Hegeler Institute

HUSSERL'S ANALYSIS OF THE INNER TIME-CONSCIOUSNESS

Author(s): J. N. Findlay
Source: The Monist, Vol. 59, No. 1, The Philosophy of Husserl (JANUARY, 1975), pp. 3-20
Published by: Hegeler Institute
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HUSSERL'S ANALYSIS OF THE

TIME-CONSCIOUSNESS

INNER

The present article is an attempt to set forth and examine the conclusions
of what is perhaps Husserl's
finest piece of philosophical
investigation, and
one of the finest
in
the
whole
of
history
pieces
philosophy: the investigation
of the consciousness of time, with its extraordinary combination of an un
an absolute flux of which it is none other than the very
changing form with
form itself. This investigation puts Husserl on a level with the wisest heads
on thematter, with Aristotle in Books IV and VI of the
Physics, with Augus
tine in Book X of the Confessions, and with Kant, whose whole Critique of
Pure Reason may be said to be an examination of what is necessary to tem
In Husserl's work we have, we may say, the greatest of
poral experience.
recent
tackling the greatest of philosophical problems, one in
philosophers
which contradiction is always appearing in novel forms, to be evaded only
a
or a Gr?nbaum, or
by the na?ve superficiality of Minkowski
by such in
as
Husserl himself practises. As Husserl himself put
finitely useful subtlety
it near the beginning of his 1905 Lectures:
Meanwhile the longed-for clarity beckons us after long labours, we think
the most glorious results are so near at hand thatwe have only to stretch
our hands forth to grasp them. All difficulties seem to dissolve, our critical
sensemows down contradictions one by one, till only one last step remains.
sum up our result.We begin with a self-conscious "therefore", and
We
then at once a point of difficultystarts up that gets bigger and bigger. It
a
our arguments
spreads and spreads into form of horror that devours all
and reanimates the contradictions we have just mown down. The corpses
all revive and grin at us mockingly. Our struggle and efforthave to begin
all over again. [Husserliana, X, p. 393.]
treatment of the time-consciousness is not free from incoher
treatment of such a subject
from
and dogmatic fixities?no
obscurities
ences,
more
to the
is
to
it
all
sensitive
these?but
could hope
escape
infinitely rami
more
and copes
manfully with any and all
fying problematic of the topic,
such ramifications, than any previous fruit of human excogitation.
For the survival of Husserl's wonderful work on the subject we have a
students to thank: first of all the deeply devoted Edith
number of Husserl
nun and a racial martyr under theNazis, who
a
afterwards
Carmelite
Stein,
Husserl's

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J.

. FINDLAY

shorthand scrawls on the time-consciousness between

on them an
1917, and who
imposed
expository order which,
was
none
at
selective
the less needed to bring
and
times,
arbitrary
inevitably
out the unified message,
and which, approved by Husserl, was to serve
as the basis for
first publication of the time-treatises in 1928.
Heidegger's
thirteen further Beilagen
To this unified exposition Edith Stein appended
of great value, all based on Husserlian manuscripts and overseen by Husserl
himself. For the full understanding of the publications of 1928 we have
further to thank Rudolf Boehm and the various others who cooperated with
him in themagnificent Husserliana
edition of 1966: this provides us with the
full manuscript material on which Edith Stein only drew partially, and
answers a great number of the
that the previously published
questions
was
now
come to achieve a
to
has
material
raise. The time
bound
philosophi
in
terms
the
cal assessment,
wider than
scholastically 'phenomenological',
of all these invaluable writings.
The first seven sections of the 1928 Main Text are all based on Husserl's
lecture notes of 1905, and on earlier treatments incorporated in these: they
set the stage for the
connect this with its
subsequent exposition, and they
treatment of temporal intentionality. There had been,
roots in Brentano's
when Husserl
lectured on the time-consciousness in 1905, no publication of
bases himself on what he had
Brentano's views on the subject: Husserl
are much
in the eighties. We
Brentano's
Vienna
lectures
from
garnered
better apprised, since the posthumous publication of many Brentano writings,
on which Husserl
it is not now the
of the
builds, but which
opinions
occasion to consider apart from Husserl's
understanding of them. Husserl
an exclusion of objective time, an
with
his
investigations
begins
anticipation
was later tomake so much
of the phenomenological
suspense (e
) that he
more elaborate. If we are to study time as it comes before us or appears to
transcribed all Husserl's
1905

and

us in consciousness, we must disregard the objective time in which conscious

which is also the time of the bodily events
experience takes place, and

which may underlie consciousness causally, and of which consciousness takes

cognizance. This objective time may afterwards be brought into the picture
as
something 'constituted' by and for consciousness in many 'transcendent'
convictions, assumptions and even perceptions, but it must at the start
be separated from the time in which things primitively appear, and in which
our own
of them is primitively placed.
'What we accept',
apprehension
an endurance of
Husserl
says, 'is not the existence of a cosmic time, of
a time and a duration which are as such apparent. These
things etc., but of
are therefore
are absolute data, which itwould be senseless to question. We

