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The Phenomenology of Internal Time-Consciousness
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.
188 pages, Paperback
Published January 1, 1964
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About the author
Edmund Husserl
518 books540 followersEdmund Gustav Albrecht Husserl (Dr. phil. hab., University of Halle-Wittenberg, 1887; Ph.D., Mathematics, University of Vienna, 1883) was a philosopher who is deemed the founder of phenomenology. He broke with the positivist orientation of the science and philosophy of his day, believing that experience is the source of all knowledge, while at the same time he elaborated critiques of psychologism and historicism.
Born into a Moravian Jewish family, he was baptized as a Lutheran in 1887. Husserl studied mathematics under Karl Weierstrass, completing a Ph.D. under Leo Königsberger, and studied philosophy under Franz Brentano and Carl Stumpf. Husserl taught philosophy, as a Privatdozent at Halle from 1887, then as professor, first at Göttingen from 1901, then at Freiburg im Breisgau from 1916 until his 1928 retirement.
Born into a Moravian Jewish family, he was baptized as a Lutheran in 1887. Husserl studied mathematics under Karl Weierstrass, completing a Ph.D. under Leo Königsberger, and studied philosophy under Franz Brentano and Carl Stumpf. Husserl taught philosophy, as a Privatdozent at Halle from 1887, then as professor, first at Göttingen from 1901, then at Freiburg im Breisgau from 1916 until his 1928 retirement.
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Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews
September 8, 2018
‘The pre-empirical temporal position of the image is the exhibition of the Objective position; the pre-empirical temporal extension in the running-off of the continuity of images is the exhibition of the Objective temporal extensity of the thing, therefore, its duration.
All this is self-evident.’
But of course it is, Herr professor...you took the words right outta my mouth...
All this is self-evident.’
But of course it is, Herr professor...you took the words right outta my mouth...
April 26, 2022
This book adds interesting insight that can give ground to the many problems of interpretation we face today. However, in the end, the project falls short of its own immensity. Insofar that it seems to recognize it's inability to answer the question it first asked.
October 25, 2019
This work, composed of lectures that Husserl gave in 1905, as well as appended material from the following ten or so years, is essential for an understanding of the constitution of the phenomenological subject and its acts of consciousness. It is also interesting when viewed in light of the temporal ecstasies of Dasein as laid out by Heidegger years later, though obviously still under the influence of these lectures, in Being and Time .
Husserl's thought remains problematic, however, and internally so. For the reliance of consciousness upon its retention of the UrImpression in order to present the object to itself as given in presencing does not seem to suggest what Husserl takes it to suggest. Rather than the retentional feature of the now "stretching" or "extending" the nowness of the now in phenomenological time (and where or when would we draw the retentional limits of this nowness?), Husserl's investigations uncover the implicit lag of consciousness in its temporality. Because the presence or immediacy of the UrImpression is only grasped as given object by consciousness in the protensional instance of its just having-passed, this would imply that the presence of the now is only apprehended by consciousness in terms of its absence as present, as a past having just-passed.
This is, of course, Derrida's critique of Husserl from Voice and Phenomena. Taking the implications of this internal critique a step further, this absence of origin, the temporal absence at the origin of of conscious apprehension of presence, marks every act of consciousness as a sort of après-coup. The immediacy of the UrImpression marks consciousness with a trace of alterity which will haunt it as its pre-consciously experienced yet ever excessive and unreachable, thus ever absent, origin. Because consciousness only apprehends the present in its retentional running-off, the immediacy of the present, the presence of the other, escapes from its grasp in this very running off of excession.
Consciousness is thus ever marked by a fault, a desire to attain or grasp its origins, which remains impossible to it by the very operations of its constitution. The gap or break between the passive impression upon consciousness and its active constitution of its object in or as meaning means that there always remains an excess which has yet to be said - the origin of meaning which cannot be rendered meant. Thus Derrida's deffering amd differing, as well as Levinas' saying which goes beyond the said.
Perhaps I have elaborated nothing new here, nothing original. These thoughts and their implication are still being worked through. In light of this, I apologize for offering up what could be seen as little more than a draft, repetitional inscriptions which may allude to something more, to some original or originary unthought. What shall come remains, as it must, to-come.
