Abstract
Those familiar with contemporary continental philosophy know well the defenses Husserlians have offered of Husserl’s theory of inner time-consciousness against post-modernism’s deconstructive criticisms. As post-modernism gives way to Deleuzean post-structuralism, Deleuze’s Le bergsonisme has grown into the movement of Bergsonism. This movement, designed to present an alternative to phenomenology, challenges Husserlian phenomenology by criticizing the most “important… of all phenomenological problems.” Arguing that Husserl’s theory of time-consciousness detailed a linear succession of iterable instants in which the now internal to consciousness receives prejudicial favor, Bergsonism concludes that Husserl derived the past from the present and cannot account for the sense of the past, which differs in kind from the present. Consequently, everything on Husserl’s account remains present and his theory cannot accommodate for time’s passage. In this paper, I renew the Husserlian defense of Husserl’s theory of time-consciousness in response to the recent movement of Deleuzean Bergsonism. Section one presents Bergsonism’s notion of the past in general and its critique of Husserl’s theory of time-consciousness. Section two presents a rejoinder to Bergsonism’s critique of Husserl, questioning (1) its understanding of the living-present as linearly extended, (2) its conflation of the living-present with Husserl’s early schema-apprehension interpretation, and (3) its failure to grasp Husserl’s revised understanding of primary memory as a result of (2). In conclusion, I suggest that Husserl’s theory of retention might articulate a notion of the past more consistent with Bergson than Bergsonism itself.
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Notes
Brough (1993). Brough’s is the most representative of these works.
Deleuze (1991). References to this work will appear parenthetically as “B” and be cited according to the English translation.
Deleuze (1973, p. 111). Deleuze writes, specifically, “I imagined myself getting onto the back of an author and giving him a child which would be his and which would at the same time be a monster… My book on Bergson seems to me to be a classic case of this.”
Husserl (1966, pp. 334, 346) and Husserl (1991, pp. 276, 286). References to this text, Zur Phänomenologie des inneren Zeitbewußtseins (1893–1917), and to the English translation On the Phenomenology of the Consciousness of Internal Time (1893–1917), henceforth will appear parenthetically as “Hua X” and be cited according to the German pagination followed by the pagination of the English translation.
Brough (1993).
This paper concerns neither the cogency of Deleuze’s theory of time nor Deleuzean Bergsonism’s theory of time (as a reading of Bergson’s theory of time), for each matter would demand a separate treatment. Rather, this paper concerns itself only with the cogency of Deleuzean Bergsonism’s critique of Husserl’s theory of the living-present, particularly its moment of retention. In conclusion, however, I offer some suggestive remarks concerning a tension in Deleuzean Bergsonism’s reading of Bergson; still, I contain these remarks to a discussion of how my defense of Husserl’s theory of retention against Bergsonism sheds light on a similarity between Bergson and Husserl.
Crocker (2004, p. 44).
Ibid., pp. 44–47.
Wood (1989, p. 94).
Bergson (2001, p. 100).
Ibid., pp. 100–101.
Bergson (1994). References to this text will appear parenthetically as “MM.”
Cf. Lawlor (1998, pp. 15–34, 24).
Here, of course, it will make sense to differentiate between memory, recollection and retention, to use Husserl’s terms. The mode of focusing in the first instance discussed above concerns memory, the mode of focusing in the second instance above concerns retention, and the difference between them concerns the temporal index of the experience. But the difference between memory and retention with respect to temporal indexing does not suffice to distinguish recollection from retention, for recollection amounts to a searching in the past for some experience relevant to the present. As such, an act of recollection does not change the temporal index from present to past. Hence, recollection resembles retention more so than memory and a fuller account of the difference between recollection and retention must focus on a distinction between recollection and perception. As this issue goes beyond the scope of the present essay, I defer its discussion for another time.
May (2005, p. 51).
Al-Saji (2004, pp. 203–239, 210).
Crocker (2004, p. 47).
Cf. Deleuze (1990, p. 165). References to this text (The Logic of Sense ) will appear parenthetically as “LS” and be cited according to the English translation. These three movements that I have divided into (a), (b) and (c)—where the (a) and (b) mark psychological time and (c) marks ontological time and the past in general—occur under different terms in this earlier work of Deleuze’s. In LS, the terms “Chronos” and “Aion” apply to psychological and ontological time, respectively. Of their difference, Deleuze writes, “Whereas Chronos expresses the action of bodies and the creation of corporeal qualities, Aion is the locus of incorporeal events, and of the attributes which are distinct from qualities. Whereas Chronos was inseparable from the bodies which fill it out entirely as causes and matter, Aion is populated by effects which haunt it without ever filling it up. Whereas Chronos was limited and infinite, Aion is unlimited, the way that the future and the past are unlimited, and finite like the instant. … Always already passed and eternally yet to come, Aion is the eternal truth of time: pure empty form of time, which has freed itself of it is present corporeal content…”
Cf., Lawlor (2003, p. 76).
May (2005, p. 47).
Cf. Lorraine (2003, p. 35).
Crocker (2004, p. 46).
Ibid., p. 47.
Al-Saji (2004, p. 208).
Lawlor (2003, pp. ix, 11, 24).
Al-Saji (2004, p. 204).
Brough (1993, p. 512).
Al-Saji (2004, p. 204).
Crocker (2004, p. 27). For a view that refutes the resemblance that someone like Crocker sees between Husserl and Augustine on time-consciousness, see my, “On the Mind’s Pronouncement of Time: Aristotle, Augustine, and Husserl on Time-consciousness,” Proceedings of the ACPA, 78 (2005): 247–262. There, I argue against the traditional readings of Augustine’s theory of time as a historical anticipation of Husserl’s theory of time-consciousness, basing my claims on the improvements Husserl makes to his theory of time between the years 1907 and 1911 (a piece that is, again, greatly indebted to my readings of John Brough’s work).
Cf. Brough (1991).
Ibid., xxlviii.
Zahavi (1999, pp. 64ff).
Brough (1991, p. xxlvii).
Brough (1991, p. 522).
Ibid., p. 522.
Husserl (2001, p. 400).
Cf. Husserl (1966, Appendix III). This is entitled “The Nexus of Intentions of Perception and Memory” and dated around 1909/1910 by Rudolf Bernet.
For Husserl, the retentional moment of the living present does not turn to cognize the self’s past states in objectifying act (as memory represents the past); rather, it functions as “a momentary consciousness of the elapsed phase and… a foundation for the retention of the next phase…,” and thus “is conscious of the preceding phase without making it into an object” (HUA X 123). Interestingly, Rudolf Bernet (who I think still would believe it more philosophically informative to emphasize the differences rather than similarities between Bergson and Husserl) recently has produced remarks on the relation between Bergson and Husserl that seemingly support this claim that each thinker believes that we “perceive” the past and that such “perception” of the past constitutes the founding conditions for memory and recollection—although Bernet writes of this matter in a radically different context than the one I have discussed in this essay. Bernet (2005, pp. 55–76, 61).
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Kelly, M.R. Husserl, Deleuzean Bergsonism and the Sense of the Past in General. Husserl Stud 24, 15–30 (2008). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10743-007-9031-1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10743-007-9031-1