kant, husserl, and heidegger on time and the unity of "consciousness"

International Phenomenological Society

Kant, Husserl, and Heidegger on Time and the Unity of "Consciousness"Author(s): Ronald P. MorrisonSource: Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, Vol. 39, No. 2 (Dec., 1978), pp. 182-198Published by: International Phenomenological SocietyStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2106977 .

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KANT, HUSSERL, AND HEIDEGGER ON TIME AND THE UNITY OF "CONSCIOUSNESS"

In his Kant and the Problem of Metaphysics, Heidegger at- tempts to show that the unity of consciousness is essentially temporal in character for Kant. This is not really a Kantian position, however, but a Husserlian one. The distortion of Kant poses a danger for Heidegger's reader, especially if he leaves out of account the anti- Kantian attack on "representationalism" which Heidegger takes up in several other works. The danger is that of concluding, as Charles M. Sherover has done, that it is "a short step ?rom Heidegger's Kant to Heidegger himself."1 It is however, a longer step from Kant to Heidegger than Kant and the Problem of Metaphysics may seem to indicate. We can appreciate the length of the stride by considering the influence on Heidegger of Husserl's doctrine of time. Husserl's analysis of the temporality of consciousness is in important respects antithetical to Kant's. In an effort to relate the respective roles that time plays in Kant's theory of human knowledge and in Heidegger's theory of human existence, I will mediate them by a discussion of Husserl's theory of time and the unity of consciousness. I will present Husserl's doctrine of time as if it were in response to Kant's, and Heidegger's doctrine of time as if it were in response to Husserl's. In fact, Husserl's book on time, The Phenomenology of Internal Time- Consciousness, does not discuss Kant, and Heidegger more frequently responds to Kant than to Husserl. The place to begin, ther., is with Kant.

Kant: Kant's theory of time owes a great deal to the fact that he believed, as Hume did, that sensation is a matter of discrete atomic impressions. It is equally important, however, that he did not believe that these impressions could be presented directly to the understanding as completely separated from each other. What is presented to the understanding is rather a manifold of impressions. The appearance of a manifold, while of subjective origin, is not due to the spontaneity of the mind -in the association of impressions, for example -but to the formal structure of the mind's capacity to receive impressions. Kant held that all receptivity whatsoever is conditioned by the form of time. It is the form of time which accounts for the gathering up of discrete impressions into a manifold.

The appearance of a manifold in intuition is due to a temporal "synopsis." Synopsis must be distinguished from synthesis. "Synthesis"

' Charles M. Sherover, Heidegger, Kant and Time (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1971), p. 221.

182



KANT, HUSSERL, AND HEIDEGGER ON TIME AND THE 183 UNITY OF "CONSCIOUSNESS"

refers to the mind's spontaneity in representing the manifold. "Synop- sis" refers only to the presentation of the manifold. Synopsis has its origin in time as the formal condition of all receptivity, and it is the pivotal factor in bringing the materials of intuition to the synthetic structures of consciousness.

Every intuition contains in itself a manifold which can be represented as a manifold only insofar as the mind distinguishes the time in the sequence of one impression upon another; for each representation, insofar as it is contained in a single moment, can never be anything but an absolute unity.2

In this passage time seems to account not only for the appearance of a synoptic manifold, but also for the absolute discreteness of its parts insofar as they are contained in different moments.

Although Kant is rather cryptic concerning the nature of synopsis, he evidently finds no difficulty in attributing a synopsis to a temporal sequence of absolute parts. "Time," he says, "is not a discursive, or what is called a general concept, but a pure form of sensible intuition. Different times are but parts of one and the same time."' It seems clear, however, that synopsis itself does not explain why there is in time a unity of absolute parts, but rather that the synopsis of intuition is explained by the unity of time. How then does Kant account for the unity of time?

Time is not only a form of intuition, but also a "pure intuition." In part this means that time can be represented a priori. As a representation, time is referred to the spontaneity of the mind and is therefore a synthetic unity. In this respect time belongs to the transcendental structure of consciousness as pure "matter." This means, as becomes especially clear in the doctrine of schematism, that formal time is an a priori or pure manifold.4 It is only as schematic determinations of this pure (temporal) manifold that the pure concepts of the understanding become applicable to sensory intuition. As containing a manifold in itself, time is not a simple unity; it is only a unity in relation to the pure concepts.