How I love my ignorance of the future...
Husserl's thought remains problematic, however, and internally so. For the reliance of consciousness upon its retention of the UrImpression in order to present the object to itself as given in presencing does not seem to suggest what Husserl takes it to suggest. Rather than the retentional feature of the now "stretching" or "extending" the nowness of the now in phenomenological time (and where or when would we draw the retentional limits of this nowness?), Husserl's investigations uncover the implicit lag of consciousness in its temporality. Because the presence or immediacy of the UrImpression is only grasped as given object by consciousness in the protensional instance of its just having-passed, this would imply that the presence of the now is only apprehended by consciousness in terms of its absence as present, as a past having just-passed.
This is, of course, Derrida's critique of Husserl from Voice and Phenomena. Taking the implications of this internal critique a step further, this absence of origin, the temporal absence at the origin of of conscious apprehension of presence, marks every act of consciousness as a sort of après-coup. The immediacy of the UrImpression marks consciousness with a trace of alterity which will haunt it as its pre-consciously experienced yet ever excessive and unreachable, thus ever absent, origin. Because consciousness only apprehends the present in its retentional running-off, the immediacy of the present, the presence of the other, escapes from its grasp in this very running off of excession.
Consciousness is thus ever marked by a fault, a desire to attain or grasp its origins, which remains impossible to it by the very operations of its constitution. The gap or break between the passive impression upon consciousness and its active constitution of its object in or as meaning means that there always remains an excess which has yet to be said - the origin of meaning which cannot be rendered meant. Thus Derrida's deffering amd differing, as well as Levinas' saying which goes beyond the said.
Perhaps I have elaborated nothing new here, nothing original. These thoughts and their implication are still being worked through. In light of this, I apologize for offering up what could be seen as little more than a draft, repetitional inscriptions which may allude to something more, to some original or originary unthought. What shall come remains, as it must, to-come.
How I love my ignorance of the future...
October 8, 2024
THE FOUNDER OF PHENOMENOLOGY LOOKS AT THE CONCEPT OF “SUCCESSION”
Edmund Gustav Albrecht Husserl (1859-1938) was a German philosopher who established the school of phenomenology. He was born into a Jewish family (which later caused him to lose his academic position when the Nazis came to power in 1933), but was baptized as a Lutheran in 1886. He wrote many books, such as 'Ideas: General Introduction to Pure Phenomenology,' 'The Crisis of European Sciences and Transcendental Phenomenology,' 'Cartesian Meditations,' etc.
The Editor’s Foreword states, “The following analysis of the ‘phenomenology of internal time-consciousness’ falls into two sections. The first includes the past part of a four-hour lecture course held during the winter semester in Göttingen, 1904-1905. The course was entitled: ‘Important Points Concerning Phenomenology and Theory of Knowledge.’ While the second volume of Logical Investigations (1901) has as a theme the interpretation of the ‘higher’ act of cognition, these lectures were to investigate ‘the most deeply underlying intellective acts: perception, phantasy, figurative consciousness, memory, and the intuition of time.’ The second section is derived from supplements to the course and from later studies (to 1910).”
Husserl says, “Because our ideas do not bear the slightest trace of temporal determinateness, it is conceivable that our sensations could endure or succeed one another without our being aware of it in the least. If we observe, for example, a particular instance of succession and assume that the sensations disappear with the stimuli producing them, we should have a succession of sensations without a notion of a temporal flow. With the emergence of the new sensation we should no longer have any memory of the having-been of the earlier. In each moment we should have only the consciousness of the sensation just produced and nothing further.
