Temporality in Husserl
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International Phenomenological Society is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Philosophy and Phenomenological Research. http://www.jstor.org Philosophy and Phenomenological Research Vol. XLIX, No. 3, March i989 Time and Spatial Models: Temporality in Husserl MARY JEANNE LARRABEE DePaul University Recent treatments of time in Husserl offer accounts of the most funda- mental aspects of what Husserl terms inner time-consciousness, the immanent temporality that is the primal constitutive source of human experience.' A major difficulty with these expansions upon the outlines of Husserl's time theory is that they continue to use theoretically reduction- ist models for time, primarily that of "flux" or "flow," which are drawn from physical space and objects extended through such space. Discus- sion focuses on "temporal Objects," particularly conscious or mental processes that are "spread" or extended through immanent time, and on those characteristics of consciousness that make such spreading possible. The rationale for such an approach, of course, is obvious: the texts of Husserl himself repeatedly refer to immanent time as a "flux" or flow and See, for example, Izchak Miller, Husserl, Perception and Temporal Awareness (Cam- bridge: Massachusetts Institute of Technology Press, i984). My own interpretation of Husserl's discussions on inner time-consciousness begins with the critical piece by John Brough, "The Emergence of an Absolute Consciousness in Husserl's Early Writings on Time-Consciousness,"Man and World 5 (1972): 298-326; reprintedin Husserl: Expo- sitions and Appraisals (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame, 1977), ed. F. A. Elliston and P. McCormick, pp. 83-ioo. There are also discussions of Husserl's time theory as it developed subsequent to the period covered by Brough to be found in Robert Sokolow- ski's Husserlian Meditations. How Words Present Things (Evanston: Northwestern UniversityPress, 1974), chapter6. It must be understood that consciousness is used by Husserl to encompass a wide variety of acts, activities, and actions by the "subject," as well as occurrences and hap- penings within the subject, including passive, automatic, and anonymous ones. NOTE: Partial support for work on this essay was received from DePaul University's College of Liberal Arts and Sciences Faculty Summer Research Grant Program. The German term, 'Fluss', is often translated as 'flux', a somewhat appropriate cognate. I have opted for 'flow' because it fits the spatial modeling of Husserl's descriptions. 'Flux' is more enigmatic, and thus is acceptable for what it labels - and I will shift to it later in my text when discussing the deepest levels of immanent temporality. TEMPORALITY IN HUSSERL 373 thus call up the image of the river moving along with its contents com- prised in that flowing, gaining their fluent qualities from it. In itself there is nothing inherently wrong with using a spatial model to open out an interpretation of temporal flow. But interpretations using such a metaphor have many limitations, often unrecognized, and they can lead, at least partially, to a mistaken understanding of Husserl's theory of time. The focus of the recent treatments, for instance, gives some account of the flowing of temporal Objects, but fails to capture the central aspect of processing itself. To clarify this point I will first investigate the two-fold description of inner time-consciousness that gives the primary spatial model of flow - in fact, of two intersecting flows. Next I will consider the manner in which dimensions of immanent temporality are overlooked or even lost in the spatial model. Finally, I will propose a variation on this spatial model so that we can gain access to the complexity of Husserl's theory of immanent temporality and provide an access to an adequate explanation of the source of process as processing. An alternative model must deliver a characterization of consciousness which is sufficiently multi-dimensional that it indicates conscious life as filling out a "space" incapable of being described by means of the narrowly limiting four- dimensionality of ordinary human experience of the world. This model might also cut through the mechanistic model of flow to a more dynamic metaphor of a decentered flowing that itself energizes the processing of consciousness. What are the two aspects of inner time-consciousness that give the pri- mary spatial model of intersecting flows? A brief investigation of these aspects will demonstrate that the usual two-dimensional spatial model given by Husserlian interpreters flattens the flows to something like two tapes moving at right angles to one another. The theory of inner time-con- sciousness proposed by Husserl posits a temporalizing consciousness that constitutes both "external"-worldly time (the time of clocks) and the "internal" or inner time of consciousness and its mental or conscious pro- cesses (Erlebnisse, also termed 'lived experiences'). The three levels of this constitutive nexus are (a) worldly object time, (b) inner time of immanent "temporal Objects" (conscious processes such as acts and sensations),3 We must remain very clear here what is meant by "Object," a translation of the German Object;it is an all-purpose term for Husserl and thus includes as only one type the inner time Objects, as another the "objektiv"temporal objects (Gegenstdnde)within the world. The immanent time Objects in Husserl's discussion are clearly Erlebnisse(acts and hyletic data). 3 74 MARY JEANNE LARRABEE and (c) absolute consciousness of time itself.4 Objects, things, events within level (a) are constituted temporally, "given" within the temporal- ity of clock time, by the immanent temporality of level (b) Erlebnisse, while the latter are temporalized by the Absolute of level (c). The more complex and thus more textually accurate descriptions of Husserl's constituting temporality speak, not of one flow, but of a double flow within temporalization itself, as Husserl calls it. Each flow is marked, as it were, with a specific constitutive task or intentionality: "like two aspects of one and the same thing, there are in the unique flux of con- sciousness two inseparable, homogeneous intentionalities which require one another and are interwoven with one another." The double flow is that of (b) inner or immanent time, on one hand, and that of (c) inner time- consciousness, on the other, that is, the consciousness of inner time; both come under the title of immanent temporality, the temporality of con- ciousness itself: "By means of the one [intentionality], immanent time is constituted, i.e., an Objective time, an authentic one in which there is duration and alternation of that which endures. In the other [intentionality] is constituted the quasi-temporal disposition of the phases of the flux,. This prephenomenal, pre-immanent temporality is con- stituted intentionally as the form of temporally constitutive consciousness and in the latter itself" (Hua IO, 83 [PITC io9]).5 In the imagining or model-based expressing of inner time, we will say that the continuum of inner time (b) flows horizontally, and inner time-consciousness (c) verti- cally. They intersect, as it were, at the impressional consciousness "in" the Edmund Husserl, Zur Phanomenologie des inneren Zeitbewusstseins (1883-1917), ed. Rudolf Boehm (Husserliana io) (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, i966), section 34, p. 73; The Phenomenology of Internal Time-Consciousness, trans. J. S. Churchill (Blooming- ton: Indiana University, 1950), p. 98. Pagination of the original i928 publication cited in the margin of the Husserliana volume will be used, given after Hua Io, with the English translation (when used) in brackets with PITC. The differentiation of temporality (transcendental and immanent) into three levels is treated both in the Time Lectures dated 1905 by their i928 editors, Edith Stein and M. Heidegger, and in the supporting texts given in the Husserliana edition by Boehm and dated about 1907. The Time Lectures (1928), however, is a composite text, with what appear to be post-1905 discussions imported into the lecture texts dated 1905, at least some by Edith Stein in i9 i6-i8; see Boehm's Introduction to the Husserliana, vol. io. Brough (in "Emergence") presents Husserl's time theory as it evolved from a model based on perceptual apprehension (Auffassung) in 1901-1907 (what Brough calls the schematic interpretation) to a theory emphasizing the Absolute Consciousness and rejecting that model. This particular aspect of the shift is not questioned in my presenta- tion, although it probably would have some pertinence in a full-scale development of an alternative model.