Just as there are no inherent unities in the matter of empirical intuition, there is no inherent unity in its pure temporal form. The representation of what appears to consciousness is a synthesis of a manifold of intuitional contents. But since no synthetic unity in empirical intuition can be the direct product of the understanding, the understanding is the ground of the synthetic unity of empirical intui-

2 Immanuel Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, Norman Kemp Smith, trans. (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1965), A99.

3 Ibid., A31/B47. 4Ibid., A138/B177, also B160.



184 PHILOSOPHY AND PHENOMENOLOGICAL RESEARCH

tion only mediately through the synthesis of the form of all intuition, time. It is in representing the pure temporal manifold that the pure concepts of the understanding become categories of experience, or unities in experience. Because all unity, whether of experience or of formal time itself, derives from belonging to one synthetic consciousness, that unity, though necessarily bound up with time, is in itself a nontemporal unity. The unity of consciousness is conceptual and not temporal' in character.

This conclusion is borne out by the fact that it is precisely because of the temporality of empirical consciousness that Kant seeks a transcendental solution to the unity of consciousness. For Kant, the unity of consciousness consists in having an identical subject of conceptual apperception. This identity, however, cannot be discovered in empirical consciousness. "No fixed and abiding self can present itself in this flux of inner appearances. Such consciousness is usually named inner sense, or empirical apperception."' There is no empirical consciousness of a "fixed and abiding self' for two reasons. First, empirical self-consciousness is not the intuition of a subject, but consciousness of appearances as subjective occurrences. As subjective occurrences, appearances are governed by time, the form of inner sense. And it is time, secondly, which makes empirical consciousness a disjunctive manifold of succession. It is for these reasons that Kant accounts for the unity of consciousness on a transcendental level. It is plain, moreover, that the transcendental analysis of this unity is in- tended to show that the subject of consciousness is a "fixed and abiding," nontemporal subject.

Inner sense is subjective. But from a transcendental point of view consciousness is purely objective; it is the a priori representation of a "transcendental object = x." There is only one transcendental object, which is to say that the a priori conditions of possible experience are at all times the same. Pure, objective consciousness is thus the very opposite of ever-changing subjective (empirical) consciousness; it is changeless. The subject of consciousness is the "correlate" of the a priori representation of an objective unity. Its identity is correlative to objective unity and consists in the changelessness of this objective unity in pure apperception. The subject of this pure apperception is "the abiding and unchanging 'I,' "8 "All consciousness as truly belongs to

5Ibid., A103 & A112. 6 Ibid., B159. 7 Ibid., A107. 8 Ibid., A123.




an all-comprehensive pure apperception, as all sensible intuition, as representation, belongs to a pure inner intuition, namely, to time."9 There is no doubt that for Kant the subject of consciousness, and therefore the unity of consciousness, is essentially contrasted with the temporal character of consciousness. There is a subject only insofar as consciousness as such is the a priori thought of an (one) unchanging object in general. There is no intuition of the subject here either. There is only "the bare representation 'T' ";10 the mere thought "that I am."911

Kant's position is that the unity of consciousness is logically prior to the temporality of consciousness. As the form of change, time breaks consciousness up into discrete moments. Kant accepts the em- piricist doctrine that there are no unities inherent in the matter of intuition, and he attributes this disjunction to time. It is true that time is synoptic; but the possibility of synopsis depends on the synthesis of pure intuition. And there is no synthesis in the form of time without the schematization of the pure, timeless concepts which represent ob- jectivity. Although formal time is constituent in the transcendental unity of consciousness, it does not account for that unity. It only determines consciousness as the representation of the unchanging throughout change.

Time means change and change means a lack of unity in consciousness because the change is always from one absolutely discrete moment to another. It is for this reason that the problem of the unity of consciousness boils down to accounting for a permanent subject. A succession of absolute momentsrequires a fixed point outside itself as the basis for determining its order. It is important to note, however, that the subject is not that "against which" the order of time- consciousness can be determined. The subject is only the correlate of the "timeless" transcendental object. Kant makes it clear in the "Refutation of Idealism" that it is the object which makes possible the determination of the time-order of the subjective flow of appearances. The object is immediate to consciousness, whereas the consciousness of appearances in inner sense (time-consciousness) is mediate.

In turning to Husserl, one thing will stand out very clearly: continuous change, as an aspect of time-consciousness, is so far from being a stumbling block to the unity of consciousness that Husserl bases the unity of consciousness precisely on its temporal form. The unity of

9 Ibid., A123-A124. 10 Ibid., A117n. " Ibid., B157.




consciousness can therefore be explained without having to bring an identical, changeless subject into account. Husserl's account of the unity of consciousness centers on demonstrating that there is an absolute continuity, not an absolute discontinuity, in time- consciousness.

