International Phenomenological Society

Time and Spatial Models: Temporality in Husserl

Author(s): Mary Jeanne Larrabee
Source: Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, Vol. 49, No. 3 (Mar., 1989), pp. 373-392
Published by: International Phenomenological Society
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Philosophy and Phenomenological Research

Vol. XLIX, No. 3, March i989

and
Time
Spatial
in
Temporality
MARY

JEANNE

Models:
Husserl

LARRABEE

DePaul University

Recent treatments of time in Husserl offer accounts of the most fundamental aspects of what Husserl terms inner time-consciousness, the
immanent temporality that is the primal constitutive source of human
experience.' A major difficulty with these expansions upon the outlines of
Husserl's time theory is that they continue to use theoretically reductionist models for time, primarily that of "flux" or "flow," which are drawn
from physical space and objects extended through such space. Discussion focuses on "temporal Objects," particularly conscious or mental
processes that are "spread" or extended through immanent time, and on
those characteristics of consciousness that make such spreading possible.
The rationale for such an approach, of course, is obvious: the texts of
Husserl himself repeatedly refer to immanent time as a "flux" or flow and

See, for example, Izchak Miller, Husserl, Perception and Temporal Awareness (Cambridge: Massachusetts Institute of Technology Press, i984). My own interpretation of
Husserl's discussions on inner time-consciousness begins with the critical piece by John
Brough, "The Emergence of an Absolute Consciousness in Husserl's Early Writings on
Time-Consciousness,"
Man and World 5 (1972):
298-326; reprintedin Husserl: Expositions and Appraisals (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame, 1977), ed. F. A. Elliston
and P. McCormick, pp. 83-ioo. There are also discussions of Husserl's time theory as it
developed subsequent to the period covered by Brough to be found in Robert Sokolowski's Husserlian Meditations. How Words Present Things (Evanston: Northwestern
UniversityPress,1974), chapter6.
It must be understood that consciousness is used by Husserl to encompass a wide
variety of acts, activities, and actions by the "subject," as well as occurrences and happenings within the subject, including passive, automatic, and anonymous ones.
NOTE: Partial support for work on this essay was received from DePaul University's
College of Liberal Arts and Sciences Faculty Summer Research Grant Program.
The German term, 'Fluss', is often translated as 'flux', a somewhat appropriate cognate. I
have opted for 'flow' because it fits the spatial modeling of Husserl's descriptions. 'Flux'
is more enigmatic, and thus is acceptable for what it labels - and I will shift to it later in
my text when discussing the deepest levels of immanent temporality.

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IN HUSSERL

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373

thus call up the image of the river moving along with its contents comprised in that flowing, gaining their fluent qualities from it.
In itself there is nothing inherently wrong with using a spatial model to
open out an interpretation of temporal flow. But interpretations using
such a metaphor have many limitations, often unrecognized, and they can
lead, at least partially, to a mistaken understanding of Husserl's theory of
time. The focus of the recent treatments, for instance, gives some account
of the flowing of temporal Objects, but fails to capture the central aspect
of processing itself. To clarify this point I will first investigate the two-fold
description of inner time-consciousness that gives the primary spatial
model of flow - in fact, of two intersecting flows. Next I will consider the
manner in which dimensions of immanent temporality are overlooked or
even lost in the spatial model. Finally, I will propose a variation on this
spatial model so that we can gain access to the complexity of Husserl's
theory of immanent temporality and provide an access to an adequate
explanation of the source of process as processing. An alternative model
must deliver a characterization of consciousness which is sufficiently
multi-dimensional that it indicates conscious life as filling out a "space"
incapable of being described by means of the narrowly limiting fourdimensionality of ordinary human experience of the world. This model
might also cut through the mechanistic model of flow to a more dynamic
metaphor of a decentered flowing that itself energizes the processing of
consciousness.

What are the two aspects of inner time-consciousness that give the primary spatial model of intersecting flows? A brief investigation of these
aspects will demonstrate that the usual two-dimensional spatial model
given by Husserlian interpreters flattens the flows to something like two
tapes moving at right angles to one another. The theory of inner time-consciousness proposed by Husserl posits a temporalizing consciousness that
constitutes both "external"-worldly time (the time of clocks) and the
"internal" or inner time of consciousness and its mental or conscious processes (Erlebnisse, also termed 'lived experiences'). The three levels of this
constitutive nexus are (a) worldly object time, (b) inner time of immanent
"temporal Objects" (conscious processes such as acts and sensations),3

We must remain very clear here what is meant by "Object," a translation of the German
Object;it is an all-purpose term for Husserl and thus includes as only one type the inner
time Objects, as another the "objektiv"temporal objects (Gegenstdnde)within the
world. The immanent time Objects in Husserl's discussion are clearly Erlebnisse(acts
and hyletic data).

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MARY JEANNE LARRABEE

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and (c) absolute consciousness of time itself.4 Objects, things, events

within level (a) are constituted temporally, "given" within the temporality of clock time, by the immanent temporality of level (b) Erlebnisse,
while the latter are temporalized by the Absolute of level (c).
The more complex and thus more textually accurate descriptions of
Husserl's constituting temporality speak, not of one flow, but of a double
flow within temporalization itself, as Husserl calls it. Each flow is marked,
as it were, with a specific constitutive task or intentionality: "like two
aspects of one and the same thing, there are in the unique flux of consciousness two inseparable, homogeneous intentionalities which require
one another and are interwoven with one another." The double flow is
that of (b) inner or immanent time, on one hand, and that of (c) inner timeconsciousness, on the other, that is, the consciousness of inner time; both
come under the title of immanent temporality, the temporality of conciousness itself: "By means of the one [intentionality], immanent time is
constituted, i.e., an Objective time, an authentic one in which there is
duration and alternation of that which endures. In the other
[intentionality] is constituted the quasi-temporal disposition of the phases
of the flux,. . . This prephenomenal, pre-immanent temporality is constituted intentionally as the form of temporally constitutive consciousness
and in the latter itself" (Hua IO, 83 [PITC io9]).5 In the imagining or
model-based expressing of inner time, we will say that the continuum of
inner time (b) flows horizontally, and inner time-consciousness (c) vertically. They intersect, as it were, at the impressional consciousness "in" the
Edmund Husserl, Zur Phanomenologie des inneren Zeitbewusstseins (1883-1917),
ed.
Rudolf Boehm (Husserliana io) (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, i966), section 34, p. 73;
The Phenomenology of Internal Time-Consciousness, trans. J. S. Churchill (Bloomington: Indiana University, 1950), p. 98. Pagination of the original i928 publication cited in
the margin of the Husserliana volume will be used, given after Hua Io, with the English
translation (when used) in brackets with PITC.
The differentiation of temporality (transcendental and immanent) into three levels is
treated both in the Time Lectures dated 1905 by their i928 editors, Edith Stein and M.
Heidegger, and in the supporting texts given in the Husserliana edition by Boehm and
dated about 1907. The Time Lectures (1928), however, is a composite text, with what
appear to be post-1905 discussions imported into the lecture texts dated 1905, at least
some by Edith Stein in i9 i6-i8; see Boehm's Introduction to the Husserliana, vol. io.
Brough (in "Emergence") presents Husserl's time theory as it evolved from a model
based on perceptual apprehension (Auffassung) in 1901-1907
(what Brough calls the
schematic interpretation) to a theory emphasizing the Absolute Consciousness and
rejecting that model. This particular aspect of the shift is not questioned in my presentation, although it probably would have some pertinence in a full-scale development of an
alternative model.
This distinction is also made in the discussion of the unity of the flux; Hua Io, section 3 8,
77 [PITC I02].

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375

Now (of immanent time, not worldly objective time), giving us the primary spatial model of intersecting flows, moving like two tapes at right
angles.'
The description of these two flows is more complex, however, than
such a model might originally seem to represent. The flows are characterized by a "doubled intentionality" that encompasses (i) the horizontal
intentionalities running through the horizontal flow of inner time (b,
above) and (z) the vertical intentionalities running through the vertical
dimensions of inner time-consciousness (c, above).7 The horizontal intentionalities would appear to be those of the phases of inner time "through"
which the enduring Erlebnisse (here, the inner time Objects) pass as
enduring. These phases of inner time are generally called the inner time
continuum of past - Now - future, broken down by Husserl more
specifically into "time points": . . . just-just-past . . . just-past . . .
Now . . . just-coming. . . ; thus the image of a flow along the horizontal
line.8
The second aspect of immanent temporality provides the image of a
flow along a vertical line, intersecting the horizontal one at the Now (of
immanent time). The vertical intentionalities include the interconnections
among phases of the actually constituting-temporalizing consciousness,
phases lumped into three designations: retention [of the past], impressional consciousness [of the Now], and protention [of the future].9 Like

The model is already in difficulties here, for the impressional consciousness cannot accurately be described as "in the Now" nor "of' the Now, since impressional consciousness
effectively constitutes the Now in the sense of "nowness" of actual momentary Erlebnis.
In a sense that will be referred to later, however, impressional consciousness is the Now;
specifically, its very impressionality, its liveliness (Lebendigkeit, but also lively presence
Leibhaftigkeit), is its Nowness Jetzigkeit). My presentation of a spatial model for
time stems in part from an assessment of Miller, who adapts Husserl's diagrams from
Hua Io, z8 [PITC 49] and 93 [izi]; Husserl, Perception and Temporal Awareness, p.

The Time Lectures, section 39, speaks of this double intentionality in regard to retention,
its primary actualizing source; Hua 1O, 8o-8i [PITC io6].
The time points are, of course, not to be thought of as mathematical ideal points; see E.
Husserl, Phanomenologische Psychologie. Vorlesungen Sommersemester 1925,
ed.
Walter Biemel, Husserliana 9 (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, i968), p. Zoo; Phenomenological Psychology. Lectures, Summer Semester, 1925, trans. John Scanlon (The

Hague:MartinusNijhoff, 1977).
9 See E. Husserl, Ideen zu einer reinen Phdnomenologie und phanomenologischen Phi-

losophie, First Book, ed. W. Biemel, Husserliana 3 (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff,
1976), i99; first half volume translated as Collected Works, Vol. 2: Ideas pertaining to
a Pure Phenomenology and to a Phenomenological Philosophy, First Book. trans.
Frederick Kersten (The Hague: Martinus Nijhdff, i982), with German pagination given
in margins.

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MARY

JEANNE

LARRABEE

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the horizontal time-phases, however, these three vertical phases hide divisions; retentional consciousness hides the continuum of (r.i) retention [of
just-past], (r.z) retention of retention [of just-just-past], (r.3) retention of
retention of retention, etc.; protention hides a parallel differentiation.
The temporality modeled on the horizontal line yields the "fact" of
flow in consciousness' processes (here we will be unconcerned with the
time of the world's objects and events). Take, for instance, the specific act
of perceiving an apple on the table that I now walk past. This act begins in
a Now (of inner time) and continues through several Nows (I keep looking at it as I walk). Each Now-moment shades off into a "past" relative to
the new Now, a past we show as part of the inner time-continuum.'0 Eventually this particular perceiving ends and does not show up in a new Now.
This perceiving, then, is said to "extend" across the inner time continuum
and is thus identified as temporal. The identification as enduring or temporal is constituted on the basis of the act (or any conscious process,
Erlebnis) "transversing" or "moving across" this horizontal line of inner
time, a feature that phenomenological attending can note: "If I orient
myself on a sound, I enter attentively into 'transverse-intentionality' . . . ; then the enduring sound is present there, ever widening in its
duration" (Hua io, 8z [PITC io8]). Thus, transverse or horizontal intentionality accomplishes one aspect of the temporalization of the Erlebnisse

Husserl names the horizontal line in his diagrams a "series of Now-points," but these
technically could not be pictured on the same line since Nows do not co-exist. The spread
of an Erlebnis across several of these Now-points is re-modeled in my presentation
(which I do not claim is Husserl's, strictly speaking) as a spreading out to the left (for past
phases of the Erlebnis) and to the right (for future phases of the Erlebnis)of the Nowpoint. This use of the horizontal line, however, does reflect Husserl's discussions of the
"Quers-" intentionality that constitutes the temporal spread of Erlebnisse across the
inner time line. The English translation of the Time Lectures, I think, has caused a major
disservice to Husserlian scholarship by taking the terms 'Quersintentionalitdt' and
'Ldngsintentionalitdt' as reflecting the geographical image of latitude and longitude, thus
providing the rough equivalents, 'vertical' and 'horizontal'. But 'Quer' in particular has
various translations, one of which makes more sense for Husserl's own diagrams, that is,
'diagonal'. This "Quersintentionalitdt" constitutes the temporal duration of Erlebnisse
by the increasing modifications shown along the diagonal line of retentional
modifications. Look, for example, at Hua IO, 3 31: the diagram shows to where an Erlebnis, say X, occurs Now; in the next moment tI, X would be "at" t,? and thus modified by
retention', while in the third moment t, it would by "at" t,7 and thus modified by retention' of retention', etc. The diagonal line drawn from to through t,0 and t,0, etc.,
shows the intentional interconnections of each successive retentional modification of X,
giving it spread across a span of inner time (the latter not shown in Husserl's diagram).
My model gives only one Now on the horizontal line and locates it in the inner time continuum so that the temporal spread constituted by the diagonal intentionality is being
pictured on the horizontal in my model.

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377

of consciousness.
The vertical flow, in contrast, is the source of this temporalizing by providing consciousness its own awareness of its processes in their processing. Each moment of the horizontal time-flow has a corresponding consciousness of it "in" the vertical flow: impressional consciousness of each
Now, retentional of the past, and protentional of future. This point is
modeled by extending a line above the Now point for the protentional line
and below the Now for the retentional line; at the Now, the protentional
and the retentional line "meet" at a point to represent impressional consciousness. This meeting occurs seemingly at exactly the same point that is
called the Now of the inner time line, but the Now is distinct from impressional consciousness, despite the picturing of the model. What we call
here the vertical flow incorporates what Husserl terms "longitudinal
(Ldngs) intentionality" (Hua io, 8z [PITC io8]).Iz A continuous shovMiller gives a crucial misinterpretation of Husserl on this point. He identifies the
"end-point" of the "first" or "primary" (to use his words) intentionality as being the
"actual object" of the exemplified intending act, that is, the apple of a perceiving; see his
Husserl, Perception and Temporal Awareness, sections 7.3 and 7.4. Such a mistake
might be called a relatively simple one to make, given Husserl's use of sound as the example of an Erlebnis. The German Ton is not helpful, but the context makes clear when this
is meant as Erlebnis, that is, as "immanent Object" rather than as the sound in the world,
a transcendent object. The "first" intentionality of retention, in fact, resides solely with
the act itself, and is not the "primary" or any intentionality of temporalizing consciousness. The act of perceiving is an immanent Object, within the level two cited earlier, temporalizing consciousness is placed on level three. The act has its own intentional reference
to a perceived "object," but temporalizing consciousness has several intentionalities
within itself. Miller has one intentionality of retention take on the role of the act's intentionality or intentional reference to its "object"; on this interpretation, a pure "passive"
intentionality (retention) would thus be accomplishing what is really an active intentionality that constitutes the perceived object, here, apple. He then reduces the other intentionality of retention to that belonging appropriately to the reflectivity of consciousness,
when this second intentionality of retention actually serves as the transcendental precondition for reflection since it accomplishes the flux's unity with itself. Miller's mistake, of
course, renders the displaying of immanent time-consciousness simpler, as it leaves out
one intentional dimension of the "dual" immanent temporality of consciousness.
Husserl designates retention's primary intentionality as a vertical ('Quers-') one, rather
than the horizontal that my diagrams spatialize. The use of 'Quers-' makes sense (see
note io); the characterization of the "secondary" intentionality of retention as horizontal, however, is puzzling, since this intentionality constitutes the unity of temporalizing
consciousness and thus its totality, its all-at-once character of complete quasi"simultaneity" (Hua Io, 8o). Yet there seems no appropriate "place" for this intentionality on his diagrams of time. If Husserl envisioned the horizontal line of his diagrams,
some clearly labeled the series of Nows (Hua 1O, z8 and 365), the usage is at best misleading. If he had in mind an image that would be expanded into his later notion of living
present, then perhaps he intended the "Langsintentionalitat" to operate "within" each
Now, although this way of expressing it is technically inaccurate.

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ing-back, on the vertical flow, of the "expired" Now-consciousness into

retentional modifications is a streaming from the Absolute of consciousness as temporalizing and self-temporalizing in an anonymous mode
"prior to" (in the genetic, not a temporal sense) the reflective stance articulated in this description. The intentionality operative throughout this
vertical line maintains the connectedness of temporalizing consciousness,
that is, provides the ordered connections of the phases of temporalizing
consciousnesses that allow immanent temporality to temporalize its
Erlebnisse, as well as itself.
When we give a "frozen" or static picturing of actual conscious life, the
vertical line is "connected" with diagonal lines, say, from retention (r.i)
to the just-past, from the retention of retention (r.z) to the just-just-past,
etc., of a particular Now. These diagonals indicate further possible intentionalities between the two flows, rather than just across one or the other
flow. We could try this modeling, based primarily on the description in
Section 39 of the Phenomenology of Internal Time-Consciousness:
Flowing in absolute transition, the first primal sensation changes into a
retention of itself, this retention into a retention of this retention, and
so on. Conjointly with the first retention, however, a new "Now," a
new primal sensation, is present and is joined continuously but
momentarily with the first retention, so that the second phase of the
flux is a primal sensation of the new Now and a retention of the earlier
one. The third phase, again, is a new primal sensation with retention of
the second primal sensation and a retention of the retention of the first,
and so on. (Hua Io, 8i [PITC107])
The diagraming of this temporalizing is usually plotted onto a two-dimensional picture, the flows statically7drawn (for simplicity, our diagram
leaves out the protentional phases):
DIAGRAM I.
SI

sl

. .5o.

ri

sz

.5s3

rz
rif

This diagram shows us a conscious process si (for example, smelling a

freshly baked loaf of French bread) that has occurred in a Now, was then
displaced by the coming sz, so that sz is Now and si just-past; the process
repeating with s3. The sz when in the Now is an impressional conscious-

TEMPORALITY

IN HUSSERL

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379

ness connected with a retentional consciousness ri of si, the si presently

just-past. In the next moment of the horizontal time flow comes S3 impressionally given, connected to retention rz of sz and ri' of si (ri' here
being a modification of the retention ri). The recognition of the identity of
si through s3 as the smelling of the same bread constitutes si through s3
as an enduring smelling act. At time 3 of s3 as Now, the identification
occurs on the basis of the "attached" retentions rz and ri .
The major problem with this sort of diagram is that it does not picture
the processing accurately - it neither captures the Now of s3 with its
complete temporal contexts nor the processing occurring at the Now of
s3. For one thing, there is really no si or sz present at the Now of s3. Let us
try an alternative diagramming procedure, one that gives each Now a different picture. The above diagram would "split" into three pictures, giving the appropriate temporal characters at each moment:
DIAGRAM II.
P.I

. . . just-past/-

P.z

. . . just-past/si . . . Now/sz

. . .

Now/si . . . just coming/sz . . .

. .

. just coming/s3 . . .

ri[si]
P.3

just-just-past/si

just-past/sz . . Now/s.

just coming/*.

ri [sz]

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~I

rz(ri '[si])

The advantage of this different picturing is the ability to display both the
"standing" or static features of inner time - the vertical and the horizontal lines as they remain the same formally - and the "streaming" feature
of immanent temporality, that is, as it continuously functions to temporalize the fluctuating "content" of the inner-time line. The former static
features of inner time are named by the series ". . . just-just-past . . .
just-past . . . Now . . . just coming" on the vertical line and by "s#
[impressional consciousness] - ri [retention] - r2 [retention of retention], etc." on the horizontal. These static features are always as they are,
formally, given in this naming. The latter streaming feature, for this particular moment of conscious life P.3, is shown by the "si . . . s . . . s3"

Identity is the subject of Giuseppina Chiara Moneta, On Identity: A Study of Genetic

Phenomenology (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1976), especially chapter 4, The Temporal Structure of Identity.

3 80

MARY JEANNE LARRABEE

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on both lines, giving the concrete specifics of this momentary consciousness; change comes here at each moment. Where the retentional
modifications with a present impressional consciousness (as shown in P.3)
identify the s i and sz and s3 as the same, they are linked as one continuous
smelling of bread spread across from the Now (of P.3) into the past phases
linked with it.
Both in this case of identification across s1-S3 and in a situation where
there are three successive different Erlebnisse, however, none of them
(always excepting the impressionally given Erlebnis) is actually present
on the inner time, the horizontal, line; their apparent presentness is simply
a feature of the picturing as intersecting lines. Other than the actually
Now phase of Erlebniss, the past or coming phases of acts or impressions
are present on the vertical line as retentionally or protentionally given. It is
the continuum of retentional, impressional, and protentional consciousnesses that temporalizes the Erlebnisse, that give them temporal spread if
they endure or give them momentariness if they do not, that give them as
simultaneous or coincident with one another, etc. The smellings and any
other Erlebnisse are not self-temporalizing but are temporalized by this
more fundamental functioning of consciousness as inner-time consciousness.
II
We must note, however, that there is a conceptualization within this modeling, for there are not really two lines in the temporalizing of consciousness. The two lines actually - that is, in the life of a consciousness - fold
into one another much as impressional consciousness is there with the
Now, separate in phenomenological description but not really distinct as
living consciousness. And here, in part, problems emerge, especially for
any two-dimensional (vertical-horizontal) modeling of temporality. Husserl characterizes the longitudinal intentionality (of the model's vertical
line), that is, of the flowing phases of the consciousness of inner time (at
least the series of retentional phases), as "the unity of the flux itself as a
one-dimensional, quasi-temporal order" (Hua io, 8z [PITC io8]).'4
How should such a description be taken? The vertical line is that part of
the model that must represent consciousness being aware all at once of
temporal extensity of Erlebnisse across the horizontal line. Representing
the primal temporalizing flux, the vertical line, as a line, already diverts us
from its true being; and picturing the horizontal line of inner time both as
a line and as separate from the vertical is a conceptualization reminiscent
I4

My emphasis. It seems appropriate to shift here to the term 'flux' for the temporalizing
consciousness referred to as self-constituting in being a unity.

TEMPORALITY

IN HUSSERL

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3 8I

of the serial interpretation of objective or clock time, one second following the next in a continuous flow along a line. The time and temporality of
consciousness itself cannot be adequately modeled by two lines intersecting one another, since inner time and inner-time consciousness are really
one (form a unity) and are one-dimensional. However, this model may be
the simplest way for presenting characteristics of them, the model echoing
always with disclaimers - the humanly experienced clock time. The
main disclaimer is that the model includes an abstracting conceptualization that can obviate full awareness of the essentials of consciousness'
temporalizing.
Are dimensions of inner time and temporality overlooked in this spatial
model of flow? As we just saw, the model derives from an abstracting separation. A critical feature of this abstraction is, in fact, a misconstrual of
intentionality within consciousness. The model does not offer sufficient
scope for glimpsing the variety of intentional currents constantly at work
with consciousness' constitutive processes, especially the intentionalities
dependent on but not identical with those of immanent temporality. I particularly have in mind the workings of genetic constitution, those of the
concrete transcendental ego, of the historicized I. Here I will only indicate
aspects of these limitations:
First, the shiftings of Sinne (senses, "meanings") throughout the spectrum of temporalized consciousness cannot be integrated well into this
model of two moving tapes, with its implicit system of flows. The vertical
and horizontal are pictured as flowing away from one another, at a 9oo
angle, whereas genetic associations and their related passivities bounce
throughout consciousness' past, present, and future. The only connections of this sort in the model appear to be the diagonals, but these give us
little more than an indication of non-temporalizing intentional connections. Besides, if some types of diagonal could display the genetic connections, they would more likely be drawn between lower left and upper right
quadrants of the diagram, and in both directions. Thus, there appears to
be little ground in the model, in particular, for the shifting "upwards"
from the past into both the present and the future, the shiftings of specific
concrete Sinne.'5

IS Much of Husserl's discussions of genetic intentionalities is found in Cartesian Medita-

tions, Analyses of Passive Synthesis, and Experience and Judgment. For a thorough
discussion of Husserl's treatment of association, see Elmar Holenstain, Phanomenologie
und Assoziation. Zu Struktur und Funktion eines Grundprinzips der passive Genesis bei E. Husserl (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1972), although some details of his
analyses misalign the various aspects of genetic constitution.

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MARY JEANNE LARRABEE

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Take, for example, the smelling Erlebnis mentioned above and let us
place it in a concrete context in order to see what some of these Sinn-shiftings would be. I am walking along a dingy manufacturing street with a
friend, both of us in a concentrated discussion of the merits of Nietzsche
so that we barely attend to where we walk. There comes wafting past us a
strong odor of baking bread. About one half minute after my nose came in
contact with the odor, I get indications, floating through the edges of my
consciousness, of spring nights in Paris. These indications come as a jumble of content - the strong heady smell of French bread, the warm night,
another philosophical conversation. My response is an olfactory perception of newly baked bread accompanied by a sudden shift of attention
from the current conversation to a strongly felt need to express pleasure at
the smell. My friend, on the other hand, barely noticed the bread smell
and thinks it odd that I should make so much of it when Nietzsche is far
more interesting. The genetic connections are (a) the initial sensory
impressions occurring to me that (b) passively associate with (c) the Sinne
of bread etc. from years before, so that they (d) are brought to passive recollection, and (e) motivate a present activity (f) which might not have
occurred otherwise. This would be only one of various ways that my
present can be colored or constituted genetically through associations
whose "movements" back and forth throughout consciousness'
"temporal field" are not strictly regulated by, although they presuppose,
the constituting accomplishments of immanent temporality.
Second, the very processing of process itself cannot be adequately indicated in a static model. At most the static model grants some room for the
movement of flow: the temporally extended Erlebnis is said to move continuously, hence to flow, from time-point to time-point along the innertime continuum. But such is not thle true processing of this process; the
image is simply a mirroring of movement through the world's space (conceived from a commonsensical perspective). The processing of Erlebnisse
is not merely a spatialized extension across a temporal expanse. For if we
look at an analog for flowing in the real world, we would see that the
flowing of the river encompasses more than simply the fact that a specific
portion of its water traverses a measurable area between two points on its
bed. The flowing or process of flow includes more importantly what goes
on to the water as it moves between any such points; it includes the dynamisms of flowing.
III
With these limitations on the current static (or any static) model in mind, I
would like nonetheless to look at possible variations on the spatial model
as a first step to unfolding the full implications of a Husserlian theory of

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383

immanent temporality. A first step can still only proceed in certain predictable ways, predetermined by the type of model being used (here a spatial one). Recognized as a first step, any alternative models at this stage
would be pictured with the demonstrated need to incorporate other features of lived conscious life. A model beginning with Husserlian immanent temporality and proceeding eventually to genetic intentionalities is
likely to emerge in the end as a preliminary model of consciousness, for
Husserl then of an embodied conscious "I" capable of engagement in a
variety of ways with world, self and others. We will keep these elements in
mind for later.
There are several ways in which to formulate alternative models, but in
any case we need to replace the somewhat flat or two-dimensional model.
We could move to a three-dimensional spatial model or locate a better
metaphor for the movement of flow than the passage along a straight line.
Here are a number of possibilities, not necessarily mutually exclusive:
MODEL A. Introduce coloring into each static picturing of inner time
(such as Diagrams I and II). Different colorings will then designate the
concrete characteristics of a specific immanent temporal span. The color
associated with a specific Erlebnis, for example, the smelling of French
bread, will move from each Now out along both vertical and horizontal
lines, as well as fill out the space described by addition of diagonals
between the appropriate points on the inner time and the inner time-consciousness lines. In the rejected Diagram I, such a coloring would picture
stripes of color being added at each shift of a new Erlebnis away from the
Now, the resultant image being a triangular rainbow. In Diagram II, however, the colors would each pull out from the Now through the triangular
space but would remain "connected" to the Now even as new Erlebnisse
begin; thus, the colors of non-simulfaneous Erlebnisse could overlap.
Each new Now would be pictured as the focal point of the flowing away
colors, and these colors could then be reflected in some degree in the protended future of that new Now, so that each new Now would be intrinsically - and distinctively - colored by its own peculiar retentional and
protentional horizons. The addition of color would allow for specificities
in conscious life, yet this model still flattens the flows and their interconnections to a two-dimensional, although bi-modal (lines and color),
expression.
MODEL B. Change the manner of interconnections for the intentionalities. Rather than the interconnections of a flow (primarily before and
after, yielding the serialized time-continuum), use other water images
for example, ripples, vortex, whirlpool. This proposal might move us to a
three-dimensional spatial model and one difficult to picture on paper.

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One possibility of presenting this three-dimensional model, albeit in a

flattened manner, would be through computer-generated graphics that
would allow for a picturing of movement of these various kinds.'6 The
advantage of this change is the ability to represent some dynamisms of the
process itself, for example, the ways in which water pulls and pushes bits
of itself along, around and about within the stream, rather than moving in
a totally lock step fashion.
MODEL C. Increase the ways in which intentional dimensions connect
throughout the horizontal and vertical "paths." The more inclusive move
here would be to broaden the diagrammings to include the temporalizing
as well as other intentionalities, particularly those following from the
"active" passivities of genetic associations. The formal structures of
immanent temporality, as we have already seen, must be of an appropriate complexity to allow inclusion of these genetic associations, wherein
elements of present impressions intentionally associate with past elements
of Sinn and the retained constitutive activities, so that these impressions
effectively result in the shifting of Sinn from past to present and into the
future and thus "move" consciousness along.
Both model A and model B provide possibilities of picturing these
intentionalities, A in its intermingling of colors that show specific Sinne
and B in its shift to three-dimensional space with altered imagery. Model
C would provide a picturing of those aspects of immanent temporality
that set up the possibilities for these intentionalities. The relevant dimension is the unity or one-ness constituted by the vertical (Ldngs-) intentionality. Without attempting to picture the unity as it really is (not temporal
itself but "quasi"-temporal and therefore not a simultaneity), we can
draw on its implications to build into our model the implicit connectibility
of anything in the model with anything else. In other words, this model
will allow us to draw lines (or smear traces of color) from any point within
our diagram to any other. If we take our Diagram II (for example), the
space set up by immanent temporality includes the lower left quadrant for

i6

Certain branches of recent mathematics, such as the geometry of fractals and other theories of dynamic systems, have demonstrated computer-generated images that capture
some of what might prove appropriate here. See, for instance, H.-O. Peitgen and P. H.
Richter, The Beauty of Fractals: Images of Complex Dynamical Systems (Berlin:
Springer, i986), and Chaos, Fractals, and Dynamics, ed. P. Fischer and W. R. Smith
(New York: M. Dekker, i985). Robert L. Devaney notes that nonlinear dynamical systems exhibit behavior that occurs in more general manifolds, specifically the chaotic and
random behavior of solutions which can be widely variant given relatively small differences in the initial conditions of the equation; see An Introduction to Chaotic Dynamical Systems (Menlo Park, California: Benjamin/Cummings, i986), also James Gleick,
Chaos: Making a New Science (New York: Viking Press, i987).