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HUSSERL

ON

INNER

E-CONSCIOUSNESS

also accepting a time which has real being, but which is not the time of the
: it is the immanent time of the stream
experienced world {Erfahrungswelt)
of consciousness* (1928 edition, p. 369). Husserl even says that there is a
sensed temporality [empfundenes Zeitliches)
which is the necessary phe
on which the
datum
nomenological
perception and thought of objective
time is founded, such 'founding* signifying that there is a sense-given
to our
is such as to
temporality attaching
primitive sense-contents, which
enable us to pass from these to a corresponding but necessarily quite different
can be
objective temporality which
represented by many such subjective
in a sense trying to discover the origin
that
he
is
Husserl
says
'temporalities'.
of our consciousness of time, but only in the sense that the consciousness
of objects in time rests upon and presupposes and has an evidential basis in
a more fundamental
time-consciousness, which need not however precede
of nativism versus
it either in experienced or objective time?questions
are
irrelevant
(1928 edition, p. 373)?and
empiricism
phenomenologically
which does not plainly lead to the objective time-consciousness by any ex
plicit process of inference.

we find him making

Here, at the very beginning of Husserl's
time-probe,
have
certain assumptions which Anglo-Saxon
analysts
long taught themselves
to criticize or distrust, and which warp,
not in any way ruin,
do
though they
what he finally concludes. Husserl assumes without question that there are in
sense the foundation of all our
tuitively given data which are in some
objective
are immensely reduced,
references, which
intensively abstracted objects
which alone can provide a fulfilling content and an evidential justification
for such references. He also assumes, though with occasional hesitation (see,
X, p. 284), that such intuitive data are also real parts of
e.g., Husserliana
our
in them, in a sense in which many of the
experiences, actually immanent
such
in
and
intended
data, brought before us by 'animating'
through
objects
are not real,
the latter with an interpretative 'conception'
[Auffassung),
immanent parts of our experiences, and in that sense wholly transcend those
are
even if, as
quite imaginary and do
happens often, they
experiences,
reflection
not exist anywhere. Whereas
has long learnt to
Anglo-Saxon
doubt whether the so-called 'directly seen' data of sense can be cleanly and
abstracted from our referential experiences, or whether,
unambiguously
however much accumulated, they can exhaustively 'fulfill' and attest all that
we mean and understand in such references. And even if admitted into
as in the
original Moorean
theory,
conception of 'sense-data',
Anglo-Saxon
as the remoter
same
are
the
objective category
objects
put into exactly
they
are
that they help to introduce. All alike
controversially 'immanent' in, or

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J.

. FINDLAY

utterances
'transcendent' of experience. Husserl has not, it is
plain, despite
that tell in another direction, ever advanced to the Twardowskian-Meinongian
notion of a sense content (or any other mental content) as a nuance of ex
perience intrinsically capable of presenting something objective, while remain
ing quite unlike it in quality or mode of being. Nor has Husserl accepted
Brentano's view of sense-data as physical rather than mental entities, nor
view of them as 'homeless', nonexistent objects. He believes,
Meinong's
in fact, like Berkeley, that the data of sense are objects
inseparably bound
acts
that
with
the
conscious
up
(though differing from)
bring them before
us, and so as much immanent in, or parts of our mental life as the latter.
no
All
these, however, are extremely questionable
assumptions, and by
can be
means the firm foundations on which a
built.
reliably
phenomenology
to
to attach too much
It would, however, be a mistake
importance
Husserl's
ill thought out treatment of so-called 'hyletic data': it should not
of
be allowed to confuse his magnificent account of the phenomenology
time. For whether or not reduced objects of
'tones' or
like
perception
patches of colour really play the central part in perception and knowledge
that he thinks they do, and whether or not they are 'immanent' in our
a sense in which other
objects, e.g., motor cars, are not, they
experience in
our
are
at least
treatment of
per
temporal experiences: there
simplify the
or
in discussing the starting and stopping,
and
of
waxing
waning
spicuities
we consider a motor car as
a noise which are not
present when
standing still
or
or as
starting up
changing its velocity. Husserl moreover admits that by
'tones', his preferred examples, we sometimes mean enduring objects of
sense with widely varying
not therefore differ from
properties, which do
'constitution' they enter (see,
the much more complex objects into whose
are
are
X, p. 272). What
e.g., Husserliana
important for phenomenology
not distinctions between the time of intuitively given sense objects and the
time of objects not adequately given by sense, but the distinctions between
the time we live through without making it an object, the time we
perceive
in the objects we perceive around us, and the time, lastly, that
provides
or
the framework for objects that extend far beyond what we can
perceive
are made and
distinctions
in
All
these
Husserl's
treatment,
imagine.
explored
which is rather a study of concretely experienced and envisaged time than
of time as attaching to so controversial a category as the immediate things
of sense.
criticisms of what he had understood Brentano to teach in
Husserl's
are
in many ways interesting and important (Main Text of 1928,
lectures
Brentano
had accepted as an ultimate law of consciousness that new
?3).

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HUSSERL

ON

INNER TIME-CONSCIOUSNESS

as
a
context of im
they arise are associated with
presentations
reproduced
to
their
and
which, however, a
objects,
mediately previous presentations
characteristic note of 'pastness' is added, a note whose addition must spring
from a newly operative, productive, unlearnt, mental association, whose
can then be
remoter past and future.
indefinitely extended into the
operation
is just past lingers on, but it lingers on as just past, and this note of
What
a creative
just pastness was not part of it in its past, but is purely and wholly
note
modal
rather
further
the
of
This
added
has
novelty.
being
property
than real: it alters the whole manner of being of what it attaches to rather
than its quality, for a noise or flash that is past is not strictly speaking a real
noise or flash at all. Brentano is at least clear as to certain basic facts of tem
most wiseacres of
poral grammar which have eluded
physical space-time
out
that the theory is not really workable:
theory. Husserl, however, points
it is not by associating a new character, even if we call it one of 'pastness',
with some objective datum that a modal change of the sort needed can be
or content
as
as
truly achieved. The datum
qualified
'past', will remain
much 'there' as the datum or content it purports to reproduce. 'The presence
of an A in consciousness cannot, even by the addition of a new moment
called by us "pastness", explain the transcendent consciousness: A is past.
It cannot give rise to the most distant notion that what I have in conscious
ness is in its new character the same as
not in conscious
something which is
nor
ness since it has been. ... An added moment cannot
produce unreality
existence'
how
Husserl
edition,
is,
(1928
pp. 381-82).
abrogate present
ever, building upon, as well as criticizing Brentano's doctrine, for he is
the latter of a crude associationism of contents, and is deepening it
purging
into a full recognition of the irreducibly intentional and modal character of
the reference to the past, as well as its underived presence in even the most
elementary perceptions.
are Husserl's
treatments of W.
Stern's 1897 article
Equally interesting
as we now call it,
on the
or,
specious present, and of Meinong's
'psychic'
1899 article on 'Objects of Higher Order', which included some criticism
of Stern. Stern had argued against the dogma that the awareness of a suc
cession cannot run parallel with the succession itself, but must necessarily
be summed up in some nonsuccessive,
i.e., momentary, awareness of the
whole
successive series. He had suggested that one act of apprehension,
out over a single 'psychic present', might embrace in its unity a
spread
whole series of successive phases, so that the apprehension's time coincided
with the time of what it apprehended, and did not have to be summed up

during the seriesor at its end (1928 edition,pp. 383-84). To thisview

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J.

. FINDLAY

had objected that the apprehension of a 'temporally distributed'

Meinong
a
one like a
i.e.,
object,
melody which can only unfold itself fully in period
of time, can only be consummated when the distribution is completed, i.e.,
it has to be consummated in an
and
apprehension which is undistributed,
a
for
is
time
full
the
and
which, though lasting
while,
complete throughout
that it lasts (Husserliana X, p. 226). Husserl's position is curiously media
torial as between these two positions. While
he does not deny that an act
of apprehension may be consummated over a
and may be present
period,
in varying completeness throughout the period, and not wholly concentrated
to
in some final summing up, he yet holds that it must somehow manage
be totally present in each of its phases, whether or not what it apprehends
in such total presentation is totally 'given'. To be aware of a
developing
as it
to be aware of it as
whole
develops, is yet always
incompletely, and
a whole: what is not as yet fully written in, is written in as yet to be written
in. A wholly momentary state of mind is of course a mere abstraction, and
all apprehension
is therefore developmental,
but this does not mean that
a
over
not
cast
its beams
wider tract of becoming, and
apprehension may
more
in what it objectively intends, than it itself em
concentrate
phases
or
covers. The
to and is
in the
braces
past invariably clings
incorporated
we must allow,
extends
this
and
but
further,
clinging
present,
incorporation
in the case of what is set before consciousness than in the case of conscious
ness itself or of anything else. Were
it not so, there would be no difference
between a succession of apprehensions and an apprehension of succession.
(The Bergsonian view that conscious experience limits and weakens, rather
than extends and intensifies, the holding
together of past with present
It is not clear that Husserl has managed
need here merely be mentioned.)
to resolve all the profound difficulties that he at least recognizes: the diffi
culty of making present existence be wholly continuous with what is modally
different from it, the difficulty of making what is strictly present a mere
limit towhat ismodally different from it, and so on, but as the time-conscious
ness rather than time as such is his theme, we may leave such
objections
aside.

in ?7 where Husserl
The
starts by using
exposition gets underway
we have called attention, and says that,
to
which
the questionable
language
having eliminated all transcendent conception and assertion, he will now
are
consider our consciousness of purely 'immanent time-objects'. These
as
not
do
such
go beyond what is intuitively and adequately given to con
therefore takes them to be immanent parts of
sciousness, and Husserl
consciousness, and also calls them 'hyletic data'. They are the supposedly

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HUSSERL

ON

INNER TIME-CONSCIOUSNESS

on which all our conscious slants are

primitive stuff
imposed, and which,
when thus slanted, will yield the changing perspectives of objects. Tones
are the well-chosen
class of objects or data which are most purely and
obviously temporal: they last through time, and what they are, e.g., rising
or remaining
or
or
falling
remaining constant in pitch, swelling, fainting
constant in intensity, are only fully exhibited in the whole of a time-tract
which they pick out and diversify. But not only do tones have the intrinsic
we have mentioned:
they also begin absolutely and end absolutely,
properties
a different face before
are
and while
last
they
they
always exhibiting
as
consciousness,
e.g., having just begun, having gone on for a while, being
over etc., and when they cease they are not merely over, but sink fur
nearly
ther and further into the past, being weighed down as itwere by the super
incumbent stages that came after them. This changing phenomenology goes
with a change in our consciousness of them: as long as they are not quite
over, we recognize ourselves as still actually hearing them, and as preeminently
a very small
on reflection, to be an
hearing
part of them which turns out,
a
abstract limit rather than
part, whereas when they, or any part of them,
we
a
or
as
is truly over,
recognize ourselves, in respect of such whole
part,
a
or
no longer
retention
retaining it in mind,
hearing, but merely keeping
which becomes more and more sketchy and inexplicit the further they lapse
into the past, until they become merely such that we could recur to them
or could resuscitate them if we chose. There is, as it were, a regular per
in an 'immanent* object like a tone or any of its successive
spectival change
it
is
given in a series of 'presences' which are more and more distant
phases:
from the original freshness of perception. This decline in freshness is not
an intrinsic change: it is also due to the accumulation of
merely
phases that
have come after a phase, and to the fact that each phase is retained in each
are themselves re
comes after it, and retained in
phases which
phase that
tained in other phases, a more distant retention being one that can thus be
or
as many intermediate retentions
as the relative
power of
regarded
product
as one likes. The process doubtless involves the built-in infinity
inseparable
from continuity, but there need be nothing vicious about this: we can
as many close or distant retentions as we
abstractly isolate
continuum of retention. As Husserl puts it in ?11:

like in the living

Every actual Now of consciousness is subject to the law of modification. It

changes into the retention of a retention and does so continuously. There
accordingly arises a regular continuum of retention such that every later
point is the retention of every earlier one. Each retention is already a con
tinuum. A tone begins and goes on steadily: its now-phase changes into a

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10

J.
was-phase,
an

ever

. FINDLAY

and our impressionai consciousness constantly flows over into

new

retentional

consciousness.

Going

down

the

stream,

we

en

counter a continuous series of retentions harking back to the same starting

... To each of such retentions a continuum of retentional modi
point.
fications is added, and this continuum is itself a point in the actuality that is
no simple infinite regress,
being retentionally projected. This leads to
since each retention is intrinsically a continuous modification, which so to
say carries the heritage of its past in itself. It is not merely the case, that,
going downstream, each earlier retention is continuously replaced by a
new one. Each later retention is not merely a continuous modification stem
ming from an original impression: it is also a continuous modification of
all previous continuous modifications of the same starting-point. [1928
edition, p. 390.]
Husserl
further argues that it would be wrong to suppose that some
weakened
form of the retained content persists in pure retention, as was
held in Brentano's previously criticized theory. Retention is an irreducibly
distinctive mode of consciousness, which requires the having been but not
the actual being of what it retains. This view is a difficult one in view of
the fact that retention is for Husserl part and parcel of all perception, and
that what in perception is not retention is only an unreachable limit. Perhaps
Husserl
should have dropped the whole notion of retention as in some
sense a derived or modified state of awareness harking back to one that was
more
the prime form of conscious
toriginary\ Quite arguably retention is
some
cases
of it certainly derive from others, and some have
ness, though
the distinction of deriving from nothing, and are then said to 'extend up into
seems to
the
the nonpast. There are passages where Husserl
present/ i.e.,
we
a
not
should
also regard pastness as
view. Whether
incline to such
the unmodified form of individual being, and so-called presentness as merely
a distinctive,
form of it, instead of reversing the priorities as we
incomplete
we cannot here discuss. Our aim is to discuss
to
is
do,
something
usually try
the views of Husserl, not to modify them profoundly. And Husserl, despite
much so-called Platonism, retains a residual faith in what are probably only
three great legends; the concretely particular, the fully given and the un
mixedly present.
it to be an a priori necessity that retentions
further maintains
Husserl
which have ceased to embrace a perceptual or now-phase must once have
embraced one, that pure retentions, in other words, must rest on perceptions,
the latter.We
and cannot meaningfully be thought to be /^representing
are absolutely sure of what is immediately retained, considered as a
pure

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HUSSERL

ON

INNER TIME-CONSCIOUSNESS

11

datum for consciousness, and it does not make sense to suppose itwas other
than what it now gives itself out as just having been (see, e.g., Husserliana X,
Immediate retention is thus not open to the errors to which
pp. 343, 353).
recollection and memory are plainly subject: the just past must be given to
neces
us just as itwas. Here as elsewhere, in the case of Husserl's a
priori
sities, we may counsel a reduction to moral certainties, likely claims that
should only yield to yet likelier claims. There are cases in which we are
as to what has
we
just been before us, or what experience
certainly unclear
have just undergone, and yet long-range comparison with other data or
lead us to describe what we saw or underwent more defi
experiences may
or to revise whatever we
to hold. If the
nitely,
previously tended
uninterpreted
datum is a legend, there can be no irrefragable certainties or clarities that it
It is on the impossibility that all the cases of a basic kind of meaning
inspires.
should be without target, or that all the assurances of a certain basic sort
should be invalid, that a true phenomenology should rest itself, not on those
clarities and certainties that can never be satisfactorily
supposedly prime
off.
marked
sums up his account of the mechanics of retention in a remark
Husserl

able two-dimensional diagram, which lends exactness to the vivid poetry of

same machinery, and also agrees very
James's account of the
largely
out
worked
D. Broad in his account of the phenomenol
C.
by
diagram
The convergence of the
ogy of time in his commentary on McTaggart.
is certainly very remarkable. In Husserl's
accounts of Broad and Husserl
a
longitudinal, horizontal dimension which represents the
diagram there is
actual flux of time, while a transverse, vertical dimension represents per
or
time: the former stays on the surface of
phenomenological
spectival
the latter always includes a
swath of the
is present, while
what
deep
immediate past. On such a diagram a datum moves along the hypotenuse of
a state of
a
to an ever
im
impressionai superficiality
triangle from
deeper
mersion beneath the impressionai surface, till at last it can no longer claim
In
to be a datum or retained at all (see Husserliana,
pp. 35, 330, 365).
such a representation, sinking phases are given as retaining their identity as
an
course
identity of
quite distinct from that of the lasting
they sink,
or event that they characterize, and they are also
as retaining
given
thing
their distances and other relations from all other similarly sinking phases.
The whole past sinks in a mass, taking all its arranged contents with it.
and Broad alike presume that there is a perfectly definite point
Husserl
at which retention ceases and makes way for such processes as
reproduction
and memory, and they also believe in an invariant length for the phenomeno

William
with a

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12

J.

logical

or

questioned
of Time'.