"But even the continued duration of the sensation already produced would not help us procure the idea of succession. If, in the case of a succession of sounds, the earlier ones were to be preserved as they were while every new ones were also to sound, we should have a number of sounds simultaneously in our imagination, but not succession… We arrive at the idea of succession only if the earlier sensation does not persist unaltered in consciousness but in the manner described is specifically modified… from moment to moment…. This modification, however, is no longer the business of sensation… But the sensation itself now becomes productive.” (§3, pg. 31-32)
He points out, “Temporal determinations do not define; they essentially alter in a manner wholly similar to determinations such as ‘imagined,’ ‘wished,’ etc. … Only the determination ‘now’ is an exception. The A existing now is indeed a real A. The present does not alter, but on the other hand it also does not define. If I add ‘now’ to the idea of man, the idea acquires no new characteristic thereby; in other words, the ‘now’ attributes no new characteristic to the idea of man.” (§5, pg. 34)
He states, “if we call perception the act in which all ‘origination’ lies, which constitutes originarily, then primary remembrance is perception. For only in primary remembrance do we see what is past; only in it is the past constituted, i.e., not in a representative but in a presentative way. The just-having-been, the before in contrast to the now, can be seen directly only in primary remembrance. It is the essence of primary remembrance to bring this new and unique moment to primary, direct intuition, just as it is the essence of the perception of the now to bring the now directly to intuition.” (§17, pg. 64)
In Appendix IX to the later section, he asserts, “Retention is not a modification in which impressional data really remain preserved, only in an altered form. Rather, retention is an intentionality, in fact, an intentionality of a special kind. When a primal datum, a new phase, emerges, the preceding one is not lost but is ‘retained in concept’ … and thanks to this retention a looking back to what has expired is possible. Retention itself is not an act of looking back which makes an Object of the phase which has expired. Because I have the phase which has expired in hand, I live through the one actually present, take it---thanks to retention---‘in addition to’ and am directed to what is coming (in a protention).” (Pg. 161)
While this book is often not considered as one of Husserl’s “major” works, I’ve always thought it one of his most interesting. Persons studying Husserl, Phenomenology, or the philosophical/psychological concept of Time will probably find it equally fascinating.
Edmund Gustav Albrecht Husserl (1859-1938) was a German philosopher who established the school of phenomenology. He was born into a Jewish family (which later caused him to lose his academic position when the Nazis came to power in 1933), but was baptized as a Lutheran in 1886. He wrote many books, such as 'Ideas: General Introduction to Pure Phenomenology,' 'The Crisis of European Sciences and Transcendental Phenomenology,' 'Cartesian Meditations,' etc.
The Editor’s Foreword states, “The following analysis of the ‘phenomenology of internal time-consciousness’ falls into two sections. The first includes the past part of a four-hour lecture course held during the winter semester in Göttingen, 1904-1905. The course was entitled: ‘Important Points Concerning Phenomenology and Theory of Knowledge.’ While the second volume of Logical Investigations (1901) has as a theme the interpretation of the ‘higher’ act of cognition, these lectures were to investigate ‘the most deeply underlying intellective acts: perception, phantasy, figurative consciousness, memory, and the intuition of time.’ The second section is derived from supplements to the course and from later studies (to 1910).”
Husserl says, “Because our ideas do not bear the slightest trace of temporal determinateness, it is conceivable that our sensations could endure or succeed one another without our being aware of it in the least. If we observe, for example, a particular instance of succession and assume that the sensations disappear with the stimuli producing them, we should have a succession of sensations without a notion of a temporal flow. With the emergence of the new sensation we should no longer have any memory of the having-been of the earlier. In each moment we should have only the consciousness of the sensation just produced and nothing further.