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385

the past and the upper right for the future, the Now given as a dot. Model
C would claim all this area as "present" because of the unifying synthesis
of self-temporalizing consciousness, and thus the model would allow all
manner of lines to be drawn throughout these two "spaces" in any directions, but all either beginning at, ending at, or moving through the Now.
A compilation of the models B and C into one model, intended as a
three-dimensional model but pictured here in two-dimensional space,
would look something like this, the two quadrants being open-ended
cones:.7
is

D'

FKN
Ae NN
\A

\!

N is the Now-point. Line AN shows where an Erlebnis occurring Now

intentionally relates to a past Sinn, e.g., when my present smelling qua
sensation pairs associatively with a past retained Sinn A of French bread.
Line NB shows a current Erlebnis providing the specifics of a future
experience; e. g., my present smelling of bread qua perceiving act delineates the pretended context, "a bakery down the street that I'll get to if I
walk this way" (these pretended Sinne need not be conceptually registered). ENF pictures a shift of Sinn from past into pretended future; DNC,
a pretended Sinn feeding back into past Sinn; GH, associative connections occurring between past Sinne. While straight lines could be used to
display linear connections, curved lines might show other types of connections.
Beyond Model C, we might have to take account of the "solidity" or
"extensity" of the impressional consciousness itself,'8 conjoined as it is
17

i8

If the reader is familiar with Hermann Minkowski's i908 geometry of events in spacetime, similarities may be apparent between his diagram of four-dimensional objective
world and my diagram of "subjective" temporality; see Jonathan Powers, Philosophy
and the New Physics (New York: Methuen, i982), p. 96. This similarity might prove
helpful in pursuing the correlations between immanent temporality and the structures of
experienced world time.
See, for instance, Ideas I, section 8i, p. i6z; and E. Husserl, Ideen zu einer reinen phdnomenologischen Philosophie, Second Book, ed. Marly Biemel, Husserliana, Vol. 4 (The
Hague:MartinusNijhoff,I95z), p. 149: ". . . Localizationof feelings[Empfindnisse] is
in fact something in principle different from extension of any material attributes of

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with (a) the spatial embodiment of the human subject - the "space"
within which sensory impressions occur, and (b) the simultaneously
occurring acts, e.g., of perceiving, imagining, etc. And this total Now-consciousness (consciousness taking place in the present Now) is necessarily
correlated with the intentionally constituted world with its objects occupying three-dimensionally objective space and enduring through objective time. The addition of such elements to any model of time, that is, to
display the intentional relationship between constituting immanent temporality and constituted objective time, would immediately show the poverty of our current models and diagrams with respect to the picturing of
the Now, which occupies a mere point. Perhaps the model must move into
hyperspace or some other multi-dimensional model. We could continue,
but these indications for further work are sufficient for our purpose
here."'

IV
The recognition of possibilities for an alternative modeling of time, especially those that allow for the explication of the genetic associative constitutions on the basis of immanent temporality, is crucial to a full articulation of the complexities of conscious life, not as abstractively pictured in
the diagrammings of inner time as quasi-geometric lines, but as actually
lived by human individuals Where an account of inner time-conscious-

'9

things' They are indeed spread in space. . . . However, this spread [extensity, Ausbreitung] . . . is indeed something essentially different from extension [Ausdehnung] in the
sense of all the attributes that characterize the res extensa" (italics omitted).
Diagrams in multi-dimensional geometry offer some ideas for breaking out of the two- or
three-dimensional portrayals of mental structure. A move to at least a four-dimensional
spatial model (a model in hyperspace) that then incorporates process (e.g., as a computer
generated graphic) throughout the model would allow the imaging of this "extensity" of
Now-consciousness in its concreteness, rather than in the overly abstracted manner of a
point. A general discussion of multi-dimensional geometry can be found in R. Rucker,
Geometry,Relativityand the FourthDimension(New York: Dover, 1977), or Jeffrey

R. Weeks, The Shape of Space:How to VisualizeSurfacesand Three-Dimensional

Manifolds (New York: Marcel Dekker, i985), or Rucker's more expansive work, The

Fourth Dimension: Toward a Geometry of Higher Reality (Boston: Houghton

20

Mifflin, i984).
Given the abstractiveness and limitations of models for consciousness, why continue trying to picture it at all? Imagery, metaphors, models, and the like have been historically
implicated in the continuing growth of knowledge.'While these are not a necessary condition for understanding either reality or consciousness, they have been used to great effect
in many fields and undertakings. For instance, Robert W. Weisberg claims that the discovery of the structure of DNA by James Watson and Francis Crick was fostered by their
commitment to use model-building as an integral part of their research; chapter 6 in Creativity:Geniusand OtherMyths(New York: W. H. Freeman, i986). K. J. Gilhooly,
Thinking:Directed, Undirectedand Creative(London: Academic Press, i98z), cites

