Beyond the mere present: Husserl on the temporality of human and animal consciousness

My aim in this paper is to reconstruct Edmund Husserl’s views on the differences between human and animal consciousness, with particular attention to the experience of temporality. In the first section, I situate the topic of animal consciousness in the broader context of Husserl’s philosophy. Whereas this connection has been often neglected, I argue that a phenomenological analysis of non-human subjectivities is not only justified, but also essential to the Husserlian project as a whole. In the second section, I introduce two notions Husserl resorts to when describing the essential difference between human and animal subjectivities, namely “strata of consciousness” and “person.” Drawing on textual evidence, I argue that Husserl does not simply see animals as excluded from the sphere of personhood. Rather, he draws a distinction between two modes of personal life, one of which is said to be unique to human adults. What holds these two modes apart, according to Husserl, is a subject’s relation to time. In the third section, I delve deeper into this topic, asking how we should understand Husserl’s claim that animals live in a “restricted temporality.” I argue that this has less to do with an inability to remember, imagine, or anticipate future events, and more with an inability to explore temporal horizons stretching before one’s birth or after one’s death. By contrast, humans gradually overcome these limitations during ontogeny, thanks to the practice of linguistic communication. This also has consequences for our capacity to engage in genuinely theoretical thought.


Introduction. A phenomenology of animal subjectivities?
For those who aim to understand the experience of other living beings, the phenomenological tradition might not seem like the most obvious place to look.On the one hand, those who are unfamiliar with the phenomenological movement generally regard it as an entirely introspective enterprise, unlikely to further our understanding of the human mind, and much less of animal consciousness-assuming there is such a thing. 1 If one were to endorse this position, any attempt to apply phenomenology to the study of other species would turn out to be hopeless: Surely, one cannot introspect one's way into the mind of a different subject, let alone into that of a different sort of subject.Phenomenologists, however, firmly reject the identification of their discipline with a form of introspection, and call attention to the role of eidetic variation and intuition in their analyses: Their methods and descriptions are concerned with the essential structures of phenomenality, not with idiosyncratic psychological processes. 2From this perspective, phenomenology appears as a powerful tool for elucidating key aspects of normal and pathological human experience, and much work has been done in recent decades to bring phenomenology into a mutually enlightening relationship with disciplines such as psychiatry and the cognitive sciences.Little thought, however, has been given to the question of how our ways of thinking, feeling, and perceiving might compare to those of non-human subjects.
There are, of course, good historical and methodological reasons for privileging a phenomenological investigation of our own experience over that of other species.From a historical point of view, it is worth recalling that in the founding text of the tradition, Husserl's Logical Investigations (1900-1901), phenomenology was originally presented as nothing more than descriptive psychology, and as a preparatory step to the theoretical researches of (human) psychology itself. 3Husserl came to regret this definition as early as 1903; yet, the damage had already been done. 4fter the publication of Ideas I (1913), many of those who had gathered around him rejected his "transcendental turn," refusing to engage with the broader, non-psychological dimension of his philosophical project. 5It is precisely within this broader context, however, that other species came to attract Husserl's attention.As far as methodology is concerned, on the other hand, one could rightly argue that other living beings are always disclosed to us as objects for our consciousness.In this sense, 1 See, e.g., criticism by John Searle, Thomas Metzinger, and Daniel Dennett, discussed in Gallagher and  Zahavi (2008, pp. 3, 22). 2 In the words of Gallagher and Zahavi, "an account of subjective experience" should be distinguished from "a subjective account of experience" (2008, p. 21).Phenomenologists, moreover, have always stressed the need to overcome the naïve metaphysical picture that sees consciousness as a "box," with phenomena located inside the mind and the world existing outside: see, e.g., § 23 of the Second Logical Investigation (Husserl 2001, p. 275), but also Gallagher and Zahavi (2008, pp.21-23). 3See, e.g., Husserl (2001, p. 176): "Phenomenology is descriptive psychology.Epistemological criticism is therefore in essence psychology, or at least only capable of being built on a psychological basis." 4 See Dermot Moran's introduction to Husserl (2001, pp.xxxiv-xxxviii). 5Similarly, contemporary attempts to bring phenomenology into dialogue with the natural sciences often appeal to a bracketing of its transcendental dimension.What we are left with, however, is not phenomenology as a genuinely philosophical enterprise, but rather a "phenomenological psychology" carried out within the natural attitude: see, e.g., Zahavi (2004, pp.338-340).
an analysis of the structures of our own experience is a necessary precondition for an epistemologically sound investigation of any other aspect of reality, including the study of other organisms.
Acknowledging this historical and methodological precedence, however, should not lead to set the issue of animal consciousness aside indefinitely, especially if one is committed to the overarching goal of the phenomenological tradition-a transcendental clarification of knowledge, objectivity, and truth, beginning with an analysis of the structures of consciousness and subjective experience.Indeed, already by the time of the Second Edition of the Logical Investigations (1913), Husserl came to regard the analyses offered in his first major work as being true of humans and animals alike-and, at the same time, as being directly concerned with neither: Phenomenological assertions on thought and intuition, on signifying intentions and fulfillments and so on, say nothing about humans and animals, about animated beings in this factual world, rather they are about that which a priori belongs to these lived experiences, by virtue of their pure species grasped in intuition. 6 one wants to avoid the pitfalls of psychologism, and of relativism as a whole, phenomenological inquiries cannot be restricted to an understanding of human subjectivity-rather, we might say, their results must hold true for men, animals, angels, and gods alike. 7Husserl's aim is to spell out the structures of consciousness and of lived experience in a way that has an a priori and universal validity, over and above a preoccupation with concrete empirical species.
A step forward in this anti-anthropocentric direction is carried out in the second section of Husserl's Ideas II, whose aim is to describe the rules governing the constitution of animal or animated nature (animalische Natur).Throughout the section, the German terms animalisch and Animal are taken to designate not just humans, but other living beings as well. 8What Husserl offers is here an analysis of the essential character of "psychic reality," as opposed to mere inanimate nature.Against this background, Husserl undertakes a study of the way we experience our bodies, as well as of the way such bodies function in allowing us to perceive material objects and other living beings.What we find here is therefore a survey of the features shared by all conscious subjects, human and non-human, stemming from their common nature as embodied beings. 9To give a brief overview, every Animal is said to have a material body (Körper), which is also a lived body (Leib); through its mediation, subjects are placed in a causal as well as intentional relation to their surroundings.The body acts as a zero-point of orientation in space, and as the bearer of sensations of various kinds (visual, tactile, kinesthetic, of pleasure/pain, and so on); every Animal has power over its movement (Ich kann) and is the subject of a series of experiences (or "acts") temporally linked to one another, in the form of a stream.It is only through the body that consciousness gains access to a surrounding world, making use of the regularities between its kinestheses and other information provided by sensibility to give a coherent organization to what would otherwise be a chaos of sensations.
Once he acknowledges the crucial role played by the living body in constitutive processes, however, Husserl is faced with a new problem.If it is true that human and animal consciousness share a necessary relation to a material body, there are still differences in the specific ways in which each body guides, and sets boundaries on, the way we experience the world.Through its senses and practical organs, every species has access only to a limited range of "hyletic data," the raw sensuous material on which our intentional experiences are built.Humans are no exception.As Husserl remarks, no species can claim to have access to an "optimal experience," that is to say, one in which all things of the world would appear in perfect clarity, with all their determinations lying in plain sight. 10Our embodied nature, we might say, always brings with it a sort of partiality.It is precisely for this reason that entering a communication with other species can enrich our world, making us indirectly aware of elements we had not yet perceived, or of things we might in principle never be able to perceive. 11Real being," as Husserl writes in 1921, is nothing but "an index for consciousness, for every existing monadic consciousness, an index for possible development"12 ; "the world can only be in so far as it develops itself, in so far as the absolute subjectivity develops itself."13 From the perspective of transcendental phenomenology, the world 9 For this sphere, Depraz (1995) proposes the term "transcendental animality" (animalité transcendantale).For a more extensive treatment of this point, see, e.g., San Martín and Peñaranda (2001, pp.355-362).Just what living beings can be considered subjects of a life of consciousness from a Husserlian perspective is a difficult question. Grnted that the distinction between "lower" and "higher" animals is in itself a phenomenological problem (cf.Bailey 2011), Husserl certainly takes some "lower" organisms to have an experiential life that falls within the scope of phenomenological analyses (see the jellyfish example in Husserl 1973a, pp.112-119).On some rare occasions, he even goes as far as to suggest that unicellular organisms should be seen as embodied and as poles of egological acts (cf., e.g., Husserl  1973b, p. 173).Nonetheless, he never seems to have reached a definitive position on the matter: in a late manuscript from 1936, for example, he reaffirms that "lower" animals and plants pose the most difficult problems to phenomenologists (cf.Ms. K III 18, p. 20a; cited in Di Martino 2013, p. 24).On this topic, see also Marosan (2022).10 Cf. Husserl (1973a, p. 135).
does not exist "in itself," but only as part of an intentional correlation, as that which is brought to manifestation in the lived experiences of a totality of conscious beings.As consciousness develops, as different sorts of subjects make their appearance in this world-and perhaps it might not be a stretch to think of this "appearance" or "development" in evolutionary terms-the world itself acquires new determinations.In this light, an inquiry into the life of consciousness of other species becomes a necessary task for phenomenology.Failing to take into account the experiential worlds of nonhuman animals, Husserl remarks, would leave a considerable field of indefiniteness at the core of our understanding of reality. 14oreover, another concern seems to call for a careful study of animal life: If our species cannot be said to represent the absolute norm for constitution, to what extent can phenomenological insights (which always derive from our own experience) describe consciousness in general, rather than our specific ways of experiencing?To what extent are we justified in applying these assertions to subjects whose bodily structures are very different from our own?Such questions require us to take a closer look at other organisms and call for careful methodological considerations, aware of the risks and also of the necessity of anthropomorphism.Indeed, there is no other way for us to encounter other species than starting from our own (human) embodied perspective.In this sense, anthropomorphism serves as an essential structure of our experience, and, as such, it can never be fully surpassed. 15This is not to say, however, that our empathic understanding of other animals cannot be refined: As we gain knowledge of their bodies, behaviors, and individual histories, we become progressively more familiar with them and with the elements that make up their experiential worlds.
We might speak of a feedback process here, or maybe of a hermeneutical circle.On the one hand, we need to observe other species to discern which structures are exclusive to our consciousness and our mode of embodied being; on the other, we need to recognize these specifically human structures in order to approach animals on their own terms, without projecting upon them our own ways of experiencing.
Several interesting remarks scattered across Husserl's research manuscripts, especially those in which he is concerned with the notion of "normality," and with the question of how a single shared world can emerge from the perspectives of many different subjects, pave the way for this kind of inquiry. 16As early as 1921, Husserl began to devise a methodology, that of Abbau and Aufbau, which aimed to combine phenomenological analyses with empirical clues coming from the natural sciences, with the purpose of reconstructing the different experiential worlds of other organisms. 17his vast research project, I believe, has not yet received sufficient attention from phenomenologists. 18In what follows, however, I will not enter the details of Husserl's methodology; rather, I will focus on some of his broader reflections concerning the essential differences between our own consciousness and that of other species.The starting point will be the notion of "strata" of consciousness, first sketched in Ideas II.I will then try to shed some light on it by drawing on the 1925 Phenomenological Psychology lectures and on Husserl's later writings on the topic of intersubjectivity, asking whether a "personal stratum" can be said to set humans apart from other animals.What I hope to have shown in this section is that a phenomenology of animal subjectivities, although perhaps counterintuitive at first, constitutes an integral part of the Husserlian project.

"Strata" of consciousness and the question of personhood
We have mentioned that other organisms always appear as objects for our consciousness.According to Husserl's theory of empathy, when something bearing a resemblance to our physical body manifests itself in our perceptual field, a kind of transposition of sense takes place, by virtue of which we apprehend it as not just another material object, but as another lived body endowed with subjectivity. 19In other words, we transpose on it those same features we highlighted in our previous discussion of animal nature: We see it as a pole of egological acts, as the bearer of a stream of consciousness in which experiences temporally flow into one another, and so on.This transposition, however, can only have a limited scope, for we also immediately recognize that not all subjectivities are equal: It is one thing to recognize an object of my perceptual field as another experiencing subject; it is quite another to ascribe the same sort of experiences that make up my stream of consciousness to it.Is there any way to express these differences among different kinds of subjectivity in phenomenological terms?
Husserl first confronts this issue in a brief and partly puzzling passage of his Ideas II ( § 32).The first section of this book analyzes the constitution of material nature, 18 The task of employing a Husserlian methodology for a systematic reconstruction of the differences existing among animal species must be distinguished from that of delivering a historico-philosophical reconstruction of Husserl's views on the anthropological difference.While the former path appears largely untrodden, many excellent studies have already addressed the latter topic, and will form the basis for the following discussion.Among the contributions cited in the next pages, De Palma (2011), Di Martino  (2014), and Vergani (2021) offer what perhaps is the most comprehensive treatment of the issue of animal consciousness in Husserl.Other studies certainly worth mentioning are Depraz (1995), San Martín  and Peñaranda (2001), Lotz (2006), Painter (2007), Bailey (2013), Heinämaa (2014), and Ciocan (2017).Toulemont (1962, pp.79-82, 192-198) remains an invaluable source for those wishing to find their way around the various Husserlian manuscripts devoted to these topics. 19This was already true for the early sketches of Husserl's theory of empathy, which can be found in § § 43-47 of Ideas II (Husserl 1989, pp.170-180).A more refined account is offered in the Fifth Cartesian Meditation, as well as in the Intersubjectivity volumes I am here discussing (Husserl 1973a, b).How strong must the resemblance be for empathy to be possible at all?Not much, at least according to the same text in which Husserl introduces the methodology of Abbau: All it takes is "an analogy with a skin sensitivity and with movements of reaction" (Husserl 1973a, p. 118).On this topic, see also Marbach (2018, pp.144-145).
that is, the way things in the physical world reveal themselves to our consciousness.The topic of the second section, as we have seen, is animated nature, or the realm of psychic or ensouled things-plants, animals, and humans.In the introductory remarks to this second section, which list a series of differences between material and psychic reality, Husserl points out that material things can always be broken down into multiple parts, while the soul or psyche "has no places, no pieces.It is absolutely not a fragmentable unity." 20Looking back to the ancient doctrines of the "parts of the soul," however, Husserl acknowledges the necessity of introducing a "certain partition" even on the level of living beings, namely a distinction between Seelenschichten, "strata in the soul, corresponding to strata of consciousness." 21A distinction between living things and mere material objects was already in place; now, within the realm of living beings, we are invited to distinguish between a soul which is "constantly sleeping"-a "subjectless psyche," 22 attributed to plants-and the kind of soul to which a psychic subject capable of active positioning belongs.The latter is said to belong to every Animal, human or beast.A brief annotation follows: "Another example is the soul of the brute animal, in which the stratum of theoretical thought in the pregnant sense is lacking, etc…" 23 After this, Husserl quickly moves on to other considerations, failing to provide a detailed characterization of the different "kinds" of soul or psychic life.One is then left wondering: What, exactly, are animals lacking?Is Husserl's conception of the "soul" of other beings Aristotelian through and through, as it might appear from this passage, or is there perhaps something innovative in his remarks about animalssomething that sets him apart from the previous tradition, as well as from later phenomenological reflections on animality?To answer these questions, I will now turn to Husserl's later writings, drawing upon his reflections on intersubjectivity from the years 1920s and '30s.
A particularly fruitful way of approaching the topic of the differences between human and non-human subjectivities, I believe, is through an analysis of Husserl's concept of Person.In Ideas II, the discussion of animated nature is followed by a third section about the spiritual world, which includes "the Ego as person or as member of the social world." 24The Ego as Person, Husserl writes, is the "subject of a surrounding world"-a world in which objects appear not merely qua physical, as parts of an "objective" nature, but as endowed with practical, aesthetic, and cultural values relating to our wants and needs, to our possibilities for action, and to the social environment we are immersed in. 25The soul or psyche (Seele) discussed in the section on animated nature was part of an objectivist picture of the world; it was consciousness as seen through the eyes of the natural scientist, that is to say, it was the object of the naturalistic attitude.The world of spirit (Geist), instead, only appears within the personalistic attitude-in other words, the attitude in which we naturally find ourselves 20 Husserl (1989, p. 141).
1 3 "when we live with one another, talk to one another, shake hands with one another in greeting, or are related to one another in love and aversion, in disposition and action, in discourse and discussion." 26n a much-cited text from the 1930s, animals, too, are said to have something like an Ego-structure, though, as Husserl remarks, "we still lack the proper terms to describe it." 27Looking back at the threefold distinction between material, animated, and spiritual nature, one might therefore ask: Is their Ego a personal Ego, as Husserl maintains in the case of the human being?In other words, are animals persons?
The topic does not cease to spark discussion among scholars.Throughout his reflections, Husserl comes back to this question multiple times, seemingly contradicting himself on more than one occasion.According to Lotz, for instance, "Husserl does think that animals lack the constitutive layer of personality and spirit [Geist]": Animals are psychic beings, but not spiritual ones, in the sense that they have no individual history and only manifest "typical" behavior. 28Di Martino follows Lotz in arguing that "what the self or the subjectivity belonging to animals lack is precisely this personal layer." 29A switch from the naturalistic attitude to the personalistic one, Ciocan maintains, reveals that while every Animal has an animated body, "we understand the human body precisely as a personal body, while animals cannot be understood in this way." 30Animals, it would seem, cannot be conceived within the personalistic attitude. 31Vergani adopts a more nuanced position, maintaining that "Husserl hesitates to extend the status of personhood to animals, continuously advancing towards and retreating from this frontier." 32inally, Bailey invites us to consider the possibility that there might be not just one, but two concepts of person in Husserl's thinking. 33In a more qualified sense of the term, personal life might only pertain to adult human beings, as it implies an engagement with historical and cultural values.In a larger and more fundamental sense, however, animals, too, might be persons, since they are "subjects of a surrounding world."Their relation to the surroundings is not merely causal-rather, it is motivational.In the case of spiritual beings, it is not simply what exists, but what the subject knows of, that guides its actions, thoughts, and feelings.This brings about, among other things, the possibility of errors and misjudgments.For instance, a subject might ignore a real threat, if it fails to recognize it as such, or it might flee in the face of a merely imagined danger.Husserl (1989, p. 192).
28 Lotz (2006, p. 196). 29Di Martino (2014, p. 61). 30Ciocan (2019, p. 7). 31Cf.Lotz (2006, p. 196). 32Vergani (2021, p. 67). 33Cf.Bailey (2013, p. 226): "La possibilité qu'il y ait non pas un, mais bien deux concepts de personne dans la pensée husserlienne." The key to solving this tension has been overlooked, and can be found, I will now argue, in Husserl's 1925 lectures on Phenomenological Psychology, and specifically in § 21 (Stufenbau des Seelischen).Here Husserl goes back to the notion of "strata" of the soul, already introduced in Ideas II, yet again emphasizing the necessity of distinguishing between a "psychic passivity" and a higher, "specifically spiritual" level, which covers the realm of acts "centered on the Ego." 34 This distinction, he remarks once again, "holds for animals (at least for the higher ones) as well as for human beings." 35Animals-at least the "higher" ones 36 -are therefore, without a doubt, spiritual beings, actively engaging their surrounding worlds.Nowhere does Husserl subscribe to the Cartesian notion of bête-machine, which sees animals as unminded creatures, blindly and passively tied to the dictates of their biological instincts. 37A difference, however, is still in place: "In human beings this higher level includes the entire personal life and, based upon it, the entire sociohistorical living and producing which transcend the single persons." 38What allows one to distinguish the specifically human way of being from that of other species has something to do with the temporality of our egological acts, with our ability to take a stance on our life as a whole and on the life of our community and species.
A crucial element with respect to previous discussions of this topic, moreover, is that at this point Husserl himself regrets that no satisfactory terminological distinction is available to make the difference between two modes of personal life readily apparent.He writes: Unfortunately we lack a most broad concept of 'person,' which is indispensable, one which includes also the higher animal life and which designates only a being which is active or affected in spontaneities pertaining to an I and as such an I has enduring I-properties. 39iley is therefore certainly right in invoking a distinction between two concepts of Person.Husserl (1962, p. 130 [99]): "Das gilt für Tiere (mindestens für die höheren) wie für den Menschen." 36The reason for this limitation, which will characterize the rest of our discussion, seems to be methodological: as Bailey (2011, p. 58) notes, "whereas Heidegger thought the essence of animal life should be uncovered by considering animals as remote from human life as possible, Husserl thought we should start with the familiar and proceed toward the unknown."Accordingly, many of Husserl's examples in this phase concern mammals, for example cats, dogs, lions, and monkeys.Only in his later years did Husserl try to move from a generic concept of animality to a more detailed description of different animal species, including less familiar ones, "pluralizing" the threshold that divides humans from other organisms.For a thorough reconstruction of this shift, see Vergani (2021). 37For a more detailed discussion of this point, see also De Palma (2011, pp.Husserl (1962, p. 130 [99]): "Bei dem Menschen befaßt diese höhere Stufe das ganze personale Leben und von da aus das gesamte über die einzelnen Personen hinausreichende gesellschaftlich-geschichtliche Leben und Leisten."Husserl (1962, p. 130 [99-100]): "Es fehlt leider ein allerweitester Begriff von Person, der unentbehrlich ist, der auch das höhere Tierleben umgreift und nur ein Wesen, das in ichlichen Spontaneitäten tätig ist oder affiziert wird und als ein solches Ich bleibende Ich-Eigenschaften hat, bezeichnet."necessity: It is only due to an insufficiency of language that Husserl appears at times to oscillate between two ways of thinking about animal subjectivities.If read in light of this passage, his earlier and later discussions of animal life appear quite coherent; he consistently attributes personhood to other species when he is discussing the wider sense of the term, and consistently excludes animals from the personal sphere when it comes to the second, more qualified, sense of the word.
What other species lack, in short, is not the personal (or spiritual) layer-rather, it is just one of these layers.The level of spirit should not be regarded as monolithic, but as internally differentiated.Moreover, it seems to me that animals can and must, beyond doubt, be conceived within the personalistic attitude, since the latter appears primarily related to the wider notion of Person.It is the attitude we ordinarily find ourselves in before the emergence of any theoretical interest, and in which everyday practical and communicative activities take place.Indeed, whenever Husserl discusses topics related to communication and sociality (including questions about the formation of so-called "personalities of a higher order"), he always takes his remarks to concern other species as well. 40One might also add, with Painter, that the personalistic attitude is precisely the one we share with animals, since the naturalistic one results from a kind of abstraction and objectifying thinking which seems unavailable to non-linguistic beings. 41ith this remark, however, we circled back to our first mention of the notion of "strata of the soul" in Ideas II.There, as we saw, the difference between humans and animals remained somewhat mysterious.There was no mention of a personal Ego-rather, the distinguishing feature of human subjectivity resided in a "theoretical stratum," whose nature was not clearly defined.We will now have to ask whether this stands in contrast with, or perhaps in addition to, what we saw in the 1925 Phenomenological Psychology lectures.What I will argue is that we can devise a tight relation between the experience of time and this theoretical layer, with linguistic communication acting as a mediating term.First, however, I will try to clear up a possible misunderstanding concerning Husserl's views on the temporality of animal consciousness.

Time and language
While discussing the distinction between two concepts of personal life in Husserl, we mentioned that humans differ from animals by way of their peculiar relation to time.According to Husserl, it seems, other species live in a "restricted temporality." 42e have yet to enquire, however, into the details of this restriction.In our case, for 40 See, e.g., Husserl (1962, p. 110; 1973b, pp.56, 181-183, 478).Painter (2007, p. 101).Husserl (1973b, p. 405): "In einer beschränkten Zeitlichkeit."instance, the present moment always appears surrounded by horizons of past and future we can freely explore through acts of recollection and anticipation.Can we say the same about other species?Can some non-human animals perform acts of imagination?Can they intuitively represent future goals?Or should we maybe maintain that all of their actions are performed "in the dark," in a continuous transition from instinct to satisfaction?Do other species, too, enjoy the freedom to distance themselves from their actual and immediate surroundings, in order to choose among different courses of action?
Husserl raises these and similar doubts in a text titled Welt und Wir (1934), one of the latest occasions in which he deals extensively with the topic of animal life.It is on this manuscript that recent discussions of animality in Husserl invariably draw.In a word, the issue seems to be whether other species have access to re-presentations (Vergegenwärtigungen)-the phenomenological term under which acts of memory, phantasy, and anticipation, as well as dreams, are collected.The general tendency is to interpret Husserl's questions as purely rhetorical.According to Di Martino, for instance, "for Husserl, the animal. . .does not possess 'authentic' recollections, nor does it have intuitive representations of phantasy." 43What non-human animals are left with, it seems, is a form of "primary recollection" 44 : At most, objects might appear to other species as "already familiar," with no indication of when or where they encountered them in the past.In the case of animals, thus, conscious life would appear to be restricted to the "living present": primal impression, retention, and protention. 45his interpretation, however, is far too hasty, as it tends to conflate Husserl's views with the position expressed by Heidegger in his 1929/30 lectures on the Fundamental Concepts of Metaphysics.Here, the distinguishing character of animal life is captured by the notion of Benommenheit-a state of stupefied "captivation," of "being driven from one drive to the other," 46 in which the possibility of adopting a reflective stance towards the present moment seems completely ruled out.Only humans, Heidegger maintains, can rise above captivation with everyday tasks and perform genuine action; other species, in contrast, merely behave in reaction to stimuli that make up their "disinhibiting ring," incapable of engaging with the environment outside of the limits imposed by their biological instincts. 47In an attempt to avoid the pitfalls of anthropomorphism, Heidegger lets "lower" animals guide his descriptions: His chief examples in these lectures are bees, lizards, snails.As Bailey notes, however, the socalled "higher" animals "never come back into the equation," an erasure that allows him to speak of an "abyss" separating human existence and animal life. 48Husserl (1973b, p. 184). 45The availability of a horizon of retentions and protentions accompanying the primal impression, on the other hand, is never put into question-otherwise, the whole edifice of constitution would crumble down: cf.Di Martino (2014, p. 63) and Vergani (2020, p. 74). 46 Heidegger (1995, p. 247). 47For a more detailed discussion of Heidegger's view of animals, see, e.g., Kuperus (2007) and Costa  (2002). 48 Bailey (2011, p. 52).
Husserl's account, I believe, is more nuanced.First, on more than one occasion he explicitly rejects the idea that the passive sphere exhausts the conscious life of other species in its entirety.Far from being blindly tied to their instincts, animals lead a spiritual life, freely performing acts "centered on their Ego."Moreover, those who feel tempted to interpret the questions of Welt und Wir as Husserl's final word on the topic of animal re-presentations, should also pay careful attention to its concluding paragraphs: Is such a crude distinction correct?How can we understand why the animal does not have proper memories, no intuitions repeating in the form of repeating perceptions with the capacity of the "over and over again," and so no constitution of existents in a temporal form of being? 49aiming that animals are unable to access a horizon of re-presentations, Husserl seems to acknowledge, would also amount to denying that they can constitute a world of objects displaying permanence in time.Although this might turn out to be accurate, at least in some cases, what could ever be the reasons for such a difference?As no answer is offered to these doubts, Husserl's questions remain far from being purely rhetorical.Rather, they must be read in the context of his other research manuscripts, in which his opinions undergo a constant process of redefinition.In a different series of notes dating from 1934, for instance, he presents a different view on the matter, asserting that other species experience the world as a unity of appearances in the present, but also "in a retentional and to some extent also intuitive past and future." 50he mention of intuitiveness hints at the possibility of an exploration, albeit limited, of past and future horizons.
"The man," Nietzsche wrote in the second of his Untimely Meditations (1874), "says 'I remember' and envies the animal, who at once forgets and for whom every moment really dies, sinks back into night and fog and is extinguished for ever." 51While Heidegger might have looked favorably at this depiction of animal life, I think we have good reasons to doubt that Husserl would have subscribed to Nietzsche's position.To be sure, he still views other species as living in a restricted temporality.This, however, does not necessarily amount to living in the mere present, in the sense of having limited access to one's own past and future experiences.Far more reasonable from both an exegetical and substantive perspective, I believe, is the idea that other animals live among those present-that is to say, in a world that is only shared with their contemporaries. 52In this respect, as we will see, they are more 49 Husserl (1973b, p. 184): "Ist das so als schroffe Scheidung richtig?Wie ist es verständlich zu machen, warum das Tier keine eigentliche Erinnerung, keine wiederholenden Anschauungen hat als wiederholende Wahrnehmungen und mit dem Vermögen des "immer wieder", eben damit keine Konstitution von Seienden in der Seinsform der Zeitlichkeit?"Emphasis added. 50 Husserl (2006, p. 210).Emphasis added. 51 Nietzsche (1997, p. 61). 52A discussion of scientific evidence concerning the extent to which different species are able to detach themselves from the present, e.g.recalling past events and planning future actions, would go beyond the scope of the present paper.For an overview, see Clayton and Dickinson (2010), Viera and Margolis (2019).similar to children, which Husserl equally excludes from the more restricted notion of personhood. 53he point here at stake is the ability to experience oneself as a member of a tradition, of an open-ended chain of generations extending endlessly in past and future directions. 54From a merely biological point of view, of course, every organism belongs to this chain; what sets adult human beings apart from other subjects, however, is an awareness of being part of a generative sequence.How, then, is this awareness acquired?How does one become a person in the strongest sense of the term?Husserl's answer, perhaps unsurprisingly, is: through language.
I mentioned above that objects in the spiritual world are endowed with practical, aesthetic, and cultural values.Some of these values simply correspond to what we would today call affordances in the Gibsonian sense: the possibilities for action tied to the bodily makeup of a specific organism.Other values, however, are cultural and historical: They refer to the meanings that other subjects bestowed upon a category of items.Just like the former set of values, historical determinations are "invisible": They are not part of an objectivist picture of the world.Unlike the former, however, they can only be "reactivated" by a subject who holds an appropriate body of knowledge.
It is here that communication and language enter the picture.From the moment we are born, we are users of objects and cultural formations devised by others.At first, however, our engagement with such practices is merely passive.In Husserl's example, we are unaware that the toys we play with and the fairy tales we listen to are part of a tradition; we have no awareness of the fact that they have been handed down to us over the course of generations. 55Only through countless communicative exchanges with those older than us do our experiential worlds gradually acquire their historical sense.As we grow up, we come to take that tradition upon ourselves; we become aware of it and accept the task of perpetuating it.As Steinbock points out, then, growing up and becoming a person means appropriating the historical elements that make up one's cultural world. 56hat about animals?Just like human children, their young go through a kind of "spiritual development," gradually learning how to make sense of their surrounding worlds.Such a development, however, does not lead them to an awareness of their historicity.It could hardly be otherwise, since other species, Husserl remarks, show no trace of historical becoming: Whereas the human world is "constantly evolving," "every animal generation in its present as a community repeats a specific surrounding world with the typicality that is proper to its species." 57Human life, too, follows 53 Cf.Husserl (1973b, p. 141). 54See, e.g., Husserl (1973b, p. 181). 55Cf.Steinbock (1995, p. 227).This appropriation, however, need not necessarily take the form of an acceptance of already-existing norms.On the contrary, a key element of personal life (in the narrow sense) is the possibility of rational critique and renewal of one's tradition (cf.Rotundo 2021, p. 353).In its most radical and comprehensive form, this critique becomes an absolute one, a critique of reason and a clarification of knowledge down to its phenomenological sources. 57Cf.Husserl (1973b, p. 180).
a general pattern that remains unchanged over time-across the centuries, humans invariably eat, sleep, form associations, and reproduce-but the concrete way in which these unchanging needs are met evolves over time: Some forms of human action are abandoned, some others arise all of a sudden or building upon previous achievements.Here, language also plays a pivotal role: Not only it allows new subjects to enter an already established cultural tradition, but it enables the creation of a tradition in the first place.Every subject endows the world with new spiritual determinations; however, it is only through communication-be it in oral or written form-that such determinations become intersubjectively available and survive the death of those who originated them. 58ith the mention of death, we finally reach what I take to be the crucial point in Husserl's discussions of personhood and temporality.Only through language, and through the tales of those older than me, I am able to realize that the world existed before I was born, and that it will keep on turning long after I am gone.Only through language can I come to appreciate birth and death as essential necessities for every living being.To the eyes of a human adult, then, the surrounding environment appears as part of a common world in the highest sense-a world shared not only with those who are perceptually present at a given moment, nor with the totality of one's contemporaries, but with an open-ended multiplicity of past, present, and future others, many of whom are "absent in their very essence." 59This and only this can be a world "for everyone," an objective world, not tied to a particular subject or historical community.
How does this relate to the question of the "theoretical stratum" mentioned in Ideas II?To put it briefly, it is only in a world so constituted that the practice of science, and of theoretical thought in the pregnant sense, becomes meaningful.The possibility of scientific judgments rests on an understanding of the historical and generative character of human existence, and of the natural world as something that persists through an enchainment of generations.Scientific laws aim to universal validity, both in space and in time; theoretical determinations and values that arise as the product of the scientific or naturalistic attitude are handed down from one generation to the next, and progressively refined in the process.Only persons in the narrow sense of the term can partake in these collective endeavors.
Just like the spiritual layer of consciousness, then, so too must the world as its correlate be conceived as internally differentiated, and its constitution as a process that occurs in multiple stages.This process, as I tried to show, is strictly tied to the exercise of communicative abilities.Through language, subjects gain "second-hand experience": As they inherit additional knowledge on the shared world, they gradually overcome the initial narrowness of their temporal horizons. 60They dig further and further into the past, gaining knowledge of events that happened before their birth, 58 Cultural determinations can then not only survive, but also accumulate modifications over time.In this regard, Husserl's reflections seem to point to what comparative psychologists would today call "ratchet effect": compare, e.g., Husserl's sixth appendix to the Crisis (On the Origin of Geometry : Husserl 1970,  pp.353-378) with Tennie, Call, and Tomasello (2009). 59Cf.Heinämaa (2014, p. 138). 60Cf.Husserl (1973b, pp.222-224).
1 3 and speculate on the future, going so far as to consider the possibility of death-not just their own, but that of their own species. 61recisely this kind of experience seems precluded to non-human beings.Animals might well be capable of remembering every moment of their lives, of imagining, and of sharing information about things of the world with other individuals.In the absence of a powerful linguistic medium, however, what non-human subjects cannot explore or reconstruct is the temporal horizon that stretches before their birth and after their death.That task, Husserl seems to suggest, is open to our theoretical capacities alone.