On Time New Contributions To The Husserlian Phenomenology Of Time

Usually Husserl’s analysis of time-constitution is thought of in terms of three phases that are roughly bound up with the central publications, the Lectures, the Bernau Manuscripts and the C-Manuscripts. Today, after the publication of the central texts incorporating the last two phases, the discussion of Husserl’s analysis of time-constitution has entered a new phase. This is true for the interpretation of the latter two texts but it also affects out reading of the Lectures. Today, in the aftermath of the recent publication of the C-Manuscipts, it seems more likely that the seemingly separated first two phases are more close to each other than expected. The new and broader context allows for more thorough interpretation of the whole enterprise of time-constitution. By publishing this collection of contributions of the best international experts in this field, entailing some refreshing approaches of new coming researchers, this collection gives an overview of the most contemporary interpretations of this fundamental phenomenological theme.

The Phenomenology of Internal Time-Consciousness is a translation of Edmund Husserl’s Vorlesungen zur Phänomenologie des inneren Zeitbewußtseins. The first part of the book was originally presented as a lecture course at the University of Göttingen in the winter semester of 1904–1905, while the second part is based on additional supplementary lectures that he gave between 1905 and 1910. In these essays and lectures, Husserl explores the terrain of consciousness in light of its temporality. He identifies two categories of temporality—retention and protention—and outlines how temporality provides the form for perception, phantasy, imagination, memory, and recollection. He demonstrates a distinction between cosmic and phenomenological time and explores the relevance of phenomenological time for the constitution of temporal objects. The ideas Husserl developed here are explored further in his Ideas and were pursued until the end of his philosophical career.

This book provides an extensive treatment of Husserl's phenomenology of time-consciousness. Nicolas de Warren uses detailed analysis of texts by Husserl, some only recently published in German, to examine Husserl's treatment of time-consciousness and its significance for his conception of subjectivity. He traces the development of Husserl's thinking on the problem of time from Franz Brentano's descriptive psychology, and situates it in the framework of his transcendental project as a whole. Particular discussions include the significance of time-consciousness for other phenomenological themes: perceptual experience, the imagination, remembrance, self-consciousness, embodiment, and the consciousness of others. The result is an illuminating exploration of how and why Husserl considered the question of time-consciousness to be the most difficult, yet also the most central, of all the challenges facing his unique philosophical enterprise.

Edmund Husserl occupied himself with the analysis of time-consciousness throughout his life. In this book, the three stages that may be distinguished in Husserl's occupation with this theme are discussed in their interrelationship. The first stage consists of a lecture manuscript from 1905; the second stage consists of the so-called Bernau manuscripts, research manuscripts that were written in 1917 and 1918; and the final stage consists of the so-called C-manuscripts, research manuscripts that were written in the late 1920s and the early 1930s. Central themes in the discussion of Husserl's phenomenology of time in this book are: the connection between the analysis of time-consciousness and the analysis of phantasy-consciousness and image-consciousness; Husserl's position in the debate between A. Meinong and W. Stern concerning the possibility of the perception of time; the self-constitution of absolute time-consciousness; the influence of Husserl's development of genetic phenomenology on his analysis of time-consciousness; and the question of the intentional character of time-consciousness.

§ 1. Remarks on the Current Status of the Problematic. The literature treating the relationship between the phenomenologies of Husserl and Heidegger has not been kind to Husserl. Heidegger's "devastating" phenomenologically ontological critique of traditional epistemology and ontology, advanced under the rubric of "fundamental ontology" in Being and Time, has almost been universallyl received, despite the paucity of its references to Husserl, as sounding the death knell for Husserl's original formulation of phenomenology. The recent publication of Heidegger's lectures from the period surrounding his composition of Being and Time, lectures that contain detailed references and critical analyses of Husserl's phenomenology, and which, in the words of one respected commentator, Rudolf Bernet, "offer at long last, insight into the principal sources of fundamental ontology,"2 will, if 3 the conclusions reached by the same commentator are any indication, serve only to reinforce the perception of Heidegger's phenomenological /I superiority" over Husserl. This is not to suggest that the tendency toward Heidegger partisan ship in the literature treating the relationship of his phenomenology to Husserl's has its basis in extra-philosophical or extra-phenome nological concerns and considerations. Rather, it is to draw attention to the undeniable 'fact' that Heidegger's reformulation of Husserl's phenomenology has cast a "spell" over all subsequent discussions of the basic problems and issues involved in what has become known as their "controversy.

Temporality has been a central issue in phenomenology since its inception. Husserl's groundbreaking investigations of the consciousness of internal time early in the century inaugurated a phenomenological tradition enriched by such figures as Martin Heidegger, Jean-Paul Sartre, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, and Eugen Fink. The authors of the essays collected in this volume continue that tradition, challenging, expanding, and deepening it. Many of the essays explore topics involving the deepest levels of temporal constitution, including the relationship of temporality to the self and to the world; the ways in which temporalizing consciousness and what it temporalizes present themselves; and the roles and nature of present, past, and future. Other essays develop original positions concerning history, tradition, narrative, the time of generations, the coherence of one's life, and the place of time in the visual arts. In every instance, the authors show how invaluable phenomenology is for the investigation of time's many faces.

Every attempt to examine our consciousness’s passive life and its dynamic in its various forms inevitably intersects with our primal awareness of the future. Even though Husserl’s theory of time-consciousness enjoys a certain fame, his conception of our primordial relation to the future has not been adequately accounted for. The book at hand aims to offer a close study of Husserl’s view of protentional consciousness and to trace its unique contribution to our overall awareness of time. It offers an extensive analysis of various aspects of protention by investigating its connection to different fields and levels of experience. To achieve such a task, the book stresses the need to enrich the familiar formal account of protention with a material one. Thus, alongside issues pertaining exclusively to the form of protention, such as its relation to fulfillment as well as its double-intentional structure, various other dimensions are discussed, such as the phenomena of disappointment and correction as well as the role hyle plays in both of them. In the same vein, special attention is given to the relation between protentional consciousness and affectivity, thus shedding light on the dynamic unity of our living-present. What this study purports to show is that Husserl’s phenomenology is equipped to offer a solid account of the thinnest and subtlest ways in which we are aware of the future in our experiential life.