. FINDLAY

a
perspectival present,
supposition that has been interestingly
in
Mind
article on Our Direct Apprehension
Mabbott
his
1953
by

the immediate retention which is part and parcel of our time

or the
at any time, Husserl
strongly contrasts memory proper
run
we
of
have
time-contents.
When
secondary reproduction
actually
through
a series of tones in
we can
the
replay
impression and primary retention,
a memorial
same series in
such
it
In
may be
retrospective recapture.
replay
we are
or
as
we
were
and
the
(more
original series,
less)
if
experiencing
then in a sense representing
it in its original successiveness and in the
sinking of retained contents under the weight of later retained contents.
With

consciousness

are, however, other cases where we merely rehearse isolated phases

of what was previously given, or vary their order at will, or survey what
ex
was
a
given in
single sweeping glance with great loss of clearness and
must not be assimilated to the retention
plicitness. Such memorial
replay
which is an absolute part of perception itself, nor has it the reliability of
the latter. But it makes of the original time-object, or any phase of it, a
on countless
can be recurred to and
time-object that
subsequent
replayed
occasions, and that can further be remembered as having been remembered
and so on to any degree of higher-order complication. It can also give a
a heard melody, a
time-object, e.g.,
place in the whole order of remembered
events which make up our
recollection
personal memory. Reproductive
further contrasts with an imagination which may re-present much that has
been previously given, but lacks a note of assertion in regard to what it
thus reproduces, and all placing of this in what was
previously given. There
is also an imagination which, while not representing some content as pre
a
none the less
or future
viously given,
puts it in place in the historic past
or will ex
which lies beyond what the imagining person has
experienced
There

perience.
As regards the reference to the future, Husserl,
like William
James,
believes in a tending forwards, a protention, which is as much part of our
as the retention which trails its comet
originative experience of time-objects
tail behind it, a protention which, however, differs from retention in that
it may leave quite open, and emptily conceived, just how the time-object
will be developed or superseded. In some cases, of course, as where, e.g., the
time-object is quite familiar or represents what has been wished or planned,
as detailed in content as retention
(Husserliana X,
protention may be almost
Protention
from
in
further
differs
retention
that it receives
297,
pp.
305).
continuous fulfilment or 'disappointment' of a decisive kind by what there

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HUSSERL

ON

INNER TIME-CONSCIOUSNESS

13

upon is impressionally given, whereas retention can look forward only to

indirect, indecisive fulfilments. And
just as retention opens the possibility
of replays later given as
or
replays,
replays of such replays etc., of its origi
native data, protention opens the
more
remotely ranging antici
possibility of
or
of
themost concretely
from
etc.,
pations,
anticipations
varying
anticipations
intuitive to the most
Such
emptily conceptual.
anticipations, like the proten
tions they extend, admit of a
in the case of
fulfilment
posterior
impossible
in memory,
and
then
when
themselves,
may
explicit reproductions,
replayed
be reproduced both with and without the fulfilments or frustrations of ex
pectation which followed upon them. In remembering our own past, our
our own
mind undoubtedly oscillates curiously between
reconstituting
past
error as to the future, and
or
and
ignorance
filling it in with
correcting
later hindsight (see e.g., 1928 edition, pp. 457-58).
In all these immensely
intricate analyses, which burgeon and blossom like a
tropical forest, and
from which we have only culled a few
samples, the superiority of Husserl's
method
shows itself. Since we admit no transcendent, no
independently
real facts into our accounts of what goes on in consciousness, we discover
in it the infinitely
repeatable feed-back of which naturalistic psychologies
know nothing, and which is the true hallmark of the intentional, the conscious
as

such.

As we

account of the original constitution of time

consider Husserl's
an obvious
stances
in
mental
various
like retention,
objects,
anticipation etc.,
lacuna makes
itself evident: how shall we explain our awareness of the
various mental stances which form the content of our whole
description,
as
of the
and relations that we so freely
time-properties
predicate of them
when we say, e.g., that direct perception always involves retention, that
retention is always being overlaid by subsequent retentions, that its content
can be
a
can itself be reconstituted or
replayed in memory which
replayed,
etc.? Plainly our whole account presupposes an internal as well as an external
an appearance
to consciousness of the succession of its
time-perception,
own
as of the succession of the
as
well
attitudes
subjective
objects of such
attitudes. Yet
there are here threats of a vicious infinity if, in order
plainly
our
to have a sequence of mental attitudes, we have to retain and
protend
retentions and protentions, retain and protend these retentions and proten
tions etc., and it looks as if the clever methods which so successfully consti
tuted the immanent and transcendent objects of our time-consciousness will
not be successful in constituting that time-consciousness itself. In face of
and has recourse to a
these questions, Husserl
displays great hesitation,
none of which he
to
himself. The first
of
commits
variety
firmly
strategies,

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14

J.