Husserl: If Hume's empiricism is a backdrop to Kant's theory of time, it may also be instructive to view Husserl's theory in the light of the radical empiricism of James. Unlike its predecessor, radical empiricism holds the relations among the parts of experience to be as directly evident as the parts themselves. Consciousness is not a disjunction of absolute units, but is conjunctive as well. James draws the ''generalized conclusion" that

the parts of experience hold together from next to next by relations that are themselves parts of experience. The directly apprehended universe needs, in short, no extraneous trans-empirical connective support, but possesses in its own right a concatenated or continuous structure."

James draws short, however, of concluding that the continuity in the stream of experience points to an absolute. A pluralism of "points of view" is more enticing to James than the lure of the absolute."3

A pluralism of this sort is inherently denied in Husserl's phenomenological reduction to transcendental consciousness. In Ideas, transcendental consciousness is called a "realm of 'absolute' Being." It is the "original region" of Being "in which all other regions of Being," such as those encountered from the various viewpoints of the special sciences, "have their root, to which they are essentially related, on which they are therefore one and all dependent in an essential way. "14 Transcendental consciousness is the absolute point of view in which all other points of view find their unity and possibility.

If the phenomenological reduction discloses such an "absolute" realm of consciousness, it does not explain its possibility. An explanation must show that transcendental consciousness is an uninterrupted continuity in which there are ultimately no disjunctions. All the parts of experience must be seen to be "constituted" within this continuity. Whereas James requires no "trans-empirical connective support" for the direct apprehension of the continuity of experience, Husserl believes that the time-form of consciousness is just such a nonem-

12 William James, The Meaning of Truth (New York: Greenwood Press, 1968), pp. Xi- xlii.

3I William James, The Will to Believe (New York: Dover, 1965), p. viii. '4 Edmund Husserl, Ideas, W. R. Boyce Gibson, trans. (New York: Collier,

1972), p. 194.




pirical support. Thus, with reference to the problematic of time, Husserl says in Ideas,

The transcendental "Absolute" which we have laid bare through the reductions is in truth not ultimate; it is something which in a certain profound and wholly unique sense constitutes itself, and has its primeval source in what is ultimately and truly absolute.'"

At this point, Husserl refers us back to the analyses which are col- lected in The Phenomenology of Internal Time-Consciousness. It is here that we find Husserl's explanation of how the "self-constituting" unity and continuity of consciousness has its possibility in the time- form of consciousness. Such an explanation amounts to a reversal of Kant's procedure and this is the aspect of Husserl's theory of time which interests us.

Husserl distinguishes more exactly than Kant between objective time ("clock time"), subjective time, and the form of time. Objective and subjective time are not as clearly distinguished in Kant, perhaps because the form of time is called the form of subjective, inner sense. Possibly, inner sense becomes objective time when its sequence of moments is determined with regard to the object. Nevertheless, it is fundamental to Kant that consciousness of inner sense (subjective time) presupposes objective consciousness. In objective consciousness there is a purely formal time. Is objective time, then, the pure form of inner sense, and subjective time a materially-filled inner sense? If so, then there is no distinction between objective time and the form of time.

This is not the case for Husserl. The form of time is to be distinguished from both the subjective time of "immanent objects" and the objective time of "transcendent objects." Moreover, objective time is derived from internal time. It is in internal time-consciousness that the phenomenological "absolute" is discovered; it is "phenomenological time." Husserl says in Ideas, ". . . the unity of the immanent time-consciousness . . . is the all-enveloping unity of all the experiences of a stream of experience, and indeed a unity of consciousness that binds consciousness with consciousness."1 In com- plete contrast to Kant, Husserl calls phenomenological time the "primary synthesis."'7 As we shall see, this primary synthesis is explained by the form of time. Primary synthesis takes place not in the "pure" representation of an objective unity, temporally schematized, but directly in "concretely filled" time-consciousness.

II Ibid., p. 216. 16 Ibid., p. 307. 17 Ibid., p. 308.




On the face of it, it would seem that the temporality of consciousness makes its unity problematic. To use Husserl's own example, the first phases of the perception of the tone "C" are past as consciousness reaches towards the last phases which are not yet present. Kant had seen that if an appearance contains a temporally extended manifold, the perception of it cannot be restricted to what is contained in the actual now-point of consciousness. On the contrary, the perception must include that part of the manifold which is not ac- tually now. This is possible, Kant thought, because the imagination reproduces the content of each passing moment, making a single and unitary apprehension of the manifold possible. Without reproduction in the imagination, Kant emphasized, the perception of a unitary object would not be possible. The unity is derived from the concept of the object as the rule by which the reproduction occurs. It is therefore the case that the determination of the temporal phases of an appearance in inner sense is dependent upon the "changeless" consciousness of an object. For Kant, "internal time-consciousness" is not immediate.

In Husserl's discussion of Brentano's theory of time, we find a doctrine which becomes very important for Husserl's own theory. Brentano believed that the passing phases of an appearance belong to t i"without mediation."1 This would be impossible if time were the succession of absolute units that Kant believed it to be. Brentano believed that the passing phase of an appearance is immediately conjoined to the now-phase. The now, therefore, always occurs in the immediate context of thne just-past. This conjunction is a matter of sensation and not conceptualization. But if the past is distinguished from the present by the absence of a stimulus, then it is clear that a past sensation cannot be conjoined with the present as something "real" or "really" conjoined. Brentano therefore attributes the conjunction to a process of "primordial association" whereby the passing phase of an appearance is conjoined to the now-phase as a "phantasy-idea." If there is to be an immediate conjunction in this process, then it is the case, as Husserl notes, that "The sensation itself now becomes pro- ductive. It produces a phantasy-idea [Phantasievorstellung] like, or nearly like, itself with regard to content and enriched by a temporal character."1 This process is the origin of time-consciousness. The now alone does not constitute time-consciousness. Husserl notes that

18 Edmund Husserl, The Phenomenology of Internal Time-Consciousness, Martin Heidegger, ed., James S. Churchill, trans. (Bloomington: Indiana Universi- ty Press, 1973), pp. 29-30.

'9 Ibid., p. 32.




the content of the now "acquires no new characteristic" by adding "now."20 It does acquire a new characteristic in adding "just-past." This acquisition of a temporal character takes place in primordial association.

Not only is primordial association "immediate," it is further distinguished from Kant's reproductive process in that a particular moment is continually altered as it gets "pushed back" farther into the past. A now becomes a just-past, then the just-past of a just-past, and so on. In the continual production of a phantasy-idea with an ever-modified temporal character, there is a more dynamic characterization of the temporal process than we find in Kant.

Husserl finds a "phenomenological core" of truth in Brentano's theory once it is shorn of such "transcendent presuppositions" which hold that sensation is caused by stimuli. The immediate result of this "reduction" is that in phenomenological time-consciousness it is un- necessary to regard the past as a phantasy-idea. "In fact, the whole sphere of primordial associations is a present and real lived experience."2' For Husserl the' content of the past is retained as just what it was in the present, neither as a reproduction of the imagination, nor as a phantasy-idea produced in sensation. The past and present are "really" conjoined. In a possible reference to Kant, Husserl says that in retention the past is not given in a "figurative consciousness."22 Kant defined a figurative synthesis as the representation of "an object that is not itself present. "23 The past is not accessible as the static configuration of a reproduced intuitional manifold. In the continual modification of its temporal character the content of the past is directly connected with the present without being confounded with the present. It is not necessary to distinguish past and present through some kind of metamorphosis in the content of consciousness. The "actuality" of the content of consciousness in no way affected as it sinks back in the flow of consciousness. It is the same content which sinks farther and farther back and which remains as the "real," lived, and experienced context of the present.

Time-consciousness is a continuum in which a present-phase and a past-phase are only abstractions. Consciousness extends beyond the now. In this temporal extension the now is only an "ideal limit"24 and the retained past is "the living horizon of the now."25 This living

2 Ibid., p. 34. 21 Ibid., p. 39. 22 Ibid., p. 56. 23 Critique of Pure Reason, B151. 24 The Phenomenology of Internal Time-Consciousness, p. 63. 25 Ibid., p. 66.




horizon extends on the other side of the now in "protention." Although protention may be indeterminate in the case of perception, there is always at least an "empty" protention in which "what is determined is only that after all something will come."26 But neither the extensiveness of this consciousness beyond the now, nor its constant modification prejudices the "formal" unity of time-consciousness or the unity of its contents. Where a kind of double discontinuity is possible in other theories -either a qualitative discontinuity between the content of the present and the content of the past, or a formal discontinuity in the nature of time itself- Husserl finds a double continuity. It is the result of the "double intentionality" of time- consciousness, to which we now turn.

In time-consciousness an object is always experienced as stretched out in a continuity of retention-now-protention. In the continual temporal modification of this consciousness, however, the objective or "transverse intentionality" remains the same. That which is constantly modified is the temporal mode of givenness. But, the transverse intentionality of consciousness does not account for its formal unity. What must be accounted for is the unity of consciousness qua flux. This is a formal unity because consciousness is a "flux" only in a metaphorical or formal sense. In time-consciousness it is the temporality of the immanent object that is experienced and not consciousness itself as a temporal flux. Husserl calls the flux itself, within which the object is constituted, a "quasi-temporal order."27 It is quasi-temporal because it is not given in time-consciousness but is the temporal form of consciousness.

As a quasi-temporal order, the flux is a formal unity correlative to the unity of that which appears in it. Husserl expresses this correlativity as "double intentionality." One aspect of this double intentionality is the transverse intentionality of consciousness with regard to its object. The other aspect is called a "longitudinal intentionality" uniting consciousness qua flux.

By means of the one, immanent time is constituted. . . In the other is constituted the quasi-temporal disposition of the phases of the flux... This pre-phenomenal, pre-immanent temporality is constituted inten- tionally as the form of the temporally constitutive consciousness and in the latter itself.28

The form consists in this, that a now is constituted through an impression and that to the impression is joined a train of retentions and a horizon of

26 Ibid., pp. 76 & 140. 27 Ibid., p. 108. 28 Ibid., p. 109.




protentions. This abiding form, however, supports the consciousness of a continuous change.

The double intentionality of consciousness means that the (longitudinal) unity of consciousness is coordinate with the unity of its temporally extended object. For Husserl the unity of consciousness is explicable solely in terms of its temporal form.

Now let us compare Husserl with Kant concerning the relation between time and the unity of consciousness. It is interesting to note that for both Kant and Husserl the unity of consciousness is coordinate with the unity of the object. But there are two different objects involved. In Kant's case, it is a nontemporal transcendental object. In Husserl's case, it is something in internal time, a temporal object. In a radical inversion of the Kantian position, Husserl maintains that it is only because the same thing appears throughout the constant modifications of internal time-consciousness that it is possible to speak of a "transcendent" object independently of internal time. The difference in objects can be seen to be significantly dependent upon different theories of time. In this regard, the relation between the form of time and the "form" of consciousness in their respective philosophies is very important.

For Kant, the abiding "form" of consciousness is the conceptual representation of an objective unity in general. As a pure manifold, or pure discontinuity, the form of time is a necessary ingredient in this representation (without it it would not be "synthetic"). This unity is experiencable because the concepts are schematic determinations of time as the form of inner sense. But it still could not be said that consciousness in general has a quasi-temporal form. Concepts are not themselves temporal determinations of the manifold, but require a kind of quasi-temporalization, so to speak. For Husserl, on the other hand, consciousness has as its. form nothing other than a unity of quasi-temporal determinations. One might say that consciousness is the representation of the unity of time as such. This unity is not transcendentally objective in a Kantian sense, for it takes place not in spite of, or over and against, inner sense, but in and with internal consciousness as such. It is for this reason that time is the "ultimate" phenomenological absolute. As the formal unity of consciousness, which is coordinate with the "immediate" consciousness of a temporally extended unity, time makes the realm of "reduced" consciousness phenomenologically significant. Such significance is theoretically impossible from a Kantian point of view, because consciousness of unity in time cannot be immediate. Because the form of

29 Ibid., p. 153.




time itself requires a synthesis, it cannot be identical with the unity of consciousness as it is for Husserl. Kant believed it to be an important result of his theory that inner sense cannot serve as a philosophical foundation, for without the immediate consciousness of an external object, the "mere" appearances of inner sense would be devoid of unity. For Kant, the discontinuity which is a formal property of time, and therefore of its contents, makes the question of the unity of consciousness a question about something other than time itself. For Hus- serl, the unity of consciousness is manifest in time-consciousness and can only be explained in terms of time. Thus it can be said, that Kant, by recognizing time as a necessary component of consciousness, sought to deny as a philosophical foundation that which Husserl, by making time "absolute," was able to affirm. The significance of time is even more strongly emphasized by Heidegger.

Heidegger: The relation between time and being indicated by Husserl becomes Heidegger's principal theme. For Husserl, phenomenological consciousness is the "original region of being" which has its source in the prephenomenological temporal structure of consciousness. Heidegger believes that from the beginning of Western philosophy time has been "the perspective governing the disclosure of being."30 However, he seeks the origin of this perspective not in a special philosophical frame of mind, but in the most basic conditions of human existence. From this point of view, he is severely critical of the notion that in "consciousness" a "subject" experiences an "object." At the same time, he regards this as an historically ac- curate description of modern man's technologized experience of the world. He therefore treats consciousness as derivative from a more fundamental disclosure of Being which none of the above terms can adequately describe. Instead of a subject-object polarity, Heidegger speaks of "Dasein." More fundamental than consciousness is "disclosedness." With Heidegger we are therefore interested to learn how the unity of disclosedness is related to the temporality of human existence.

Human existence (Dasein) is the disclosure of a world of things in themselves. This is not the inner consciousness of external or of immanent objects. It would be incorrect to say that Dasein discloses a world "external" to itself, for this would make human existence something internal. Heidegger believes that in the disclosure of a world of things Dasein is disclosed to itself as "out there" (Da-sein).

30 Martin Heidegger, An Introduction to Metaphysics, Ralph Mannheim, Trans. (New York: Doubleday, 1961), p. 172.



KANT, HUSSERL, AND HEIDEGGER ON TIME AND THE 193 UNITY OF 'CONSCIOUSNESS"

Heidegger calls this the "ecstatic" nature of human existence. The question of the unity of disclosedness cannot, therefore, be stated in Kantian fashion as concerning the relation between objective and subjective unity. The unity of disclosedness is at once the unity of the "world" and of existence.

How is this to be understood? The double intentionality of consciousness in Husserl provides an important clue. Bearing in mind the inadequacy of the word, it is as if Heidegger "externalized" internal consciousness in such a way that in the "transverse" disclosedness of the thing there is a "longitudinal" unity, not of internal consciousness, but of the world in which things appear. Thus there is a reciprocity between world and thing in disclosedness just as there is between the flux of consciousness and the constituted object. Heideg- ger sometimes calls the relation between world and thing "ontological difference." While insisting upon the reciprocity or correlativity between the two, it is called a "difference" in order to emphasize that the world is not itself thingly, but is the different phenomenon of the being or meaning of things.

Heidegger's explanation of how the world is manifest in ecstatic human existence further distinguishes disclosedness from consciousness. Disclosedness is not a theoretical, detached observation of objects, but comes about in a "concerned" involvement with things in the world. Things appear as useful or threatening or beneficial in relation to or for something else as a result of our practical activity. In this way the world is manifest as a relational totality of significance.31 The unity of this world depends upon something unifying in human existence, and here is a problem.

From a practical point of view the unity of existence is more perplexing than is the unity of consciousness vis a vis its object. Man is always living "ahead of himself' in anticipating, planning, getting something done, etc. Insofar as human existence is oriented toward the "not-yet" it seems to lack unity. Heidegger believes that an account of the unity of human existence must include the preeminent role of the not-yet. In this regard, the unity of existence cannot be modelled on the unity of an object, as if, for example, its unity were a synthesis of moments that is coordinate with an objective synthesis. Rather, what "unifies" human existence is the manner in which it bears itself toward its future. Of central importance is the manner in which death is faced. Heidegger believes that the authentic unity of human existence is possible in a "resoluteness" toward death. It is on-

" Martin Heidegger, Being and Time, John Macquarrie and Edward Robin- son, Transs. (New York: Harper & Row, 1962), p. 120.




ly in this resoluteness that human existence becomes a self for itself. The resolute anticipation of death "utterly individualizes Dasein, and allows it, in this individualization of itself, to become certain of the totality of its potentiality-for-Being."32 In facing death as the absolute negation of any possibility for existence, the individual's existence is a finite, comprehensible "whole." But the individual's potentiality-for- being is not abstract and vague ("worldless," Heidegger would say). It is rather seen in conjunction with what he already is, as limited and directed by the world in which he finds himself, by his "facticity." Resoluteness brings together both aspects of human existence into an integrated relation.

Heidegger finds the true nature of the temporality of human existence in this resoluteness. The most important point is that time is experienced as arising out of the future and not out of the present as the impressional source-point of temporal sequence. The original phenomenon of the future is to be explained in terms of the way human existence "comes toward itself' in relating itself to its possibilities.33 In thereby calling attention to what it already is there arises the original phenomenon of the past. Heidegger designates this past by the term -already used by Husserl in connection with retention- Gewesenheit, "beenness," or "having-been." This term stresses that existence is a continuity of what it is not with what it already is (has been). What existence has been is the immediate "factical" context of the futural aspect of existence. The present, in this original temporality, is not an intermediate moment between future and past. It is rather a kind of taking cognizance of what "has presence" within the context in which we act on our possibilities. The original phenomenon of the present is therefore a "making-present" which is guided by the future and the past.34 The interrelatedness of these ''moments" of temporality unify every aspect of human existence: what it is not-yet, what it already is, and what is present (disclosed) to it.

Although Heidegger's account of the unity of existence may seem unusual, he notes with emphasis, "The order of the sequence in which Experiences run their course does not give us the phenomenal nature of existing."35 For both Kant and Husserl the problem of the unity of consciousness involves the way in which the order of experiences is determined. Consciousness of a now is the starting point of their in-

32 Ibid., p. 310. " Ibid., p. 372. " Ibid., pp. 373-374. " Ibid., p. 337.




quiries into the "temporality of existence." Heidegger objects that Kant defined the past and future in terms of the present as the no- longer-now and the not-yet-now. If to some extent this is true of Husserl also, it is nevertheless true that he went a long way toward seeing the past and the future as each having a unique essence. As the retained "horizon" of the now, the past is a distinctive aspect of consciousness that is not now-like. There seems to be no indication in Kant, on the other hand, that a reproduced content has a new, uniquely temporal character. What is new about it is that it is reproduced and not actual. But as reproduced it belongs to the now. Although Husserl speaks of the future as the not-yet-now, there is a suggestion of a unique definition of the future in the doctrine that the present is continuous with at least an "empty" protention. The significance which Husserl placed on protention is evident in the following:

Now it pertains to the essence of perception that it not only has a punctual now in view and has dismissed from view a just-having-been (and yet, in the characteristic manner of the "just-having-been," is "still conscious of") but also that it goes over from now to now and fore-seeing faces each one. The wakeful consciousness, the wakeful life, is a living-in-the-face-of, a living from one now toward the next.36

Apart from the emphasis upon the now, Heidegger's later analyses are foreshadowed here. It is certainly the case that Husserl is thinking of time as a horizon of unique, but interdependent, moments. The future is more than the not-yet-now; it is a horizon of expectation which is a distinctive aspect of the consciousness of the present. It is this horizonal notion of time which Heidegger adapts to a human existence conceived in terms broader than those of "consciousness." In this adaptation the present is thought of with regard to what has presence within the temporal horizon. In this way time becomes the central factor determining the thing as appearing in a world.

Oddly enough, the horizonal nature of temporality seems to have occupied Heidegger more with Kant than with Husserl. There is an extensive confrontation with Kant concerning the nature of the horizon within which things can be met. Heidegger claims that the kind of horizon which belongs to the temporality of resoluteness allows things to be seen as they ate in themselves. On the other hand, he believes that Kant's transcendental analysis of consciousness has disclosed a different kind of horizon which determines things as objects of representation. This horizon, moreover, is the "framework" (Ge-Stell) of the technological appropriation (or annihilation) of things in themselves. The thing in itself appears in this horizon only

36 The PRhenomenology of Internal Time-Consciousness, p. 141.




within the determinate limits of the represented "object in general." Because Heidegger believes the horizon in which the thing appears as it is in itself to be grounded in the temporality of resoluteness, he at- tempts to explain the horizon of the thing-as-object in terms of a kind of temporality. But it is an essentially different kind of temporality than is manifest in resoluteness. The contrast with Kant depends, therefore, upon his claim that for Kant too the unity of consciousness (disclosedness) is explained by time and not the other way around. Heidegger undertakes this task in Kant and the Problem of Metaphysics by showing that consciousness is a three-fold unity of intuition, imagination, and understanding, and by interpreting these as corresponding to the three moments of time. Without getting into the details of this interpretation,3 it is clear that Heidegger now has to account for two different manifestations of human temporality. He does this by referring to them as "temporalizations" of what could be called a prehorizonal time. The temporality of consciousness is not thereby put on equal footing with the temporality of disclosedness; the latter is still the most primordial temporalization. But the notion of temporalization means that there is an essential respect in which time remains constant in all horizons, whether they are "ecstatic" or internal to the subject's experience.

