of himself internally? Indeed, Husserl here does not say this clearly, but it must be so; if not so, we could not understand at all how Husserl could actually describe the functioning of the Ego as the condition of the possibility of reflection. In my opinion, precisely this idea on the self-touching of the functioning Ego, which was still hidden implicitly in the Bernau period, has now become explicit in the late time-manuscript A V 5. “Das ständige Ich ständig Urquelle, identisch nicht durch ein ‘Identifizieren’, sondern als ureinig Sein, seiend im urtümlichsten Vor-Sein, [. . .]” (A V 5/6b). Ibid. “Das Ich als Ur-Ich, als Ichquelle in seiner Ständigkeit eines Ureins <sic> ist Bewusstseinsich, hat einheitliches Bewusstes als ständiges Gegenwartsströmen, zeitliche Einheit konstituierend” (ibid.). According to Husserl this constitution presupposes “pre-consciousness in the form of ultimately hyletic substratum (Vorbewusstsein in Form des letztlich hyletischen Untergrundes)” (Hua Mat VIII, 53), and the process of this constitution “in the ultimate hyletic primal-sphere” is an “identification” in the “intentional modification which becomes differentiated continuously (kontinuierlich sich differenzierende intentionale Modifikation)”, i.e., the identification through the “intentional modification of ‘retention’”, through the “continuous depresentation (stetige Entgegenwärtigung)” (Hua Mat VIII, 134). It is now to be brought out from these descriptions that the self-touching of the functioning Ego can be also understood as touching the ultimate identifying and differentiating which occur with equal primordiality in the depth of pre-consciousness, i.e., of the consciousness of ultimate hyletic substratum. For previous remarkable investigations to this deepest dimension cf. also Antonio Aguirre: Genetische Phänomenologie und Reduktion. Zur Letztbegründung der Wissenschaft aus der radikalen Skepsis im Denken E. Husserls. Den Haag 1970, 162–166; Ludwig Landgrebe: Faktizität und Individuation. Studien zu den Grundfragen der Phänomenologie. Hamburg 1982 (hereafter: Landgrebe (1982)), 80–87. A V 5/7a. Ibid. Ibid. “[. . .] wird es [= das Ich] auch von sich selbst affiziert und kann in bezug auf sich selbst und von seinem vergangenen Ichsein, Ichtun aktiv werden” (A V 5/8a). A V 5/9a. A V 5/10a–b. A V 5/10a.
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33. Indeed, a description of the self-affection of the functioning Ego is given in C 10, but unfortunately the thematization of the procedure of method is not connected with it. If it had been the case, the “appropriate reflection” upon the living present could have been grounded in this self-affectioning mode of being of the functioning Ego. I will go into this point in the last section of this paper. 34. In der “transzendentalen Zeitigung” “zeitigt sich ein absolut anonymer Seinssinn, der nicht schon ‘geprägter’ ist, vielmehr erst durch meine Prägung als phänomenologisch Forschender die Gestalt eines eigentlichen Seinssinnes hat, während er doch, in apodiktischer Rückfrage ‘hinterher’ aufgewiesen, die apodiktische Seinsgeltung hat von einem, was schon war und konstituierend fungierte und doch nicht ‘vorgegeben’, nicht geprägt, nicht explikabel war” (B III 4/29a–b). 35. “vom phänomenologisierenden Ich in der Rückfrage aufweisbar in einer eigentümlichen Abstraktion und nur von ihm aus herzustellenden Identifikation”. 36. Held (1966), 118. 37. Cf. also Held (1966), 94. 38. It is now clear that the concept of apodicticity presented in this paper is nothing other than a unification of the epistemological impossibility to think otherwise and the ontological impossibility to be otherwise. 39. With regard to the date of this manuscript cf. Hua Mat VIII, 185, note 1, 189, note 2, and 194, note 1. The consideration which begins here is an attempt to investigate, with the help of some passages of C 10, an ontological ground of that self-touching or inner primal consciousness of the functioning Ego which was brought out in the previous, chronological research. 40. “[. . .], dass zu jeder lebendigen urgegenwärtigenden Gegenwart (als der des wachen reflektierenden Analytikers) schon das Ich mit Ichaffektion und Ichakt gehört”. 41. “[. . .] nur durch passende Reflexion [weiß ich] davon, das thematische Ich ein fungierendes Ich hinter sich hat”. 42. Regarding Fink’s conception of “wakingness” cf. Bruzina (1998), especially 120 ff., 129. 43. In another passage Husserl describes this state of affairs as follows: “It [= the Ego] cannot function without affecting itself, itself, that is, as functioning [Ego] (Es kann nicht fungieren, ohne sich selbst, sich als fungierendes zu affizieren)” (Hua Mat VIII, 193). The Ego can therefore only function, as a result of being affected by its Self constituted through its (previous) functioning. Husserl calls this state of affairs “necessary self-affection of the functioning Ego (Notwendige Selbstaffektion des fungierenden Ich)” (ibid.). 44. In order to develop this attempt further, it would be necessary to take the problem of one’s own body (Leib) and that of alter ego into consideration. Husserl says in a manuscript: One’s own “animate body (Leibkörper)” is indeed a constituted something, but it also functions, because the Ego “as centre of all constituting affections and actions” is “the experiencingly functioning one (das erfahrend Fungierende) in the constituted body” (Hua Mat VIII, 338). In the same manuscript Husserl speaks also of a “primal affection (Uraffektion) in which the anonymous [functioning] Ego can be affected by itself and by other Egos” (ibid.). In this paper I cannot go into this problem. Concerning the relationship between the inner primal consciousness and the functioning living body cf. Landgrebe (1982), 80–87; Zahavi (1998).
CHAPTER XIV
THE INNER NIGHT: TOWARDS A PHENOMENOLOGY OF (DREAMLESS) SLEEP Nicolas de Warren La conscience est le pouvoir de dormir. Lévinas
Abstract. Is a phenomenology of sleep possible? If sleep is the complete absence of experience, including the self-experience of consciousness itself, how can phenomenology, as a description of lived experience, have access to a condition that is neither lived nor experienced? In this paper, I respond directly and indirectly to Jean-Luc Nancy’s challenge that a phenomenology of sleep is impossible. As an indirect response, my sketch of the contours of phenomenology of sleep investigates Husserl’s employment of the distinction between sleep and wakefulness as a metaphor. Specifically, the metaphorical characterization of retentional consciousness is assessed. On the basis of this metaphorical characterization of time-consciousness in terms of sleep and wakefulness, I turn to Husserl’s account of the constitution of sleep. I argue that Husserl’s phenomenology of timeconsciousness remains incomplete without an account of “sleep-consciousness” (by which we mean, in a restricted manner, dreamless sleep). In pursuing Husserl’s phenomenological account of sleep, falling asleep and waking up within the context of his genetic phenomenology, I offer a suggestion for how to understand the sense in which consciousness (temporarily) constitutes itself as sleep – as the absence of itself. I conclude with an analogy with Husserl’s investigations into the imaginary: in both instances, consciousness induces within itself its own suspension or self-abstention. In the particular instance of sleep, consciousness disengages itself entirely from the complex of interests while also immunizing itself to the force of affectivity.
I. He awoke, opened his eyes. The room meant very little to him; he was too deeply immersed in the non-being from which he had just come [. . .] in utter comfort, utter relaxation he lay absolutely still for a while, and then sank back into one of the light momentary sleeps that occur after a long, profound one. Suddenly he opened his eyes again and looked at the watch on his wrist [. . .] now he was awake; in another few seconds he knew where he was, he knew that the time was late afternoon [. . .].
273 D. Lohmar, I. Yamaguchi (eds.), On Time - New Contributions to the Husserlian Phenomenology of Time, Phaenomenologica 197, DOI 10.1007/978-90-481-8766-9_14, C Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2010
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These opening lines to Paul Bowles’ The Sheltering Sky contain various descriptions of sleep, as evoked from the telescopic experience of waking up in which we glimpse sleep’s fleeting image, as a mirage, which otherwise would not appear to us while actually asleep. In awakening, we grasp not sleep itself, but the contrast between being asleep and being awake, but only from the side of being awake, since whatever impression we have – or accept – of sleep is given to us in the evidence of already being awake, however dim and tenuous this fitful luminescence of one’s own consciousness may be. Even the familiar confusion of whether I am still sleeping or already caught in the stirrings of a consciousness already regained presupposes a minimal degree of wakefulness. Of sleep, nothing is experienced for the one who sleeps. And even the Other, who looks at me while I sleep, and in whose trust I place my sleep, is also not truly a witness to my sleep; even the Other remains excluded from the experience of my being asleep, an experience that exists for no one. Sleep retires me from myself as much as it retires me from the world. That we never, strictly speaking, experience our own condition of being asleep, that we are never conscious of being asleep while we sleep, but only experience sleep in the transitions of falling asleep and awakenings, would seem to explain the indispensability of metaphors in our evocations of sleep. Whether in literary prose, in philosophical discourse or in ordinary talk, the condition of sleep is commonly characterized as a distance or retreat; as a state of rest and relaxation; as an absence of differentiation; as a depth or submersion; as a state of non-being. In Hegel’s formulation: “sleep is the condition in which the soul is plunged in its unity without difference – being wake, by contrast, is the condition in which the soul is engaged in opposition to its simple unity.”1 In the absolute of sleep, all cows are indeed black. If sleep is the condition in which nothing appears to me – in which I am not even for myself – is a phenomenology of sleep possible? In Jean-Luc Nancy’s words: “Il n’y a pas de phénoménologie du sommeil, car il ne montre de soi que sa disparition, son enfouissement et sa dérobade.”2 The force of Jean-Luc Nancy’s pronouncement – “il n’y a pas de phénoménologie du sommeil” – rests on a conception of sleep as the complete absence of any experience. In sleep, the “self” (soi) has retired from itself as well as from any relation to otherness. Indeed, the difference between self and non-self (expressed in Sartrean terms: the
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difference between pour soi and en soi) is temporally suspended in the “tomb of sleep” (tombe de sommeil). Withdrawn from the openness of transcendence, the sleeping self has not ensconced itself within itself, withdrawn into its own immanence. Even in the radicalized form proposed by Michel Henry, the self-affection of immanence would have to yield to the indiscriminate oblivion of sleep, as Nancy conceives it. The self does not retire to itself, but retires from itself in succumbing, or falling, into its own self-oblivion. In this inner night of consciousness, the intentionality of manifestation is neutralized; nothing appears since nobody is here, for whom something could appear. As Nancy writes, “Le soi dormant est le soi de la chose en soi: un soi qui ne peut même pas se distinguer de ce qui n’est pas <soi>, un soi sans soi, en quelque façon, mais qui trouve ou qui touche dans cet être-sans-soi sa plus véridique existence autonome.”3 The self who sleeps is absent from itself and plunged into the night of a “thing in itself” more primordial than the distinction between pour soi or en soi that defines its wakeful openness towards the world. For Nancy, the sleeping self is an “ab-solutum,” a solitary instance lacking any relation to anything else, including itself. The self who sleeps is truly the one that sleeps. In the face of Nancy’s challenge, an intriguing feature of Husserl’s phenomenological thinking is its sustained employment of sleep and wakefulness as metaphors, especially in his analysis of time-consciousness – notoriously, the most difficult, yet significant of all problems for phenomenology. That sleep and wakefulness can at all function as metaphors – as “live” metaphors – militates against any strict exclusion between sleep and wakefulness, as implied by Nancy’s presumed impossibility of a phenomenology of sleep. Strictly speaking, if a phenomenology of sleep were impossible, the metaphorical meaning of sleep within phenomenological descriptions would remain without traction. My guiding thought is that an assessment of how sleep and wakefulness function metaphorically within Husserl’s analysis of time-consciousness offers an entry into a phenomenology of sleep. Once I have found a way into the problem of sleep for phenomenology through this indirect approach, I shall discuss specifically manuscript D-14 in which Husserl deals with sleep; and end by sketching a further line of reflection that Husserl himself never formulated, but which draws on his resources, and to which, I argue, his nascent phenomenology of sleep is committed.
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Before I embark on this proposal, let me first clearly state the limitations of my essay. First: I am concerned exclusively with dreamless or profound sleep. The phenomenological constitution of dreams and other manifest occurrences during sleep – somnambulism, nightmares, sleep talking, etc. – represent “higher order” problems of constitution that are here excluded. Second: I make no pretense to develop a complete phenomenological account of sleep; nor do I offer an exhaustive inventory and reflection on the metaphorical uses of sleep. Third: I avoid any direct treatment of what constitutes a metaphor from a phenomenological point of view as well as the relationship between metaphorical and literal descriptions for the method of phenomenological analysis. The truly difficult questions are the questions we continually postpone, and never truly face.
II. Husserl’s analysis of time-consciousness is centered on the exemplary phenomenon of the perceptual apprehension of a time-object – an object, such as a melody, that intrinsically contains temporal duration. A melody is an intentional object whose parts – individual musical notes – are necessarily distributed over time, and yet which belong together in a synthetic unity. Within the temporal constitution of a melody, each individual note is also temporally extended, since a musical note possesses a beginning and an end that defines its individual temporal duration. Whether we operate on the descriptive level of a time-object as a melody or an individual note, the now-phase of any time-object is apprehended along with a consciousness of earlier and later now-phases. Each nowphase is situated within a horizon of past and future now-phases. On Husserl’s view, “every perception is endowed with temporal intentions” such that “it belongs to the essence of perception that it not only has in its regard a now with the character of a point, and not only dismisses from its regard something that has just been of which it is nevertheless ‘still conscious’ in the appropriate mode of ‘just having been’ (primary memory [or what Husserl also designates as retention]), but also that it passes over from now to now and goes to meet the now with its regard.”4 Each now-phase of a time-object is endowed with a temporal breadth,
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as constituted in a perceptual act composed of a three-fold declension of temporal intentions. A perceptual act of consciousness possesses an internal architecture of three non-independent forms of temporal apprehension: retention, original presentation, and protention. An original presentation is the wellspring of intuitive givenness in which a now-phase is constituted as now. Every original presentation, however, becomes necessarily modified in a retentional consciousness, and in such a manner that an (earlier) now-phase is still apprehended, but as just-past. In turn, every retentional modification of an original presentation motivates a protentional consciousness that, in the form of an empty intention, anticipates a now-phase yet to come. This “protended” now-phase becomes fulfilled in the eruption of a renewed original presentation, which, in turn, succumbs to the destiny of its own retentional modification. The inevitability of the now is its passage or sinking away. Within this threefold structure, each intentional declension of consciousness is intuitive (anschaulich) in character, yet not in the same manner. Whereas an original presentation provides for the original presence and intuitive fullness of a now-phase as now, retentional consciousness provides for the consciousness of an earlier now-phase as just-past, but not, however, in the form of a representation or image, but as an original consciousness of the now-phase as itself absent or no longer now. By contrast, whereas retentional consciousness “empties” or “de-presentifies” the apprehension of the now-phase of its original presence, protentional consciousness intends a subsequent now-phase as not-yet-now, as given in an empty manner, or “emptily” in character. As Husserl progressively discovered over the course of his reflections, this three-fold temporal declension of perceptual consciousness does not merely offer an account of how time-objects – and in view of such time-objects, the fixed order of temporal positions – are constituted. Insofar as the constitution of any possible object of experience, as the synthetic unity of a manifold of appearances, is grounded in acts of consciousness that are themselves intrinsically temporal, the possibility of consciousness as such, as intentionality, is temporal through and through, and, in this regard, constituted in time-consciousness. This insight into the temporality of transcendence and immanence is anchored in what Husserl discovers as the double-intentionality of retentional consciousness in which the dual aspects of intentionality, as self-relatedness
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and other-relatedness, finds a constitutive footing. In the experience of hearing a melody, consciousness relates to the melody as its transcendent object while also, but not in the same manner, relating to itself. Consciousness experiences its own act of hearing and, in this sense, is implicitly conscious of itself as hearing a melody. The double-intentionality of retentional consciousness does not merely stipulate that when I hear the elapsing duration of a melody – the successive now-phases of its unfolding – I must still grasp in retentional consciousness earlier notes as just-past. Husserl specifies that along with the necessary retention of an earlier now-phase as just-past, consciousness retains itself as having just heard a note as now. Indeed, if consciousness did not retain its own act of hearing – as having just heard – consciousness could not retain the note as just-past, which it just experienced, and which it still experiences as just-past. The double-intentionality of retentional consciousness is composed of a cross-intentionality and a length-intentionality: a cross-intentionality (Querintentionalität) directed towards the note as just-past, in which the note is given to me as “no longer now;” a length-intentionality (Längsintentionalität) directed towards my own act of hearing as just-past in which I retain myself as having just heard the note. Along this lengthwise intentionality, every retentional modification of an original presentation further entails a “re-retention” or “re-iteration” of the entire sequence of earlier retentional modifications, such that the entire history of my past is implicated in an intentional manner with every renewed original presentation and its retentional modification. This lengthwise intentionality underpins a “stretch-continuum” in which different phases of consciousness, along with their nested intentional correlations, over-lap in the mode of sedimentation. Without this continuous over-lapping of consciousness – for example, phases in the unfolding experience of hearing a melody – Husserl would only be in position to account for the temporal continuity on the noematic side of the constituted time-object, but not on the noetic side of perceptual acts. Yet, since Husserl’s argument turns on the claim that the constitution of time-objects is founded in the temporality of consciousness, a phenomenological description of the constitution of time-objects must also include a description of the inner temporalization, or self-temporalization, of consciousness, as itself “flowing” or “streaming,” and as such, as constituting itself as a unity
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of consciousness. It is precisely this self-constitution of the streaming temporality of consciousness that Husserl intends to capture descriptively with the double-intentionality of retentional consciousness and the foundational significance ascribed to “length-wise” intentionality in which consciousness retains itself, and, in this manner, appears to itself within the course of its own flowing away. In hearing an earlier note as just-past, I am implicitly conscious of myself as having just heard the note as now; this implicit form of self-consciousness is not a distinct “object” of an “inner consciousness,” but, instead, becomes manifest along, or as, the lengthwise intentionality of (self )-retention, as pre-reflective and non-objectifying self-consciousness. More could be developed and, indeed, questioned, regarding Husserl’s solution to the problem of the intersection of time-consciousness and self-consciousness in the double-intentionality of retentional consciousness; given our immediate purpose, it suffices to note that the double-intentionality of retentional consciousness avoids the difficulties of “reflection theory” of self-consciousness while also establishing the sense in which the past transcends consciousness of the now, and, in this temporal transcendence, of how consciousness transcends itself. At the center of Husserl’s insight into the constitutive function of retentional consciousness within the three-fold declension of timeconsciousness, we find a complex description of the “de-presentification” of the intuitive fullness and “living presence” of an original presentation. Retentional consciousness exercises a constitutive function: the note is constituted as no longer now and, in this sense, is still given, yet given as absent, in the specific temporal index of just-past. As Husserl remarks: “every accomplishment of the living present, that is, every accomplishment of sense or of the object becomes sedimented in the realm of the dead, or rather, the dormant horizonal sphere, precisely in the manner of a fixed order of sedimentation: While at the head, the living process receives new, original life, at the feet, everything that is, as it were, in the final acquisition of the retentional synthesis, becomes steadily sedimented.”5 Whereas an original presentation is charged with the constitutive function of constituting the givenness of presence, retentional consciousness is charged with the constitutive function of reversing, in mid-flight, this original givenness of presence into the constitution of an original “absence” that necessarily punctures and
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punctuates the eruption of original presentation. Husserl relies on an array of characterizations to describe this function of retentional consciousness as “de-presentification:” going to sleep, sinking into a depth, emptying of intuitive affectivity and vivacity, and erasing all differentiation. The underlying metaphorical image of retentional modification comprises different strands of meaning; with the passage of time, the content of experience progressively becomes emptied of its intuitive fullness, loses its proximity vis-à-vis the stabilizing axis of the recurring, and renewed, original presentation, slackens in its affective force and is compressed into an ever diminishing perspective, much as a ship that fades into the distant horizon, until it is no longer seen. The content of experience becomes perceived less clearly and distinctly, until the content of experience has completely “exited” from the arc of the living present. The melody is over and done with; it has, as a constituted unity of experience, become sedimented into the distant past. As Husserl remarks: “The present turns into the past as the past that is constituted for the ego through the lawful regularity of retentions; and finally, everything that is retentional turns into the undifferentiated unity of far retention of the one distant horizon, which extinguishes all differentiations.”6 The increased sinking away of the past is correlated to an increased diminishing of intuitive force and differentiation among its content of experience. The past eventually recedes into an entirely undifferentiated depth or night. Husserl’s point is to provide a descriptive account of the difference between the continued retention of the past within the arc of living present – the experience of still hearing the notes as just-past – and the definitive passage of those notes into a remote past. And yet, even though the content of experience slips beyond the horizon of the living present, the process of retentional modification does not abruptly come to an end, as if the sinking-away of the past were suddenly arrested. In order to understand how retentional consciousness passes into – in constituting – an inner night of consciousness, Husserl metaphorically characterizes this transformation of retention as a shift from falling asleep to being asleep. This shift within the transcendental accomplishment of retentional consciousness from the constitution of the living present as sinking away to the continued retention of experience, and constituted content, beyond the arc of temporal vitality is reflected in Husserl’s distinction
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between “near” and “far” retentions. It is in terms of this difference that Husserl distributes the metaphorical characterization of sleep, falling asleep, and wakefulness within the over-arching wakeful life of consciousness. Near retentions operate within the arc of the living present and contribute directly to the constitution of a time-object in its temporal unfolding. The function of “de-presentification” ascribed to near retentions is metaphorically characterized as “falling asleep;” its principle attribute is the progressive emptying of “intuitivity” (Anschaulichkeit) and affectivity. The maximal point of intuitive fullness in the eruption of an original presentation is characterized as wakefulness: the “head,” or maximal point, of wakefulness is centered on an original presentation. From this original wellspring of intuitivity, the running-off of experience into the past is described as sinking into the “realm of the dead” or “dormant horizonal sphere.”7 The past remains present within consciousness in the form of sedimentated far retentions in the dual significance prescribed by the double-intentionality of retentional consciousness. The emptying of intuitive fullness operates along two entwined registers of intentional constitution: other-constitution and self-constitution. The progressive emptying of intuitive fullness of intentional content goes hand in hand with a progressive emptying of the self-givenness of consciousness for itself. As the experienced content of the past becomes farther and farther removed from the renewed wellspring of original presentation, consciousness itself becomes farther and farther past from itself. In the over-lapping running off of consciousness along the length-wise intentionality of (self )-retention, consciousness covers over its own accomplishment of the living present. The metaphor of sedimentation means a “covering over” or “self-forgetting” of consciousness: consciousness “de-presentifies” itself in its own temporal self-constitution. Given that retentional consciousness has the form of a pre-reflexive and non-thematic self-consciousness, this self-forgetting, or falling asleep, of consciousness is original to the selfconstitution of time-consciousness. The constitution of the living present in original time-consciousness is the constitution of an original difference between falling asleep and wakefulness; it is the constitution of an original difference, and tension, between the self-abstention and self-presence of consciousness. Much as retentional modification does not intrude or infect an original presentation from the outside, but, instead, ejects an original presentation from the inside – throws its center of gravity
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outside itself (to adopt Lévinas’ felicitous expression) – the falling asleep of consciousness, as a characterization of retentional consciousness, does not intrude onto an already constituted wakeful sphere from the outside. Instead, consciousness constitutes itself as wakeful in the context of constituting itself as already falling asleep, as already falling away from itself into the depth of its own past. Each of us has had the experience of locking the door of our house unthinkingly and, then, seconds later, falling into a panic in failing to remember whether we have indeed just locked our door. The resulting anxiety of whether we did indeed do what we always habitually do exemplifies how the constitution of experience within the arc of the living present relies on the silent accomplishment of retentional consciousness without, thereby, instilling within us the confidence of an explicit selfconsciousness. Insofar as retentional consciousness shoulders the burden of a double-constitution, the retention of myself as having just experienced quilts the texture of time-consciousness with an original form of self-forgetting: in retaining myself, I in fact forget myself – I put myself to sleep since the de-presentification of consciousness is self-induced or self-affected. In this example of forgetting whether I have locked my door, the intrinsic self-consciousness within retentional consciousness is sedimentated into the inner night, or oblivion, of consciousness. Taken in this dual significance as following the contours of double-retentionality, consciousness “puts itself to sleep” or “falls asleep” in the constituting of itself as past, as becoming past. Consciousness must jump over itself, or cover itself over – cover over its own accomplishment of meaning in order to become open to itself, and to the world of experience. The passage of time is also the passage of consciousness into itself. Taken in its metaphorical meaning as “falling asleep,” the retentional modification of consciousness fixes the sense in which consciousness still has itself – retains itself – without being conscious or awake to itself: the experience of hearing a melody yesterday is over and done with, and yet, it is not “nothing,” for it has become sedimented as the past that I have become for myself. My past has become my incarnate history. In this regard, the metaphor of sleep defines the sense in which the past that I have become is “unconscious” without being beyond the reach of consciousness. The metaphorical characterization of near retention as falling asleep allows Husserl to define the becoming past of consciousness as a consciousness
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that is constituted as the possibility of return, but also as a past that builds the ground upon which we stand, from which we confront or face the future. Near retention contributes to the constitution of temporal passage; far retention continually retains the sedimented past beyond the arc of the living present. Husserl ascribes various functions to far retention and combines different features of what it is to have a past, or to live against the horizon of the past, under the heading of far retention. Of the different functions ascribed to far retention, the sedimentation of the past within consciousness determines the sense in which experiences of the remote past can be associated with the living present through what Husserl terms “original association.”8 The sedimentation of the past in far retentions is the manner in which Husserl accounts for the dimension of tacit knowledge that shapes the living present. Whereas, as we shall discuss below, remembrance is an act of recollecting a specific event from the past, when I perceive an object that strikes me as familiar or when, after the interruption of an activity, I resume where I had left off (reading a book, for example), experiences of the past, as contained in far retention, are passively associated with the experience of the present. In addition to this meaning of far retention as the tacit dimension of knowledge, far retention also contributes to constituting the possibility of remembrance. It is only because a time-object has first of all been constituted in its temporality through the three-fold declension of time-consciousness, and, furthermore, that this constituted time-object is retained in far retention, that remembrance is at all possible; remembrance presupposes the dual service of near and far retentions. In light of this accomplishment of retention, Husserl characterizes remembrance as an “awakening.” As noted, retentional consciousness possesses a dual significance: consciousness “de-presentifies” its intentional object but also “de-presentifies” itself. Retentional consciousness entails both a noetic and noematic modification: the noematic sense of the object is modified along with a modification of the noetic consciousness – its character of self-givenness as consciousness. The consciousness of the past is itself a past consciousness; but as such, it is a consciousness that can be re-awoken and return. In its metaphorical employment, sleep is the possibility of return: a consciousness that sleeps is a consciousness that can return to itself, and find itself again, but not from where it first
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left itself. Remembrance is an “again consciousness” (Wiederbewußtsein) in the sense that when I remember an object of the past, the perceptual act in which an experience was first constituted as present is itself “given again,” and “reproduced.” As an awakening of a past consciousness retained in the sedimentation of retention, remembrance is an “Ent-Sedimentation” (D-14/12b). Remembrance relives the past because in recalling an object of the past, consciousness replays itself by “implicating” its (own) past consciousness. As Husserl notes, “every remembrance of A is at the same time the remembrance of an earlier perception of A.”9 It is only on the constitutive basis of the double-intentionality of retentional consciousness that remembrance is possible: if I did not retain myself as having just heard the note, I could not remember that note as an experience that I once had. Remembrance is an awakening – consciousness is once again “alive” and “given,” as if a particular act of consciousness regained its consciousness, not in its original form or characterization, but in a reproduced form, as given again in a now that it no longer calls its own. This metaphorical characterization of sleep and wakefulness within our discussion of time-consciousness applies to individual acts of consciousness and their intentional correlates. The metaphor of awakening is applied to an act of consciousness; but this awakening of a past consciousness is itself situated within a wakeful consciousness as such. In other words, when I remember what I did yesterday, an act of remembrance re-awakens a consciousness of the past, yet the act of remembrance is, for its part, not only itself awake, but it is constituted within a consciousness that is fundamentally awake. The wakefulness of consciousness as such is bound up with the living presence of time-consciousness. Remembrance is based on the consciousness of a difference, or distance, between the remembered past (self ) and the self that remembers; the difference between the remembering consciousness that is literally awake and the metaphorical re-awakening of a past consciousness. The latter is metaphorical since it is based on, or only given on the basis of, a remembering consciousness that is itself awake, and thus, not asleep (the complicated question of whether there is remembrance while dreaming will not be addressed here).
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Husserl defines waking consciousness in the following manner: “the waking consciousness, the waking life, is a living toward, a living from the now toward the new now. Here it is not merely and not primarily attention that I am thinking of. On the contrary, it might seem to me that independently of the mode of attention (attention in the narrower and wider sense) an originary intention reaches from now to now, combining itself with experiential intentions – now indeterminate, now more or less determinate – which arise from past experience.”10 In this passage, Husserl distinguishes between attention and wakefulness. Attention is a particular mode or disposition of the ego, and its directedness and engagement with objects in its sensory fields; the ego can also therefore be in the mode of non-attentiveness, as, for example, with music in the backdrop. Whereas attention is directed towards a particular object (I attend to this or that), the condition of wakefulness is not directed towards an object. Wakefulness is the openness of consciousness to experience as such, not a state or condition of an individual act of consciousness. Husserl further specifies that we can take attention in a narrow and wider sense. In its narrow sense, attention is a focusing on an aspect of an object: I can attend to this detail of an object. In its wider sense, I am attentive to this particular object at the expense of other objects in my environment that recede into the background. Husserl is explicit in not only distinguishing between attention and wakefulness, but also in claiming that wakefulness is “independent” of different and changing modes of attention, by which he means that the changing fortunes or landscape of attention does not affect the underlying openness or wakefulness of consciousness. Yet even though wakefulness is a global predicate of consciousness and does not, in this regard, have a particular intentional object correlate, wakefulness is a form of consciousness in the sense that it is a “living towards” and a “consciousness towards” in the fundamental form of time-consciousness. Waking consciousness is a consciousness of time’s passage in the midst of its transition from now to now. Waking consciousness is a consciousness of the temporal duration of experience – the experience of intervals, not only of objects in time, but of consciousness itself to the extent that consciousness itself comes to pass, and is intrinsically self-conscious of its temporality, in the registering of the temporal duration of objects.
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III. One does not find in Husserl’s reflections on time-consciousness an explicit confrontation with the constitution of sleep, other than by way of an implicit thematization in the form of a metaphorical employment of sleep and wakefulness, as presented above. However, the problem of sleep did not entirely escape Husserl’s attention, even though, in those manuscripts in which the problem of sleep is explicitly addressed – for example, in manuscript D-14 – Husserl’s phenomenology of sleep remained in a preliminary stage of formation. Husserl increasingly recognized during the 1930s the need for a phenomenology of sleep in the widening context of his reflections on time-consciousness. As Husserl notes, the distinction between being awake and being asleep represents a “necessary expansion” and “a correction” of his analysis of time-consciousness (D-14/3). This expansion and correction is a direct consequence of pursuing the distinction between “hyletic data” and Ichlichkeit within temporalization (Zeitigung) to its phenomenological limit. Expressed in the terms preferred by Nancy, but in contrast to his thinking, the distinction between pour soi and en soi is not suspended in sleep; rather, understanding the inherently temporal constitution of this distinction must include the constitution of the difference between sleep and wakefulness. Nancy’s view of sleep as the condition in which the self has – temporarily – retired from itself is only possible when situated within the distinction of pour soi and en soi, or, in other words, Ichlichkeit and hylé. As Husserl begins to realize, a phenomenology of time-consciousness, gathered around the dual-differentiation of self from itself and self from the world (i.e., double-intentionality of retentional consciousness) remains incomplete without a phenomenology of sleep. The phenomenon of sleep is not, in this regard, external or “deeper” than the distinction pour soi and en soi. Or, rather, the inner night of sleep is itself a constitutive accomplishment of the distinction between pour soi and en soi, given the temporary condition of any period of dreamless sleep. With this indication of the form that a phenomenology of (dreamless) sleep is to take, we can identify two ways in which the problem of sleep develops within phenomenological reflection. As discussed above, the distinction between sleep and wakefulness is a master-metaphor for the constitution of time-consciousness in Husserl’s thinking. The distinction
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between “near” and “far” “retention” is characterized metaphorically in terms of the difference between “falling asleep” and “being asleep,” in contrast to the wakefulness of original presentation. Although Husserl does not employ this distinction explicitly in his reflections on sleep in D-14, the concept of far retention is evident in his treatment of sedimentation while the notion of near retention is evident in his discussion of retentional modification as an emptying of original intuitivity until it reaches the horizon of “zero-degree.” In this regard, the distinction between night and day within wakeful consciousness is introduced: the wakeful arc of the living present is enveloped by the “night of sedimentation” (D-14/4a). As Husserl writes: “how do I find my ‘day’ in today [wie finde ich meinen ‘Tag’ im Heute]?” (D-14/2). As sketched above, far retentions and the self-retention of consciousness as the possibility of its own return in the again-consciousness of remembrance underpin this question of finding one’s “day” in today. In addition to this metaphorical description of retention, Husserl formulates directly the constitution of sleep and wakefulness as such. This problem of sleep, of how consciousness falls into sleep, is situated in the context of a reflection on the constitution of the life of consciousness as a whole, indeed, of consciousness as a life, in its self-constituting stream of temporality, which is constituted through alternating periods of sleep and wakefulness, of night and day. The unity of the life of consciousness is described as a stream or chain (Kette) of experiences (D-14/21a). The chain of consciousness is composed of periods of sleep and wakefulness that are connected; this chain of consciousness is not linear in the sense that once something has happened, I am forever separated from it. Within this chain, there is over-lap in the sense that earlier periods of wakefulness can be recalled in the form of remembrance. The chain of consciousness is thus a chain of mediations, since every previous period of wakefulness can be recalled. As Husserl notes, “Das Heute hat die Erinnerung an das Gestern in sich, das Gestern an das Vorgestern etc., mittelbar aber alle” (D-14/21a).11 Sleep presents the problem of the temporary interruption or suspension of time-consciousness; when I sleep, I am neither aware of events in time nor am I aware of myself as experiencing: sleep is the constitution of an interval or a temporal difference between the past and a present, yet this temporal interval, or difference, unlike the temporal differentiation,
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or interval, of waking time-consciousness, is not “lived through” or experienced. When I awake from a period of sleep, I am aware that an interval of time between the moment of having fallen asleep and the moment of waking up has elapsed, yet this interval, or consciousness that time has passed, was not an interval that I experienced as having past. How can consciousness constitute a temporal interval without having experienced, or lived through, this interval? Sleep is itself a temporary phenomenon, that is, a stretch of sleep is marked by a beginning and an end; sleep is not unending. We have to understand how consciousness falls asleep and awakens; and what kind of self-modification of temporality is sleep. Sleep becomes a central problem for Husserl due to his view of consciousness as fundamentally “self-constituting” and “consciousness through and through.” The problem of sleep and wakefulness is addressed in the context of Husserl’s interest in association and affectivity, and thus falls within the domain of genetic phenomenology. At this genetic level of analysis, Husserl’s interest is to describe the genesis of intentional objects, as they emerge within the pre-given dimensions of experience within the structure of consciousness gathered around the distinction between “Ich und Ichfremdes” (D-14/7b). Consciousness is being-affected, or hetero-affection: an affection of something other than consciousness. In this regard, hyletic sensations are characterized as “ego-foreign” (“Ichfremdes”). Hyletic sensations affect the ego, whereby affection is described in terms of differentiation and changing forms of saliency. In the lectures on passive synthesis in which this genetic level of pregivenness is investigated in detail, Husserl adopts a manner of description that is reminiscent of Alice in Wonderland. A perceptual object “calls” out to be touched and turned, so as to reveal its hidden sides. The world is not mute; it affects consciousness in different ways, clamoring for attention and engagement. It is in light of this description of the situatedness of consciousness within the flux of pre-givenness that the ego, in heeding the call of affections, awakes to the world. Although we cannot discuss further the rich analyses provided in the lectures on passive synthesis, it is, for our purposes, important to note that the basic structure of the saliency of affection is conflict. In every phase of immanent temporality, the ego is confronted with different, and changing, landscapes of saliencies: an affection possesses a mode of force (D-14/11a). Husserl evokes
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this situation by characterizing affections as in a struggle for existence (“Kampf ums Dasein”). The differentiation of sensations from each other in terms of various grades of affectivity is based on relative differentiations or gradients of force. At the hyletic level, consciousness is situated within fields of sensations or hyletic content, the landscape of which is shaped and populated by saliencies (“Abgehobenheiten”) – particular formations of sense-content that stand out in relief, and to which an awakened ego (“wache Ich”) responds in different manners of intentional expression, in turning towards these saliencies and taking an active interest in them. Important for our concern is the “double concept” of affectivity (D-14/10b) that emerges from these discussions, and which establishes the framework in which Husserl considers the phenomenon of sleep. The double-concept of affectivity consists in the force of affectivity and the interest of the ego towards affectivity, and reflects the two correlative sides of noetic and noematic analysis, taken up at the genetic level of pre-givenness. Husserl thus distinguishes between sleep and being awake (“Wachheit”) within the domain of affectivity. Sleep is not opposed or beyond the concept of affectivity; it is only in terms of affectivity that we can make sense of sleep. The distinction between sleep and beingawake is a “fundamental distinction in affectivity” (D-14/10b). Sleep and being-awake are two modes of affectivity, or being-affected. Husserl defines Wachheit as the condition in which the ego is constantly active in the sense of constantly “answering” or “responding” to affections, and this means: turning towards (“zuwenden”) that which affects the ego, and concerning itself with that which affects the ego. Force of affection means: pulling of the ego and awakening of the ego (D-14/11a). Hyletic sensations are in conflict (“Streit”) with each other, each clamoring for recognition or attention of the ego. By contrast, sleep is the condition in which there is an absence of the force of affections. Affections touch the ego, yet they are lacking in force. The concept of force underpins Husserl’s argument that the distinction between sleep and being-awake is constituted within affection: sleep is being-affected, but without force. In sleep, consciousness has insulated or immunized itself, not from affections per se, but from the force of affections. In this manner, the ego has a “distance” (“Abständigkeit”) towards the hyletic sensations, and, thus a distance from the world.
