[Edmund_Husserl,_John_B._Brough]_On_the_phenomenol(BookZa.org).pdf

8/13/2019 [Edmund_Husserl,_John_B._Brough]_On_the_phenomenol(BookZa.org).pdf

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EDMUND HUSSERL

ON THE PHENOMENOLOGYOF THE CONSCIOUSNESS

OF INTERNAL TIME1893-1917

TRANSLATED BY

JOHN BARNETT BROUGH

\\

KLUWER ACADEMIC PUBLISHERSDORDRECHT/ BOSTON/ LONDON


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Library of CoagreM Catalogiag-ia-PabUcatioii Data OEHusserl, Edmund. 1859-1938.

[Zur Phanomenologie des inncrcn Zeitbewusstseins. English]On the phenomenology of the consciousness of internal time1893-1917)/EdmundHusserl; translated by John Bamett Brough.p. cm. \342\200224 Collectedworks; v. 4)Translation of: Zur Phanomenologie des inneren Zeitbewusstseins.Includes bibliographical references and index.ISBN 0-7923-0891-3alk. paper)1.Time. 2. Time perception. I. Brough, John B. II. Title.III. Series:Husserl, Edmund, 1859-1938.Works. English. 1980;v. 4.B3279.H93Z84131990

115\342\200\224dc20 9


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CONTENTS

TRANSLATOR SINTRODUCTION XI

ON THE PHENOMENOLOGY OF THECONSCIOUSNESS OF INTERNAL TIME

(1893-1917)A

LECTURESION THE PHENOMENOLOGY OF THECONSCIOUSNESS OF INTERNAL TIMEFirst Part: The Lectures on the Consciousness of Internal Timefrom the Year 1905 3Introduction 3\302\2471. The Suspension of Objective Time 4\302\2472. The Question about the \ Origin of Tune\ 9First Section : Brentano s Theory of the Origin of Time ... II

\302\247 3. The Original Associations 11\302\2474. The Acquiring of the Future and Infinite Time 14\302\247 5. The Modification of Representations through Temporal Characters 15\302\2476. Criticism 16Second Section : Analysis of the Consciousness of Time .... 21\302\2477. Interpretation of the Grasping of Temporal Objectsas Momentary

Grasping and as Enduring Act 21\302\247 8. Immanent TemporalObjectsand Their Modesof Appearance . . 25\302\247 9. The Consciousnessof the Appearances of Immanent Objects . . 27\302\247 10.The Continua of the Running-OfT Phenomena. The Diagram ofTime 29\302\24711. Primal Impression and Retentional Modification 30\302\24712. Retention as a Unique Kind of Intentionality 33


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VI CONTENTS

\302\24713.TheNecessity that an Impression PrecedeEvery Retention. Evidence

Pertaining to Retention 34\302\24714. Reproduction of Temporal Objects(Secondary Memory) .... 37

\302\24715. Reproduction s Modesof Accomplishment 39\302\24716. Perception as Presentation in Distinction from Retention and

Recollection 40\302\24717. Perception as the Act That GivesSomething Itself in Opposition to

Reproduction 42\302\24718. The Significance of Recollection for the Constitution of the

Consciousness of Duration and Succession 44\302\24719.The Difference between Retention and Reproduction (Primary and

Secondary Memory or Phantasy) 47\302\24720. The \ Freedom\ of Reproduction 49\302\24721. Levelsof Clarity Pertaining to Reproduction SO\302\24722. Evidence of Reproduction SI

\302\247 23. Coinciding of the Reproduced Now with a Past.Distinction betweenPhantasy and Recollection 52

\302\24724. Pretentions in Recollection 54

\302\247 25. TheDoubleIntentionality of Recollection 55\302\24726. Differences between Memory and Expectation 57

\302\24727. Memory as Consciousnessof Having-Been-Perceived 59

\302\24728. Memory and Image-Consciousness.Memory as Positing Reproduction 61\302\247 29. Memory of the Present 62\302\24730. The Preservation of the Objective Intention in the RetentionalModification 64\302\24731. Primal Impression and the Objective Individual Time-Point ... *66\302\24732. The Roleof Reproduction in the Constitution of the One ObjectiveTime 72

\302\24733. SomeA Priori Temporal Laws 73

Third Section: The Levels of Constitution Pertaining to Timeand Temporal Objects 77\302\247 34. Differentiation of the Levelsof Constitution 77\302\247 35. Differences between Constituted Unities and the Constituting Flow 77\302\247 36. The Time-Constituting Flow as Absolute Subjectivity 79\302\247 37. Appearances of Transcendent Objectsas Constituted Unities . . 79\302\24738. The Unity of the Flow of Consciousnessand the Constitution of

Simultaneity and Succession 80\302\24739. The Double Intentionality of Retention and the Constitution of theFlow of Consciousness 84

\302\24740. The Constituted Immanent Contents 88

\302\24741. Evidence Pertaining to Immanent Contents. Change and Constancy 89\302\247 42. Impression and Reproduction 93\302\24743. Constitution of Physical-Thing Appearances and of Physical Things.Constituted Apprehensions and Primal Apprehensions 95

\302\24744. Perception of the Internal and Perception of the External .... 99

\302\24745. Constitution of Nontemporal Transcendencies 101


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contents viiSecond Part : Addenda and Supplements to the Analysis of Time-Consciousness from the Years 1905-1910 105Appendix I : Primal Impression and Its Continuum of Modifications 105Appendix II : Re-presentation and Phantasy. - Impression and

Imagination 107Appendix III : The Nexus-Intentions of Perception and Memory.-TheModesof Time-Consciousness 109Appendix IV : Recollectionand the Constitution of Temporal Objectsand ObjectiveTime 113Appendix V : Simultaneity of Perception and the Perceived .... 114Appendix VI : The Grasping of the Absolute Flow. - Perception in aFourfold Sense 116Appendix VII : Constitution of Simultaneity 119Appendix VIII: The Double Intentionality of the Stream of

Consciousness 120Appendix LX : Primal Consciousnessnd the Possibility of Reflection 122Appendix X : Objectivation of Time and of Something Physical inTime 124Appendix XI : Adequate and Inadequate Perception 127Appendix XII : Internal Consciousnessand the Grasping of Experiences 130Appendix XIII: Constitution of Spontaneous Unities asObjectsin

Immanent Time.- Judgment as Temporal Formation andAbsolute Time-constituting Consciousness 133

BSUPPLEMENTARY TEXTSSETTING FORTH THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE PROBLEM

I.


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VIII contentsNo. 6. Brentano and the Question about the Evidence ofMemory) 162No. 7. Intuition, Evidence of Being-Past - Mere Representation

of Being-Past.Apparent Necessity of Assuming a Changeof Content m Primary Memory) 162No. 8. Adequation by Means of Similarity. - Representation ofan Object and Representation of the Perception of theObject.


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CONTENTS IX

No. 23. The Unity of Time and Its Infinity 204No. 24. Perception of an Individual (Temporal) Object. (Do WeFind in OnePhaseof the Perception of SomethingTemporal the Perceptual Appearances of the Earlier Phases?)(September 1904) 205No. 25. Adequate Memory. Earlier Perception.- Perceptionof thePast. Attempt (Aporia). (Why Is Fresh Memory NotSimply the Original Perception Continuing to Endure?) 208No. 26. On the Hypothesis: That PerceptionsInclude the \Temporal Determination\ Actually Now, Which, However,Continually Changes, and That Primary Memory Has theSignificance of the Abiding of ThesePerceptions ... 211No. 27. (Attempt at a Survey: the Fundamental TemporalDistinctions. There-itselfand Objectivation) 216No. 28. The Identity of the Tone,of the Temporal Object,and ofEach Phase of the Temporal Object in the Flow ofTime-Consciousness 220No. 29. Meinong s Distinction between Distributed andUndistributed Objects(January 7, 1905) 223No. 30. (Three Kinds of Phases) 235No. 31. Diagram. (Apprehension of the Now and ExtensivePerception) 237No. 32. Continua 238No. 33. Results of the Stern-Meinong Discussion 239No. 34. (On the Problem of the Consciousnessof a Succession)(February 1905) 242

III. Seefelder Manuscripts on Individuation1905(until about 1907) 245No. 35. The Unity of the Thing in Time as Something Identical in

Change or Constancy (Summer Vacation, 1905) .... 245No. 36. (On the) SeefeldReflection. (The Typical,theMathematical, and the Unity of the Temporal Object) 261No. 37. TheTemporal Object 268No. 38. Objection to This Whole SeefeldWay of ConsideringThings 274

IV. (On the Dissolution of the Schema: Apprehension-Content-Apprehension)(1907 to 1909) 279

No. 39. Time in Perception ((Beginning) 1907) 279No. 40. Levelsof Objectivity 297


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No. 41. Appearance and Time.- Experiencing and Experience.Consciousnessas the Experiencing in Which theExperiences Belonging to ConsciousnessAre Experienced in thePlural 299No. 42. Evidence 304No. 43. Problem 305No. 44. The Temporal Form of Consciousness 306No. 45. The Double Intentionality of the Flows ofConsciousness) 308No. 46. Questionablenessof Tracing All Differences Back to theModeof Apprehension) 322No. 47. \ Content-moments\ and \ Apprehension-moments\and the Evidence of Fresh Memory) 323No. 48. The Original Processof Being Pushed Back in Time . . 330No. 49. Do We Have a Continuum of Primary ContentsSimultaneously in the Now-point and, in Addition to This andSimultaneous with It, a Continuum of\ Apprehensions\ ?) 331No. 50. The Modification Proper to Primary Memory 337

On the Primary Conclusion of the Investigations)Beginning of) 1909to the End of 1911 347

No. 51. The Problem ofTimein the Considerations Fundamentalto Phenomenology) May-June 1909) 347No. 52. Mere Representations of Processes or of IndividualEnduring) Objects.Evidence Pertaining to MemorialPerception, Evidence Pertaining to the Perception of What IsPresent End of August 1909) 364No. 53. The Intentionality of Internal ConsciousnessNovember10-13,1911) 370

No. 54. Consciousness Flow), Appearance Immanent Object[Object]),and Object [Gegenstand]} 379397


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TRANSLATOR S INTRODUCTION

What follows is a translation of Volume X in the Husserlianaseries, the critical edition of the works of Edmund Husserl.1Volume X was published in 1966. Its editor, Rudolf Boehm,provided the title: Zur Phanomenologie des inneren Zeitbewusst-seins (1893-1917). Some of the texts included in Volume X werepublished during Husserl s lifetime, but the majority were not.Given the fact that the materials assembled in Volume X do notconstitute a single and previously published Husserlian work,some acquaintance with their history and chronology isindispensable to understanding them. These introductory remarks areintended to provide the outlines of such an acquaintance,together with a brief account of the main themes that appear inthe texts.

The Status of the TextsIn 1928, Husserl s \ Vorlesungen zur Phanomenologie desinneren Zeitbewusstseins \ appeared in the Jahrbuch fur Philoso-

1 Edmund Husserl, Zur Phanomenologie desinneren Zeilbewusstseins (1893-1917)On thephenomenology of the consciousness of internal time (1893-1917)],erausgegeben vonRudolf Boehm, Husserliana X (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1966).The references inRoman numerals that occur in parentheses in this Introduction are to Rudolf Boehm s\ Editor s Introduction\ to Husserliana X. References in Arabic numerals, unless otherwisenoted, will beto this translation. Corresponding page numbers ofHusserliana X will befoundin the margins of the translation. The translation includes Parts A and B ofHusserliana X,with Boehm s notes. It doesnot include Boehm s \ Introduction,\ the main points ofwhichare summarized here, or his \ Textkritischer Anhang.\


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XII TRANSLATOR S INTRODUCTION

phie und phanomenologische Forschung.2 Martin Heidegger wascredited as the editor of the work, for which he wrote a briefprefatory note. The publication of 1928 had two parts: \ TheLectures on the Consciousness of Internal Time from the Year1905,\ which was considerably longer than the second part, the\ Addenda and Supplements to the Analysis of

Timeco n o u n from the Years 1905-1910.\ The complete text of the workpublished in 1928 appears as \ Part A\ of Husserliana X andtherefore as \ Part A \ of this translation.

At first glance, the status of the text of 1928 could hardly bemore straightforward: it is evidently a work edited by Heideggerand consisting of two parts, the first and more substantial ofwhich dates from 1905, while the second is formed fromsupplementary texts written from 1905 to 1910. But as Rudolf Boehmhas shown in the Editor s Introduction to Husserliana X, thesituation is considerably more complicated than that, and thecomplications are fraught with philosophical consequences.Towards the end of his prefatory note to the edition of 1928,Heidegger mentions, almost as an afterthought, that Husseri sassistant Edith Stein had inserted the chapter and paragraphdivisions when she transcribed Husseri s stenographic lecturemanuscripts (XXV). The reader is left with the impression thatthe organization and character of the work as published arealtogether Husseri s and that neither the contributions of EdithStein nor the emendations of Heidegger as editor went beyondthe cosmetic. This, in fact, was true in Heidegger s case-hisediting consisted in introducing only the slightest of changes-butit could hardly be further from the truth as far as Edith Stein srole was concerned. Indeed, by virtue of her work on the text, shemay rightly be called its true, and deeply involved, editor.When Edith Stein was Husseri s assistant at Freiburg from1916 to 1918, one of her tasks was to begin to assemble andprepare Husseri s numerous lecture manuscripts, notes, andsketches for possible publication (XIX, XX). In at least some

2 Edmund Husserl, \ Voriesungen zur Phanomenologie des inneren Zeitbewusstseins\[Lectures on the phenomenology of the consciousness of internal time], herausgegeben vonMartin Heidegger, Jahrbuchfur Philosophie und phSnomenohgische Forschung IX (Halle:MaxNiemeyer, 1928).


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TRANSLATOR S INTRODUCTION XIII

instances, she seems to have had a fair amount of freedom indeciding which Husserlian texts to include in a given draft andhow to organize them. On occasion, when Husserl lacked thetime or inclination, she may even have undertaken revisions ofsome of the texts herself (XIX, XX). In July of 1917, Stein wroteto Roman Ingarden that she had come across a bundle ofmanuscripts on \ time-consciousness\ (XX). She takes note ofthe importance of the theme in terms of Husserl s own thoughtand the thought of others, such as Bergson, but also says of themanuscripts themselves that their \ external state is prettydismal : scraps of note paper from 1903 on \ (XX). She isenthusiastic about her discovery nonetheless, and expresses a strong desireto stitch the scraps together into a form that might leadeventually to publication.What precisely did the bundle of manuscripts on time that (asHusserl later put it) \ presented itself to Fraulein Stein\ (XVIII)in 1917 contain? A portion of it consisted of lecture materialfrom 1905. In the winter semester of 1904-05, Husserl presenteda four-part course, \ Important Points from the Phenomenologyand Theory of Knowledge,\ at Gottingen. The concluding partof the course, \ On the Phenomenology of Time,\ was deliveredin February 1905 (XIV, XVII, note 3). Husserl s notes for thisfinal part, which were neither as complete nor as coherentlyorganized as the notes for the first three parts, were includedamong the manuscripts that Stein found in 1917. From 1905 intoat least 1911, Husserl would occasionally remove old sheets fromthe lecture notes in the bundle and substitute new ones.Sometimes he would simply add an entirely new sketch (XVIII). Thesesubstitutions and additions came to form a substantial part of thebundle of manuscripts. The raw material available to Edith Steinfor her draft, then, included matter written for the 1905 lectures(as well as some earlier notes, going back to 1901 or so, that wereused to some extent in the lectures) and sheets and sketcheswritten after 1905 until as late as 1911. She also apparently hadavailable some material from 1917, perhaps supplied by Husserlwhen he learned about her project (Husserl also wrote one pagespecifically for the draft she eventually produced).3

*SeeRudolf Boehm s \ Textkritischer Anhang\ 10Huuerliana X, pp. 389-91.422.


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xrv TRANSLATOR S INTRODUCTIONAt the beginning of August 1917, Stein wrote to Ingarden thatshe had been working on the time-notes - \ beautiful things, butnot yet fully matured \ - for the past month (XXI). By this point

she already seems to have finished a first draft or \ working-out\[Ausarbeitung] of the chronologically disparate materials she hadfound. In putting together the draft, Stein did not use all of themanuscripts, whether from the lectures of 1905 or from earlier orlater sketches, that were present in the bundle. Those she did useshe assembled in an order quite different from the one in whichHusserl had left them. As Boehm states: \ the arrangement,sequence, and interconnection of the texts ... are completelychanged\ (XXIII). That she then managed to get Husserlactively interested in her project is clear from a letter written toIngarden early in September of 1917 reporting that she and the\ master\ had \ worked zealously on time\ for three days inBernau (XXI). There is also evidence that Husserl comparedStein s draft with his own manuscripts (XXVII-XXVIII),although that does not decide the question whether Husserlappreciated the extent to which Stein s draft conformed or failedto conform to his own course of development and chief concernsduring this period.One can reasonably assume that Edith Stein hoped that thedraft she put together in 1917, with - at least in the later stages ofthe project - Husserl s cooperation, would move rapidly towardspublication. But it was not until ten years later, long after shehad ceased to be involved in \ the master s\ work, that Husserlsought to have it published. The occasion for Husserl s decision isworth recounting. According to Heidegger s recollection, asreported to Boehm, while Husserl and Heidegger were spendingtheir spring holidays in the Black Forest in 1926, Heideggershowed Husserl the manuscript of Sein und Zeit, which wasalmost complete at the time. It was this that prompted Husserl topropose to Heidegger that the latter undertake the publication ofHusserl s investigations of time-consciousness, which meant thedraft Edith Stein had prepared in 1917 (XXIV). Heideggeragreed, stipulating, however, that he could not get underway withthe task until Sein und Zeit had appeared, and even then could dono more than give Stein s manuscript a careful reading. While thecomments in his prefatory note indicate that Heidegger certainly