"But even the continued duration of the sensation already produced would not help us procure the idea of succession. If, in the case of a succession of sounds, the earlier ones were to be preserved as they were while every new ones were also to sound, we should have a number of sounds simultaneously in our imagination, but not succession… We arrive at the idea of succession only if the earlier sensation does not persist unaltered in consciousness but in the manner described is specifically modified… from moment to moment…. This modification, however, is no longer the business of sensation… But the sensation itself now becomes productive.” (§3, pg. 31-32)
He points out, “Temporal determinations do not define; they essentially alter in a manner wholly similar to determinations such as ‘imagined,’ ‘wished,’ etc. … Only the determination ‘now’ is an exception. The A existing now is indeed a real A. The present does not alter, but on the other hand it also does not define. If I add ‘now’ to the idea of man, the idea acquires no new characteristic thereby; in other words, the ‘now’ attributes no new characteristic to the idea of man.” (§5, pg. 34)
He states, “if we call perception the act in which all ‘origination’ lies, which constitutes originarily, then primary remembrance is perception. For only in primary remembrance do we see what is past; only in it is the past constituted, i.e., not in a representative but in a presentative way. The just-having-been, the before in contrast to the now, can be seen directly only in primary remembrance. It is the essence of primary remembrance to bring this new and unique moment to primary, direct intuition, just as it is the essence of the perception of the now to bring the now directly to intuition.” (§17, pg. 64)
In Appendix IX to the later section, he asserts, “Retention is not a modification in which impressional data really remain preserved, only in an altered form. Rather, retention is an intentionality, in fact, an intentionality of a special kind. When a primal datum, a new phase, emerges, the preceding one is not lost but is ‘retained in concept’ … and thanks to this retention a looking back to what has expired is possible. Retention itself is not an act of looking back which makes an Object of the phase which has expired. Because I have the phase which has expired in hand, I live through the one actually present, take it---thanks to retention---‘in addition to’ and am directed to what is coming (in a protention).” (Pg. 161)
While this book is often not considered as one of Husserl’s “major” works, I’ve always thought it one of his most interesting. Persons studying Husserl, Phenomenology, or the philosophical/psychological concept of Time will probably find it equally fascinating.
November 14, 2024
philosophy: from philosophia, greek; philo = love, sophia = knowledge
sophistry: from sophistēs, greek; meaning: a wise person; connotative turn: superficially plausible, yet deceptive reasoning
so how much philosophy is actually sophistry? the apprehension towards philosophy as a discipline may have substantial grounds in the fact that much of it is esoteric, and also convoluted. the philosophy that could be popularized has been popularized, for good reasons, i believe: plato, machhiavelli, nietzsche, camus, beauvoir, sartre, butler (?). i believe i believe. yet most of it remains somewhere hidden in the dusty annals of no library shelves or libgen. does libgen have shelves? it should, no? how much philosophy is actually sophistry?
tony morrison's beloved or sethe had nowhere advocated for reading out of spite. i think i now agree with her. beloved was always correct, much of it dawns on me with time. how could a person be so true, so prophetic? i didn't understand this book for the most part, to be honest. but i tried, and that doesn't count. you try so hard, you come so far, but in the end, it doesn't even matter. with time, it will keep coming back to me, i want to believe, so should tony morrison.
i should, however, also be wary in saying that i don't understand somebody. understanding is not necessary. acceptance and love is. in not being able to understand, we should also consider how ignorant we are. love is not ignorance, love is acceptance of ignorance, in knowledge. maybe. i believe. i am wrong.
"noor"/14.11.2024
happy children's day
sophistry: from sophistēs, greek; meaning: a wise person; connotative turn: superficially plausible, yet deceptive reasoning
so how much philosophy is actually sophistry? the apprehension towards philosophy as a discipline may have substantial grounds in the fact that much of it is esoteric, and also convoluted. the philosophy that could be popularized has been popularized, for good reasons, i believe: plato, machhiavelli, nietzsche, camus, beauvoir, sartre, butler (?). i believe i believe. yet most of it remains somewhere hidden in the dusty annals of no library shelves or libgen. does libgen have shelves? it should, no? how much philosophy is actually sophistry?
tony morrison's beloved or sethe had nowhere advocated for reading out of spite. i think i now agree with her. beloved was always correct, much of it dawns on me with time. how could a person be so true, so prophetic? i didn't understand this book for the most part, to be honest. but i tried, and that doesn't count. you try so hard, you come so far, but in the end, it doesn't even matter. with time, it will keep coming back to me, i want to believe, so should tony morrison.
i should, however, also be wary in saying that i don't understand somebody. understanding is not necessary. acceptance and love is. in not being able to understand, we should also consider how ignorant we are. love is not ignorance, love is acceptance of ignorance, in knowledge. maybe. i believe. i am wrong.
"noor"/14.11.2024
happy children's day
Read
December 27, 2023Good. Will have to return to it after the logical investigations I imagine, since much of this flew over my head. Probably to do with some of the jargon that feels unnatural compared to some other Husserl I have read. We'll see.
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews