Abstract
This paper approaches Husserl’s analysis of time-consciousness from a mereological perspective. Taking as inspiration Bergson’s idea that pure durée is a multiplicity of interpenetration, I will show, from within Husserlian phenomenology, that the absolute flow can indeed be described as a whole of interpenetrating parts. This mereological perspective will inform my re-consideration of the much-discussed issue of Husserl’s self-criticism concerning the schema of content and apprehension. It will also reveal a fundamental similarity between Husserl’s conception of the absolute flow and Sartre’s conception of lived temporality. This paper consists of four sections. Section 2 presents the basic elements of Husserl’s mereology. Section 3 introduces the difficulty encountered by Husserl’s early account of time that makes use of the schema. I will examine Barry Dainton’s criticism of Husserl’s theory of time-consciousness against the background of the older debate between Meinong and Stern, a debate that has informed Husserl’s own account. Section 4 distinguishes two common (but misguided) criticisms of the schema from Husserl’s own self-criticism, which is in turn divided into two steps. It is shown how the second step of this self-criticism implies the interpenetration of the absolute flow and responds to Dainton’s criticism. Finally, Sect. 5 concludes with some comparative remarks. I will show how Husserl’s notion of absolute flow, as mereologically interpreted, anticipates Sartre’s conception of consciousness as self-transcendence, as well as how it accommodates the apparently conflicting mereological intuitions of Aristotle and Bergson.
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Notes
The following represents only Bergson’s early position in Time and Free Will.
One might argue that Bergson’s approach is anti-mereological insofar as he insists on the indivisiblity of the durée. But the insistence on indivisibility and interpenetration is still taking a position on the problem of part-whole relation and thus in a widened sense adopting a mereological perspective. Besides, there may be reasons to find Bergson’s simple affirmation of interpenetration on the basis of an appeal to intuition insufficient. Such is, for example, Sartre’s assessment. He thinks Bergson’s notion of interpenetration remains at the level of “a figure of rhetoric,” because it fails to show the “source” or “principles” of interpenetration (Sartre 2018, pp. 198–200). Thus, it seems a sound methodological strategy that we do not start from the simple intuition of interpenetration but work towards this intuition in our reflective analysis. This will be my strategy in this paper.
This distinction between phenomenal fusion and ontological independence is famously rejected by Aron Gurwitsch (2010, pp. 85–90, 111–120, 128–148). For Gurwitsch, the qualitative multiplicity of the sensory field is not only a phenomenon of fusion, but also interpenetrating in the ontological sense. For him, interpenetration is equivalent to the notion of Gestalt-coherence, defined as “the determining and conditioning of the constituents upon each other” or their “thoroughgoing reciprocity” (p. 131). Gurwitsch’s position relies crucially upon his notion of functional significance, which a constituent enjoys “[b]y virtue of its absorption into the structure and organization of a Gestalt-contexture” (p. 112). For Gurwitsch, the phenomenal identity of a constituent is exhausted by its functional significance thus defined, which means that a constituent owes its identity entirely to the particular Gestalt-contexture to which it belongs. However, as Mulligan (1995, pp. 186–191, 230), Williford (2013, pp. 507–508) and Hopp (2008, pp. 237–239) have argued, the phenomena made famous by the Gestalt Psychologists, such as the Vase-Faces figure of Rubin, do not support the strong conclusion of Gurwitsch. Contrary to what Gurwitsch claims, the partial coincidence of the Vase-Gestalt and the Faces-Gestalt, for example, is the condition of possibility for the experience of their conflict. It is, after all, the same segment that undergoes the change of its functional significance, which means that “its identity is not entirely determined by its place within a Gestalt-contexture” (Hopp 2008, p. 238).
A slightly different version of this proposition results if we substitute “representation” for “sensation.” For the present purpose, the difference between these versions is unimportant.
Meinong is certainly committed to this principle as well, though he does not explicitly frame it this way. As an intentionalist, he understands it in a way similar to Husserl. Cf. Kortooms (2002, p. 41).
That Stern’s notion of presence-time refers to a particular span of clock-time is shown by the fact that he attempts to measure its duration. Though he considers the difficulties of such measurement, the difficulties he considers are of a technical nature. Cf. Stern (2005, pp. 334–349).