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Husserl recognizes that “awaking” (“Weckung”) is a mode of affection but that “awakening” (“Weckung”) also plays a role within “waches Leben.” This metaphorical projection of the concept of “Weckung” within waking life, as Husserl notes, touches on the “secret of the unconscious and sedimentation,” in which there is no activity and wakeful affection (i.e., forceful affection), as explored above in our treatment of the metaphorical characterization of sleep and wakefulness. As discussed above, Husserl employs a juxtaposition of different terms – sleep, unconscious, sedimentation – to characterize the sense in which retentional modification is a “veiling” and “covering” over of the intuitive givenness of an original presentation. The passage of near retentions into the depth and night of far retenion approaches a limit of “Unwachheit” and “forcelessness.” Husserl remarks that we have the streaming of life with a broad core of wakeful affectivity and activity, and, beyond this horizon, the constant stream of “forceless unawake temporalization” (“kraftlose unwacher Zeitigung”) (D-14/12a). This expression “unawake temporalization” helps us resolve a question posed earlier regarding the distinction between absolute time-consciousness – the self-manifestation of the immanent stream of conscousness – and wakeful consciousness. Wakeful consciousness is a consciousness open to the force of affections. Husserl implicitly distinguishes between waking consciousness and time-consciousness such that the self-temporalization of consciousness is not dependent on wakeful consciousness; in this sense, the temporalization of consciousness in its absolute self-constitution is more basic than the distinction between wakefulness and sleep, much as, we can suggest, absolute time-consciousness is more primordial than, but not separable from, the distinction between perceptual experience and acts of re-presentification in the precise sense that both of these forms of intentionality are constituted as time-consciousness. By the same token, the “self-abstention” of consciousness from itself, its suspension of the patent distinction between pour soi and en soi is itself constituted in absolute time-consciousness much as, within waking life, we have the transformation within retentional consciousness, and thus, within time-consciousness, of near retentions into far retentions. When Husserl speaks of “unwache Zeitigung” he means the expression “unwache” as equivalent to “lifeless” and “unconscious,” but not in the sense of lacking consciousness, or, indeed, of lacking an intrinsic self-consciousness, but rather in the
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sense of without force. Sleep is an affection of consciousness in which affections lack force, but also, self-affection of consciousness itself – its self-temporalization – must also lack force, and thus, in this sense, be seen as temporarily neutralized from within, as if consciousness absented itself from itself, that is, rendered itself immune to the affective force of its own self-affection. The condition of Ichlosigkeit is a temporary condition; it is a potentionality of returning to oneself and finding once again the ego and the force of the world. As we shall suggest, the temporality of sleep is “headless,” bereft of any stabilizing wellspring in an original presentation. As noted, the concept of affection is double-sided: in addition to the force of affections, we must also consider the interest that consciousness adopts in response to affections. Not every affection within the living present is an affection to which the ego answers; even though affections pull the ego, the ego must, in turn, take an interest in an affection. The concept of interest within the over-arching double-conception of affection is crucial for a proper understanding of Husserl’s phenomenology of sleep. If we consider both sides of affection – force and interest – we are able to establish the sense in which sleep is not only the “forcelessness of affections” but also the “disinterestedness” of consciousness, not only for affections, but with regard to itself. In sleep, consciousness abstains from its own interests, and, in this sense, consciousness has retired from itself while also retiring from the world. It is significant that Husserl discusses the disengaging of consciousness from its own interests in the context of reflections on falling asleep. Husserl characterizes falling asleep in general terms as “letting go” of one’s practical interests, one’s thoughts, etc. Falling asleep is allowing the world and myself to slip away and come to a rest. Bit by bit, particular interests and activities are let go, until we have the entire “life of the will” has been let go. This “letting go” or “sinking away” (“Sinken-Lassens”) is a mode of my entire life of consciousness. In other words, when I am fatigued, and falling asleep, or losing my gumption, my ego is still affected by things around me, yet the force of these affections slackens, and I no longer give myself over to these affections. I sink into an indifference in having relinquished any investment in the world. In a sense, I allow myself to become inert. But we must grasp the meaning of this sinking-away or letting-go of consciousness in terms analogous to the function of far retentions:
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indeed, the description of falling asleep as “sinking” and “flowing-away” (“Sinkenlassen” and “Fahrenlassen”) (D-14/22) mirrors the description of retentional consciousness, which, in turn, is described metaphorically as falling asleep. It is as if we had a mirroring relationship between falling asleep as sinking away and sinking away of retentional consciousness as falling asleep. This mirroring of retentional consciousness and falling asleep extends to the mirroring of the transition from falling asleep to being asleep. As Husserl writes: “Schlaf selbst ist der Limes dieses Modus, der Limes totaler Affektionsentspannung und Aktionslosigkeit, der Willenslosigkeit, Willensentspanntheit” (D-14/22).12 In sleep, consciousness has become transformed into a “Limes des Wachmodus der Willensspannung, der selbst nicht direkt erfahrbar ist, weil jedes Erfahren selbst ein Modus der wachen Aktivität ist” (D-14/23).13 Husserl here clearly states that sleep is a mode of wakefulness, and yet that sleep cannot be not directly experienced, precisely because any experience implies a wakeful consciousness. And yet, even though Husserl grants that consciousness in sleep is, in a sense, beyond itself, in the sense of beyond any possible (self )-experience, sleep is equally characterized as an ideal limit of complete self-abstention. Sleep is an inner night of consciousness into which we fall without ever reaching completion; we are never truly entirely asleep much as we are never entirely awake. We are always in the process of falling asleep – we never reach sleep itself, that is, “absolute sleep,” since sleep is the limit of falling asleep. Husserl contends that the limit of sleep does not designate “a nothing” (“ein Nichts”) or an “an idea at infinity” (“eine im Unendlichen liegende ‘Idee’ ”). For this reason, the limit of dreamless or profound can only be “represented” (“vorstellig”) as the “Limes eines abklingenden Prozesses.” Sleep is the condition in which the self has (temporarily) abstained itself from itself in the precise sense of retiring from the nexus of interests that defines what it is to be a self. Nancy’s intuition that (dreamless) sleep is the condition in which the “le soi dormant est le soi de la chose en soi” is vindicated phenomenologically without, however, compelling us to accept the consequence of the impossibility of a phenomenology of sleep. The self, in the tomb of sleep, does not become petrified into the darkness of a “thing in itself.” In fact, on Nancy’s construal, it would be impossible for consciousness to return to itself from sleep, that is,
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to awaken from its slumber. Consciousness can only awaken on the condition that consciousness has put itself to sleep, taken in its transcendental significance: consciousness has constituted a temporary retirement from itself. This temporary character of sleep points to the phenomenological veracity of its constitution within absolute time-consciousness. For Husserl, the consciousness in sleep (and not: consciousness of sleep) has the form of “unwache Zeitigung” – a sleeping temporalization; but in what sense? Let us conclude by sketching a possible meaning to this phenomenological implication. One of the significant achievements of Husserlian phenomenology is to have described and reflected upon different modes of givenness of objects, including the forms of “non-presence” or “absence.” Indeed, we see this emphatically in the analysis of inner time-consciousness: and we also see it in the analysis of the constitution of perceptual objects and the inter-play of inner and outer horizons, absent and present profiles. How is sleep the manner in which consciousness abstains from itself temporarily? How is sleep a “de-presentification” of consciousness that reaches towards the ideal of a complete self-abstention? Let us take a brief look at the function of “de-presentification” in the imagination and its temporality. In the constitution of an imaginary object, consciousness de-temporalizes itself in the sense that we have a temporality of retention and protention without an original presentation. The temporality of the imaginary, in both directions of the imaginary object and the imagined, or quasi-perception, act of consciousness, is constituted in a “headless” temporalization. As a modification of consciousness, the imagination is a temporality without presence: we have the interplay of retentions and protentions without a stabilizing axis in an original presentation. In the case of sleep, however, the de-presentification of consciousness is more radical, or profound, in the senses explored above. We can understand this suspension of the original presentation as a radical de-presentification of self, or self-abstentation. We have the temporary suspension of the arc of the living present, but we still have the dimensions of far retention and far protention. In this manner, we can understand, from a phenomenological standpoint, how the self does not retire to itself, but retires from itself in succumbing, or falling, into its own self-oblivion; nothing appears since I am not here, for which something could appear. And yet, when I awake and open my eyes, I find all of my yesterdays in far retention
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return to me as well as all my tomorrows there before me, as if, despite the self-oblivion from which I am just emerging, the unity of my life, as a project of temporalization that has been and still will be, returns to itself, but not from where I had, the evening before, taken leave of myself. As in the opening scene of The Sheltering Sky: “He awoke, opened his eyes. The room meant very little to him; he was too deeply immersed in the non-being from which he had just come [. . .] in utter comfort, utter relaxation he lay absolutely still for a while, and then sank back into one of the light momentary sleeps that occur after a long, profound one. Suddenly he opened his eyes again and looked at the watch on his wrist [. . .] now he was awake; in another few seconds he knew where he was, he knew that the time was late afternoon [. . .].” Notes 1. Hegel, Encyclopedia, § 398. 2. Jean-Luc Nancy, Tombe de sommeil, (Paris: Galilée, 2007), 31 [“There does not exist a phenomenology of sleep since the self shows of itself only in its disappearance, its fleeting and its absence.”] 3. ibid, 33 [“The sleeping self is the self of the thing in itself: a self that can not even distinguish itself from that which it itself is not; a self without self, but which, in a certain manner, finds or touches in this being-without-self its most veridical and autonomous existence.”] 4. Hua XXIII, 258 [314]. 5. Hua XI, 178 [227]. 6. Hua XI, 288 [422–423]. 7. We cannot pursue here the added complication in Husserl’s characterization of retentional consciousness and the constitution of the past of introducing the metaphor of the dead as equivalent, in its descriptive value, to the metaphor of sleep. 8. Hua XI, 286 [420–421]. 9. Hua X, 197 [203]. 10. Hua XXIII, 259 [314]. 11. “Today has the remembrance of yesterday in itself, yesterday has the remembrance of the day before, etc. all of theme in mediation.” 12. “Sleep itself is the limit of this mode, the limit of a complete relaxation of affections and lack of action, the relaxation of the will and its absence.” 13. “the limit of a wakeful mode of the will’s relaxation that is not directly experienced because every experience is itself in the mode of a wakeful activity.”
CHAPTER XV
INTERMONADIC TEMPORALIZATION IN SIMULTANEOUS RECIPROCAL AWAKENING Ichiro Yamaguchi Abstract. The problem of the infinite regress and the key to the solution of this problem are quite characteristic features in the development of Husserl’s analysis of time consciousness. Although I believe the solution is in principle already given in Hua X (“Zur Phänomenologie des inneren Zeitbewusstseins”), Husserl persistently strives to deepen his analysis of this problem. The central concern of his analysis seems to be the proper interpretation of the character of retentional intentionality as passive egoless intentionality. Such an interpretation must continue to maintain the distinction between egoic and egoless intentionality. This distinction leads to the latter distinction between egoic and intermonadic temporalization of the temporal stream of the living present given in the C-manuscripts. The final solution is found in the concept of the reciprocal awakening between the empty shapes of drive intentionality as primal affection and the primal impression (primal hyle) in the process of intermonadic temporalization. This unconscious temporalization in genetic phenomenology can establish a cooperative, but limited relation between phenomenology and neural science.
I. Preface The problem of time-consciousness was a central one for Husserl and one that he worked on up until the end of his life. The first draft on this investigation was published in Hua X (“Zur Phänomenologie des inneren Zeitbewußtseins”, 1893–1917). The complete texts concerning the time-consciousness problematic are not only systematically developed in the new publications of the L-manuscripts and the C-manuscripts, but also in other works of Husserliana working through this problem. The publication and the correct interpretation of these texts are of course a different matter. For example, in Hua XI (“Analysen zur passiven Synthesis”), Husserl provides a description of the process of retention as it relates to 295 D. Lohmar, I. Yamaguchi (eds.), On Time - New Contributions to the Husserlian Phenomenology of Time, Phaenomenologica 197, DOI 10.1007/978-90-481-8766-9_15, C Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2010
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aspects of association and affection in passive synthesis. Without this description, it would be impossible to clarify the so-called “living present” in the C-manuscripts. Clarifying the drive intentionality in the primal affection (Uraffektion) as that which forms the associations between different affections at the level of pre-affection demonstrates how the flow of the living present can be transcendentally grounded. There is a further problem of interpretation. The simultaneous discovery of absolute time consciousness and retention in Hua X solves the so-called “infinite regress” problem. This solution is rooted in Husserl’s insight into the self-constitution of the absolute temporal-stream in the double intentionality of retention, an insight described in the main text and texts in Nr. 50 and Nr. 54 of Hua X. In spite of this decisive insight, Husserl’s analysis in the L-manuscripts still seeks to find the solution to the infinite regress problem. Why does Husserl continue to work toward a solution? In this paper I show that the ultimate solution to this problem is found in the correct interpretation of the retentional intentionality and of “primal consciousness”, and consequently in the unity of the stream of time consciousness developed through association and affection. This explication necessarily leads to the distinction between the egoic and the monadic interpretation of the time-stream. In the final section, I show how this clarification of inter-monadic temporalization provides a clear direction for the inter-disciplinary field consisting of cooperative research between phenomenology and neural science. II. The Solution to the Infinite Regress Problem in Hua X (1) In Hua X, the infinite regress problem is described in the passage below. In this passage, Husserl uses the concept of memory. However, his shift in usage of the concept of memory to the concept of retention is significant for the solution to this problem. If a self-contained flow (one that belongs to an enduring process or object) has elapsed, I can nevertheless look back on it; it forms, so it seems, a unity in memory. Hence the flow of consciousness obviously becomes constituted in consciousness as a unity too. The unity of a tone-duration, for example, becomes constituted in the flow, but the flow itself becomes constituted in turn as the unity of the consciousness of the tone-duration.
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And must we then not also go on to say that this unity becomes constituted in an altogether analogues way and is every bit as much a constituted temporal series, and that one must therefore surely speak of a temporal now, before, and after? (Hua X 80, CW IV, 84)
In this passage there are in fact two types of consciousness, namely a consciousness of tone-duration, and a consciousness of the constitution of the flow of consciousness itself. That there are distinct types is revealed through the different senses of content and form. During this period, Husserl tried to analyze time-consciousness from the perspective of apprehension-content and apprehension as an intentional act. Both the concept of memory analyzed according to the content of memory and memory as an act are concepts that fall under the infinite regress problem.
Fig. XV.1
Figure XV.1 allows us to clarify the above passage in the following manner. When T1 passes over into T2 , T3 , T4 and there is a growing consciousness of the unity of the tone duration, it is possible not only to look back at the tone duration, but also at the consciousness of the unity of this duration. (This “looking back” is indicated by memory1 , M1 ). If this is true, then the memory of T1 , T2 , and T3 must occur in sequential order. That is, the first retention is the third retention of T1 , R3 (T1 ), and the second retention is the second retention of T2 , R2 (T2 ), and the final retention is the first of T3 , R(T3 ), while there is also the impression at T4 . In this manner, the series of memories has a particular order occurring in sequence along with the consciousness of the unity of the duration. The reason for figure XV.1-1 is to clarify the constitution of consciousness of the unified tonal duration and of the unity of this consciousness itself, namely, the consciousness of T1 , T2 , T3 and T4 . Yet in order to
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explain this figure XV.1-1, to explain the series of memories of R3 (T1 ), R2 (T2 ), R(T3 ) in particular, a second figure, figure XV.1-2, is necessary to explain how it is possible to become conscious of the unity of the remembered R3 (T1 ), R2 (T2 ), R (T3 ). Figure XV.1-2 is constructed to illustrate the sequential order of the remembered R3 (T1 ), R2 (T2 ), R(T3 ). However, figure XV.1-2 illustrates this consciousness in the same manner as in figure XV.1-1. According to figure XV.1-2 the correct memory2 (M2 ) requires the memory sequence, first the remembered R6 (T1 ), then secondly R4 (T2 ), and thirdly R2 (T3 ). Then the next figure is necessary to reveal the consciousness of the series of these memories; and so on ad infinitum. Herein lies the infinite regress problem that is inherent in the concept of memory as an intentional act. It is in the context of this discussion that Husserl uses the following diagram (Fig. XV.2) to demonstrate how to solve this problem.
Fig. XV.2 Hua X, 331
When t0 passes over into t1 t2 . . ., the very memorial series that we characterize as ordinates [in the diagram] take shape; at the same time the ordinates blend. [. . .] But does that mean anything else than that the ordinates blend into one another and that here the very blending is nothing other than the blending that pertains to memorial modification? Or better: The flow of consciousness is indeed a succession itself, but it automatically fulfils the conditions of the possibility of the consciousness of succession. (Hua X, 332f, CW IV, 344f )
The blending of the ordinates into one another shows that a memorial continuum forms in such a way that “each later ordinate contains in itself the memory of every earlier ordinate” (Hua X, 331, CW IV,
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342). In order to form this continuity of ordinates, nothing other than the ordinate itself is the condition for the possibility of the consciousness of a memorial continuum. This means then, that an iteration of memories (M1 in Fig. XV.1-1) is in no way necessary. A memory (in later retention) harbors within itself its own modification. In the following passage, this modification is referred to as an “implication” and the term memory is replaced by the term retention (Retention), implying an implicit intentionality, rather than an act intentionality. On the other hand, as far as the flow of memories is concerned, nothing further needs to be attached to the newly occurring memory since it already implies in itself the “memory” of the previous memory (Retention). (Hua X, 333, CW IV, 345)
According to the editors’ note in Hua X, the term “retention” first appears in the original text of the manuscript. Husserl’s switch from “memory” to “retention” is readily apparent since memory is an essential characteristic of the intentionality of retention. The particular mode of this memory, namely retention, entails self modification and the immediate implication. The differences between so-called memory and retention are as follows. (i) Memory is an intentional act that belongs to the scheme of apprehension-content and apprehension. However, retention “itself is not an ‘act’ ” (Hua X, 118, CW IV, 122). “Retention is intentional with a specific character all of its own.” (Hua X, 118, CW IV, 122). In later manuscripts, Husserl calls this specific character of intentionality “passive”, i.e. passive intentionality. (ii) The mode of retention is immediately given as the inseparable unity between “primal consciousness (Urbewusstsein)” or immanent perception and retention. Both cannot be an intentional act for the following reason. If one says that every content comes to consciousness only by means of an act of apprehension directed towards it, then the question immediately arises about the consciousness in which this act of apprehension, which is surely content itself, becomes conscious, and an infinite regress is unavoidable. But if every “content” is “primal conscious” in itself and necessarily, the question about a further giving consciousness becomes meaningless. (Hua X, 119, CW IV, 123)
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If the consciousness of the duration of the flow of consciousness itself is constituted in the scheme, apprehension – apprehension’s content,1 it is necessary that this consciousness, given itself as content, is constituted by an act of apprehension. But this consciousness of the flow of consciousness is immediately given as “a constituted immanent duration-unity” (Hua X, 119, CW IV, 123) in primal consciousness itself. Because there is this primal consciousness, retention is not at risk of falling into the infinite regress. (2) Self-constitution of Time-Consciousness through the Double Intentionality of Retention The above solution to the infinite regress problem found in text Nr. 50 in Hua X is described in § 39 in Hua X with reference to the double intentionality of retention. For example, the consciousness of the duration of a tone, the unity of a tone-duration in the transverse intentionality (Querintentionalität) of retention, and the unity of the continuous flow itself in the horizontal intentionality (Längsintentionalität) of retention are simultaneously constituted. This means then that this double intentionality of retention is nothing other than the self-appearance of one flow of absolute time-consciousness. There is one, unique flow of consciousness in which both the unity of the tone in immanent time and the unity of the flow of consciousness itself become constituted at once. As shocking (when not initially even absurd) as it may seem to say that the flow of consciousness constitutes its own unity, it is nonetheless the case that it does. (Hua X, 80, CW IV, 84)
How the double intentionality in the retention of the one flow of consciousness can solve the infinite regress problem is shown in the following: On the one hand, the unity of the tone, the vertical retentional series of R3 (T1 )-R2 (T2 )-R(T3 ) (Fig. XV.1-1) is constituted in the transverse intentionality of retention as implicit intentionality. On the other hand and at the same time, the series of now points: T1 , T2 , T3 , T4 (Fig. XV.1-1) is constituted in the horizontal intentionality of retention. Consequently, the consciousness of the duration of a tone is formed in the following way. If the tone T2 is given, the retentional modified T1 and the tone T2 are “simultaneously” given in the ordinate R(T1 )-T2 , and if the tone T3 sounds, the retentional modified R2 (T1 ), R(T2 ) and T3 are also simultaneously given in the ordinate, and so on.2
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(3) Regarding the vertical simultaneous coincidence of temporal-content in the transverse intentionality of retention, Husserl describes this coincidence as having an interesting connection to the concept of association in Hua XI (see later description).
Fig. XV.3 Hua X, 93
Here, in the vertical series of the diagram, we have not only the all-inclusive vertical coincidence that belongs to the constitution of phenomenological time [. . .] There are two coinciding here. The series of physical-thing apprehensions coincides not only because it co-constitutes a continuous succession but also because it constitutes the same physical thing. The former is a coincidence of essential likeness that makes connecting possible; the latter is a coincidence of identity. (Hua X, 93, CW IV, 98)
Here (figure XV.3), it is clear that the coincidence of essential likeness is nothing other than the essential likeness between the primal datum E2 and the retentional modification Q’ and E1 ’. This coincidence of essential likeness belongs to the content of sensation (Empfindungsinhalt) and is to be distinguished from the external perception of a thing, which is constituted through apprehension by an intentional act. Then there are two possibilities for the consciousness of temporal-content. Either it is “pre-phenomenally” (CW IV, 88) constituted as a unity of sensations “without our turning toward the object;” (CW IV, 100) or it is phenomenally constituted as an external something in our turning towards the appearance. (4) Although the insight in Hua X regarding the absolute timeconsciousness in the double intentionality of retention solves the infinite regress problem, some problems remain. These problems are the result of a peculiar tendency in Husserl’s thought, a tendency that plays an important role in the development of his analysis of time consciousness.
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(i) Husserl describes the notion of the “self-constitution of the absolute time-consciousness” as follows: “The constitution and the constituted coincide, and yet naturally they cannot coincide in every respect.” (Hua X, 83, CW IV, 88).3 How should we interpret this sentence? I suggest we interpret it with reference to the double coincidence of temporal contents described above. At the level of the pre-phenomenal constitution of retentional intentionality, the coincidence between the constitution and the constituted is self evident. This form of evidence is later called the “apodictic evidence” of retention in Hua XXXVIII, or the “absolute evidence” of “immanent perception” in Hua XI. However, at the level of the phenomenal constitution of external things, there is not always a coincidence between the constitution as act intentionality and the constituted as apprehension-content in the apprehension or external perception of a physical being. As I show below, the difference between the immanent and external perceptions are important for the interpretation of the characterization of the intentionality of retention. (ii) The intentionality of retention does not have a definite character. In passage Nr. 50 in Hua X, memory is not defined as act-intentionality. But in Nr. 51, 1909, Husserl writes: “Certainly retention, which is an act now living and an act that can be made to be given itself,” (Hua X, 344, CW IV, 355). His tendency to characterize retention as an intentional act continues in his descriptions in the L-manuscripts as well as in the C-manuscripts, a tendency which again leads him into the infinite regress problem. It is necessary to clarify the reason for this tendency in these different works. (iii) How the coincidence of essential likeness is understood in the transverse intentionality of retention is an important matter for genetic phenomenology. From the perspective of a genetic phenomenology, the question is, how can the content of the sensuality be constituted in time consciousness. This question is concretely worked out in the analysis of the retentional process in Hua XI, or more exactly in the analysis of implication and coincidence of retention, i.e., the rule of association und affection.
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III. The Development of the Analysis of Time-Consciousness in the L-Manuscripts, Hua XI and C-Manuscripts Important for this period is the sense of genetic phenomenology articulated sometime during the 1920s. A static phenomenological investigation starts with the already constituted noematical sense of apperception. It analyzes the constitution of the correlation between the noetic act and the noematic content of sense. In later self-criticisms, found for example in Hua XXXVII (“Introduction to philosophy”, 1922/1923), Husserl criticizes the “naiveté (Naivität)” of the transcendental reduction in the period of Ideen I and insists on the necessity of studies undertaken in a genetic regard. According to Husserl, the method of the transcendental reduction in this period is unable to raise the question of the “apodictic evidence” of time-consciousness and of consciousness of the other forms of transcendental consciousness. Husserl’s statements concerning the paucity of studies regarding time-consciousness in Ideen I are well known. Such a study is developed in Hua XXXVII, where the apodictic evidence of retention is also fully established. The analysis of the so-called problem of “intersubjectivity”, that is, the consciousness of another transcendental consciousness, is developed from the perspective of genetic phenomenology in other texts, but not here in Hua XXXVII. The field of genetic phenomenology is characterised as follows: The elemental analysis [of static phenomenology] then proceeds to time-consciousness, association, awakening of reproduction, primal foundation (Urstiftung) (. . .) I now recognize the necessity of becoming (Werden) through the free variation of elemental matter or in any of the possible forms of experience (Erlebnisgestalten).4
The objects of genetic phenomenology are namely “time, association, and primal foundation”. Therefore, a genetic phenomenological analysis of time-consciousness undertakes an analytical investigation into the relation between time, association and primal foundation. Let me give a brief preview of this development: the primal foundation of temporalcontents in the living present occurs through the simultaneous reciprocal awakening (primal association in coexistence and succession) between the empty shapes and presentation of the past and the primal impression given in the present. The next passage intimates that temporalization is nothing other than association.
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A structural unity belongs to this streaming unity (. . .), namely, the structural unity of the association of temporalizing (association in the strict sense). However, feeling and kinaesthesia have in their own particular manner a unity. Only as an experience (Erlebnis) do they come to have a unity through association.5
(1) The infinite regress problem in the L-manuscripts (i) According to Kortooms, there have been three different attempts used to solve the infinite regress problem and none of them present a satisfactory solution.6 Of the three found in the argument, the third attempt is most interesting for our purposes here. The third attempt maintains that retention and protention proceed as one function in the self-constitution of the ultimate stream of timeconsciousness. However, this attempt also has its limit, because, according to Kortooms, another infinite regress problem in respect to protention arises. He asserts, “if this protention itself functions as the fulfilment of a preceding protentional directedness toward it, the same is true of the latter protentional directedness, and so on ad infinitum.”7 This argument regarding the intentionality of protention assumes that the fulfilment of protention can only be considered at the level of the active intentionality and therefore a fulfilment prepared in primal protention is not considered from a genetic regard whatsoever. Kortooms’ criticism belongs to those arguments that improperly characterize the intentionality of protention and retention. (ii) In my opinion, the L-manuscripts present two ways of solving the infinite regress problem. The first is rooted in the unknown, ego-less “primal process” of the flow of time: “Prior to every comprehension of consciousness, there is a mere process of primordial constitution and phasing out without any understanding or representation, as is the case with the unperceived data of perception” (Hua XXXIII, 45 author’s translation). The second is related to the above mentioned double intentionality of retention. Passive identification or coincidence in the stream of continuous primal presentation and retention consistently coincides with the retention that sinks into its respective primal presentation. (Hua XXXIII, 389 author’s translation)
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In this context, Husserl points to sensual data and sensual feelings in the primary immanent order of time, (. . .) ‘utterly ego-less’ sensual tendencies, such as the sensual tendencies of association and reproduction, and thus the determinant formation of horizon. [The] question [is] whether it holds for the primal consciousness of time. Passive Intentionality (Hua XXXIII, 275f author’s translation).
The association and passive intentionality mentioned here are of course not meant in an empirical-psychological sense, but in a transcendental sense.8 (2) In Hua XI, Husserl develops his analysis of retentional modification through an analysis of association and affection. It is clear from this analysis that time and association, both fundamental notions for genetic phenomenology, form an inseparable unity. This means that time unfolds through association and association forms temporally. The temporal stream is nothing other than the stream of association. (i) When characterizing the descriptions in Hua XI, it is crucial that the process of retention is described at the level of “immanent perception”, that is, at the level of primal consciousness or the eternal consciousness in Hua X. In the introduction to § 4 in Hua XI, Husserl insists that the immanent object ought to be described at the level of “being given to consciousness in the original” in immanent perception.9 This description in Hua XI is, of course, a transcendental one made possible through the transcendental reduction, and is not any empirical-psychological description of an internal experience. Husserl’s analysis is taken up through the use of the transcendental imagination, which remained unsolved to Kant.10 (ii) Textual support for a description of retention as the association of temporal contents runs as follows: But as the retention changes, precisely the identical objective sense has been maintained, and the uniform sense content, only once in the mode of the impression and the other time in the mode of emptiness, grounds the synthesis. (Hua XI, 176, CW IX, 225)
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ichiro yamaguchi The synthesis described in this passage refers to the synthesis between the temporal content of the impression and the temporal-content in the emptiness of retention. This synthesis is nothing other than the association in passive synthesis. If this synthesis issues enough affective force upon the ego, then the ego becomes conscious of the pre-constituted in passive synthesis. Thus, in this text, the impression elicits an affective force upon the emptiness of retention. From the affective force of this hammer blow and as a consequence of this community, an affective awakening now goes back into senses that are uniform. [. . .] That is to say, now it has its own affective force – the reanimated past hammer blow, just like the new hammer blow. (Hua XI, 176, CW IX, 225)
(iii) There is a particular and necessary process through which the one-sided awakening becomes a reciprocal awakening. A genetic investigation of the empty shape and presentation clarifies the relation between the fulfilment of intention, i.e., intuition, and the empty shape. Genetically, empty shapes precede all types of intuition, all perceptual constitution of object like formations, in all modes of appearance. Nothing can come to intuition that was not previously emptily presented and that comes to fulfilment in intuition. (Hua XI, 326, CW IX, 641)
In this manner, it is clear that the affective force of the awakening does not emerge from the side of the impression, but emerges reciprocally between the impression in the present and the empty shape or presentation in the horizon of the past. Therefore, Husserl asserts: Awakening is possible because the constituted sense is actually implied in backgroundconsciousness, in the non-living form that is called here unconsciousness. (Hua XI, 179, CW IX, 228)
The unconsciousness is no longer a metaphysical concept, but within the purview of a “phenomenology of unconsciousness”.11 Husserl makes obvious reference to this reciprocal awakening between the impression and retentional empty shapes or presentations in Hua XVII:
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The whole intentional genesis refers back to the background of sedimented detachments, forming the horizon for the whole living present and illustrating its continuously changing sense in the awakening (Hua XVII, 319).12
(3) The C-Manuscripts and other texts in the 1930s (i) In respect to the process of temporalization through the drive intentionality of the living present, Husserl’s review of the development of his analysis of time-consciousness is of particular interest. Immediately preceding his transcendental definition of both universal drive intentionality and the living present, Husserl writes: In my former theory of inner time-consciousness, I only considered the intentionality arising in this context [drive intentionality] merely as intentionality, as maintaining a unity between the forward directed protention and the self modifying retention. However, I failed to consider the ego; I did not characterize intentionality as egoic (in the widest sense of intentionality of the will). In later texts, I introduce this sense of intentionality as founded in an egoless passivity (Passivität). But is not the ego of the acts and the habituation deriving from it caught up in a process of development? (Hua XV, 594 f., author’s translation)
What is the meaning of intentionality related to the ego, but founded in an ego-less passivity? In addition to the association in passive synthesis, the phenomenon of affection plays a central role. Decisive for the phenomenon of affection is whether the ego is turning toward the pre-affective, pre-constituted sensual data. This question presupposes a fully formed ego pole. Thus, the analysis of affection from a genetic regard makes it clear that investigations into the development of the ego-pole and the ego-activity in general must be undertaken with the distinction between ego-less passivity and egoic activity in mind.13 Universal drive intentionality finally resolves the enigma of the flowing and standing present. This drive intentionality “constitutes each primal presence as standing temporalization, and which concretely pulses from present to present, so that all content is the content of drive fulfilment and is intended prior to the aim.”14 The drive intentionality is called “primal affection (Uraffektion)” (E III 9, 4a) or “principle of ‘association’ of affections” (C10, 20),
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because it unifies affections through association in unconscious egoless passive synthesis and is the strongest affective force.15 Thus it is in this way that the evident grounding of the transcendental condition of the flow of living present is fully achieved. The original stream of temporalizing occurs at the level of primal foundation in the reciprocal awakening between the sedimented implicit passive egoless intentionality, especially the drive intentionality in the past, and the correlative primal impression in the present. (ii) Interpretation of Time-Consciousness from the Viewpoint of Egology Although the principle insight of the original constitution of time-consciousness is attained through the drive intentionality, Husserl’s descriptions in the C-manuscripts has another characteristic, namely the tendency in egology to interpret time consciousness as an act of intentionality in the activity of the ego. This tendency comes from his analysis of affection, which accentuates the directed-ness of the ego toward the pre-constituted in passive synthesis, and conflates the difference between passive and active intentionality into act intentionality. Husserl says: consequently, that a pre-temporalization in the proper sense does not exist. The actual temporalization that is presupposed and achieved in the evident temporal givenness of the stream of experiences is the temporalization of the transcendental–phenomenologizing ego. [. . .] Temporality just is an egoic performance in every mode, an original or an acquired one. (C17, 65b, XXXIV 181, translation T. Kortooms)
Nonetheless, it is important to realize that Husserl immediately annexes to this above passage that there is a real danger of an infinite regress due to the egoic character of active intentionality. He fully acknowledges the limits of his egoic argument. Certainly, it is not the case that this experience of temporalizing is always in operation and entirely as purely transcendental, an experience that requires primarily the transcendental, phenomenological ego, the ego active in the epoché. It becomes readily apparent that if the continual flowing in itself as flowing
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would have actual intentionality, then we would arrive at an infinite regress. (C17, 65b, author’s translation)16
For Husserl, it is clear that the infinite regress would necessarily occur, if the phenomenologizing ego is active and if passivity does not precede the activity, or more precisely, passivity founds activity. The tendency, noted above, toward the egoic interpretation is rooted in his insight into affection. It is for this reason that Husserl could not thoroughly distinguish between pre-affection and affection. (iii) Simultaneity in Reciprocal Awakening and the Difference between Pre-affection and Affection The difference between pre-affection and affection concerns the difference between passive and active intentionality. Pre-affection as passive intentionality is a simultaneous occurance, a simultaneity in reciprocal awakening between the original hyle (and primal impression) of the present and the sedimented retentional empty shape or empty presentation of the past. This simultaneous pre-constitution of pre-affection is the process of becoming attentive, a process wherein passive synthesis occurs unconsciously in connection with the awakening of similarities and contrasts. In so doing, this something as such is brought to “the living conflict” in respect to affective perception, an activity in which there is a turning of the ego and, at the same time, a repression in the sense of a “suppression, as a suppression into non-intuitiveness” (Hua XI, 413, CW IX, 515). The attractive and repulsive affective energies in the empty retentional sphere constitute the original pre-affective synthesis in the above mentioned drive intentionality, constituting in every original present a standing temporalization. Husserl succinctly describes this pre-affective pre-constitution as the simultaneous becoming of the content of time-consciousness, which is the most important concept in the original constitution of the flow of the living present. Citing Husserl, A transition from one primal impression to another primal impression demonstrates that the new primal impression simultaneously unites with the retentional modification of the early primal impression (. . .) The simultaneous unity is only possible through
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the fusion of contents. In this way, a fusion of content takes place between the impression and the immediate originary retention in the simultaneity of both. (HM VIII, 82, author’s translation)17
Although the instinct-intentionality or drive intentionality, have been simultaneously and reciprocally awakened by the original hyles at the level of pre-affection as passive intentionality, the pre-constituents remain unintuitional and not sufficiently affective to gain the ego’s attention. It is not until the ego turns its attention to something, not until the ego sees the pre-constituted in retrospection, that the pre-affective pre-constituted becomes affective as something and intuitional.18 However, this double structure of the pre-affective and the affective in the living present is nothing other than a thorough analysis of the basic principle of Husserl’s genetic phenomenology: Passivity founds activity, passivity precedes activity. In respect to the foundational relationship, simultaneity is described as the reciprocal awakening of the synthesis of pairing: “the founding and the founded are inseparable, they are necessarily one” (Hua XI, 298, CW I, 494). Thus the simultaneity of reciprocal awakening precedes the temporal displacement, which is filled with egoactivity. The flowing of the temporal stream in temporal displacement is simultaneously founded in the drive intentionality through the standing of the temporal stream. IV. Intermonadic Temporalization The transition from a narrowly conceived notion of egology to the concept of the monad, a notion that includes the historicity and concreteness of the ego, leads to the notion of a phenomenological monadology from the perspective of genetic phenomenology. Phenomenological monadology has some important features such as the development of intentionality, the descriptions of ontogenetic and phylogenetic development, the openness of windows in the monad etc. With respect to my investigations in this paper, the grounding of the stream of living present in drive intentionality provides crucial insight into intermonadic temporalization and into the concept of phenomenological monadology as a whole. The notion of intermonadic temporalization offers the possibility for a fruitful interdisciplinary investigation, an investigation such as cooperative
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research between phenomenology and the neural sciences. Here, I would like to draw attention to the investigation of time consciousness by B. Livet and F. Varela. (1) Intermonadic Primal Communication in Intermonadic Temporalization (i) From the perspective of egology, Husserl attempts to analyze the transcendental explanation regarding intersubjectivity, for example, in the Introduction into Philosophy, 1922/1923. However, in the fifth chapter of his Cartesian Meditations, Husserl states that this subject borders on a phenomenological monadology. It is obvious that the key concept of “pairing (Paarung)” for the intersubjective constitution in passive synthesis is discovered through the monadology of genetic phenomenology, but not in egology, which is unable to explain the becoming of the ego pole itself.19 (2) An entire systematic view of the development of the monadology is described, for example, in his text in Hua XV: 1) the wholeness of monads in original instinctive communication, everyone living at every moment in their individual life, and thereby everyone living a sedimented life, having a concealed history, which is at the same time implicated in universal history. Sleeping monads 2) The development of monadic history, maturing monads and development in the awakening with a background of sleeping monads that serves as a continual foundation 3) The development of human monads as world constituting, as a development in which the universe of monads achieves in orientated form self-objectivation, monads gain rational self and human consciousness and comprehension of the world. Etc. (Hua XV, 609, author’s translation)20
There are a few points of clarification necessary for an accurate interpretation. First, the sense of monadology in Leibniz’ monadology is understood as a monadology of “a systematic intentional phenomenology”. All levels of the monad’s development are defined at their levels of different intentional accomplishments. The deeper level of intentionality founds the higher level of intentionality. However, this does not mean that the higher level of intentionality emerges from the
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deeper level of intentionality. Each level of intentionality exists in potentiality as a pre-being in the empty horizon of transcendental “genetic constitution (Erbmasse)” in the “sedimentation of an inherited development (Entwicklungserbschaft)” (XV, 609). Husserl does not recognize that activity emerges from passivity. Every level of potentiality of intentionality becomes sedimented and awakened in the primal horizon of the primal environment. (3) Contribution of Husserl’s Theory of Time Consciousness to Interdisciplinary Investigations (i) Animadversion in Libet’s Theory of Time Consciousness Libet assumes that our consciousness arises 0.5 sec after neural activity, that is, 0.5 sec after events happen in the objective world, and that the consciousness of a similarity with the objective event is possible through the subjective referral back to the primal EP response. However, this means for Libet that free will is possible because “a person could veto an expected act within the 100–200 msec before the present time for the act.”21 This research is now acknowledged by neural scientists as a genuine discovery. It is particularly crucial for this case that so-called objective time, which Husserl reduces to the internal time through the phenomenological reduction, is naively presupposed by the natural scientific investigation. By virtue of this presupposition, the presupposition of a linear time axis of objective time, there is the search for the possible temporal point of free will in terms of a before or after. Consequently, Libet has no other option than to assume that the subjective referral to the primary EP response takes place, just as a time machine moves “back to” a time, 0.5 sec before the EP response on the objective temporal line. Secondly, the research concerning the temporal point of free will, just like the temporal point of the “unmoved mover” in Aristotle along the objective time axis, fails to realize that free will is a transcendental accomplishment of active intentionality. (ii) In contrast to Libet’s interpretation of time consciousness, Husserl’s phenomenology describes the genesis of objective time in the monadologic teleology of the “entelechy” of the monadic
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cosmos (Monadenall).22 Objective time is primordially constituted as the intermonadic instinctive primal communication through the fundamental level of intermonadic temporalization and is fully constituted through higher levels of active intentionality such as the perception of an object, the social communication through language and science. Therefore, Libet’s subjective referral to the EP response for Husserl is nothing other than a metaphysical presupposition regarding objective time. The consciousness of the similarity with the real events in the world is founded through the unconscious retention in an unconscious passive synthesis of association at the level of the pre-affection. This means that the unconscious activity of 0.5 sec in the brain should be understood as the time in which the unintuitional passive synthesis of retentional pre-constitution in the reciprocal awakening of the primal impression and the empty shape or presentation in the past horizon becomes an intuitional primal consciousness of the pre-constituted. Here it is important to note the difference between the active consciousness of something and the primal consciousness of this consciousness. The primal consciousness does not need more than 0.5 sec, which is necessary for the consciousness of something through active intentionality. Primal consciousness is the special consciousness of the pre-constituted in the vertical transverse intentionality of the unconscious retention of simultaneous, reciprocal awakening. For Husserl, free will is understood in terms of motivation as an active motivation, a notion described specifically in Ideen II. But active motivation presupposes “passive motivation,” which in many other texts referred to as “associative motivation”.23 Associative motivation precedes active motivation und the former founds the latter. Precedence and foundation does not infer causality. As an active motivation, free will can draw attention to the pre-constituted of pre-givenness that is similar to the real world, and cast a judgement about the pre-constituted facticity. Research into causality in nature itself is developed at the level of active intentionality, a type of research replaced by the whole system of monadology in genetic phenomenology.
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(iii) F. Varela uses a concept of “neurophenomenology”. He assumes that a new development of neural life science is only possible with the application of the phenomenological reduction. His article “The Specious Present: A Neurophenomenology of Time Consciousness” provides us such a very good example. He attempts to clarify time-consciousness “through reciprocal constraints”24 between phenomenology and cognitive science. His use of Husserl’s analysis of time consciousness, specifically the structure of present “now-retention-protention,” leads to a description of “three scales of duration”: “(1) basic or elementary events (the ‘1/10’ scale); (2) relaxation time for large-scale integration (the ‘1’ scale); (3) descriptive-narrative assessments (the ‘10’ scale)” (p. 273) The level of retention belongs to the second 1 scale, where “cell assemblies or, synonymously, neuronal ensembles” as “a distributed subset of neurons with strong reciprocal connections” (p. 273) occurs. The cell assembles is also called as “synchronous coupling of neuronal assemblies” (p. 275) In my opinion, this “1 scale” and retention are equivalent, especially the transverse intentionality of retention. Varela interprets the vertical transverse intentionality of retention as “longitudinal intentionality” along the lines of genetic constitution as that which “reappears in the preconscious, affective substrate (permanence) on one direction, and in the conscious, embodied ego, aware of emotional change on the other (change)” (p. 304). The one direction to the bottom refers to the pre-affective pre-constitution at the level of passive synthesis and the other direction to top the affective-egoic constitution at the level of active synthesis in a genetic regard. In her article “The rainbow of emotion: At the crossroads of neurobiology and phenomenology,” N. Depraz, who has done research with Varela, describes the same four components of pairing, which in passive synthesis play a fundamental role in the grounding of the intersubjectivity, and coupling (span. acoplamiento), a key concept in the theory of autopoiesis, as follows: Both [pairing and coupling] include the same four components: (1) a bodily anchorage, (2) a temporally founded dynamic, (3) a relational meaning, and (4) the creation of a
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linkage that necessarily admits alterity. These structures can be found, on the one hand, in Husserlian genetic phenomenology under the name Paarung and, on the other hand, in the Chilean school of autopoiesis under the name acoplamiento.25
Following this point, it becomes clear that the common field of investigation of the development or evolution of life is established on the one hand from the perspective of phenomenological monadology in genetic phenomenology, and on the other hand from the perspective of neurobiology of autopoiesis. Notes 1. With regard to the difficulty with this schema, see R. Boehm’s well-known introduction of Hua X, pp. XXXV–XLII, and R. Bernet’s introduction of “E. Husserl, Texte zur Phänomenologie des inneren Zeitbewusstseins (1883–1917)”, pp. XXXIII–LIII. 2. In this manner, time is not a form of a priori sensibility, in the Kantian sense. The coincidence of temporal content precedes the mere form of time. The form of time is nothing other than an abstraction given by the egoic act of reflexion. Regarding this point, see L. Landgrebe, Faktizität und Individualität, p. 98. 3. In his interpretation of this passage, Kortooms fails to acknowledge the special character of the intentionality of retention. See T. Kortooms, Phenomenology of Time: Edmund Husserl’s Analyses of Time-Consciousness, p. 102. 4. “Die Elementaranalyse führt dann aber auf Zeitbewusstsein, auf Assoziation, Weckung von Reproduktion, auf Urstiftung etc. (. . .) betrachte ich nun frei variierend im Elementaren bzw. in den beliebig genommen Erlebnisgestalten (. . .) die Notwendigkeiten des Werdens.” (XXXV, 410) Regarding the genetic method, see A.J. Steinbock, Home and Beyond. Generative Phenomenology after Husserl, pp. 37–42. 5. “Zu dieser strömenden Einheit gehört eine Einheitsstruktur, (. . .): diejenige der Assoziation der Zeitigung (der Assoziation im prägnanten Sinne). Andererseits die Gefühle und wiederum die Kinästhesen haben ihre besonderen Weisen, sich ureinige. Nur als Erlebnis sind sie einig durch Assoziation” (B III 9, 79b, author’s translation). 6. See T. Kortooms (2002, pp. 107–174). 7. See T. Kortooms (2002, p. 170). 8. Association as a transcendental concept is already described in Hua XVI (“Ding und Raum”) 1907. Husserl says: “What here falls under the title, association, does not deal with a geneticpsychological factum, [. . .] but with a phenomenological factum of specific togetherness.” (Es handelt sich hier unter dem Titel Assoziation nicht um ein genetisch-psychologisches Faktum [. . .], sondern um ein phänomenologisches Faktum einer gewissen Zusammengehörigkeit (Hua XVI, 177f author’s translation). 9. See Hua XI, 17, CW IX, 55. 10. See, Hua XI, 275 f. CW IX, 410 f. 11. See Hua XI, 167, E. Fink’s appendix XXI: Finks Beilage zum Problem des “Unbewussten”, in; Hua VI, 473 ff., R. Bernet, Husserls Begriff des Phantasiebewußtseins als Fundierung von Freuds Begriff des Unbewußten, in: Grundlinien der Vernunftkritik. 12. “Auf diesem Hintergrund der sedimentierten Abgehobenheiten, der als Horizont alle lebendige Gegenwart begleitet und seinen kontinuierlich wechselnden Sinn in der ‘Weckung’ zeigt, bezieht sich die ganze intentionale Genesis zurück.” (XVII, 318, translation by the author).
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13. Kortooms says “Affection and actions have their own egoic formation of unity, which is not founded on an non-egoic intentional process of constitution that would take place in the primal stream.” (Kortooms, 2002, p. 268) Although his insight into affection and actions is accurate, he needs to recognize the foundational relation between passivity and activity. Activity, as Husserl states, “is founded in an egoless passivity”. Of course, this does not mean that the transcendental function of activity emerges out of the transcendental function of passivity. 14. “[eine universale Triebintentionalität voraussetzen], die jede urtümliche Gegenwart als stehende Zeitigung einheitlich ausmacht und konkret von Gegenwart forttreibt derart, dass aller Inhalt Inhalt von Trieberfüllung ist und vor dem Ziel intendiert ist” (Hua XV, 595, author’s translation). Regarding the grounding of drive intentionality as the associative synthesis of primal affection, which conditions the stream of time, see I. Yamaguchi “Triebintentionalität als uraffektive passive Synthesis in der genetischen Phänomenologie”; in: ALTER Nr. 9, 2001, 233 ff. 15. For clarification regarding the term “drive intentionality” as primal affection, see I. Yamaguchi, “Passive Synthesis und Intersubjektivität bei Edmund Husserl”, S. 58 ff. Therefore Husserl states that “the most efficacious” of the motives in the living present is “instinctive or even higher drives” (see CW IX, 227f ). 16. “Es ist aber natürlich nicht so, dass diese Erlebnisverzeitlichung immerzu betätigte ist, und gar als eine transzendental reine, die erst des transzendentalen phänomenologischen Ich bedarf, des Ich, das in der Epoche tätig ist. Man sieht ja, dass, wenn das ständige Strömen in sich als Strömen wirkliche Intentionalität hätte, wir auf einen unendlichen Regress kämen.” (C 17, 65b). 17. “Der Übergang von Urimpression in Urimpression besagt in Wahrheit, dass die neue mit der unmittelbar retentionalen Wandlung der früheren sich simultan einigt, (. . ..). Die simultane Einigung ist aber nur möglich als inhaltliche Verschmelzung; also eine inhaltliche Urverschmelzung findet statt zwischen Impression und der unmittelbaren Urretention in der Simultaneität beider” (HM VIII, 82). 18. I. Yamaguchi, “Triebintentionalität als uraffektive passive Synthesis in der genetischen Phänomenologie,” in: ALTER, Nr. 9/2001, pp. 219–240. 19. Held’s concept of the invalidity (Hinfälligkeit) of primal ego is not enough for the similar nativity of other. See K. Held, Lebendige Gegenwart, Part 3, Chapter 3. Regarding Zahavi’s egoic interpretation of intersubjectivity, the role of the passive synthesis is missing. See D. Zahavi, Husserl und die transzendentale Intersubjektivität. Rodemyer’s interpretation of “world-time” does not contain an intermonadic temporalization as well. He highlights “the interconnection of all egos in world-time”. See L. Rodemeyer, Intersubjective Temporality, p. 193. 20. 1) “Die Allheit der Monaden in ursprünglich instinktiver Kommunikation, jede in ihrem individuellen Leben immerfort lebend, und somit jede mit einem sedimentierten Leben, mit einer verborgenen Historie, die zugleich die ‘Universalhistorie’ impliziert. Schlafende Monaden.” 2) “Entwicklung der monadischen Historie; erwachsende Monaden und Entwicklung in der Wachheit mit einem Hintergrund schlafender Monaden als ständiger Fundierung.” 3) “Entwicklung menschlicher Monaden als Welt konstituierend, als worin das Monadenuniversum in orientierter Form zur Selbstobjektivation durchdringt, Monaden zum vernünftigen Selbst- und Menschheitsbewusstsein und zum Weltverständnis kommen. etc.” (XV, 609). 21. See B. Libet, Mind Time, 138 f. 22. See Hua XV, 610. 23. See for example, Ideen II, 222 ff. Hua XXXVII, 110 ff. 24. F. Varela, The Specious Present: A Neurophenomenology of Time Consciousness, in: Naturalizing Phenomenology, 305. 25. N. Depraz, “The rainbow of emotion: At the crossroads of neurobiology and phenomenology,” in: Continental Philosophy Review 41, 240.
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Bibliography List of Abbreviations HM VIII Husserliana Materialien, Band VIII, Späte Texte über Zeitkonstitution (1929–1934). CW IV On the phenomenology of the Consciousness of Internal Time (1893–1917). Translated by J. B. Brough, 1991. CW IX Analyses Concerning Passive and Active Synthesis: Lectures on Transcendental Logic. Translated by A.J. Steinbock, 2001.
Other Literature Bernet, R., “Einleitung”, in: E. Husserl, Texte zur Phänomenologie des inneren Zeitbewusstseins (1883–1917), Hamburg, Felix Meiner Verlag, 1985. Bernet, R. “Husserls Begriff des Phantasiebewußtseins als Fundierung von Freuds Begriff des Unbewußten”, in: Grundlinien der Vernunftkritik, Suhrkamp Verlag, 1997. Boehm, R., “Einleitung des Herausgebers”, in: E. Husserl, Zur Phänomenologie des inneren Zeitbewusstseins (1893–1917), Den Haag: Martinus Nijhoff, 1966. Depraz, N., “The rainbow of emotion: At the crossroads of neurobiology and phenomenology”, in: Continental Philosophy Review 41, 2008, 237–259. Held, K., Lebendige Gegenwart. Die Frage nach der Seinsweise des transzendentalen Ich bei Edmund Husserl, entwickelt am Leitfaden der Zeitproblematik, Den Haag, Martinus Nijhoff, 1966. Kortooms, T., Phenomenology of Time: Edmund Husserl’s Analyses of TimeConsciousness, Phaenomenologica, Dordrecht, 2002. Landgrebe, L., Faktizität und Individuation. Hamburg, Felix Meiner, 1982. Libet, B., Mind Time, Harvard University Press, 2004. Rodemeyer, L., Intersubjective Temporality, Phaenomenologica. Bd. 176, Dordrecht, 2006. Steinbock, A.J., Home and Beyond: Generative Phenomenology after Husserl. Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 1995. Varela, F.J., The Specious Present: A Neurophenomenology of Time Consciousness, in: Naturalizing Phenomenology, Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1999. Yamaguchi, I., Passive Synthesis und Intersubjektivität bei Edmund Husserl, Phaenomenologica, Bd. 86, Dordrecht, 1982. Yamaguchi, I. “Die Frage nach dem Paradox der Zeit”, in: Recherches Husserliennes, Vol.17, 2002, 25–49. Yamaguchi, I. “Die Triebintentionalität als uraffektive passive Synthesis in der genetischen Phänomenologie”, in: Alter, No. 9, 2001, 219–240. Zahavi, D., Husserl und die transzendentale Intersubjektivität: Eine Antwort auf die sprachpragmatische Kritik, The Netherlands: Kluwer Academic Publishers, Dordrecht, 1996.
CHAPTER XVI
INNER (TIME-)CONSCIOUSNESS Dan Zahavi Abstract. The aim of the article is to examine the relation between Husserl’s notion of inner consciousness (self-consciousness) and his theory of inner timeconsciousness. Not only will it be argued that the distinction between reflective and pre-reflective self-consciousness is crucial if we are to understand Husserl’s analysis of time, but it will also be argued that the latter analysis contains Husserl’s most profound contribution to an understanding of the pre-reflective self-manifestation of subjective life.
In the introduction to Zur Phänomenologie des inneren Zeitbewusstseins, Husserl remarks that “we get entangled in the most peculiar difficulties, contradictions, and confusions” (Hua X, 4) the moment we seek to account for time-consciousness. I think most scholars of Husserl’s writings on these issues would agree. Attempting to unravel the inner workings of time-consciousness can indeed easily induce a kind of intellectual vertigo. Let us consequently start with some of the basic questions that motivated Husserl’s inquiry.
I. Experienced Time If we look at Husserl’s early writings on time-consciousness, Husserl insisted on the difference between directly experiencing change and duration and merely imagining or remembering it, and he explicitly advocated the possibility of an intuitive presentation of succession, change and persistence. We can hear an enduring tone or a melody, just as we can see an immobile pyramid or the flight of a bird. But how is this possible? Husserl’s well-known thesis is that a perception of a temporal object as well as the perception of succession and change would be impossible if perception had only been conscious of that which exists right now. Since we are obviously conscious of succession and duration, we must acknowledge that our consciousness, one way or the other, can encompass more than that which is given right now. But although we can be co-conscious 319 D. Lohmar, I. Yamaguchi (eds.), On Time - New Contributions to the Husserlian Phenomenology of Time, Phaenomenologica 197, DOI 10.1007/978-90-481-8766-9_16, C Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2010
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of that which has just been, and that which is about to occur, the crucial question remains: how can we be conscious of that which is no longer, or not yet, present to our consciousness? One obvious suggestion might be that we simply need to recognize that our perceptions (auditory, visual, etc.) are themselves temporally extended processes. The perception of the melody starts when the melody starts, and comes to an end at exactly the same moment as the melody ends. Unfortunately, however, things are not quite that simple. If a perception has duration and temporal extension, it will contain temporal phases of its own. But on closer inspection, it is obvious that a mere succession of such conscious phases will not as such provide us with the consciousness of succession. For that to happen, the succession of these phases must somehow be united experientially. The decisive challenge is then to account for this unification without giving rise to an explanatory regress, i.e., without having to posit yet another temporally extended consciousness whose task is to unify the first-order consciousness, and so forth ad infinitum. In his 1905 lectures, Husserl argued that our experience of temporal objects involved the animation of non-temporal (unzeitliche) contents by means of time-constituting apprehensions (Hua X, 417). Whereas the present phase of a temporal object is perceived by way of a present apprehension of a non-temporal content, the past and future phases of the object are co-perceived by way of present apprehensions of modified and thereby no longer sensuously given nontemporal contents. In short, whereas the perception of the now-phase of the object would be constituted through the animation of a certain sensory content by means of a “now-apprehension” (Hua X, 230), this perceptual consciousness would be accompanied by retentional and protentional apprehensions of modified content thereby providing us with consciousness of those phases of the object that were no longer or not yet present. The weakness of this account is obvious. The manifold of contents and apprehensions are all part of the actual phase of consciousness. But, as Husserl himself was eventually to ask, how can a manifold of coexisting contents provide us with awareness of succession (Hua X, 323)? How can a present apprehension of a non-temporal content provide us with intuitive awareness of something just-past? Husserl eventually realized the deficiencies of his own early model and instead started to emphasize the width of presence. According to Husserl, the basic unit of
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temporality is – to use Jamesian terms – not a “knife-edge” present, but a “duration-block”, i.e., a temporal field that comprises all three temporal modes of present, past, and future. Husserl employed three technical terms to describe this temporal structure of consciousness. There is (i) a “primal impression” narrowly directed toward the strictly circumscribed now-phase of the object. The primal impression never appears in isolation and is an abstract component that by itself cannot provide us with a perception of a temporal object. The primal impression is accompanied by (ii) a “retention”, or retentional aspect, which provides us with a consciousness of the just-elapsed phase of the object thereby furnishing the primal impression with a past-directed temporal context, and by (iii) a “protention”, or protentional aspect, which in a more-or-less indefinite way intends the phase of the object about to occur thereby providing a future-oriented temporal context for the primal impression. The concrete and full structure of all lived experience is consequently protention-primal impression-retention. Although the specific experiential contents of this structure change progressively from moment to moment, at any one given moment this threefold structure is present (synchronically) as a unified whole: In this way, it becomes evident that concrete perception as original consciousness (original givenness) of a temporally extended object is structured internally as itself a streaming system of momentary perceptions (so-called primal impressions). But each such momentary perception is the nuclear phase of a continuity, a continuity of momentary gradated retentions on the one side, and a horizon of what is coming on the other side: a horizon of “protention,” which is disclosed to be characterized as a constantly gradated coming (Hua IX, 202).
According to this account, retention is not a particular thing in consciousness that we perceive; rather we hear the just-past tone as just-past because it is retained. There is no simultaneity between the retentional aspect of consciousness (which is present) and that which is retained (which is just past). The just-past tone doesn’t remain present in consciousness, like some reverberation; rather it is presented to consciousness as just-past, or as Brough has put it: “Retention does not transmute what is absent into something present; it presents the absent in its absence”.1 The retention does not retain real contents (the just-past tone is not physically present); rather, consciousness retains it as an intentional content. It retains the sense of what has just consciously passed.
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Thus, retention must be appreciated as a peculiar form of intentionality. Unlike the primal impression, the retention intends the past. As Husserl writes, “retention is not a modification in which impressional data are really [reell] preserved, only in modified form: on the contrary, it is an intentionality—indeed, an intentionality with a specific character of its own” (Hua X, 118). Being retentionally aware of the just-past phase of the object or event consequently doesn’t entail having the just-past phase sensuously co-present in some strange distorted way. Let us consider a concrete example: If we look at a pedestrian who is crossing the street, our perception will not be restricted to capturing the durationless now-phase of his movement. Perceptually, it is not as if the pedestrian suddenly appeared as out of nowhere; and further, we do not have to engage in an explicit act of remembering in order to establish the temporal context of his current position. Nor, however, will it be the case that all the previous phases of his movement are perceptually present in the same way as his current position. If that were the case, the pedestrian would perceptually fill the entire space he has just traversed. But we also have to avoid the idea that the past phases of his movement remain visually present in some vague ghostly manner. Temporal “fading” into the past is not equivalent to the fading of a fading image that remains perceptually present. Retention retains the sense of my just-past experience of seeing the pedestrian, but it does not do so by keeping a faded image in consciousness. Rather, the basic idea is that whatever we perceive will necessarily be embedded in a temporal horizon. Its meaning will be influenced by what went before, which is still intentionally retained. Rather than being a memory that re-presents the object in question, retention provides us with an intuition of the just-past sense of the object (Hua X, 41). This is precisely what is required if perception of succession is to be possible. Husserl would agree that the mere succession of conscious states doesn’t guarantee consciousness of succession, but this doesn’t entail the impossibility of a perception of duration and succession unless one also accepts the idea that perception is reduced to the grasping of a mere now-point, and that is precisely the idea that Husserl rejects. A perception cannot merely be a perception of what is now; rather any perception of the present phase of an object includes a retention of the just-past phase and a protention of the phase of the object about to occur (Hua XI, 315). Phrased differently (noematically), perceptual presence
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is not punctual, it is a field in which now, not-now and not-yet-now is given in a horizonal gestalt. This is what is required if perception of an enduring object is to be possible. But is consciousness of a temporal process, on this view, itself temporally extended? This is a deceivingly simple question. And it is a question that Husserl answered differently at different stages of his thinking. In 1904, Husserl’s answer was straightforward. As he writes in text nr. 21: “I see with evidence that the consciousness of a time itself <requires> time; the consciousness of a duration, duration; and the consciousness of a succession, succession” (Hua X, 192. Cf. Hua X, 22). But of course, if the protention-primal impression-retention structure has a duration of its own, if it contains temporal phases of its own, how then are these different successive phases synthesized in such a manner as to allow for an experience of succession? Are we then not forced to posit yet another form of time-consciousness to account for the givenness of this duration and unity, and so forth ad infinitum (Hua X, 80)? Husserl eventually became aware of these problems, and as he writes in text nr. 50: Is it inherently absurd to regard the flow of time as an objective movement? Certainly! On the other hand, memory is surely something that itself has its now, and the same now as a tone, for example. No. There lurks the fundamental mistake. The flow of the modes of consciousness is not a process; the consciousness of the now is not itself now. The retention that exists “together” with the consciousness of the now is not “now,” is not simultaneous with the now, and it would make no sense to say that it is (Hua X, 333).
Husserl would consequently reject the suggestion that there is a temporal match between time-consciousness and the temporal objects and events of which it is conscious. The relations between protention, primal impression and retention are not relations among items located within the temporal flow; rather these relations constitute the flow in question. To put it differently, it is for Husserl absolutely mandatory to distinguish sharply between the primal impression, retention, protention, i.e., the non-independent structures of inner time-consciousness, on the one hand, and the now-phase, the past-phase, and the future-phase, i.e., the phases of the temporal object, on the other hand. The primal impression, retention, protention are not related to each other as present, past, and future. Rather it is their conjunction which makes possible the senses of present, past, and future. In his writings, Husserl occasionally speaks
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of absolute time-constituting consciousness as an unchangeable form of presence (as a nunc stans) (Hua XXXIV, 384). But it is noteworthy that Husserl explicitly denies that this standing presence is to be understood as referring to merely one of the three temporal modalities (Hua XXXIV, 384). The presence in question is not the “now”, is not the “Gegenwart”, if one by Gegenwart means Gegen-wart, that is, a now that one stands over against (Hua XIV, 29). Inner time-consciousness is a field of experiencing, a dimension of manifestation, which encompasses all three temporal modes. And while it from a first-person perspective certainly makes sense to say that I had an experience of joy, or a perception of a flower, and that these experiences endured and have now ceased and become past – after all, otherwise it would hardly make sense to say that I can remember a former experience – the very dimension of inner time-consciousness with its threefold structure of protention-primal impression-retention, the very field of experiencing that allows for presence and absence, cannot itself become past and absent for me. It was reflections like these that eventually made Husserl distinguish three different layers of temporality: the objective time of the appearing objects, the subjective, immanent or pre-empirical time of the acts, sensa, and appearances, and the absolute, pre-phenomenal flow of timeconstituting consciousness (Hua X, 73, 76, 358). But how should one understand Husserl’s distinction between the subjective time and the absolute flow? As will become clear in a moment, the precise relation between the two has been a matter of controversy. As far as I can judge, in order to make full sense of Husserl’s distinction, one must relate it to his analysis of the relation between reflective and pre-reflective self-awareness, that is, to the relation between the kind of self-awareness that comes about as a result of an explicit, thematic, objectifying reflection, and the kind of implicit self-awareness which characterizes all of our experiences and is a condition of the possibility for reflective self-awareness. II. Self-Awareness According to Husserl, to be a subject is to exist for-itself, that is, to be self-aware. Thus, rather than being something that only occurs during exceptional circumstances, that is, whenever we pay attention to our
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conscious life, self-awareness is a feature characterizing subjectivity as such, no matter what worldly entities it might otherwise be conscious of or occupied with. In Husserl’s words: To be a subject is to be in the mode of being aware of oneself (Hua XIV, 151). An absolute existent is existent in the form of an intentional life–which, no matter what else it may be intrinsically conscious of, is, at the same time, consciousness of itself. Precisely for that reason (as we can see when we consider more profoundly) it has at all times an essential ability to reflect on itself, on all its structures that stand out for it–an essential ability to make itself thematic and produce judgments, and evidences, relating to itself (Hua XVII, 279–280 [transl. modified]). [E]very experience is ‘consciousness,’ and consciousness is consciousness of. . . But every experience is itself experienced [erlebt], and to that extent also ‘conscious’ [bewußt] (Hua X, 291 [transl. modified]). For the latter [the life of consciousness] is not only a lived-experiencing continually streaming along; at the same time, as it streams along it is also immediately the consciousness of this streaming. This consciousness is self-perceiving, although it is a thematically executed awareness on the part of the ego only in exceptional circumstances. Belonging to the latter is a reflection that is possible at any time. This perceiving that presents all lived-experiencing to consciousness is the so-called inner consciousness or inner perceiving (Hua XI, 320).
In the last quote, Husserl speaks alternately of tacit self-awareness as both an inner perceiving and as an inner consciousness. The later Husserl increasingly opted for the latter expression and much misunderstanding might have been avoided if he had always distinguished as clearly between the two as he did in Ideen II, where he equated “inner perception” with reflection, and “inner consciousness” with a non-thematic kind of selfawareness that precedes reflection (Hua IV, 118).2 When Husserl claims that subjectivity is per se self-aware, he is not advocating a strong Cartesian thesis concerning total and infallible selftransparency, but simply calling attention to the intimate link between experiential phenomena and first-personal givenness. In his view, the subjective or first-personal givenness of the experience is not simply a quality added to the experience, a mere varnish as it were. On the contrary, it is something that essentially characterizes experiential life. It is something the experiences cannot lack without ceasing to be experiences. It constitutes – to use a Sartrean expression – the very mode of being of the experience. In contrast to physical objects, which can exist regardless of whether or not they de facto appear for a subject, experiences are
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essentially characterized by their subjective givenness, by the fact that there is a subjective “feel” to them. To undergo an experience necessarily means that there is something “it is like” for the subject to have that experience.3 On Husserl’s account, an act of reflection is a founded form of self-awareness in the sense that it relies upon a prior, tacit form of self-awareness. To utilize a terminological distinction between perceiving (Wahrnehmen) and experiencing (Erleben) dating back to the Logische Untersuchungen: Prior to reflection one perceives the intentional object, but one experiences [erlebt] the intentional act. Although I am not intentionally directed at the act (this only happens in the subsequent reflection, where the act is thematized), it is not unconscious but conscious (Hua III, 162, 168, 251, 349, IX, 29), that is, given in an implicit and pre-reflective manner (Hua IV, 118). Indeed, reflection is often taken to be a thematic, articulated, and intensified self-awareness, initiated in order to bring the primary intentional act into focus. However, in order to explain the occurrence of reflection it is necessary that that which is to be disclosed and thematized is (unthematically) present, otherwise there would be nothing to motivate and call forth the act of reflection. As Husserl points out, it is in the nature of reflection to grasp something which was already given prior to the grasping. Reflection is characterized by disclosing, not by producing its theme: When I say “I,” I grasp myself in a simple reflection. But this self-experience [Selbsterfahrung] is like every experience [Erfahrung], and, in particular, every perception a mere directing myself towards something that was already there for me, that was already conscious, but not thematically experienced, nor noticed (Hua XV, 492–493). Whenever I reflect, I find myself “in relation to” something as affected or active. That to which I am related is experientially conscious, it is already there for me as a ‘lived-experience’ in order for me to be able to relate myself to it (Hua Mat VII, 196).
In short, reflection is not an act sui generis, it does not appear out of nowhere, but presupposes, like all intentional activity, a motivation. According to Husserl, to be motivated is to be affected by something, and then to respond to it (Hua IV, 217). I can thematize myself because I am already passively self-aware, I can grasp myself because I am already affected by myself (Hua VI, 111, XV, 78, 120).
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When I start reflecting, that which motivates the reflection, and which is then grasped, has already been going on for a while. The reflected experience did not commence the moment I started paying attention to it, and it is not only given as still existing, but also and primarily as having already been. It is the same act which is now given reflectively, given to me as enduring in time, that is, as a temporal act (Hua III, 95, 162–164). When reflection sets in, it initially grasps something that has just elapsed, namely, the motivating phase of the act reflected upon. The reason why this phase can still be thematized by the subsequent reflection is that it does not disappear, but is retained in the retention, for which reason Husserl can claim that retention is a condition of the possibility for reflection. It is, as he writes, due to the retention that consciousness can be made into an object (Hua X, 119). In other words, reflection can only take place if a temporal horizon has been established. This brings us back to the issue of temporality. In order to understand Husserl’s investigation of inner time-consciousness it is indeed crucial not to overlook that his analysis is supposed to serve a double purpose. It is meant to explain not only how we can be aware of objects with temporal extension, but also how we can be aware of our own stream of experiences. To put it differently, Husserl’s investigation is not only meant to explain how we can be aware of temporally extended units, but also how consciousness itself is temporally unified. Indeed, as Husserl wrote in the beginning of Bernauer Manuskripte über das Zeitbewusstsein, consciousness exists, it exists as a stream, and it appears to itself as a stream. The enduring question is how the stream of consciousness is capable of being conscious of itself; how it is possible and comprehensible that the very being of the stream is a form of self-consciousness (Hua XXXIII, 44, 46)?
III. The Internal Object Account One possibility is to employ the previously mentioned distinction between three levels of temporality. Level one would be the region of transcendent temporal objects such as trains, houses, and symphonies. Level two would be the region of experiences (Erlebnisse), and would include the intentional acts aimed at the objects on level one, and also the different immanent sensory contents. Level three would be the experiencing
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(Erleben) of the unities on level two. Just as we must distinguish between the constituted transcendent objects and the constituting dimension that permits them to appear, we must distinguish between the constituted acts and the constituting dimension that permits them to appear. The acts are temporal objects existing in subjective or immanent time, but they are constituted by a deeper dimension of subjectivity, namely, by inner time-consciousness. Thus, according to what might be termed the internal object interpretation, inner time-consciousness makes us aware of the acts or Erlebnisse as temporal objects in subjective time.4 This view has been the reigning interpretation for a while, but I find it quite problematic. In the Bernauer Manuskripte über das Zeitbewusstsein (originally written in 1917–1918) one can indeed find texts wherein Husserl defends such a view. In text number six, for instance, which carries the title “Acts as objects in the ‘phenomenological time’,” Husserl argued that one should distinguish between the perception of a tone, on the one hand, and the original or inner consciousness in which the perception is constituted as a temporal unity on the other. Every perception is what Husserl called an act-object (Aktgegenständlichkeit). Every perception is itself something that is constituted as an object in original time-consciousness (Hua XXXIII, 107–109). Similar statements can be found elsewhere in the volume. In text number seven, Husserl wrote that it is a necessary fact that every experience in the course of streaming life is constituted as an immanent temporal object (Hua XXXIII, 128). In text number eighteen, he wrote that every concrete experience is a unity of becoming and is constituted as an object in inner consciousness. Experiences are, in fact, simply objects in inner consciousness; objects in which further objects are constituted (Hua XXXIII, 318). One way to understand Husserl’s assertion is to see it as amounting to an endorsement of a view also found in Brentano’s Psychologie vom empirischen Standpunkt according to which an act is conscious not by being taken as an object by a further act, but by taking itself as object. Thus, every conscious experience has a double object, a primary and a secondary. In the case of the hearing of the hum of a refrigerator, the primary and thematic object is the hum; the secondary and unthematic object is the hearing. The focus of attention is on the primary object, and our consciousness of the act itself is normally secondary and incidental.5 That
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Husserl might have been tempted by such a model is clearly expressed in the following passage: Consciousness is not merely object-consciousness, consciousness of its ‘primary’ object, but also ‘inner’ consciousness, consciousness of itself and its intentional process. Next to its primary objects, it has its ‘secondary’ objects (Hua XXXIII, 42).
In my view, however, this view is fundamentally mistaken. Before I proceed to show that Husserl also defended an alternative and more convincing account, let me briefly outline why I believe the internal object to be wrong. It is relatively, but not completely, uncontroversial to concede that we, under certain circumstances, are aware of our own experiences as immanent objects, namely, whenever we reflect. If I reflect on my current perception of my laptop and reflectively try to discern and articulate the different structures of this perception, I do seem to be confronted with a rather peculiar immanent object. In the Bernau Manuscripts, Husserl called these objects of reflection “noetic objects” (Hua XXXIII, 449). The crucial question, however, is whether our experiences are also given as objects in inner time-consciousness prior to reflection. Is their primary givenness a form of object-manifestation? This is what the internal object account claims, but is it true? Not only do I think it is wrong from a purely descriptive point of view – in my everyday life, I am absorbed by and preoccupied with projects and objects in the world, I am not aware of my own stream of consciousness as a succession of immanent objects – but I also think that such a view is theoretically misleading. The central question is obviously whether it is appropriate to interpret the way in which the experience is conscious as a form of objectconsciousness. Is the experience originally given to us as an object? In some places, Husserl suggests that such a view would lead to an infinite regress: Every act is consciousness of something, but there is also consciousness of every act. Every act is “sensed,” is immanently “perceived” (inner consciousness), although naturally not posited, meant (to perceive here does not mean to grasp something and to be turned towards it in an act of meaning). [. . .] To be sure, this seems to lead back to an infinite regress. For is not the inner consciousness, the perceiving of the act (of judging, of perceiving something external, of rejoicing, and so forth), again an act and therefore itself something internally perceived, and so on? On the contrary, we must say:
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Every “experience” in the strict sense is internally perceived. But the inner perceiving is not an “experience” in the same sense. It is not itself again internally perceived (Hua X, 126–127 [Translation slightly altered]).
In this quote from Zur Phänomenologie des inneren Zeitbewusstseins Husserl is obviously denying that inner consciousness amounts to an ordinary form of object-intentionality. If we for a moment return to one of Husserl’s earlier writings, namely, Logische Untersuchungen, we will encounter a similar view. As Husserl writes in the 1st Investigation: sensations are originally simply lived through (erlebt) as moments of the experience; they are not objectified or taken as objects. This only happens in a subsequent psychological reflection (Hua XIX, 80). This assertion is then followed up in the 2nd Investigation, where Husserl writes: That an appropriate train of sensations or images is experienced, and is in this sense conscious, does not and cannot mean that this is the object of an act of consciousness, in the sense that a perception, a presentation or a judgment is directed upon it (Hua XIX, 165).
Obviously, the central word is the term “conscious”. For Husserl the sensations are conscious, that is, experientially given, when they are lived through and, as he makes clear, this givenness does not come about as the result of an objectification or because the sensations are taken as objects by an (inner) perception. The sensations are given, not as objects, but precisely as subjective experiences. The very same line of thought can be found in the 5th Investigation. There Husserl writes that the intentional experiences themselves are lived through, but he denies that they appear in an objectified manner; they are neither seen nor heard. They are conscious without being intentional objects (Hua XIX, 395, 399). This is not to deny that we can, in fact, direct our attention towards our experiences and thereby take them as objects (Hua XIX, 424), but this only occurs the moment we reflect upon them. As he explicitly stated in the 6th Investigation: “Experiential being is not object being [Erlebtsein ist nicht Gegenständlichsein]” (Hua XIX, 669). This is also the result that Husserl reached in his 1906/1907 lecture course Einleitung in die Logik und Erkenntnistheorie. He began by observing that we are aware of the perceptual object when we are engaged in a perception. But what about the sensations and the perceptual experience itself? They are also conscious, but are not given as perceptual
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objects; they are not perceived. What does it mean to be conscious, if not perceptually given (Hua XXIV, 242)? Obviously, the experiential components do not form part of the objective background of the perceptual object. The perceptual object, say a house, is always situated in a perceptual field. The house is located right in the middle of a multitude of other objects, and obviously the perceptual experience itself is not to be found among these objects, as if it was located a few centimeters to the left of the wall. As Husserl then continues, One should not mistake the consciousness of the objective background [gegenständlichen Hintergrund] and consciousness understood in the sense of experiential being [Erlebtseins]. Lived-experiences [Erlebnisse] as such, do have their own being, but they are not objects of apperception (in this case we would end in an infinite regress). The background, however, is given to us objectively; it is constituted through a complex of apperceptive lived-experiences. We do not pay attention to these objects [. . .], but they are still given to us in a quite different manner than the mere lived-experiences themselves [. . .]. The attentional consciousness of the background and consciousness in the sense of mere experiential givenness must be completely distinguished (Hua XXIV, 252).
We know that we can turn our attention away from the perceptual object and towards the perceptual experience. In this sense, it is possible to reflect upon the experience. To repeat the question, how is the perceptual experience given prior to reflection; how is it pre-reflectively present (Hua XXIV, 244)? In 1906/1907 Husserl answered the question by distinguishing between consciousness in the sense of experiential being and consciousness in the sense of intentionality. Whereas the latter involves directedness towards an object, i.e., object-consciousness, the former does not. As Husserl explicitly wrote: “ ‘experiencing’ does not mean the having of an object [Gegenständlich-Haben], nor to be ‘related’ to the object in this or that way and to take a position to it in this or that way and whatnot” (Hua XXIV, 247). The attempt to model pre-reflective self-consciousness on marginal object-consciousness by suggesting that our pre-reflective experiences remain in the background as potential themes in precisely the same way as, say, the hum of the refrigerator, might be tempting, but is ultimately misleading since it remains stuck in the subject-object model. It remains committed to the idea that our experiential life must either be given as an object or not be given at all and lets the only allowed variable be whether
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the object is given thematically or only marginally. This line of thought is flawed, however, since it erroneously assumes that there is only one type of givenness or manifestation, that of object-givenness. Had that, in fact, been the case, self-awareness sensu stricto (understood as an awareness of oneself as subject) would have been impossible. It is true, of course, that the plausibility of the claim that self-awareness and awareness of something as an object are mutually exclusive modes of awareness to a large extent depends on what we mean by “object”. In order to understand the phenomenological point of view it is at this point crucial not to conflate issues of ontology with issues of phenomenology. The claim is not that the object of experience must always differ ontologically from the subject of experience, as if the subject and the object of experience must necessarily be two different entities. Rather, the claim is simply that the experience itself is not pre-reflectively experienced as an object. On this understanding, for something to be an object is for that something to consciously appear in a specific manner. More specifically, for x to be considered an object is for x to appear as transcending the subjective consciousness that takes it as an object. It is to appear as something that stands in opposition to or over against the subjective experience of it (cf. the German term Gegen-stand). When we are absorbed or immersed in our daily concerns and simply live through the experiences, they are not given as objects, they are not something we observe from a distance and they do not stand opposite us. This, however, is precisely what can happen when we reflect. In reflection, we can place ourselves in contrast to a part of our own experiential life. We can distance ourselves from an experience and seize it as an object. If I reflect upon my present perception, it is given as that which remains identical across the respective differences of pre-reflective and reflective givenness, i.e., it is given as the same as what was previously experienced unthematically. But whereas we in reflection are confronted with a situation involving two experiences, where one (the reflected upon) can appear as an object for the other (the reflecting), we are on the pre-reflective level only dealing with a single experience, and one experience cannot appear as an object to itself, cannot be experienced as transcending itself, cannot stand opposed to itself, in the requisite way. An additional argument (found already in several of the post-Kantian German philosophers) for why an experience cannot pre-reflectively be
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given as an object, if, that is, the experience in question is to be considered my experience, was more recently revived by Shoemaker. He has argued that it is impossible to account for first-personal self-reference in terms of a successful object-identification. In order to identify something as oneself one obviously has to hold something true of it that one already knows to be true of oneself. This self-knowledge might in some cases be grounded in some further identification, but the supposition that every item of self-knowledge rests on identification leads to an infinite regress.6 This holds even for self-identification obtained through introspection. That is, it will not do to claim that introspection is distinguished by the fact that its object has a property which immediately identifies it as being me, and which no other self could possibly have, namely, the property of being the private and exclusive object of exactly my introspection. This explanation will not do because I will be unable to identify an introspected self as myself by the fact that it is introspectively observed by me, unless I know it is the object of my introspection, i.e., unless I know that it is in fact me who undertakes this introspection, and this knowledge cannot itself be based on identification, on pain of infinite regress.7 Is there any alternative? The obvious solution is to accept that we are aware of our own experiences in an immediate, pre-reflective, and non-objectifying manner. Prior to reflection, experiential states do present themselves, but not as objects. Metaphorically speaking, experiential states are characterized by a certain self-luminosity; they are self-intimating or self-presenting. Thus, the first-personal givenness of experience should not be taken as the result of a higher-order representation, reflection, internal monitoring or introspection, but rather should be treated as an intrinsic feature of experience. It is precisely because consciousness is characterized by such a non-objectifying self-awareness that it is possible to avoid an infinite regress: The flow of the consciousness that constitutes immanent time not only exists but is so remarkably and yet intelligibly fashioned that a self-appearance of the flow necessarily exists in it, and therefore the flow itself must necessarily be apprehensible in the flowing. The self-appearance of the flow does not require a second flow; on the contrary, it constitutes itself as a phenomenon in itself (Hua X, 83).