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387

ness must end in a claim that certain supposed experiences of some human
individuals are of little account for a phenomenological science of conscious life, such an unfolding of the contours of inner time-consciousness
has abstracted too far from concrete human living. The formal description of inner-time consciousness must articulate with some persons'
experiences of the beautiful, with others' experiences of the ineffable
within themselves or of the peculiar but seemingly ever,-presentambiguities of human existence, as much as with human experiences of the mathematical. It must be coherent with the experiences of the inexpressible and
with the inexpressible of experience, just as much as with the experience
of one small apple, of one continuous tone, or of one pure concept. Many
of these types of human experience find their descriptive basis more in the
nameless Absolute of immanent temporality than in the abstractively presented quasi-serial flow of the horizontal line."' And, more importantly,
we must recognize that the abstractive separation of this horizontal line of
the inner time series from the vertical line of the various consciousnesses
of it is paralleled by the abstractive separation of this formal description
of immanent temporality from the concrete living out of it within the
dynamic of genetic associative interconnections that concretely fill out the
contexts and horizons of each Now. This dynamic, located at the center of
what Husserl terms the living present, may very well be the source of the
processing that is immanent temporality - an appropriate account of
which is lacking in any interpretation based on a Diagram I or two-dimensional model for inner time. A full account of processing precludes the
the advantages of model building in problem-solving. Rudolf Rucker concedes the helpfulness of images in elaborating four-dimensional space, but notes that they are not in
fact needed to carry out mathematical analysis; see his image (in two dimensions) of a
hypercube in Geometry.
I would thus agree with positions integrating all human experiences into consideration
under conscious experience, as found, for example, in John R. Battista's psychological
work. Battista rejects the limitation of the term "consciousness" to reflective awareness,
since such would leave out early.pre-reflective childhood experience, all dreaming, and
"ecstatic" or mystical experiences occurring without self-awareness; this use of the term
consciousness', however, need not imply any existential claims concerning the object of
the experiences. See "The Science of Consciousness," in The Stream of Consciousness:
Scientific Investigations into the Flow of Human Experience, ed. K. S. Pope and J. L.
Singer (New York: Plenum Press, 1978), pp. 57-87. Eliot Deutsch reflects the eastern tradition, in Personbood, Creativity, and Freedom (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press,
i982),
by describing consciousness as a power "the being of which is to be bound or
boundless," that is, either tied to objects and thus temporal, or unified and thus timeless
(pp. 3 5-3 6). This view coheres to some extent with Robert E. Ornstein's psychology that
posits two major modes of consciousness, analytic and holistic (related to rational and
intuitive knowing), in The Psychology of Consciousness, zd ed. (New York: Harcourt
Brace Jovanovich, 1977). Parallels between Husserl's phenomenology of time and these
recent psychologies of consciousness might be worth pursuing.

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reductionof inner time to a series, for this processingencompassesthe

slippagebetween membersof any time that is conceptualizedas series.
Accordingto geneticanalysis,the Now is the centerof humanlife and of
inner-timeconsciousnessas temporalizing.EachNow in its concreteness
prescribesthe effectivenessof the past upon it and the pretendingof
specificsinto its future.An expansionon sucha descriptionof a concretely
lived Now must be accomplishedwhen searchingfor the appropriate
model, spatial or otherwise,for immanenttemporality.
Furtherelaborationof immanenttemporalitymustnot only serveas a
basisfor the wide varietyof humanexperienceandthe geneticanalysesof
them, but extend discussionsto includethe concretemonadologicalego
or "I."" For it is the I who now exists in its concretealivepresence,acts
now in beginningto act in specificways towards an object or person
within its world, continuesnow acting,or ends that actingnow through
movingon to act in furtherwaystowardsotherpersonsor things.Butthis
concreteI is calledtowardactivityin a Now, not by an absentfuture,but
by its concretelypresentfutureas it is delineatedby an associativeprojection of senses,Sinne.The delineationsof sensesonto a futureis rootedin
this Now, for theseSinnearecalledfromthe I'spast that is still presentto
it. These shiftingsof Sinnecontinuouslymove forward,as temporalized
Erlebnissecontinuouslymove back, togetherwith the total contexts in
which they occur (includingany noemata constitutivelycorrelatedto
acts;also the horizontalintentionalitiesof thesecorenoemata).Thuseach
Now is not so much an absencedefinedby its not being eitherpast or
future,but is the livingconcreteI presentto the veryslippagethatplacesit
within the constitutiveprocessingthat continuouslyprovidesa specified
context,a worldthatit lives.Thesefew topicsdisplayan essentialconnection betweenthe seeminglyformaldiscussionsof immanenttemporality
and the extraordinarilyconcreteand materiallyspecifiedlife of the living
I, a connectionthat mustbe elaboratedfully beforethe contoursof Husserl'stheoryof innertime can be said to have beenfilledout.3 Verylittle
2I

23

prefer the more literal translation of Ich, despite its seeming awkwardness. I take the
primary usage of 'I' to be the primal sense of a vague identifiable and self-identified
"etwas," this something or other of the natural attitude which is the "core" of the conscious being that human beings are. The 'I' exists inchoately within very early human life
and is a sense that shapes most of an individual's human existence. It is this 'I' that I
accept in the natural attitude as 'just there' and that I question as I move into the phenomenological attitude, seeing myself as a "different" I while phenomenologizing, although
still the "same" I. The recognition within the phenomenological epoche of the essential
characteristics of this 'I' carries with it no metaphysical commitment to a substantial ego
or ego-subject in the traditional sense, nor does it necessarily carry with it a Humean
scepticism concerning personal identity.
Charles T. Tart attempts, from a psychological perspective, a static diagram of a concrete

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3 89

of these topics can even be allowed such a connection if the original, Diagram I, variety of spatial model for inner time substitutes for a richer alternative.
A move toward the models proposed above or other alternative models
for the immanent temporality of consciousness has ramifications beyond
those already mentioned. I am interested, for example, in how it might
cohere with and further explicate the kinaesthesia of -embodied existing
that is the current mode of human living. Several criticisms have been leveled against what is taken as the full story concerning Husserl's theory of
sensation in general and of kinaesthetic sensings in particular.4 Since
bodily "space" is temporalized both within and beyond the delimited
space of the physical body as "living thing in objective space-time," the
fundamental temporalizing of immanent time-consciousness has to be
capable of accounting for, and of grounding constitutively, a multidimensionality of immanent spatiality which itself resists the usual models of objective space.5 For Husserl, the kinaesthetic field provides the
ground zero of the impressional consciousness of the embodied human