See, for example, the model of double continuum which Husserl develops in connection with his criticism of Meinong in a text entitled “Results of the Stern-Meinong Discussion” (Hua X, pp. 232–234).
I call these criticisms misguided only insofar as the mistakes they identify are not really committed by Husserl, at least insofar as his mature position is concerned. Both lines of criticism have a philosophical agenda to promote after the Schema has been dealt with. In the first case, this concerns the phenomenon of self-organization of the sensory field. In the second, it is the genesis of meaning. I am certainly not saying that these concerns are misguided.
Already in Logical Investigations, Husserl writes that the connection between content and apprehension in the case of an intuitive representation is “an essential, internal” connection, as opposed to the “contingent, external” relation in the case of a signitive representation (Hua XIX/2, p. 622).
It goes without saying that elements of both steps have long been noted by, e.g., the authors included by Mensch in the “Louvain tradition” of objecting to the Schema (Mensch 2010, p. 66n), and I claim no originality here. Given Mensch’s objection to this tradition (2010, pp. 63–70, 86–102), it is perhaps helpful to show once again what exactly is involved in, and what follows from, the criticism of the Schema. This is what I hope to contribute with the distinction between the two steps and the mereological approach.
The following formulation is adapted from Gallagher’s distinction between the two versions of Lotzean Assumptions, which are identical with what we are calling the PSA. To be more precise, Gallagher (2003) distinguishes between a strong and a weak version of the PSA, and the two Lotzean Assumptions (LA) are given as specifications of the strong version. For my purposes, I have simplified Gallagher’s threefold distinction into a twofold one, leaving out his LA1 and replacing it with his weak version of the PSA. For the original formulation of the two Lotzean Assumptions and their fate in the theory of James, Broad, Husserl etc., see Gallagher (1998).
In the Bernau Manuscripts, these crosscuts go under the name of Ux. See, e.g., Hua XXXIII, pp. 30, 34, 39.
Cf. Hua XXXIII, pp. 94, 103. Compared with the earlier expression of a similar worry in Hua X, the formulation of this concern in the Bernau manuscripts evinces a deeper level of reflection. When in Hua X Husserl asks “Can a series of coexistent primary contents ever bring a succession to intuition?” and replies that it cannot, he is insisting on the distinction between the absolute flow and constituted time and warning against conceiving the former in terms of the latter (Hua X, pp. 322–323; cf. Brough 1972, pp. 311–312) However, even after one has distinguished the “all at once” (zugleich) of “Momentanbewusstsein” from simultaneity (Gleichzeitigkeit) in the usual sense (Hua X, p. 374), there remains the question of the limitation of the methodological orientation towards the “all at once.” It is this latter, deeper-lying limitation that is indicated in the cited paragraph from the Bernau manuscripts.
The distinction between the two steps of Husserl’s criticism of the Schema is reflected in the historical development of Husserl’s thought. This is clear from Rudolf Bernet’s chronological ordering of Husserl’s manuscripts into four groups. The third group, dated between 1907 and 1909, is characterized, according to Bernet, by both the introduction of absolute consciousness and the application of the Schema to this absolute consciousness. The fourth group, written between September of 1909 and end of 1911, features the criticism of the Schema. I am claiming that the third group is already a criticism of the Schema, though a first step of such criticism. Cf. Brough (1972, pp. 311–324). The fourth group constitutes the beginning of the second step of criticism, which is then deepened in the Bernnau manuscripts. Thus, I see more continuity between the two works than does Kortooms (2002, pp. 116–117).
„schließlich geht die Rede von Auffassung in alle Sphäre hinein, wo irgendeine Gegenständlichkeit […] vorliegt, und sich nun ein fundiertes Gegenstandsbewusstsein […] darauf gründet“ (Hua XXXIII, p. 175).
Cf. Hua XXXIII, p. 176. The locus classicus for the structure of intentional modification is, of course, Ideas I (§99, §104, §107, §111, etc.).