. FINDLAY

consists in treating thewhole matter as plain and obvious: states of conscious

as their immediate or remote objects are, and
ness are
given in time just
there is in fact only a difference of 'slant' in placing a time-datum, e.g., a
a serial succession, and in
of it in the
placing the hearing
phase of tone, in
same succession. The second strategy consists in regarding the time for con
sciousness and the time of consciousness as only analogically similar, and in
and is
holding that the latter time really transcends significant expression
we can
rather
than
towards
that
clearly
only something
inadequately gesture
talk about. The third strategy, with which Husserl would not seem to be
in its postulation of a profound and
wholly satisfied, is almost Kantian
and
accommodation
between the distinct and opposed
necessary harmony
our
of
'sides'
and
objective
experience.
subjective
illustrations of the first, 'obvious' strategy are the following
Good
passages:
It pertains to the a priori essence of time that it is a continuity of temporal
positions, sometimes with identical and sometimes with varying objective
contents that fill these positions: the homogeneity of absolute time consti
tutes itself unceasingly in the flux of modifications of pastness and in a
a
steady streaming forth from Now which is the creative point of time, the
a
of
of
all
time-points. It also pertains to the priori essence
origin
point
of the situation that sensation, conception, attitude all share in the same
flux of time, and that objective, absolute time is necessarily identical with
the time which pertains to sensation and conception. [1928 edition, p.
427.]
If we eliminate transcendent objects we may ask how it stands as regards
the simultaneity of perceived and perception in the immanent sphere. . . .
If reflexion and retention presuppose the impressionai inner consciousness
of the immanent datum in question in its original constitution, and this is
concretely one with, and inseparable from, its originative impression?
we have here in very truth strict simultaneity of
perception and perceived*.

[1928 edition, pp. 462-63.]

interesting example of the second, 'ineffable' strategy is the following:
The objects with which we are concerned are temporal objects which have
to be constituted [for consciousness]. The sensory kernel of appearance
without conceptual slant exists "now" and has just been and was earlier
a
etc. . . .When
phenomenological reduction has been instituted, each
temporal appearance resolves itself into such a flux. But I cannot in turn
perceive the consciousness itself in which all these things are resolved.
For such a new percept would in its turn be something temporal, which
would point back to a constitutive consciousness of precisely the same
sort, and so on in infiniturn. ... I of course have a consciousness of time
An

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HUSSERL

ON

INNER TIME-CONSCIOUSNESS

without making an object of it. And when I do make an object of it, this
also has a position in time, and, if I follow it frommoment to moment,
an extension in time. . . . And the time of this change of appearance is
identical with the time of what is objective in it. If we are dealing with,
e.g., an invariant tone, the subjective duration of such an immanent tone
is identical with the time-stretchinwhich its appearance [to consciousness]
continuously changes. But is this not a most astonishing state of affairs?
For can one speak in this case of a change where a nonchange, an un
con
changingly filled duration, is unthinkable? For there is no possible
can
to
in
flux
which
their
of
be
stancy
steady
opposed
appearance-phases
consciousness. In this original flux there is no duration. For duration is
the form of an entity that lasts, something that endures, that remains the
same through the time-serieswhich functions as its duration. . . . For
objective time is a form pertaining to enduring objects, to their changes,
and to the events which happen to them. An event is therefore a concept
that presupposes persistence, and persistence is something that gets con
stituted in the conscious flux, a flux which is essentially such that nothing
are phases of
experience and con
persists in it. In the conscious flux there
tinuous series of such phases. But each such phase or each continuous
series of such phases involves nothing enduring. ... Its identity is not the
...
In the
identityof something that persists and cannot be made such.
flux [of consciousness] there can in principle be no part that is not in flux.
This flux [of consciousness] is not a contingent flux like an objective flux:
the change of itsphases can never cease, nor pass over into a constant con
tinuum of like phases. ... If I live in the appearance of a tone, the tone
stands before me, and either persists or changes. But if I attend to the
appearance of the tone in consciousness this likewise stands before me and
has its temporal spread, its persistence or change. . . . But now the ab
solute flux of conscious states is in its turn to be made our object and
case also therewould have to be a conscious
given itsplace in time. In its
ness which constituted such an objectivity and therewith also its time.
But we could in principle again reflecton this and so on indefinitely. Is it
to prove the non-vicious character of such an infinite regress? . . .
possible
But even if reflection is not pursued to infinity,and there need not be any
such reflection at all, somethingmust at least be given which makes such
reflectionpossible, which makes a regress in infinitumpossible in principle.
And herein lies our problem. [1928 edition, Appendix VI, pp. 463-68.]

The 'problem'raised in this interesting

Appendix is also dealtwith

the 1928 Main

Text. Husserl

writes:

If we now examine the phenomena which constitute temporal objects,

we find a flux ... in which no phase can in principle be extended into a
succession which remains constant, in which no phase can be the same

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16

J.