24

25

consciousness with its embedded but interacting structures of habituated materials; this
diagram might show a "multidimensional map of psychological space" allowing one to
determine "where the individual is in that space." See his "Discrete States of Consciousness," in Symposium on Consciousness (American Association for the Advancement
of Science, 1974), ed. Philip R. Lee, et al. (New York: Viking Press, I976), pp. 89-175.
Several accounts of Husserl's theory of sensation dismiss the phenomenologist's
reflective access to hyletic data, thus calling their "existence" for phenomenology into
question; see, for instance, Quentin Smith, "A Phenomenological Examination of Husserl's Theory of Hyletic Data," Philosophy Today zi (1977): 356-67. Others misconstrue the nature of hyletic data due to importations of faulty assumptions concerning
Husserl's phenomenological method and the like. While retaining the notion of hyletic
data or "experience," for example, Shaun Gallagher disconnects hyletic experience and
thus the body from consciousness; this move reifies either the body or consciousness in a
way not intended by Husserl. See "Hyletic Experience and the Lived Body," Husserl
Studies 3 (i986): 13i-66.
Jacques Derrida notes a connection between temporalizing and spatializing within Husserl; see Speech and Phenomenon, trans. D. B. Allison (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1973), p. 143. Derrida's conflation of temporalizing and spatializing, however, is too simple a reading of Husserl's text. Robert Magliola deals with Derrida's view
of time in Derrida on the Mend (West Lafayette, Indiana: Purdue University, i984); he
summarizes Derrida as saying that for Husserl ". . . the relation of the 'present' to the
'past' and 'future' is a negative relation, that is, the present is not the not-now." Magliola
notes interestingly enough that "the human mind, for Derrida, always defines by negative
reference and only by negative reference" (p. 24). Whether or not Magliola accurately
captures Derrida's position, I am inclined to reject such a view of human mind, because
the foundational aspect of consciousness, the "cause" of those differences, must itself be
beyond such distinctions, especially when they are presented in a conceptualized fashion.
Husserl's descriptions of flux, especially of the living present, display the core of conscious life, whereas such a negativizing thrust covers it up.

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subjectivity. It might be said that impressional consciousness is "located"

throughout the kinaesthetic field - the latter, of course, a multi-faceted
dimension of the impressional Now.76 The primary spatial model for
time is often associated with the imagery drawn from bodily/kinaesthetic
movements - the body moving forward, towards its future, away from
its past ("Leave your past behind you"); the inclination is thus strong to
tie both inner time and the kinaesthetic field to objective space. We must
differentiate, however, between Husserl's attempts to describe the essential features of our natural attitude, including its often naive interpretations of our own lived spatiality and immanent temporality, and Husserl's
transcendentally phenomenological accounts of what makes the natural
attitude possible. There is much work to be done in this area.Z7
A reflection upon alternative models might also move against several
current flows within contemporary philosophical life. A recasting of Husserl's consciousness into something irretrievably linguistic in all its occurrences cannot sustain Husserl's task of an essential description of human
conscious activities.8 It would indeed have to admit a limitation to fairly
specified areas of Husserl interpretation or agree to an incompatibility of
what it claims is Husserl's theory and much of Husserl's text, particularly
that on temporality and the intrinsically connected discussions of genetic
constitution.

z6

There are many interesting hints, with Husserl's C-Manuscripts particularly, of the
dynamics of the living present and its connections with impressional consciousness,
kinaesthesia, genetic elements, the "I" and other specifics of conscious life. See, for exam-

ple, C z
27

i983),
z8

1 (1931)-

Algis Mickunas shows one important direction that a phenomenology of kinaesthesia

and therefore corporeality must take - he links the pre-theoretical level of vital-kinaesthetic involvements in the world with the moral level of human activities; see "The Vital
35-53. J. N. Mohanty locates an
Connection," Analecta Husserliana z2 (i987):
approach to the phenomenon of body and thus of kinaesthesia in his attack upon the Heideggerian and post-modernist anti-foundationalisms; he includes body as one of three
"recalcitrant phenomena" that only transcendental reflection can free from a self-forgetfulness tied to naive human life. See "The Destiny of Transcendental Philosophy," in
Phenomenology in a Pluralistic Context (Albany: State University of New York Press,

ed. W. McBrideand C. Schrag,pp, 235-43, especiallyfromp. 240 on.

Both Maurita J. Harney and J. N. Mohanty discuss the way in which Husserl's account
of intentionality can actually supplement Frege's theory of sense, their work being in part
responses to recent interpretations of Husserl's view of Sinn, noema, and Bedeutung as
analogous to aspects of Fregean semantical theory. Harvey rejects a F0llesdalian view, in
Intentionality, Sense and the Mind (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, i984), especially p.
145;
Mohanty clarifies the appropriateness of F0llesdal's theses on noema if read with
care, but rejects Dreyfus' reading, as well as any reduction of all Husserlian Sinn to conceptual meaning (Bedeutung), in Husserl and Frege (Bloomington: Indiana University
Press, i98z), pp. 75-85 and II5-i6.

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391

The attack from deconstructivists and other "post-modernists"

attempting a move beyond the end of metaphysics would have to be
reconstituted, its critique of the philosophy of "presence" clarified with
respect to a Husserl whose central presence of consciousness is present
only in its very slippage between the future and the past which it constitutes in a sense not captured by any word-play or textually linear re-readings. If we can devise a spatial model that cannot be tied to a two-dimensional reading of logical thinking, the Husserlian theory of immanent time
can capture the inexorably complex interplay of consciousness. It might
even capture, in an essential description, the human attempts to philosophize seemingly beyond but still within the limits of Western thought.'9

29

For a discussion of Husserl's theory of immanent time from a Derridean perspective, see
Rudolf Bernet, "Die ungegenwartige Gegenwart. Anwesenheit und Abwesenheit in Hus-

ForschungI4
Pbdnomenologische
serlsAnalysedes Zeitbewusstseins,"

(i983):

i6-57.

In contrast, Alan White criticizes Derrida's failure to appreciate "the subtleties of Husserl's account of the interplay of presence and absence," p. 46. Robert Sokolowski is
more direct, citing the presence of Derridean absence in Husserl's discussions of objective
givenness; see "The Theory of Phenomenological Description," in Descriptions (Albany:
State University of New York, i985), ed. D. Ihde and H. Silverman, pp. 25-34.

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