{"agent_id":"husserl","agent_name":"Edmund Husserl","slug":"inner-time-consciousness-retention-protention-and-the-absolu","label":"Inner time-consciousness, retention/protention, and the absolute flow: does the privilege of the living present rest on a metaphysics of presence that retention itself undermines?","topic":"Inner time-consciousness, retention/protention, and the absolute flow","question":"Does the privilege of the living present rest on a metaphysics of presence that retention itself undermines?","position":"Inner time-consciousness has a triple structure at the level of constituted temporal objects: *primal impression* (the now-phase that currently presents the temporal object), * retention* (the just-past held within the now as just-having-been), and *protention* (the immediate anticipation of the next now-phase). Below this constituted level there is the *absolute time-constituting flow of consciousness* — a self-affecting, self-temporalizing structure that constitutes time itself and cannot itself be temporal in the same sense as what it constitutes. Retention is not a memory or re-presentation of a past now; it is the passive holding of the just-past within the living present, structurally distinct from active recollection.","paragraphs":[[{"t":"Inner time-consciousness has a triple structure at the level of constituted temporal objects: *primal impression* (the now-phase that currently presents the temporal object), * retention* (the just-past held within the now as just-having-been), and *protention* (the immediate anticipation of the next now-phase).","n":[1,2,3,4,5]},{"t":"Below this constituted level there is the *absolute time-constituting flow of consciousness* — a self-affecting, self-temporalizing structure that constitutes time itself and cannot itself be temporal in the same sense as what it constitutes.","n":[]}],[{"t":"Retention is not a memory or re-presentation of a past now; it is the passive holding of the just-past within the living present, structurally distinct from active recollection.","n":[]}]],"texts":"On the Phenomenology of the Consciousness of Internal Time (Hua X, Brough trans.) §§7-23 on retention, recollection, and the structure of temporal objects; §§31-39 on the absolute time-constituting flow of consciousness; the Bernau Manuscripts (Hua XXXIII) on the late development; the C-Manuscripts (Husserliana Materialien VIII) on absolute consciousness; Ideas I §81 on absolute time-consciousness. Reception: Heidegger's editorial work on the 1928 publication; Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Phenomenology of Perception (1945), Chapter on Temporality; Jacques Derrida, Speech and Phenomena (1967) — the iterability critique of the privilege of presence; Edward Casey, Remembering (1987) on the structure of memory; John Brough's translator's introduction and his essays; Rudolf Bernet on the C-Manuscripts; Dan Zahavi, Self-Awareness and Alterity (1999) on inner time-consciousness and self-affection.","works":["On the Phenomenology of the Consciousness of Internal Time (Hua X, Brough trans.) §§7-23 on retention, recollection, and the structure of temporal objects","§§31-39 on the absolute time-constituting flow of consciousness","the Bernau Manuscripts (Hua XXXIII) on the late development","the C-Manuscripts (Husserliana Materialien VIII) on absolute consciousness","Ideas I §81 on absolute time-consciousness"],"reception":"Heidegger's editorial work on the 1928 publication; Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Phenomenology of Perception (1945), Chapter on Temporality; Jacques Derrida, Speech and Phenomena (1967) — the iterability critique of the privilege of presence; Edward Casey, Remembering (1987) on the structure of memory; John Brough's translator's introduction and his essays; Rudolf Bernet on the C-Manuscripts; Dan Zahavi, Self-Awareness and Alterity (1999) on inner time-consciousness and self-affection.","status":"The time-consciousness analysis is among the most technically demanding and most influential of Husserl's contributions. Heidegger edited the 1928 publication; Merleau-Ponty extended the analysis in *Phenomenology of Perception* (1945); Derrida's *Speech and Phenomena* (1967) mounted the most sustained critique, charging that the privilege of the living present rests on a *metaphysics of presence* that retention's own structure of repetition and *iterability* undermines. Brough, Bernet, and Zahavi defend the structure against the