. FINDLAY

for any stretchof the flux. On the contrary,we have a flux which of neces
sity involves continuous change, and which also involves the absurdity that
it runs as it runs, and can never runmore quickly or more slowly.We have
no object
present in such a case that could change, and, to the extent that
something or other happens in every happening, nothing at all happens
here. . . .The phenomena which constitute time are quite evidently other
in principle than those which are constituted in time. The former are not
individual objects or events, and we cannot significantly apply predicates
which fit objects and events to them. It does not thereforemake sense,
at least not the same sense as in the case of other things, to say of such
constitutive phenomena that they are occurring now, or did so previously,
or that
they followed one another in time, or occurred simultaneously etc.
We however can and must say that a certain continuity of appearance which
is a phase of the time-constitutiveflux, belongs with a Now, i.e., with the
.
can only say: This flux is
Now that it constitutes. . . We
something that
we say exists now, in virtue of what it constitutes, but it is not
temporally
objective. It is an absolute subjectivity, and has absolute properties which
are figuratively described by the term "flux", and by
saying that it springs
from a point of actuality, an originative source-point, a Now.
In the
we
an
this
of
have
originative source-point and a
experience
actuality
resonances.
we
names
of
But
lack
for all these things! [p. 429?]
continuity
In the passages we have
faces a
quoted it will be noted that Husserl
an infinite regress if the conscious flux
the
threat
of
double problem:
(a)
has to be 'constituted' as temporally objective in a second conscious flux,
and so on indefinitely; (b) the difficulty of making sense of a pure flux of
awareness which is
can exhibit
quite void of content, and which accordingly
no difference between constancy and variation, nor any conceivable accelera
tion or retardation.

As regardsthe thirdstrategy,it is best deployed inAppendix XII

of

the 1928 edition. (Husserliana X, pp. 126-130),

and in the 54th
Supplem
Text of theHusserliana X edition. Here Husserl makes
important additions
or the immediate consciousness of
to his doctrine of 'inner
perception',
consciousness, and moves in the direction of holding that there is at least
a form of 'inner
which is part and
perception'
parcel of every conscious
state?the
doctrine of Brentano and also of Sartre with his
prereflexive
which so much coincides with the state that it reflectively
Cogito?and
illuminates that no duplicity is present, and hence no
an
possibility of
a
act
is
conscious
consciousness
of
infinite reduplication. 'Every
something,
but is also consciously such (Jeder Akt ist auch beivusst). Each
experience
is "sensed",
is immanently perceived by internal
it is
perception. Naturally

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HUSSERL

ON

INNER TIME-CONSCIOUSNESS

17

or
does not here amount to being referentially
meant?perceiving
. . .
an
nor
Every experience in the preg
object
apprehending it.
not in the
is inwardly
this
but
inward
perceived,
perceiving is
an
inner
not itself inwardly
It
This
is
perceived'.
experience.
that accordingly enters into all experience must be distinguished
perception
from the inner
which accompanies a reproduction of the experi
perception
aware of its own
ence in
in
being inwardly
question, which,
re-presentative
also
therefore
distances
from
and
character,
itself,
objectifies, the experience
to Husserl
that it re-presents. According
in one odd passage there is prac
no difference between the
a house,
tically
reproduction of the perception of
*The
the
the
house
and
itself (1928 edition, p. 483).
re-presentation of
an
indication
duplicity in the intentionality of retention, he goes on, provides
which goes some distance towards resolving our difficulty as to how it is
not posited
directed to
nant sense
same sense

possible to have any knowledge about any unified item [Einheit) in the
ultimate, constitutive flux of consciousness'

( 1st sentence, ? 39, 1928 edition).

It is the one single flux of consciousness in which the immanent temporal

unity of a tone is constituted, and, together with this, the unity of the
conscious flux itself. Objectionable and at first glance nonsensical as it
may seem that the flux of consciousness should constitute its own unity,
this is none the less the case (next paragraph, ?39) ... In the one, unique
flux of consciousness there are two inseparably united intentionalities,woven
together like two sides of one and the same thing. Through one of these
intentionalities immanent time is constituted, a genuine objective time in
which there is persistence and also change in what persists. Through the
other intentionality the quasi-tem?ot? arrangement of the phases of the
flux is constituted, the phase of theNow which has an actuality which is
of necessity ever-fleeting, and the series of phases thatwere formerly, or
are not as yet actual. The pre-phenomenal, pre-immanent temporality is
constituted intentionally as the form of the time-constitutingconsciousness
and in that consciousness itself. . . .The appearance to self of the flux de
mands no second flux: as phenomenon, it rather constitutes itself. . . .
The phases of the flux of consciousness in which phases of the same con
scious flux constitute themselves phenomenologically, cannot be, and are
not, identical with these constituted phases. What are made to appear in
the momentary actuality of the flux of consciousness are past phases of
the conscious flux retained in the series of its retentionalmoments. [1928
edition, pp. 436-37.]
It is hard to overestimate the philosophical
importance of these passages.
as to
of
revive
the
the
and
rediscover
They
Critique of Pure Reason
aporiae
of permanence can be found in the ceaseless flux of conscious
how any
point

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18

J.

