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The act of forgetting: Husserl on the constitution of the absent past

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Abstract

I advance a phenomenology of forgetting based on Husserl’s accounts of time-consciousness and passive synthesis. This theory of forgetting is crucial for understanding the transcendental constitution of the past. I argue that without forgetting, neither memory nor retention suffice for a consciousness of the past as past, since both are irreducibly connected to the Living Present. After an initial survey of the challenges that confront a phenomenology of forgetting (i.e. the “forgotten” is defined by its lack of phenomenality), I provide a descriptive analysis of forgetting as a complex process that integrates an accomplishment of retention that Husserl called “temporal contraction” with an accomplishment of passive synthesis that Husserl called “affective fusion.” Temporal contraction is the accomplishment that creates a qualitative (not quantitative) distinction between near-retentions and far-retentions. Affective fusion enables us to provide a positive (not privative) phenomenological description of the withdrawal of egoic investment in intentional experiences. Taken together, these two syntheses generate a double concealment in which consciousness both forgets its object and forgets that it has forgotten it, thereby constituting it as part of the truly absent past.

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Notes

  1. Husserl (2001b, p. 201 [Hua XI pp. 153–154]). I will use English translations of Husserl’s works wherever possible and add the corresponding Husserliana edition page numbers in square brackets.

  2. Husserl did make sleep a theme of phenomenology as a “limit phenomenon”: Husserl (2013, pp. 26–46).

  3. Granel (1968) quoted in Bégout (2001, p. 211).

  4. On the connection of forgetting, memory, and the crisis, see: Buckley (1992, pp. 80–92).

  5. Bernet (1983); Boehm (1975); Brough (1975); Sokolowski (1974, pp. 141–158).

  6. Husserl (1991, pp. 55–61 [ Hua X pp. 53–59]).

  7. Deleuze (1994, p. 80). I am admittedly co-opting this statement from Deleuze for my own purposes, but to offer some defence of my appropriation here, see Deleuze’s analysis of the pure past in Bergson: Deleuze (1991, pp. 56–62).

  8. Husserl (1991, p. 31 [Hua X p. 29]).

  9. Husserl (1991, pp. 29–31, 78 [Hua X pp. 27–29, 74]).

  10. Husserl coined the terms Längsintentionalität (horizontal intentionality) and Querintentionalität (transverse intentionality) to describe the two orientations of retention. Husserl (1991, pp. 86–87 [Hua X pp. 81–82]).

  11. I borrow the imagery of “encasement” (emboîtement) from Duval (1990, pp. 49–51).

  12. See Brough, (1972 pp. 318–319).

  13. Husserl (1991, p. 28 [Hua X p. 26]). Brough translates “Zusammengerücktheit” as “compression.”

  14. Husserl (1991, p. 142 [Hua X pp. 137–138]). Kortooms captures this visually with a wonderfully precise diagram. See Kortooms (2002, p. 172).

  15. Rodemeyer offers a much richer image to make this subtle process more intuitive. She describes it in terms of the mise en abîme effect produced by two mirrors facing each other: “Each image is contained within the next into infinity, and yet, each image is distinguishable in itself while relying upon the whole for its existence. Spatially, these two mirrors do not ‘move away’ from each other, and yet their ‘activity’ of reflection causes their images to become less and less clear.” Rodemeyer (2006, p. 90).

  16. Husserl (1991, pp. 377–378 [Hua X p. 367]).

  17. Husserl (2001a, p. 69).

  18. Husserl (2001a, p. 72). My translation and emphasis.

  19. For Husserl’s description of egoity as consisting solely in a wakeful style of carrying out intentional comportments, see Husserl (1974, p. 363).

  20. Husserl (2001b, p. 197 [Hua XI pp. 149–150]).

  21. Husserl (2001b, p. 203 [Hua XI pp. 155–156]).

  22. Husserl (2001b, p. 67 [Hua XI p. 122]).

  23. Husserl (2001b, p. 220 [Hua XI p. 171]).

  24. Husserl (2001b, p. 220 [Hua XI p. 171]).

  25. Husserl (2001b, p. 532 [Hua XI p. 426]).

  26. Husserl (2001b, pp. 526–527 [Hua XI p. 422]). My emphasis.

  27. Casey expresses this eloquently, though he does not tie the doubleness of forgetting to time-consciousness and affectivity specifically, but rather to an inherent complexity or pluriformity of forgetting which modern philosophy has “forgotten” (1992, 285–288, 303–304). For an account of the Greek roots of the doubleness of forgetting, and the German interpretation of those Greek roots, see Chrétien (2002, pp. 1–40). Chrétien does not draw upon Husserl but Heidegger for his discussion of original forgetting—which in Heidegger is not a failure of memory, but a condition of possibility of both memory and repetition (2002, p. 32). The most salient point of contact between our Husserlian analyses in this essay and Heidegger’s own account of the past is facticity (rather than, say, Heidegger’s account of how philosophers have forgotten to pose the question concerning the meaning of being). One always comes to oneself as already existing in the world, before being able to account for how one has gotten here; Heidegger’s description of Dasein’s facticity concerns a form of the past that Dasein does not explicitly represent to itself, but a past that it is. Heidegger (1962, 373–376, 388–389); see also Richardson (1963, pp. 85–90).

  28. Husserl calls affection a “function of contrast” (2001, p. 197 [Hua XI p. 149]).

  29. Husserl (2001, p. 217 [Hua XI p. 168]).

  30. Tyman (1983), Biceaga (2010) and Kozyreva (2018) also characterize the liminal awareness of past experience as a kind of background, horizonal consciousness, though none explicitly distinguish the operations of time-consciousness and affectivity in this regard.

  31. Husserl (2001b, pp. 591–623 [Hua XI pp. 304–335]).

  32. Husserl (2001b, p. 220 [Hua XI p. 171]; see also p. 609 [Hua XI p. 321]).

  33. Husserl (2001b, p. 619 [Hua XI p. 331]).

  34. Husserl (2001b, pp. 218–219 [Hua XI p. 170]).

  35. Husserl (2001b, pp. 219–220 [Hua XI p. 171]).

  36. Husserl (2001b, pp. 220–221, 223 [Hua XI pp. 172, 174]).

  37. Husserl (2001b, p. 216 [Hua XI p. 167]).

  38. Bégout makes this clear (2001, pp. 33–38). See also Holenstein’s articulation of the distinction between “Urassoziation” and “Assoziation im gewöhnlichem Sinn”; Holenstein (1972, pp. 32–39).

  39. As Husserl sometimes maintained; see Husserl (1991, pp. 202–203 [Hua X pp. 195–196]) and Husserl (1977, pp. 324–325). The basic thought is that since absolute consciousness continues to constitute new impressional moments while one is remembering, the reproduced track of experience can never catch up to the impressional track of experience. I think this is right but offering a full defence and demonstration of the phenomenological virtues of this position would require its own lengthy treatment.

  40. Augustine (1961, pp. 222–223).

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  1. Department of Humanities & Languages, University of New Brunswick, Saint John, Hazen Hall, 100 Tucker Park Rd., Saint John, NB, E2L 4L5, Canada

    Patrick Eldridge

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Eldridge, P. The act of forgetting: Husserl on the constitution of the absent past. Cont Philos Rev 53, 401–417 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11007-020-09501-0

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