Derridean critique, arguing that the absolute flow is itself already structured as self-affection, not as pure self-presence. The C-Manuscripts (published late) substantially complicate any reading that assumes a simple Cartesian self-present consciousness.","era":"1859-1938","discipline":"Philosophy","refs":[{"n":1,"work":"On the Phenomenology of the Consciousness of Internal Time","page":"p. 99","canonical":"","quote":"But we can say: A temporal object 23 The text of 16-17 is based on sheets\" 38\"-\"40\" of the lecture manuscript of 1905. - Editor's note. 24 On acts as constituted unities in the original consciousness of time, cf. 37, p. 79f. is perceived (or intended impressionally) as long as it is still being generated in continuously emerging new primal impressions.","label":"On the Phenomenology of the Consciousness of Internal Time, p. 99"},{"n":2,"work":"On the Phenomenology of the Consciousness of Internal Time","page":"pp. 440–441","canonical":"","quote":"Each of these phases has the peculiarity that it is consciousness of the earlier now, \"original memory\" of it. It does not \"re-present\" in the manner in which a recollection would; it instead re-presents or holds back *[zuriickhiilt]* what was 35 previously intended in the mode of the now in a primal sensation. It holds it back in the form of a new mode, which continuously issues forth from the primal sensing.","label":"On the Phenomenology of the Consciousness of Internal Time, pp. 440–441"},{"n":3,"work":"On the Phenomenology of the Consciousness of Internal Time","page":"p. 89","canonical":"","quote":"The diagram therefore gives a complete picture of the double continuity of running-off modes. 11. *Primal Impression and Retentional Modification 13* The\" source-point\" with which the \"production\" of the enduring object begins is a primal impression.","label":"On the Phenomenology of the Consciousness of Internal Time, p. 89"},{"n":4,"work":"On the Phenomenology of the Consciousness of Internal Time","page":"p. 95","canonical":"[35]","quote":"Now if we again take up the question whether a retentional 25 consciousness is conceivable that would not be the continuation of an impressional consciousness, we must say: Such a consciousness is impossible, for every retention intrinsically refers back to an impression. \"Past\" and\" now\" exclude one another.","label":"On the Phenomenology of the Consciousness of Internal Time, [35]"},{"n":5,"work":"On the Phenomenology of the Consciousness of Internal Time","page":"pp. 89–90","canonical":"","quote":"Rather, each later retention is not only continual modification that has arisen from primal impression; each is also continual modification of all earlier continuous modifications of that same initial point. Up to now we have taken into consideration principally the 35 perception or original constitution of temporal objects and have attempted to understand analytically the time-consciousness given in them.","label":"On the Phenomenology of the Consciousness of Internal Time, pp. 89–90"}],"answer":null,"siblings":[{"slug":"anti-psychologism-and-the-autonomy-of-logic","label":"Anti-psychologism and the autonomy of logic: are the laws of logic ideal and apodictic, or are they psychological regularities?"},{"slug":"intentionality-and-the-noesis-noema-structure","label":"Intentionality and the noesis-noema structure: is the noema an intensional sense in the Fregean manner, or the object itself in its mode of givenness?"},{"slug":"the-transcendental-reduction-and-transcendental-idealism","label":"The transcendental reduction and transcendental idealism: does the epoché yield a constituting subjectivity that grounds the world, or does it lose the world it brackets?"},{"slug":"embodiment-leib-vs-k-rper","label":"Embodiment, Leib vs. Körper: is the lived body structurally distinct from the body considered as object, or is this distinction collapsible?"},{"slug":"intersubjectivity-and-the-fifth-cartesian-meditation","label":"Intersubjectivity and the Fifth Cartesian Meditation: does the analogical apperception of the Other avoid solipsism, or did Husserl never escape the transcendental ego?"},{"slug":"the-lifeworld-the-crisis-of-european-sciences-and-the-husser","label":"The lifeworld, the Crisis of European Sciences, and the Husserl-Heidegger break: does the late phenomenology recover the meaning-foundation of science, or is it a relapse into philosophical anthropology that Heidegger's existential analytic surpasses?"}]}