. FINDLAY

ness, as well as the solution reached in the Kantian Refutation of Idealism

to the effect that consciousness
outer objects as
of permanence
requires
points
can attach themselves,
to which its flux of
thereby giving
representations
teaches, the unity which would
themselves, as the Transcendental Deduction
otherwise wholly elude them. Some of Husserl's
difficulties certainly seem
even
immanent contents, i.e.,
and
from
his
that
belief
factitious,
spring
are
some
sense
acts
in
of
sense-data, feelings etc.,
objects
primitive conscious
which constitute them, so that consciousness qua consciousness becomes
acts does not differ from
quite uniform and transparent, and its pure flux of
an unflickering, constant
If
Husserl had adopted a concept of 'content*
light.
more in line with that of Twardowski
or Meinong,
to whose views he
seems to incline, to views i.e., which make 'contents' colourings
occasionally
of consciousness quite unlike even the reduced objects, e.g., tones, that they
bring before consciousness, the difficulty of the empty flux would vanish: our
an internal content which
or
might be constant
experience would have
varied, and which would not necessarily be used in the constitution of
central place of the concept of 'constitution' in Husserl's
is in fact the source of all its major weaknesses:
it sug
phenomenology
to
set
the
of
is
that
conscious
business
gests
only
objects before
experience
itself and to contemplate them, and not simply to be the mixture of change
and constancy, of unity and variety that it is, and to live through and enjoy
it. The
that being without necessarily contemplating
importance of the
we have selected is that they show that the flux of states of mind,
passages
retentions, protentions etc., in which objective time is constituted, do not
need to be objectified in order that they should exist and flow and perform
their constitutive functions, nor is such ob jedification or constitution a
objects.

The

necessary condition of their being and functioning. Secondarily, of course,

can be made
so
into objects, and must be
they
being, but the
capable of
transcendence involved in such ob jedification is in a sense also immanent:
it is our conscious states themselves which by adhering closely to what we
a rearward
are now
glance to themselves possible. When
experiencing make
were lived through, they were bewusst, consciously there,
they
though not
intended as objects, and now, by a transition certainly without parallel, but
a
in its uniqueness,
they give rise to
entirely understandable
retrospective
awareness which is really their own self-declaration. The mechanics of such
a transition have been more
than by
meticulously
explored by Meinong
distindion of an
Husserl:
and an
see, e.g., Meinong's
Ausw?rtswendung
same conscious
of
the
the
and
of
doctrine
Einw?rtswendung
presentation,
as set forth in his ueber emotionale Pr?sentation.
the
(See
self-presentation

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HUSSERL

ON

INNER TIME-CONSCIOUSNESS

19

translation in the Northwestern University Studies in

recently published
Where
Husserl goes wrong is in his failure fully to rec
Phenomenology.)
we
what
the
existential dimension of experience: its having
call
may
ognize
of states, actions, tendencies, tensions, transitions etc., in the sense of living
as objects. Such living
through them rather than setting them up before itself
a
is
not
mode of conscious
transitions
defective
etc.,
through states,
perhaps
ness
it
is perhaps the per
in
intentional
reference:
the
conscious
perfected
fection to which
the conscious intentional reference merely aspires. A
recognition of this supra-conscious, existential dimension might have made
Husserl willing to recognize an analogue of the latter even in unconscious
natural realities, organic and inorganic, and so halted that rush towards
a transcendental
swine in the
subjectivism in which, like the Gadarene
Sea of Galilee, he finally submerged and drowned himself. The existential
such as to
dimension of experience might further have been adjudged
versa: it
vice
referential
dimension
and
the
might be
consciously
require
our own immanent life of sen
to
in
only by setting up objects
opposition
sations, feelings etc. that we could in fact enjoy and have the latter. In this
manner theHusserlian
correct that consciousness only
position may indeed be
constitutes the serial flux of its own acts and states, in the sense of making
them possible objects of its awareness, in and through the constitution of
the objects of those same acts. It is by minding objects that we can have
nor Kant has
something contrasting to mind in ourselves. Neither Husserl

unfortunately offered us a completely satisfactory 'deduction' of the need

for objectivity and objective categories in order that there should be such
a
thing as self-feeling and self-awareness and vice versa, but both have
seem to have moved
in this direction, and Husserl would
further
moved
than Kant.
a suitable abstraction,
Having constituted immanent time-objects, and, by
immanent time itself, Husserl goes on to consider the further constitution
of transcendent objects of various sorts, of things which change or remain
constant in time, or of the events and states which enter into their history.
Into this interesting and admirable work of detail we shall not here enter.
of time terminated in
reflections on the phenomenology
Since Husserl's
1917, there is naturally no suggestion in his work of the constitution for
consciousness of a cosmic space-time, such as modern physics has proposed,
a
in which countless local times are integrated, and from which
space-time
a structure
can
they
again be differentiated. Such local times certainly have
more or less
to that of the immanent time of consciousness, while
parallel
full integration
has another far richer structure. The
cosmic
space-time

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20

j.

of phenomenological
time of the modern

. findlay

time with the depersonalized,

unlocalized
is
far
from
been
outlook,
very
having
physical
philo
see this one has only to consider the incredible
sophically accomplished. To
time can be
na?vet? of, e.g., a Gr?nbaum,
who thinks that experienced
as
are
related to
related to physical time
the sense-qualities red, loud etc.,
has
their
work on time-phenomenology
foundations.
Husserl's
physical
a
and
of
it
sustained
but
defects,
many
by
large
obviously
represents
piece
on a
thinking
surpassingly difficult topic, exploring countless alternatives and
not rashly committing itself to any of them, and
quite capable of being used
are very
some of Husserl's most cherished pro
to
who
thinkers
by
allergic
grammes. It is in fact altogether on a level with the finest work of Aristotle.
To resolve more of the puzzles of temporality it will be perhaps necessary
and

local

to go beyondHusserl, but itwill only be by buildingon him and studying

him profoundlythat itwill be possible to go beyondhim.

Boston

University

J. N.

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Findlay