To sum up, I do not think the account offered by Husserl in the Bernau Manuscripts is systematically satisfactory.8 However, as I
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have already indicated, I also believe that it is a view that Husserl himself, for the most part, rejected. This is so not only in Logische Untersuchungen and Einleitung in die Logik und Erkenntnistheorie, but also in Zur Phänomenologie des inneren Zeitbewusstseins. Let me end by proposing an alternative interpretation of Husserl’s account of inner time-consciousness that explicitly links it to the notion of pre-reflective self-awareness
IV. Inner Consciousness and Inner Time-Consciousness To speak phenomenologically of the temporality of consciousness is to speak of the temporal givenness of consciousness. To speak of the temporal givenness of consciousness is to speak of its temporal self-givenness. To suggest otherwise is to reify consciousness. Why speak of self-givenness? Because whereas in the case of the givenness of an object, we have to distinguish the object that is given and the subject to whom it is given, this distinction is no longer appropriate when it comes to the givenness of our experience. The experience is given in and through and for itself. What this means, however, is that it would be a mistake to conceive of the relation between inner time-consciousness and the intentional experience as if it were an objectifying relation between two distinct dimensions of consciousness. When Husserl claimed that the experience is constituted in inner time-consciousness, he was not saying that the experience is brought to givenness by some other part of subjectivity, as if one part took the other as its object. Rather, to say that an experience is constituted in inner time-consciousness means that it is brought to awareness by its own means. It is called inner time-consciousness because it belongs intrinsically to the innermost structure of the experience itself. On this reading, the stream of consciousness is not illuminated by a separate spotlight, rather the stream is self-luminous. To put it differently, when Husserl discusses inner consciousness and when he discusses inner timeconsciousness he is not discussing two different issues. Rather Husserl’s investigation of the structure of inner time-consciousness (protentionprimal impression-retention) must be seen as an investigation of the (micro)structure of inner consciousness. Indeed, Husserl’s investigation of inner time-consciousness must precisely be appreciated as a profound
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contribution to an understanding of pre-reflective self-manifestation of our experiences. Where does the interpretation I am offering stand in regard to the distinction between three different layers or levels of temporality: The objective time of the appearing objects, the subjective, immanent or pre-empirical time of the acts and experiences, and finally the absolute pre-phenomenal flow of inner time-constituting consciousness (Hua X, 73, 76, 358)? It accepts the tripartion, but simply denies that the acts are given sequentially as temporal objects prior to reflection and recollection. In short, I am certainly not denying that there is a crucial difference between analysing consciousness in terms of different intentional acts, such as acts of perception, judgment, imagination, etc., and analysing consciousness in terms of the structure of inner time-consciousness. If we take three different experiences, say, a visual perception of a bird, an anticipation of a forthcoming holiday, and a rejection of the claim that Earth is the largest planet in our solar system, these three experiences obviously have different intentional structures. But the self-manifestation of the three experiences does not have a different structure in each case. On the contrary, we are faced with the same basic structure of inner timeconsciousness. If that is the case, however, we do need to distinguish the experience and its self-manifestation. Whereas we live through a number of different experiences that arise, endure, and become past, the structure of protention-primal impression-retention might be considered an invariant field of presencing, or even better as an unchanging field of presencing (primal impression) and absencing (retention-protention).9 To use a striking image from James, the latter stands permanent like a rainbow on a waterfall, its own quality unchanged by the events that stream through it.10 Simply to collapse these different levels into one involves an oversimplification that is detrimental to a correct understanding of consciousness. As Husserl wrote in a manuscript dating from the fall of 1930: This streaming living Presence is not what we elsewhere have designated transcendentalphenomenologically as stream of consciousness or a stream of lived-experience. It cannot be depicted as a “stream” in the sense of a special temporal (or even spatio-temporal) whole that has a continuous-successive individual being consisting in the unity of a temporal extension (individuated by this temporal form in its distinguishable stretches and phases). The streaming living Presence is “continuous” streaming-being, and yet it is
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not a separated-being, not a spatio-temporal (world-spatial) being, not an “immanenttemporal” extended being; not a separation [Außereinander] that implies a succession [Nacheinander], a succession in the sense of a punctual-separation taking place in time properly so called (Hua XXXIV, 187).
In other words, it is highly appropriate to distinguish the singularity of the lebendige Gegenwart from the plurality of changing experiences. And of course, to claim that the two levels can be distinguished is not to claim that they can be separated or dissociated. We are not dealing with a pure or empty field of presencing-absencing upon which the concrete experiences subsequently make their entry. Inner time-consciousness has no self-manifestation of its own, but is the very non-objectifying, prereflective self-manifestation of the experiences. Incidentally, this should also make it clear why one must reject a claim made by Husserl in the Bernau Manuscripts according to which the truly constituting foundation is made up by inner time-consciousness, whereas the intentional experience is not itself constituting in the full sense of the term (Hua XXXIII, 108–109). This view must be rejected since it mistakenly posits inner time-consciousness as an independent constitutive dimension, rather than seeing it as a core feature of the experience.11 This is presumably also why Husserl at several places in Zur Phänomenologie des inneren Zeitbewusstseins wrote that perceptual consciousness rather than being a constituted temporally unity is a moment of the time-constituting absolute flow (Hua X, 75–76, 333–334). It is only due to a special apprehension, namely, when we thematize the acts, that they are constituted as enduring objects in subjective time. As Husserl also writes, our experiences appear in subjective time with duration and temporal location qua objects of reflection (Hua X, 285, Hua XIV, 29). Prior to reflection there is no awareness of internal objects and there is no distinction between the pre-reflective givenness of the experiences and inner time-consciousness, since the latter is simply a new term for the former. Furthermore, it also makes good sense to preserve the difference between level 1 and 2. Pre-reflectively the stream of consciousness is given to us as a flowing unity. Originally, consciousness does not appear to itself chopped up into bits. As Husserl writes, “consciousness is a unity. An act is nothing on its own, it is a wave in the stream of consciousness” (Ms. L I 15 2b. cf. Hua XXIX, 194).12 The relation between two consecutive experiences must rather be likened to the relation between
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two waves in the same stream than to two wagons in the same train. Whereas the duration of lunar eclipse can be measured with the time of the clock, it is quite doubtful – as many phenomenologists have pointed out – whether this form of temporality does justice to lived time. To mention just one simple example: Think of the way in which the experience of time (for instance the interplay between the three different temporal dimensions) is differently articulated in such diverse states as hope, anxiety, insomnia and boredom. Think of the way in which the “same” 30 min can be experienced differently depending on whether you are anxious, bored, or captivated. This is not to say that a stop clock cannot measure something, but the question is what precisely it is that is being measured. It is certainly possible to transform our experiences into mental objects and to posit or inject them into the clock time. But is this serial time a form of temporality that is native to the experiences in question or is it rather derivative, i.e., the result of a subsequent objectification?
V. Conclusion In Heidegger’s lecture course Prolegomena zur Geschichte des Zeitbegriffs from 1925, Heidegger writes that Husserl operated with a too narrow concept of Being. Due to his exclusive interest in intentionality, Husserl identified the Being of consciousness with the Being of objects, and consequently failed to uncover the unique mode of Being characterizing intentional subjectivity itself. Heidegger ultimately argues that a more radical phenomenology is called for. This phenomenology has to return to the original givenness of subjectivity, and should not merely consider it, as Husserl did, insofar as it is a (potential) object of reflection.13 This is an objection that has been repeated frequently by Heideggerians ever since. The persisting claim has been that Husserl despite his recurring emphasis on the cardinal difference between reality and consciousness never really understood that this difference amounts to an ontological difference, a difference in Being; rather he consistently took consciousness to be a region that could be objectively determined and failed to realize that its mode of Being differs radically from the mode of Being of worldly entities. Indeed the problem with Husserl’s transcendental methodology is that it remains too narrowly focused on the givenness of objects.14
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As I have tried to show, this criticism doesn’t do Husserl justice. In Ideen I, Husserl confined himself to an analysis of the relation between constituted objects and constituting consciousness. He accounted for the way in which the givenness of objects are conditioned by subjectivity, yet apart from stressing that experiences are not given in the same (perspectival) manner as objects, he did not pursue the question concerning the givenness of subjectivity itself any further. As Husserl himself was quite aware, however, such a silence was phenomenologically unacceptable, and he explicitly admitted that he thereby left out the most important and fundamental problems, namely, those pertaining to timeconsciousness (Hua III, 182). To put it differently, any serious attempt to gauge the radicality of the Husserlian enterprise must necessarily discuss Husserl’s writings on the deepest layers of constitution. In particular, it must discuss his writings on time, since it is these writings that contain Husserl’s most extended analyses of the non-objectifying mode of Being of consciousness.
Notes 1. John B. Brough: Husserl’s Phenomenology of Time-Consciousness. In: Husserl’s Phenomenology: A Textbook. Ed. by J.N. Mohanty and W.R. McKenna, Washington, 1989, 276. 2. Husserl’s use of the term “inner consciousness” is clearly indebted to Brentano’s discussion in Psychologie vom empirischen Standpunkt, though I would argue that Husserl’s construal of inner consciousness ultimately differs significantly from Brentano’s. 3. See Thomas Nagel: What is it like to be a bat? In: The Philosophical Review, 83 (1974), 436. 4. This interpretation has been advocated by Brough (John B. Brough: The Emergence of an Absolute Consciousness in Husserl’s Early Writings on Time-Consciousness. In: Man and World 5 (1972), 308–309) and Sokolowski (Robert Sokolowski: Husserlian Meditations. Evanston 1974, 156–157). For an extensive discussion and criticism, Dan Zahavi: Self-awareness and Alterity: A phenomenological investigation. Evanston, 1999. 5. Franz Brentano: Psychologie vom empirischen Standpunkt I. Hamburg 1973, 179–180. 6. Sidney Shoemaker: Self-reference and Self-awareness. In: The Journal of Philosophy LXV (1968), 561. 7. Sidney Shoemaker: Self-reference and Self-awareness. In: The Journal of Philosophy LXV (1968), 562–563. 8. Perhaps it could be argued that in text number six (and elsewhere) Husserl was simply playing with certain ideas in an attempt to see where they would lead him. If this charitable interpretation is correct, which it very well could be, one might wonder whether the text really deserved to be published. For a more extensive discussion of the Bernau Manuscripts, cf. Dan Zahavi: Time and Consciousness in the Bernau Manuscripts. In: Husserl Studies 20/2, 2004, 99–118. 9. Fink spoke of retention and protention in terms of an “Entgegenwärtigung” (Eugen Fink: Studien zur Phänomenologie 1930–1939. Den Haag 1966, 22). 10. William James: The Principles of Psychology I. London, 1890, 630.
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11. Another reason for rejecting the claim is that it by mistakenly severing inner (time-)consciousness from intentionality (rather than seeing them as interdependent) sets the stage for a quite problematic understanding of the nature of transcendental subjectivity. But as Husserl himself were to write in Analysen zur passiven Synthesis, taken on its own inner time-consciousness is a pure but abstract form. And he further characterized the phenomenology of inner time-consciousness as an abstractive analysis which has to be complemented by a phenomenology of association dealing with the fundamental laws and forms governing the syntheses pertaining to the content (Hua XI, 118, 128, Hua I, 28). To put it differently, in concreto there can be no inner time-consciousness, no pre-reflective self-awareness, without a temporal content. Time-consciousness never appears in pure form, but always as a pervasive sensibility, as the very sensing of the sensations: “We regard sensing as the original consciousness of time” (Hua X, 107). Basically, this is the reason why Husserl would eventually insist upon the inseparability between Quer- and Längsintentionalität: “Consequently, two inseparably united intentionalities, requiring one another like two sides of one and the same thing, are interwoven with each other in the one, unique flow of consciousness” (Hua X, 83. Cf. Hua XI, 138). 12. “Bewußtsein ist eine Einheit. Ein Akt ist nichts für sich, er ist Welle im Bewußtseinsstrom.” I am grateful to the previous Director of the Husserl-Archives in Leuven, Prof. Dr. Rudolf Bernet, for permitting me to consult and quote from Husserl’s unpublished manuscripts. 13. Martin Heidegger: Prolegomena zur Geschichte des Zeitbegriffs. Frankfurt am Main, 1979, 143, 152. 14. Jean-Luc Marion, Reduction et donation: recherches sur Husserl, Heidegger et la phenomenologie. Paris, 1989, 77, 187–188, 304.
NAME INDEX
A Alweiss, L., 112 Aristotle, 40, 44, 49, 91–92, 94, 99, 111, 138, 150, 312 Augustine, 21, 93, 112, 137 B Banham, G., 19 Barnes, H. E., 70 Benoist, J., 69 Berlinger, R., 112 Bernet, R., 1–20, 70, 111–113, 133, 153–154, 163, 165, 168, 184, 209–210, 249, 267–268, 315, 317, 339 Biemel, W., 69, 112, 114, 151 Binswanger, L., 175 Blaschek-Hahn, H., 168 Boehm, R., 18, 111, 132, 134, 150, 153–154, 165, 184, 191, 248, 315, 317 Böhme, G., 111 Brentano, F., 4–5, 338 Brough, J. B., 19, 21–49, 111, 150, 153–154, 165, 169–172, 176, 321, 338 C Cairns, D., 151, 210, 228 Churchill, J. S., 18 Collingwood, R. G., 205 Comte, A., 145 Coriando, P. L., 113
D Dahlstrom, D., 133 Depraz, N., 314 Derrida, J., 112, 137, 146, 183, 209–211, 213 de Warren, N., 273–294 Diaconu, M., 114 Dodd, J., 51–70, 133 Düsing, K., 134, 165 E Eyre, R. M, 70 F Ferrarin, A., 133 Fichte, J. G., 145, 151 Fink, E., 3–4, 210, 230, 262, 338 Fleischer, M., 19, 70, 151, 184, 248 Fonfara, D., 165, 229 G Gadamer, H. G., 88–89 Geniusas, S., 71–90 Green, M., 1 H Hegel, G. W. F., 145, 205, 274, 294 Heidegger, M., 2–3, 18, 54, 63, 68–69, 72, 79, 85–89, 91–115, 132, 147, 181, 184, 192, 197, 205, 210–211, 337, 339 Held, K., 1, 91–114, 133, 181, 210, 228–229, 264, 267, 316 Hüni, H., 1, 133, 228
341 D. Lohmar, I. Yamaguchi (eds.), On Time - New Contributions to the Husserlian Phenomenology of Time, Phaenomenologica 197, DOI 10.1007/978-90-481-8766-9, C Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2010
342
name index
I Ingarden, R., 2–3, 17, 133
Mohanty, J. N., 165, 168, 184, 338
J James, W., 93, 338
N Nancy, J.-L., 273–275, 286, 292, 294 Nagel, T., 338 Natorp, P., 228 Niel, L., 213–230 Ni, L., 187–211 Novotny, K., 168
K Kant, I., 87, 111, 145–146, 174, 205, 210, 229, 305 Kern, I., 151, 165, 167–168, 200, 209–210 Kersten, F., 19, 150, 249 Kortooms, T., 69, 112, 153–154, 165, 184, 268, 304, 308, 315–316 L Landgrebe, L., 270f., 315, 317 Latham, M., 165, 168 Lee, Nam-In, 251, 268 Leibniz, G. W., 139–140, 143–144, 146–148, 151, 311 Lévinas, E., 79, 112, 144, 151, 175, 183, 185, 273, 282 Libet, B., 312–313, 316 Lohmar, D., 3, 18, 70, 111–112, 115–136, 154, 164–165, 184–185, 228–229, 249, 251 M Marion, J.-L., 230, 339 Macquarrie, J., 210 Mader, E., 228 Maldiney, H., 183 Marbach, E., 209–210 Mayzaud, Y., 137–152 McKenna, W. R., 165, 168, 184, 338 Meinong, 4–5 Melle, U., 251 Mensch, J., 134, 153–168 Merleau-Ponty, M., 147, 208 Micali, S., 169–184
P Pastore, L., 133 Pat˘ocka, J., 165, 168 Plato, 94–95, 98–99, 101–102, 109–110, 168, 202, 204, 210 R Richir, M., 180 Ricoeur, P., 137, 146, 200, 208, 210 Robinson, E., 210 Rodemeyer, L., 112, 153, 165, 231–250, 316–317 S Sakakibara, T., 251–271 Sartre, J.-P., 51, 68–70 Schopenhauer, A., 204–205, 210 Schubert, F., 53–54, 57, 62 Schuhmann, K., 18–19, 150 Sokolowski, R., 134, 153, 165, 338 Stein, E., 2, 111, 116, 133, 192 Steinbock, A. J., 315 Strasser, S., 151 Stumpf, C., 4 T Taguchi, S., 228–230 Tengelyi, L., 133 Trawny, P., 1, 113, 133, 228
name index V Varela, F. J., 311, 314, 316 Voltaire, 73 Y Yamaguchi, I., 295–316
343
Z Zahavi, D., 39, 49, 171–172, 184–185, 229–230, 268, 271, 316–317, 319–339