See Taguchi (2006, Kapitel 6) for an excellent discussion of the philosophical significance of Husserl’s notion of intentional modification. What is especially relevant for our purpose is his critique of the “production model.” This model insists one-sidedly on the radical heterogeneity of the constitutive source (Urmodus) and the constituted unity (Modifikate), such that the former is understood as an “Überinstanz” standing over and above the latter. Taguchi insists, against this production model, on the self-insertion of the constitutive source into the series of the constituted modifications. As a result of this conception, Taguchi speaks of the “self-transcendence” of the constitutive source (2006, p. 177). By contrasting the model of intentional modification with the Schema, my analysis highlights a different aspect of intentional modification. There is nevertheless a convergence of result, especially concerning the self-transcendence of the constitutive source. See the comparison with Sartre in Sect. 5.
Cf. Hua XXXIII, pp. 58, 81, 142–150, 175–180, 220, 238–240. This viewpoint is retained in his latest time-analysis. Cf. HuaMat VIII, pp. 6–9, 127–132. This viewpoint is already present in the later text of Hua X, e.g., in Text No. 50 (from 1909), part of which is integrated by Edith Stein into §11 of the lectures. See also Appendix I. Compared to the discussion in the Bernau manuscripts, however, these earlier texts do not present the viewpoint of intentional modification as an alternative to the Schema.
As for primal impression, it may be characterized as “really immanent,” but only in the sense of unmodified givenness (Hua XXXIII, p. 178), which must be distinguished from the proper sense of immanence as absolute self-givenness. As Boehm (1968, pp. 146–163) and Brough (2008) have noted, the notion of immanence (as discussed in Ideas I) is ambiguous between the sense of absolute self-givenness and the sense of real containment—an ambiguity Husserl himself acknowledged as such in the 1907 lectures The Idea of Phenomenology. Primal impression is immanent in neither of these senses. Not in the first sense, because absolute self-givenness is an accomplishment of evidence, i.e., of intentional constitution (Hua XVII, pp. 289–295), while primal impression is a factical condition of intentional constitution and not itself constituted. Not in the second sense, because primal impressions do not somehow exist “in” consciousness. They are not a succession of unitary data that exist independently of the fabric of intentional modification. Husserl says that “jene Kerndata (die Urempfindungsdaten) nicht einmal sind und daneben, und gar nicht notwendig, von einem dazutretenden Bewusstsein ‚in Funktion genommen‘, als das oder jenes ‚aufgefasst‘werden” (Hua XXXIII, p. 179). In other words, even here the Schema does not apply. Being lived (erlebt) but not perceived, the being of primal impression is entirely absorbed in the contexture of intentional modification into which it enters. Thus, it may well be characterized as the dimension of facticity, in the sense of a non-objective, pre-ontic condition for any constitution. Cf. Sokolowski (1970, pp. 197–201), Kortooms (2002, pp. 192–199), and de Warren (2009, p. 270). As the unmodified hyletic nucleus of the living present, it is the factical condition of any transcendence; as such it is not immanent in any usual sense of the term.
This implies that a retention is and is not in a given momentary crosscut. This sounds similar to Graham Priest’s “Spread Principle” in his dialetheian account of time, according to which the non-localizability of temporal instant explains the objective flow of time (2006, pp. 213–220). But there is a significant difference: I am not addressing real time but temporal experience. If my interpretation is committed to some form of dialecticism or dialetheism, it applies only to consciousness, but not to reality as constituted or revealed by consciousness. Sartre is, of course, committed to a dialecticism of consciousness. Husserl the logician is, on the other hand, no friend of dialetheism. What about Husserl the phenomenologist? The law of contradiction, we are told, has its genealogy, its passive genesis (Cf. Hua XI, pp. 103–104). Can we, then, take for granted that this law applies to the absolute flow, which is the deepest level of passive genesis itself?
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Acknowledgements
This research was funded by the China Scholarship Council. An earlier version of this paper was presented at the 50th Annual Meeting of the Husserl Circle. I am indebted to the participants in the meeting, especially Prof. Burt Hopkins, Prof. Tom Nenon, and Prof. Michael Roubach, for their remarks and criticisms. I am also indebted to Prof. Julia Jansen and Prof. Witold Plotka for discussions and for remarks on an earlier draft. The comments and suggestions of an anonymous reviewer offered invaluable help in strengtening the final version of the paper.
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Huang, D. A Mereological Perspective on Husserl’s Account of Time-Consciousness. Husserl Stud 36, 141–158 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10743-019-09260-8
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10743-019-09260-8