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TRANSLATOR S INTRODUCTION XV

knew that Stein had worked on the materials he was publishingin 1928, Husserl apparently did not tell him how extensive herinvolvement had been, that it was she who had really put themanuscript together.The publication in 1928 of Stein s draft of 1917 furnished thecontrolling text for the understanding of Husserl sphenomenology of time-consciousness for the next forty years indeed, untilthe present, in the case of the many writers who do not useBoehm s critical edition). It might seem that this would make nodifference philosophically. Even if the draft that was eventuallypublished was originally put together by Stein on her owninitiative, Husserl himself seems to have worked on it with her;and it was Husserl who instigated its publication a decade later.Furthermore, Husserl refers to it without qualification as one ofhis works XXVII). True, it is now clear from Boehm s researchthat the first part of the publication of 1928, supposedly lecturesfrom 1905, includes, without announcing the fact and inchronological disorder, texts from as early as 1901 and as late as 1917,with the majority coming from 1907-1911 XXIII). But that byitself would not be philosophically significant, assuming Husserl sthought underwent no important changes throughout the firstdecade or so of the century.In fact, however, Husserl s thinking did undergo significantevolution during this period, especially in relation to time. The1928 edition, scrambling texts from different years, effectivelymasks this development. Furthermore, the difficulty is not simplythat the changes fail to emerge-a failing that might provedistressing chiefly to the archaeologist of Husserl s thought - butthat the organization of the text of 1928 can make Husserl sthinking about time appear to be incoherent. For the evolution inquestion is not simply the gradual unfolding of a single position,but the movement from one position, through its criticism, to anew position incompatible with the first. To the degree that theedition of 1928 permits such incompatible standpoints to existside by side in the text, Husserl s thought comes across to thecareful reader as refusing to settle into a stable and coherentpattern. The problem is exacerbated by the fact that manypassages in the 1928 edition have been lifted from larger sketches,with the result that the broader issues from which they come do


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XVI TRANSLATOR S INTRODUCTION

not appear and that what does appear is shorn of the context ofits meaning. Furthermore, changes in terminology that signalimportant transformations in Husserl s thought have beenobscured in the text of 1928. Such difficulties apparently stemfrom Edith Stein s desire to put her selections from the lectures of \342\200\2421905 into a form compatible with the results Husserl had reachedfrom about 1909 to 1911. To accomplish this, she inserted latertexts next to earlier ones and substituted, particularly in textsbefore 1909, terms that first appeared or were used commonlyonly after that date (XXXVIII, note 3).4 A key example of thelatter would be the frequent substitution of the term \ retention \for \ primary memory,\ \ fresh memory,\ or just \ memory\ inselections from the 1905 lecture manuscripts, even though theterm does not appear in Husserl s original notes for the lectures.Although Husserl will eventually come to use \ retention\ and\ primary memory\ as synonyms, \ retention\ itself does notappear with its \ official\ meaning until 1909, when itsintroduction, along with that of \ primal impression\ and \ protention,\signals the arrival of a new interpretation of the constitution oftime-consciousness, including the constitution of what Husserlhad been calling \ primary memory.\ The substitution of \retention\ in texts in which the term did not originally occur thereforeerases a key trace of Husserl s philosophical evolution.All of this was revealed by Rudolf Boehm s careful study ofthe origins and chronological sequence of the text published in1928, particularly of its first part. Boehm specifies or suggestsdates in Husserliana X for each of the components of the firstpart so that a picture of Husserl s developing thought can beginto emerge.Still, given the way in which Edith Stein organized her draftand the fact that she frequently used fragments of much longertexts, knowledge of the date and even the source of each passagein the 1928 edition will not render it fully comprehensible in aphilosophical sense. For that, the complete version of texts fromwhich Stein excerpted parts, combined with other texts that she

4 Since Stein s original handwritten manuscript has not been located, it is impossible todetermine precisely which changes in terminology were introduced by Stein and which mighthave been inserted by Husserl. SeeBoehm s \ Textkritischer Anhang\ to Husserliana X,p. 391.


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TRANSLATOR S INTRODUCTION XVII

did not use at all or may not have known about, arranged inchronological sequence, would be needed; and that is whatBoehm supplied in \ Part B\ of Husserliana X, \ SupplementaryTexts Setting Forth the Development of the Problem.\ The textsin question, all of which are translated here, come from the years1893 to 1911. They are arranged chronologically and relatedwhere appropriate to the edition of 1928. Within thechronological sequence, Boehm puts the texts into five groups reflectingstages in the evolution of Husserl s thought.5 While thesupplementary texts in \ Part B\ do not constitute a distinct \ work,\they are indispensable to the understanding of Husserl sphenomenology of time-consciousness. As Rudolf Bernet has observed,on their basis one can reach conclusions - indeed, fundamentalphilosophical conclusions as well as conclusions about the courseof Husserl s development - that one simply cannot reach on thebasis of what was published in 1928.6 But these texts forming\ Part B\ of Husserliana X should also be read together with\ Part A,\ Boehm s annotated version of the 1928 edition, sincethe two parts shed much light on one another, and therefore onHusserl s understanding of the phenomena of time and theconsciousness of time. Husserliana X first made this reading

5 Based on new research in the Husseri-Arenives at Leuven and on new study of theoriginals, Rudolf Bernet in his editor s \ Introduction\ to the republication of \ Part B\ byFelix Meiner (1985)has proposed changes in the dating of several texts. He argues, forexample, that the date of No. 39 should be shifted from 1906-1907o 1909(beforeSeptember) and that Nos. 49-50should not bedated before September of1909.Taking intoaccount all of his proposed changes, Bernet suggests that the material in \ Part B\ bearranged into four rather than five groups:Group 1 (1900-1901):os. 1-17.Group 2 (1904-1905):os. 18-35(Nos.36-38:1917rather than approximately 1905).Group 3 (Winter Semester 1906/07-endfAugust 1909):Nos. 39-47,Nos. 51and 52.Group 4 (Beginning ofSeptember 1909o the end of 1911):Nos. 48-50,Nos. 53 and 54.Seethe \ Einleitung\ to Edmund Husseri, Texle zur PhSnomtnologie desinneren Zeitbe-wusslseins (1893-1917).erausgegeben und eingekitet von Rudolf Bernet (Hamburg: FelixMeiner Verlag, 1985),XVIH-XIX.Since Bernet makes a strong case,on the basisofhis new investigations and discoveries inthe Husserl-Archives, for his revised chronology, I will accept it in my discussion of thedevelopment ofHusserl s thought that follows in this introduction. In the translation of thesupplementary texts themselves, I have preserved Boehm s groupings and his suggested datesin the interest of fidelity to the critical edition; the reader may find it useful to keep in mindBemet salternative arrangement as presented above, however.

\342\200\242Ibid.. LXX.


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XVIII TRANSLATOR S INTRODUCTION

possible, and it is hoped that this translation will open up thesame possibility for English-speaking readers.

Some Themes from Husserl s Phenomenology of Time, hTemporal Objects, and the Consciousness of Time

Three remarks Husserl makes in these texts are particularlystriking. First, he calls time-consciousness a \ wonder\ (290),\ rich in mystery\ (286), thereby signalling the pull it exerts onthe philosopher s proclivity to reflect. Second, he writes that theanalysis of time is \ the most difficult of all phenomenologicalproblems\ (286), warning the philosopher who chooses toindulge his proclivity that hard labour awaits him. And finally,he says that the key themes in the phenomenology of time-consciousness \ are extremely important matters, perhaps themost important in the whole of phenomenology\ (346), affirmingthat this is no passing wonder and that the philosopher whoinvests effort in exploring it will not do so in vain.

What will one find if one follows Husserl s efforts to \ lift theveil a little\ (286) from the wonder of time-consciousness?Essentially, a complex example of intentional analysis. Fortime-consciousness exemplifies - and in fundamental ways makespossible - what Husserl took to be the universal structure ofconscious life, intentionality. Consciousness is alwaysconsciousness of something; if one chooses to speak of consciousness interms of \ acts,\ then every act of consciousness must be said to\ intend\ an object. One hears a tune; one sees a house; oneremembers a wedding; one thinks of the Pythagorean theorem.The phenomenologist seeks to describe and finally to reach theessence of intentionality in its myriad forms and dimensions. Theconsciousness of time represents one of those forms, but one thatrightly claims a special position. For time and the consciousnessof time, Husserl maintains, enter into every conscious experience,whether the experience is straightforwardly a form of temporalawareness, such as memory or expectation, or whether it seems tohave nothing directly to do with time, such as judgment or desireor aesthetic experience. Time is everywhere in the intentional lifeof consciousness. True, time and the consciousness of time are


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TRANSLATOR S INTRODUCTION XIX

parasitic in the sense that they are incapable of independentexistence apart from other experiences; but it is equally true, andof much greater significance, that they play a founding role, asessential as it is universal, in every kind and instance ofexperience. This surely helps explain why Husserl called time-consciousness a wonder, and why he thought it was perhaps themost important matter in phenomenology.If intentionality universally characterizes conscious life, and iftime-consciousness is a necessary condition of all forms ofintentionality (including, as Husserl will eventually argue, itself),then in confronting the problem of time the phenomenologist willfind a phenomenon of formidable complexity. This means that anadequate phenomenology of time-consciousness will have tofollow many levels of temporal constitution (18), all connectedand offering severally and in their relations an abundance ofwonders and conundrums. Specifically, Husserl will consider theappearing time of the objects and events that we intend in theworld, such as houses or bottles seen, violin concerti heard insymphony halls, or trains thundering into stations. This is themost familiar level of time, the time of \ external\ or\ transcendent\ temporal objects. Husserl will devote even more attentionto the \ immanent\ or \ internal\ time of the intending acts andcontents of consciousness through which the transcendenttemporal objects appear. Finally, in later texts-those written after1908 - Husserl focuses on the deepest level of time-consciousness,what he calls the \ absolute time-constituting flow ofconsciousness\ (77). Both wonder and scandal (390), the absolute flowconstitutes the internal time of the intending acts and, throughthem, the transcendent time of external objects. In that sense, theflow is the universal condition of every intending act andintended object. But, as we shall see shortly-and this is itsscandalous aspect - it also constitutes itself, that is, brings itselfto appearance; and if that is the case, then it is indeed true thatno level of conscious life escapes the touch of time-consciousness,not even time-consciousness itself.


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XX TRANSLATOR S INTRODUCTION

I. The Place of the Phenomenological Reduction inHusserl s Early Writings on Time-ConsciousnessBefore inspecting the levels of time and temporal awarenessmore closely, we should inquire briefly into the presence-andsometimes the absence - of the \ phenomenological reduction \ inthese texts. The reduction is Husserl s way of disengaging the

proper object of philosophical inquiry. It is also the step by whichthe phenomenologist enters into the properly philosophicalattitude. Indeed, attitude and object of reflection are correlated inphenomenology, representing in the very activity of philosophyitself an instance of the relationship between intending act andintended object that the phenomenologist seeks to investigate.While Husserl explicitly discusses and deploys the reduction inmature and elaborated form in works such as the Ideas andCartesian Meditations, the writings translated here present nosuch neat picture. This is partly because the texts do not form asingle and systematic presentation, but it is also because theyoriginated during precisely the period in which Husserl conceivedthe idea of the reduction and struggled to bring it to maturity.This circumstance affords a certain advantage, however, for theseearly writings on time-consciousness let us watch the growth ofHusserl s sense of the reduction, and therefore of thephilosophical enterprise, particularly as it applies to time. One can isolate atleast four stages in this development.The first is represented by a sketch written around 1893 (No. 1of the supplementary texts in \ Part B\. ) The reduction iscertainly not explicitly present in this sketch, and a claim for itsimplicit presence could be justified only on the basis of thedescriptive approach Husserl often takes. On the other hand,there are elements that reflect the standpoint of the Philosophy ofArithmetic (1891), that is to say, a standpoint tinged withpsychology. Thus Husserl will inquire in the sketch into thepsychological genesis of our experience of temporally extendedobjects such as melodies. Confusion throughout the sketchbetween the factual and the causal, on the one hand, and theessential, on the other, indicates that Husserl has not yet clearlysorted out what is properly philosophical from what ispsychological.


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The second phase coincides with texts written around the timeof the publication of the Logical Investigations (1900-01).7Psychological questions are overtly suppressed in these texts, withthe emphasis placed on describing the acts and act-componentsthrough which temporal objects are intended. There is noextended discussion of the method Husserl will employ in hisanalysis.This discussion first occurs in 1904 (No. 19) and 1905,particularly in notes written for the lectures of 1905. Thereduction announces itself in these texts in a form that is directand forceful, yet immature in comparison with statements thatwill be made only three or four years later. In the lectures of1905, for example, Husserl is quite clear about what he will notbe concerned with: questions about the empirical genesis ofexperiences of time, about experiences as psychic states ofpsycho-physical subjects governed by natural laws (9), about\ whether the estimations of temporal intervals correspond to theobjectively real temporal intervals or how they deviate fromthem \ (4), and so on. His concern, he says, is not to gather dataand draw conclusions about the factual dimensions of time-consciousness but to bring \ its essential constitution tolight...\ (10). Now it is in the context of this effort to set asideevery element of empirical and psychological investigation inorder to focus on the essential that Husserl makes statementsthat, from the standpoint of more mature formulations of thereduction, can be misleading. In 1905, for example, he writes:\ One cannot discover the least thing about objective timethrough phenomenological analysis\ (6). What is disconcertingabout this assertion is that it suggests that the phenomenologist isconcerned with only one side of the intentional experience: withthe act and its components and not with the object intended.Husserl does in fact say during this period that it is experiencethat interests him, which might be taken to suggest that he meansexperience to the exclusion of the object of experience. He alsoexplicitly focuses on the sensory data - say, the datum red - thathe thinks are immanent to consciousness, rather than on thequalities perceived in the world on their basis, such as the red

7 Following Bernet, Nos. 2 through 17of the supplementary texts. Bernet. XVIII.


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facade of a brick building. Rudolf Bernet observes that thisexclusion or suspension of objective time results from Husserl sefforts to escape the toils of psychology and establish a \ pure\phenomenology.8 No doubt it also reflects a desire to establishan indubitable basis for his investigations, which at this point hethinks can be accomplished only by focusing exclusively on whatis immanent to consciousness.

But perhaps one should not make too much of suchassertions; for even in these early texts, Husserl, in fact and sometimesin statement, admits the side of the intended object and itsobjective time into his discussions. Thus he writes that he isinterested in appearing time \ as appearing\ (5) and in \experiences with respect to their objective sense and descriptivecontent\ (9), and that he will focus on the intended temporal realityonly insofar as it is \ reality meant, objectivated, intuited, orconceptually thought\ (9). The difficulty with the texts from thisperiod, then, is less that they are wrong than that they aresometimes muddled: the key aspects of the reduction are takingshape but have not yet crystallized.

By 1909, however, the muddles clear up and the reductionemerges in a clear and coherent form. While Husserl will stilloccasionally say that objective time is lost following thereduction (351), he is now quite clear about what the loss means. Whatfalls to \ the proscription of the phenomenologicalreduction\ (350) are the techniques and instruments - clocks,chronometers, and so on - that natural science employs in determiningtime. Phenomenology s approach to time, in other words, is notthat of empirical science. But that does not mean that thetemporal object intended in a time-constituting act and the\ objective\ time in which that object appears cannot and shouldnot be described in a complete phenomenology of time-consciousness. The only restriction imposed by the reduction isthat the intended object and its time be described just and only asthey appear through the act. Indeed, this restriction applies toeach level Husserl will eventually consider: the object, the actintending it, and even the absolute flow of time-constitutingconsciousness that intends the act must all be taken just as they

\342\200\242Bernet, XX.


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present themselves to the phenomenologist; considerations andprocedures imported from the physical sciences and psychology,inferences of whatever kind and from whatever source extendingbeyond the appearing intentional life, are to be set out of play.If Husserl sorted out his method and the full range of what hewill analyze in the phenomenology of time-consciousness by theend of the first decade of the century, he simultaneously becameaware that the very subject of his investigation might render thewhole undertaking impossible-in fact, might jeopardize the verypossibility of phenomenology as such. The phenomenologistwants to uncover the essential structures of consciousnessunderstood as intentional. The reduction is supposed to make theintentional life available to the phenomenologist as an infinitefield of work. \ But,\ Husserl writes around 1909, \ allexperiences flow away. Consciousness is a perpetual Heraclitean flux;what has just been given sinks into the abyss of the phenomeno-logical past and then is gone forever. ... Do we thereforeactually have an infinite field? Do we not rather always have onlya point that, in arriving, immediately escapes again?\ (360)Time s unceasing flow seems to cut the ground from underphilosophical reflection on time or on anything else. But perhapsone could \ retreat to what is truly given, the absolute now and theever new nows,\ and carry on phenomenological reflectionthere (3S3). But the moment it is fixed, the now is gone (353). Inthat sense, not even the now is available to reflection. Absolutescepticism seems to be inevitable.Thanks to the consciousness of time, however, it is not. Whatthe flow of time takes away, Husserl argues, the consciousness oftime restores. It is true that each point that appears to me as nowslips immediately into the past. It is equally true that thisineluctable flow can never be brought to a halt. But it is also thecase that I can be conscious of what is just past, of what has justbeen now, and that what is preserved in this consciousness is mysafe and sure possession. It is there as slipping away, but it isthere, available to me as something on which I can reflect. Theconsciousness of the immediate past that lets me escape the snareof the now, Husserl calls (after 1909) \ retention.\ Retentiongives what is just past, a portion of the earlier stream ofconsciousness, \ absolutely\ (364); it provides something


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extended towards which my reflective glance can be directed.\ We therefore owe it to retention that consciousness can bemade into an object\ (123). The field for phenomenologicalinvestigation is secured through the consciousness of time. Andsince time-consciousness itself is a fundamental feature of thefield to be investigated, the reduction that opens it up may besaid to find the condition of its own possibility in the very thing itinvestigates.But what else does the phenomenology of time-consciousnessreveal?

II. The Temporal Object and Its Modes of AppearanceHusserl s analysis of time may strike the reader as quiteformal, which it is in comparison with certain anthropological orexistential accounts of time. Husserl seeks to uncover the

essential or a priori structures of temporal experience as such. That hisfindings have a formal character should come as no surprise,then. Their formalism, however, implies neither an artificialabstraction from experience nor an oversimplification of whattime involves. Indeed, as anyone who has studied it will attest,Husserliana X supplies evidence in abundance that Husserl neverunduly simplifies the issue: He recognizes that there can be nosingle and concise definition of time, that the problem of timebreaks down into many problems - interrelated, to be sure, buteach demanding careful consideration in its own right.Furthermore, his formalism should not be construed to suggest that timeand the consciousness of time could exist or even be consideredadequately as pure forms apart from objects and the experienceof objects. Husserl does think that time itself is a form, andultimately his analyses of time and our awareness of it are formalbecause time is a formal structure. But the form of time is \ onlya form of individual objects\ (308). \ A phenomenologicalanalysis of time,\ therefore, \ cannot clarify the constitution of timewithout considering the constitution of temporal objects\ (24).Time does not exhaust the objects that fall \ within\ it, ofcourse. There is more to the symphony I am now hearing thanthe fact that it appears to me as in part now and as in part past


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4-i'*\

and future. The symphony, like the concert hall and the programnotes I experience simultaneously with it, has its own intrinsicstructure that may be able to manifest itself only in time but thatnonetheless cannot be accounted for solely in temporal terms.Temporal objects, that is to say, can be quite different from oneanother in respects other than time. When Husserl looks attime-consciousness he is concerned with the temporal featuresthat temporal objects have in common, not with the extratempo-ral features or aspects that may distinguish them.Husserl approaches the issue of the temporal object fromseveral perspectives. Notable among them is that he comes to fyydescribe both \ transcendent\ and \ immanent\ temporalobjects. The hawk soaring over the field in front of me would bean example of the former: the hawk is something seen orintended by me, but nevertheless transcendent to myconsciousness. The act of seeing the hawk would be an example of thelatter: intending acts are immanent to consciousness. \ On bothsides, that is, both in the immanent and in the transcendent spheres Iof reality,\ Husserl writes, \ time is the irreducible form of]individual realities in their described modes\ (284). I

Among the cardinal features Husserl isolates as possessed byall temporal objects, perhaps the most prominent is/duratiqnjHusserl discusses it in the earliest and in the latest sketchestranslated here. Any experienced temporal object, whether some- ^ ^thing relatively constant such as a Jiouse, or an event thatinvolves continuous change such as the departure of a ship orjhe.perception of its departure, presents itself as fenduringj The / /duration of the object, its temporal extension, is the object's time. /'Husserl cap therefore say of duration what he said of time: that,it is thetformjof individual objects (118).Concreteness and individuality also characterize temporal

II objects. To endure is to possess the form of time, and that is to //become concrete. The temporal object will have a specificduration in which it will change or remain jgnstanL And while in thecase of some transcendent objects - a house I observe for a fewminutes, for example- may not experience the end^ of itsduration (as opposed to the end of the duration of my immanentact of seeing it), it nonetheless presents itself as the kind of thingthat could indeed come to an end. Furthermore, as we shall see in

lO


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more detail shortly, the temporal object is individual by virtue ofpossessing a particulaiftemporal locationj(117). The object in itsconcrete duration does not float free with respect to time: it notonly has the form of time but is in the form of time as anchoredto a particular place. By contrast, ideal objects, such as judg-ments or values, are not temporal objects because they do not,strictly speaking, endure in time; nor are they experienced ascapable of changing or of coming to be or of ceasing to be intime. They also do not occupy a definite temporal location. Theyare neither concrete nor individual in the sense in which temporalobjects are. Still, ideal objects are recognized against thebackground of time and in contrast to temporal objects, for Iexperience them precisely as timeless (103). The Pythagoreantheorem is not tied to this moment or that in the way in whichmy act of thinking it is, which is why my act of thinking thetheorem is an immanent temporal object while the theoremthought is not a temporal object at all (101).

A. The \ Now \ as Temporal Mode of AppearanceThe temporal objects we have been describing present

themselves in temporal modes of appearance: as now, past, andfuture (218). I am aware of an object as enduring and asindividual and concrete only to the extent that it appears to me inthese modes.Among the modes of temporal appearance, the now has a

certain privileged status (37). One of the senses in which it isprivileged is as a point of orientation. Like the \ here\ fromwhich I look out into the world and around which I orient myperceptual space, the now supplies the point of reference fortemporal experience. It is in relation to the now that things andevents appear as past or future. Another side of the now s roleshows itself in the fact that I am conscious of a past object orevent as something that was once now; similarly, I am consciousof whatever is in the future as something that will be now.There are ways in which the \ privilege\ the now enjoysshould not be understood, even if Husserl s language mayoccasionally invite us to try them. To cite one instance, the now


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should not be identified with a part of the temporal object - withthe tone forming part of a melody, for example. To say that thetone is now is not to identify it with the now but to say that itappears as now. The now is precisely a mode of appearance or\ running-off mode\ (49, 375) for an object, not the objectitself (388). In that respect, it may be compared to a spatialperspective, which is one s view of the house from the front, say,but not the front of the house itself. It is precisely because objectand mode are not identical that one can speak of the same objectpresenting itself in different modes. One can intend the same tonesuccessively as future, as now, and as past, which would beimpossible if the tone were simply identified with the now. Ofcourse, one might claim that, as time flows, actual nows becomepast nows. Husserl himself sometimes speaks of an \ actuallypresent now\ becoming a \ past now\ while remaining \ thesame now \ (68). This makes sense if one is really talking aboutthe tone as it flows away rather than the now, which is whatHusserl is usually doing in expressions such as these. Takenstrictly, \ past now\ is at best an odd expression: as Husserl saysin a different context, \ past\ and \ now\ exclude oneanother (330). The now as mode of appearance does not reallybecome past; rather, what \ was a now\ (72), that is, what didappear as now, becomes past, that is, now appears as past.To say that the now is a mode of appearance is to point againto time s \ formal\ status: The now is not a thing capable ofindependent existence; I am always conscious of it as the form ofsomething. And even as form or mode of appearance, the nowdoes not exist by itself: It is always accompanied by the modes\ past\ and \ future\ , which join the now to form the temporalfringe (37) or horizon in which every temporal object is given.If it is true that past and future are oriented with respect tothe now, it is equally true that the now is a dependent part of alarger whole that it forms with past and future. The now \ is arelative concept and refers to a past, just as past refers to thenow \ (70).That now, past, and future are interdependent moments of thetemporal horizon does not mean that they somehow merge intoindistinction. \ We have the evidence that past refers to nowand that past and now exclude one another\ (330). Thanks to


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the fact that now, past, and future are modes of appearancedistinct from what appears in them, and thanks to the fact that asmodes of appearance they are distinct but inseparable from oneanother, an identical temporal object can appear: \ Identicallythe same thing can indeed be now and past at once, but only byenduring between the past and the now \ (330). Husserl stressesthe connection between now, past, and future not simply becauseone is in fact always aware of more than just what is now; hispoint is also that if one s awareness were restricted to the now,one would have no experience of time and temporality at all, noteven of what is now as now. Husserl is interested in giving acareful description of one s experience of time, but he also wantsto give an account of the essential necessities embedded in thatexperience.It should be clear that Husserl would agree with WilliamJames, whose work on time he greatly appreciated, when Jameswrote that \ the practically cognized present is no knife-edge, buta saddle-back...\ 9. The immediately experienced present isextended; it forms what James called the \ specious present\ andwhat Husserl at one point refers to as the \ rough\ now (42).Within this rough now we distinguish a \ finer\ now fromdegrees of the immediate past and future surrounding it asfringes (172). This now, Husserl suggests, can be cut further andfurther, approaching a limit; but he also acknowledges that thenow thus conceived is something abstract, something ideal (SI).This means both that we never experience a completely unex-tended now and that we never experience a now in isolation. Infact, the effort to contract the now through abstraction to a purepoint reveals both that the now always expands into extensionand that it is therefore never without its halo. \ ... Even thisideal now is not something toto coelo different from the not - nowbut is continuously mediated with it\ (42). The now may be thecutting edge of time, but it is the edge of something: \ A now isalways and essentially a border-point of an extent oftime\ (72).To say that the now is on the cutting edge of time suggests

\342\200\242 William James, The Principles of Psychology (New York: Dover Publications, Inc.).p. 609.


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another sense in which Husserl says that the now is privileged. H*? A\ The now-moment,\ he writes, \ is characterized above all as the.. - ^ pnew\ (63). The now is the running-off mode in which what isnew in my experience makes its appearance, whether new objectsor fresh phases of old objects or new phases of the acts intendingthem. In this sense, the now is the \ generative point\ (26) ofconscious life, \ constantly filled in some way\ (27). I may ceasehearing a particular melody, I may no longer experience any ofits phases as now; but as long as I am conscious, there willalways be something new experienced as now to replace it. Infact, it is the new ceaselessly welling up in the now that \ pushesaside\ (65) what had been now and new, letting it gain a newmode of appearance, that of the past.In presenting new points of the object, the now also presentsnew time-points. Husserl views time as a continuity of suchtime-points or places (74). \ Each actually present now creates anew time-point because it creates... a new object-point...\ (68).The now is not a particular position in time any more than it is aparticular object in time. It is the mode of appearance of both,and of both together: of object-in-position. When a particulartone appears to me as now, it also appears at a particular place intime, a place that it will preserve ever after. If it were never toappear as now, it would never have that place or any other placein time. In that sense, the now is the \ soufte-point of alltemporal positions\ (74).Earlier we observed that temporal objects appear to us asindividual objects. The notion of temporal positions helps toexplain the phenomenon of their individuation, for an object isindividuated by appearing at a particular temporal location. Tothe extent that this first happens in the now, Husserl writes thatthe now is \ a continuous moment of individuation \ (68). To besure, the new object, emergent in its new time-point in the now,will immediately sink back into the past. But as it sinks back, itwill continue to appear to me in constantly changing modes ofthe past as the same object at the same point in time. Oncewedded by appearing in the now, object and time-point remainforever inseparable; the object will never lose its individuality assomething that occurred at this rather than at that point intime.


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B. The Oneness of TimeThe inseparability of an object-point and its time-point shouldnot be taken to suggest that there are as many individual times asthere are objects. There is only \ one time,\ Husserl writes, \ inwhich the temporality of the thing lies, into which its duration isinserted...\ (124). At least three senses of the oneness of timecan be distinguished in the texts.In the first sense, Husserl thinks of time-\ objective\ time-as a linear extent formed of successive temporal positions. Every

temporal object we experience will find a place on this line. It iswith respect to time understood in this linear, objective sense thatone appropriately speaks of \ before\ and \ after\ (rather than\ past\ and \ future\-as ) when one says that the overture wasplayed before the first act and after the lights in the theater hadbeen dimmed. Time in this sense supplies one of the objectiveconditions for the consciousness of succession. Objects can beexperienced as succeeding one another only if they occupydifferent temporal positions in one and the same time. Once ithas been experienced, the relation of before and after will remainfixed, although in its fixed identity it will slip further and furtheraway from the actually present now. Thus the overture s positionon the line of time in relation to the first act and to whateverpreceded it will not change, although its mode of temporalappearance - the mode of the past in which it presents itself- willdo nothing but change. \ Time is fixed, and yet time flows\ (67).Furthermore, the fixed time appears through the flowing time: itis \ in the flow of time, in the continuous sinking down into thepast, [that the] nonflowing, absolutely fixed, identical, objectivetime becomes constituted\ (67).The second sense in which time is one concerns the individualtime-point. Each time-point is a unity - one might say a unitaryform - that may accommodate many different objects or object-points. Many objects may occupy one temporal position. \ Theactually present now is one now and constitutes one temporalposition, however many objectivities are separately constituted init...\ (74). If the first sense of time s oneness is the ground ofobjective temporal succession, this sense is the ground ofsimultaneity. To be simultaneous means first to be given in the same


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now [Gleich-Jetzigkeit (120)] and then ever after to enjoy thesame time [Gleichzeitigkeit (120)].That a single time-point can play host to many objects doesnot diminish its individuating role. Indeed, it enhances it,explaining the possibility of such familiar experiences as recalling whatone was doing at the same time another event took place. Thetime-point thus emerges as the common form of individuation ofwhatever happens to occur within it (73). It is true, althoughHusserl does not emphasize it, that as common form ofindividuation the time-point does not account for the differencesamong the various objects simultaneously occupying it. What itdoes account for is their temporal location, and that is preciselythe same for all of them. Something more-what the objectsspecifically are, their \ matter\ (70)-is required for fullindividuation.

Finally, these two senses of the oneness of time come togetherin the complementarity of simultaneity and succession: \Simultaneity is nothing without temporal succession, and temporalsuccession is nothing without simultaneity...\ (386).The third sense of the unity of time involves the two kinds oftemporal objects, the immanent and the transcendent. Husserl, ofcourse, does not want to collapse these two dimensions. The actof hearing the violin tone in the concert hall and the violin toneitself remain on their distinct, if intentionally related, levels. ButHusserl also does not want to multiply times. Despite his use ofsuch phrases as \ internal time\ and \ immanent time,\ hefinally seems to resist the notion that there is one time for actsimmanent to consciousness and another time for the objectsintended through those acts. The time of the perceived object isthe same as the time of the immanent act perceiving it (74).

III. The Consciousness of TimeWe have been looking at one of the levels on which Husserl s

phenomenology of time-consciousness moves-the level of theintended temporal object and its time. Husserl also investigatesthe consciousness that intends or, in more technical language,\ constitutes\ (333) the temporal object.


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It is no easy task to develop a coherent picture of Husserl sunderstanding of the time-constituting consciousness. While hisaccount of the appearing temporal object remains fairly constantover the years, occasionally undergoing expansion or refinementbut not fundamental change, the situation is quite different in thecase of the consciousness that intends the object. Here significantdevelopment, or better, upheaval, occurred, which the texts-particularly the text of the 1928 edition - present in tangled andoften obscure form. Still, with the chronological informationsupplied by Husserliana X, it is possible to achieve a reasonablyaccurate outline of the development and principal features ofHusserl s understanding of the consciousness of time during thefirst decade of the century.Husserl s investigations in the earlier part of the decade focuson the perception of temporal objects.i0 This focus commonlytakes the form of a reflection on the perception of what Husserloften calls a \ sensation-content,\ a notion derived from anexplanation of the constitution of perception in the LogicalInvestigations. According to this account, an object-a violintone, for example-is perceived when a sensory contentimmanent to consciousness, a sensation-tone, is \ animated\ by anappropriate \ apprehension \ or \ intention.\ The immanentcontent, considered in itself, is neutral as far as reference to anyparticular object is concerned. Thanks solely to the moment ofapprehension, in this case the \ violin-tone\ apprehension, doesit gain reference to a transcendent object. If one were to performa kind of reduction and set aside the moment of apprehension,then reference to the violin tone transcendent to consciousnesswould be set aside as well, and one would be left with only thetone-content immanent to consciousness. Husserl makes thismove-an immature form of the reduction, as we indicatedearlier - presumably because he wants to avoid questions aboutthe existence or nonexistence of perception s transcendent object.Concentration on a content supposedly immanent toconsciousness will let him avoid such questions. But since the content inour example is itself a \ tone\ (even if not an external violintone), a phenomenological account of the experience or \ imma-

10 Bernet, XXI.


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nent perception\ of it should furnish valid conclusions aboutperception as such. It does not seem too farfetched to claim thatthe immanent sensation-content in the lectures of 1905 and intexts leading up to them is, for descriptive purposes, really justthe perceptual object stripped bare of whatever garments oftranscendence the animating intention may have draped over it.Later in the decade, Husserl will explicitly include the appearingtranscendent object in his phenomenology of time-consciousness.

A. Reaction to the Theories of Brentano and MeinongFrom about 1901 through 1905, Husserl s analyses of

perception as a form of time-consciousness were shaped in crucial waysby his reaction to the views of Meinong and Brentano. The basicconclusions Husserl reached during this period will continue toplay important roles when his focus shifts from perception to adeeper and more universal level of time-consciousness.

Behind his discussion of Brentano and Meinong is Husserl scontention that the perception of a temporal object \ is itself atemporal object and as such has its phases\ (235). A melody, forexample, runs off phase by phase, but so does the act that intendsit. Among the names Husserl gives to the individual phase of theextended act are \ momentary perception \ (234), \ momentarytime-consciousness\ (237), and \ cross section\ [Querschnitt](239). Despite the many changes and variations it willundergo, this theme of the role and nature of the phase oftime-consciousness will abide at the center of Husserl s concerns.Of the phases that make up the extended perception of amelody, only one will be \ actual\ at any moment. Others will bepast or future in relation to the phase that is actual. Now how isit possible to perceive a temporally extended melody, consistingof many successive tones, through a single perceptual phase thatenjoys its moment of actuality and then is gone? Meinong sreply, as Husserl presents it, is that short of the very last phase ofthe perceptual act, there simply is no perception of the temporallyextended object. Each successive phase of the perception isconscious exclusively of a single now-phase of the object inten-


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tionally correlated with it. Thus when the third tone composingthe melody and the third phase of the act - the phase intendingthe third tone - make their joint appearance, one perceives thetone in question as now but perceives nothing else - no elapsedtones, no tones yet to come. But this means that one will notperceive the melody, for a melody is a temporally extendedobject, only one of whose phases will be now while the others willbe past or future. \ ... The extended object, since it is not apartial now, cannot be perceived in a now-perception, whichgives precisely a partial now\ (233).

Meinong, of course, does not want to deny that we perceivetemporally extended objects. We do hear melodies, not justinstantaneous tonal pulsations. According to Meinong, however,the consciousness of the temporally extended object occurs onlywith the last phase of the perception, and then through a specialact. Since the successive individual phases of the perception arenow-perceptions that perceive only the now-phases of the object,\ there must be an act that embraces, beyond the now, the wholetemporal object\ (234). This overlapping act must occur at theend of the series of now-perceptions, since only then will theobject have run its course and all of its phases be available to begathered together in the appropriate order of succession.The difficulty with Meinong s position is that the elapsedphases of the object will not be accessible. The momentary phasesof the perception have been conscious of now-phases of theobject and only of now-phases. Since they did not reach outbeyond the now and preserve elapsed phases of the melody as itran its course, the special overlapping act that supposedly makesits entrance at the end will have nothing there to overlap. Noperception of a temporally extended object could occur. Andeven if by some miracle it did, Meinong s account would hardlyfit our experience that we are conscious of a temporally extendedportion of the melodic whole in each phase of our hearing of themelody, not just at the end. Our awareness of the melody asstretched out in time is there throughout the perception; it doesnot suddenly explode upon us at the concluding moment of aseries of punctual now-perceptions.The lessons to be learned from the difficulties inherent inMeinong s position is that if we are to perceive enduring or


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succeeding objects, then consciousness in each of its phases\ must reach out beyond the now\ (234): \ not only the final actbut every momentary act must be overlapping\ (234). FranzBrentano appreciated this necessity.

Specifically, Brentano realized that each phase of an act mustintend, in addition to the now-phase, phases of the object thathave elapsed and phases that have not yet actually appeared.Such preservation of past phases and anticipation of futurephases would not alone suffice to bring a temporally extendedobject to presentation, however. If the elapsed tones of a melodywere simply preserved in the present as they had originallyappeared, one would hear a \ disharmonious tangle ofsound\ (11), not a succession of tones. In fact, preservation inthis unqualified sense would just be another version ofmomentary now-perception: it would perceive everything as now, eventhe past phases of the object. One would be conscious ofsimultaneity, not of duration or succession - or more accurately,not even of simultaneity, since the consciousness of simultaneityand the consciousness of succession are inseparable.

What is required in addition to preservation and anticipationis modification. The elapsed phases of the object must bepreserved, but with the appropriate modifications of the past.Thus if I experience a sequence of tones A B C, my consciousnessof C as now will be accompanied by a consciousness of B as justpast in relation to C and of A as just past in relation to B. Anordered succession will appear rather than an instantaneous tonalporridge. To the extent that this is Brentano s position, Husserlagrees with it fully. His criticisms focus on Brentano s account ofhow this consciousness of time that reaches out beyond the nowbecomes constituted.

Brentano claims that the requisite preservation andmodification come about through the process of \ original association,\which Husserl describes as follows: \ In conformity with an invariable law, new representations are joined continuously tothe perceptual representation by means of original association.Each of these new representations reproduces the content of thepreceding ones, appending the (continuous) moment of the past asit does so\ (176).In terms of our experience of the tonal sequence ABC, the


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process of original association would involve something like thefollowing. Through the first perceptual representation, I amconscious of tone A as now. In the next moment, I have aperceptual representation of tone B as now. When this occurs, Aand the perceptual representation of A are past - past in the sensethat they have elapsed, are finished, and have departedirrevocably from the now. This means that if I am to be conscious ofthem as past - and I must be conscious of them as past if I am tobecome aware of the melodic succession - then a newrepresentation that reproduces A and appends the appropriate moment ofthe past must appear along with the perceptual representation ofB as now. The same process will occur again at the next momentwhen C is perceived as now: new representations will appearreproducing A and B in their appropriate modes of the pastrelative to C. Expectations in the form of representations offuture phases of the object would be produced at each moment aswell.

In comparison with Meinong s account, Brentano s theory hasthe virtues of affirming that each phase of consciousness intendsmore than just the now and of attempting to explain how thisoccurs. But Husserl argues that Brentano s attempt is notsuccessful: original association fails to explain, on the one hand,how the perception of a temporal object is possible, and, on theother hand, how any consciousness, whether perceptual or not, ofa temporally extended object is possible.As for the first point, Husserl observes that on Brentano stheory only the now-phase of the object is actually perceived.Consciousness of past and future phases of the object doesaccompany the perception of its now-phase, but this is notperceptual consciousness. Brentano assumes, as did Meinong,that perception is restricted to what is immediately present, to thenow in the narrowest sense. Phantasy-the imagination - mustsupply the representations of past and future phases of the object.The empiricist tenor of \ original association \ is no coincidence,therefore. When the perceptual representation of the now passesaway, a \ phantasy-representation... enriched by the temporalcharacter\ (13), a kind of copy or reproduction of the original endowed with a modified temporal character, takes its place.Thus while \ phantasy... proves to be productive in a peculiar


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way here\ (12), what it produces is not perception but memoryand expectation. The difficulty with this position is not so muchthe claim that memories attend my now-perception but the kindof memory Brentano has in view. Specifically, he means memoryin the ordinary sense-what Husserl will often call secondarymemory - as when I recall a melody I heard yesterday, runningthrough it again from beginning to end. This sort of memory isre-presentational. It does not present the past as it flows away butre-presents it all over again. It stands opposed to perceptionunderstood as presentation. There is another kind of memory,what Husserl at this time calls \ fresh\ or \ primary\ memory,that is an ingredient of the perceptual act itself and throughwhich we may be said to perceive the elapsed phases of theobject. This kind of memory is altogether different from thememory produced by phantasy. \ Even if he may refuse to speakof the perception of something temporal (with the exception ofthe now-point as the limit between past and future), thedifference that underlies our talk about the perceiving of a successionand the remembering of a succession perceived in the past...surely cannot be denied and must somehow be clarified\ (17).Although Husserl says that Brentano cannot possibly haveoverlooked the difference between these radically different kindsof consciousness, the fact remains that his contention that \ theoriginal intuition of time is already a creation of phantasy\ (17)makes it impossible for him to explain it. If the theory werecorrect, there indeed would be no perception of a temporalobject: I would not really hear a melody or see a train speedpast.The distinction between primary and secondary memory is atheme Husserl will refine and return to again and againthroughout his investigations of time-consciousness. Some of the ways inwhich he develops it will be discussed later in this Introduction.Husserl s second argument is intended to show that Brentano saccount would actually make the consciousness of temporalobjects impossible (whether the consciousness is perceptual or notis irrelevant). According to Brentano, the way in which we areaware of past or future phases of an object is through memorialor expectational representations generated by phantasy in the nowand attached to the perceptual representation. The memorial and


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expectational representations are therefore co-present with thenow-perception. They must be, for Brentano assumes that what ispast, precisely because it is past, is no longer available toconsciousness. One can be aware only of what is actually presentor now. If one is to be conscious of the elapsed tone, then, thismust occur on the basis of a present surrogate. The memorialrepresentation fulfills that role. It is not itself the past content butfurnishes a present replica endowed with the temporaldetermination \ past\ (177). In experiencing the new surrogate tone-content with its new temporal content \ past,\ one supposedlywins a consciousness of the past, and therefore of succession.Thus, in hearing the series of tones, one first perceives A as now;then, in the next moment, after the original A is gone, phantasygenerates a new A with the determination \ past.\ Now this newA with the moment of the past is something present-just asmuch \ now\ as B, the phase one is actually perceiving. \ But,\Husserl writes, \ if the complex of the two moments A and pastexists now, then A also exists now; and at the same time A issupposed to be past, therefore not to exist now\ (177). This is anobvious contradiction (19). With Brentano s theory of originalassociation, trading exclusively as it does in present contents, \ Istill have not acquired a consciousness of A past \ (178). But thismeans that \ the question of how time-consciousness is possibleand how it is to be understood remains unanswered\ (20).

B. Husserl s Account of the Constitutionof Time-Consciousness

In contrast to Meinong, Husserl holds that \ each perceptualphase has intentional reference to an extended section of thetemporal object and not merely to a now-point\ (239). Thismeans that each phase of the perceptual act is intentionallydirected towards past phases of the object, towards its present or\ now\ phase, and towards future phases. Time-consciousness isborn in this triple intentionality that makes up each phase. Incontrast to Brentano, however, Husserl argues that theintentionality is perceptual in each of its three moments. We do perceiveenduring objects and objects in succession. The momentary phase


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of perception, therefore, is not an amalgam of now-perception,on the one hand, and memories and expectations, on the other.Husserl s position depends on the distinction that Brentanofailed to appreciate between two different kinds of memory (or,in the direction of the future, two different kinds of expectation).Husserl began to investigate the distinction at the turn of thecentury (cf. No. 10), and it remained a vital and evolving themeover the next decade.Neither kind of memory can be understood apart fromperception, and primary memory, particularly, cannot beunderstood apart from now-perception. The now-perception is not anindependent act: it is simply a dependent moment of thethreefold intentionality belonging to a perceptual phase, which itself isonly a dependent part of a larger temporal whole, the extendedperceptual act. But like the now that it intends, the perception ofthe now has a certain privileged status; it presents a phase of theobject as now in the narrower sense, as there itself and nowpresent, \ in person.\ It is the moment of origin, since in it onefirst experiences the presence of the new-a new part of themelody, a new moment of the enduring landscape, and so on.But consciousness will flow on. What was experienced in oneperceptual phase as now will be perceived in the next phase asjust past. In the earliest texts translated here, Husserl calls thisperception of the past, understood as one moment of the tripleintentionality of the perceptual phase, \ fresh memory\ (169).Somewhat later, he will usually refer to it as \ primary memory,\and later still - following a significant turn in his thought-as\ retention.\ Just as now-perception is the original consciousnessof the now, primary memory is the original consciousness of thepast: \ only in primary memory do we see what is past, only in itdoes the past become constituted - and constituted presentatively,not re-presentatively\ (43; cf. 339). If perception is the act inwhich all origin lies, then primary memory is perception (43). Inprimary memory what has elapsed is \ still present... as justpast\ (219), in the sense that \ its being-past is something now,something present itself\ (219). This does not mean that primarymemory preserves what is past as now; that is precisely what itdoes not do. It rather presents the past as past. It is theimmediate consciousness of \ just-having-been \ (169).


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XL TRANSLATORS INTRODUCTIONPrimary memory has its counterpart in \ primary

expectation\ (41) (or later, \ pretention\, ) the third moment of theintentionality of the perceptual phase. Primary expectation orprotention is the immediate awareness of the future attending allof my experiences. But can we actually be said to perceive thefuture in protention as we can be said to perceive the past inprimary memory? Husserl occasionally suggests that we can-heranges the \ perception of the future\ along with the \ perceptionof the now \ and the \ perception of the immediate past\ at onepoint (180)- but he more often speaks of pretention s openness.He writes, for example, that it is essential to the perception of atemporal object \ that there be an intention directed towardswhat is to come, even if not towards continuations involving thesame temporal object\ (240). Primary expectation thus differsfrom the other two intentional moments in the sense that itsobject, as future, is not yet determined. Still, as a mode ofconsciousness, it joins primary memory as \ perceptual\ asopposed to ordinary or secondary expectation. Probably becauseof its openness, Husserl devotes less discussion to protention orprimary expectation than to the other modes of original time-consciousness. In the ensuing remarks I will follow Husserl spractice and focus chiefly on primary memory.How does primary memory differ from memory in thecustomary sense, from what Husserl calls \ secondary memory\ orjust \ memory\ or \ recollection\ ?An obvious difference is that primary memory is not itself anact. It is a dependent moment of the triple intentionalitybelonging to a non-self-sufficient phase of an independent act.Secondary memory, on the other hand, is itself an independentact with its own successive phases.But what particularly distinguishes the two is the differentways in which they intend their objects. The intentionality properto primary memory presents the past; the intentionality proper tosecondary memory re-presents it (101). Primary memory, that is,gives the past originally; recollection gives it once again (328). Inthis respect, secondary memory is a \ richer\ form ofconsciousness than primary memory. Primary memory is consciousness ofits object in only one way: as elapsing. It has no freedom tointerfere with the ineluctable process of passing away, no freedom


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to review again what has gone by; it can only passively look atwhat is past as it moves further and further away from theactually present now. Secondary memory, on the other hand,while it does not perceive the past, does re-present it. Thus itintends the elapsed object as if it were running off again. It willre-present a past phase as now (64) and then as just past, and itcan speed the process up or slow it down or repeat parts of it atwill, none of which primary memory can do. There is, then, a\ freedom of reproduction \ (49) denied to primary memory.On the other hand, secondary memory assumes that a sense ofthe past has already been established in primary memory, whichis the \ primitive\ or \ first form\ of the constitution of thepast-just as its counterpart, primary expectation or protention,is presupposed by ordinary expectation as the primitive form ofthe establishment of the future (338). Secondary memory andexpectation then elaborate and solidify what the more primitiveforms first make available. This also accounts for the key sense inwhich this kind of memory is \ secondary.\ It is not secondarybecause it perceives \ something further past\ (185) incomparison with primary memory, although th- name \ fresh\ memorymight suggest that that is the case (\ fresh \ memory holding onto the past until it becomes \ stale,\ at which point it would bethe proper object of ordinary memory). In fact, Husserl will oftensay that one can recall in secondary memory what one stillretains in primary memory (378), in which case there would be notemporal differentiation between their respective objects.(Something on this order effectively occurs in reflection.) Ordinarymemory is rather \ secondary\ because it depends on the priorand primitive constitution of the past, which occurs in the formof memory rightly called \ primary.\ Only when the past has firstbeen constituted presentatively can it be re-presented in recollection.Furthermore, to say that ordinary memory has the capacity tore-present or run through again an entire temporal object stilldoes not overcome the fact that it is not perceptual or impres-sional consciousness. It therefore does not present the object; itgives it \ as if seen through a veil\ (50), \ as if\ it wereengendering itself anew (371), as \ ^Masi-present\ (301). The wayin which its object appears confirms again that recollection cannever shed its dependence on an original experience of the past.


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XLH TRANSLATOR S INTRODUCTION

That ordinary memory intends its object \ through a veil\might be taken to suggest that Husserl embraces an image theoryof memory. Certain sketches from early in the decade hintstrongly that he did (Nos. 9, 10, IS, all probably written around1901), although he never offered a developed version of such atheory. By 1904 or 1905, however, he comes to argue vigorouslyagainst the image theory, and there can be no question that heexplicitly rejects it from that time on. The theory, Husserlobserves, imposes a present image between the act ofremembering and the remembered object. Consciousness of the past wouldtherefore be indirect, that is, through an intermediary image. Amodel for such consciousness would be historical painting,exemplified in a picture of the storming of the Bastille (190),which represents a particular event in time. However, what I amaware of as given \ itself\ in pictorial consciousness is thepainting, not the event. In memory, on the other hand, it isprecisely the past event that I directly intend, not somethingpresent and merely similar or in some other way related to it. Iam conscious of the past object itself, as past, in memory.Secondary memory, accordingly, is representation \ throughidentity\ and not \ through mere pictorial similarity\ (190). Theobject of the memory and what immediately appears toconsciousness in the memory are identical.Husserl also implies that the image theory suffers from alogical difficulty. Much as Brentano s theory of originalassociation, which worked exclusively with present contents, therebycutting off access to the past, raised the question how we couldever get the idea of the past in the first place (19), so the imagetheory, which proscribes direct experience of anything that is notpresent, renders inexplicable the sense of the past we obviouslyenjoy. In later texts (e.g., No. 47), Husserl will find otherdifficulties with the theory.Husserl s rejection of the image theory lets him avoid anothermistaken way of thinking about the distinction between primaryand secondary memory. The two are not distinct because theformer intends the past object \ itself\ while the latter does not.\ ... In [secondary] memory too the object itself appears \ (191),just as it does in primary memory. The difference lies rather inthe fact that primary memory presents the past while secondary


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memory re-presents it. In accomplishing this, secondary memoryshows itself not just to be \ something on the order of a poorimitation of perception or a weaker echo of it, but precisely afundamentally new mode of consciousness...\ (Husserliana XI, 325).

1. The Schematic Interpretation of the Constitutionof Time-Consciousness

From about 1901 to 1908, Husserl explained the constitutionof the triple intentionality belonging to each perceptual phase bymeans of the \ schema,\ mentioned earlier, according to whichreference to an object in a certain mode of appearance isestablished through the \ animation\ of contents immanent toconsciousness by \ apprehensions\ or \ act-characters.\ Theschema originally comes from the Logical Investigations, althoughtime is not directly an issue in that work and the schema is notapplied to the constitution of time-consciousness

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