Heidegger's later thought takes place on this prehorizonal level. An additional factor in retreating to this new level of inquiry is Heidegger's increasing reluctance to see man's relation to being as one of "transcendence." In Being and Time the possibility of transcendence is explicated with regard to the temporal structure of human existence. Accordingly, the nature of the "horizon" of transcendence seems to be rooted in the nature of man. But in order to strengthen his interpretation of human existence as Da-sein, Heidegger comes to emphasize more strongly that the nature of man is rooted in the "there." He therefore ceases to explain the "there" in terms of a horizon of transcendence and begins to speak of it as a "clearing" which does not originate in the specifically human act of transcendence. He rather speaks of the "event" (Ereignis) of the clearing as one in which the possibility of human existence first arises. The clearing is not brought about through the activity of disclosure (or consciousness), nor is it to be explained as originating in things (or objects). It is an "event" which does not arise through the agency of particular beings, either man or things. Therefore, if this clearing is

3 For a detailed analysis of Heidegger's interpretation of Kant, see Sherover, op. cit.



KANT, HuSSERL, AND HEIDEGGERON TIME AND THE 197 UNITY OF "CONSCIOUSNESS"

to be explained in terms of time, the essence of time must be con- sidered prior to its temporalized modes.

To time itself belongs a "dimensionality" which "consists in the mutual reaching out and opening up of future, past and present."38 The unity of these three dimensions, however, must be explained in terms of a "fourth dimension" which Heidegger calls presentingg." Each of the three dimensions of time is a mode of presencing. Where Heidegger says presentingg," Husserl would have said "givenness." As we noted, Husserl distinguishes the present and the past not by an essential change in what is given but by the way in which the same thing is given. Heidegger's use of the term presentingg" reflects his continued effort to find a way to state man's relation to things without falling back upon the presuppositions of "conscious" experience. Ac- cordingly, presencing is not the same as givenness. Yet Heidegger would say that givenness is the way presencing takes place in consciousness.

It is presencing which determines the dimensionality of time as the clearing of being. In the entire history of metaphysics, Heidegger believes, being has always been explained as a kind of being-present. The manner in which the presence 9f things has been determined -whether as idea, subjective appearance, etc. -has been on- tologically decisive. That time is the unified dimension of presencing Heidegger calls the "event of appropriation" (Ereignis) between time and being.39 This prehorizonal or pretemporalized time is prior to all historical determinations of being. It cannot, therefore, be strictly correlated with the formal quasi-temporality which for Husserl unites consciousness as the original region of Being. From Heidegger's point of view, being-present in internal consciousness is a particular historical determination of being. For Heidegger there is a prephenomenal time underlying every historical-modification in the way man experiences the presence (being) of things. In this respect, incidentally, I do not think that the later Heidegger's neglect of his earlier analyses of horizon and transcendence reflects the "failure" of Being and Time. Being and Time's analysis of disclosedness (and the later analyses of thinking) is in some respects modelled on what Heidegger takes to be the Presocratic experience of the presence of things. This analysis can be seen as representing an authentic, historically possible alternative to the technological manipulation of things and of experience itself.

From Kant to Husserl to Heidegger time grows in significance as

38 Martin Heidegger, On Time and Being, Joan Stambaugh, trans. (New York: Harper & Row, 1972), p. 14.

3 Ibid., p. 19.




it is increasingly emphasized that time constitutes the unified dimension of consciousness or disclosedness. It could be argued-that Kant's doctrine of synopsis constitutes a first step toward the recognition of time as in itself an extensive unity. But Kant puts little emphasis upon the doctrine of synopsis, and it is unimportant in even Heidegger's interpretation of Kant. If time is to be recognized as an original "region" or "clearing" of being, it is necessary that the future and the past be put on equal footing with the present. Only in the in- terdependence of all three moments of time is anything like a region possible. In this respect, Husserl takes an important step toward deemphasizing the present. However Heidegger might interpret Kant, it is clear that both he and Husserl are opposed to Kant in regarding time as consituting in itself the region of Being.

Husserl and Heidegger both believe against Kant that the unity of consciousness or disclosedness must be explained in terms of time and not the other way around. A very important factor in this reversal is that what Husserl and Heidegger have in mind by the unity of consciousness or disclosedness is far more comprehensive than what Kant had in mind. The manifoldness of time-consciousness for Kant makes the problem of the unity of consciousness a question of joining in one object what time has put asunder. Because the determination of the time-order of the manifold is relative to an object, there can be no determinate intuition of a more extensive unity. For the more comprehensive unity of all appearances we can only rely on the regulative employment of reason.

For Husserl and Heidegger, on the contrary, the "region" of all things is immediately continuous with their appearance. Heidegger is particularly insistent on seeing this region as one in which the meaning or Being of things is disclosed and not imposed. He regards a transcendental system of pure reason, on the other hand, as an imposed structure of meaning. This must be borne in mind when com- paring Kant and Heidegger. In his Heidegger, Kant and Time, however, Charles M. Sherover does not make it clear that Heidegger is just as "radically" opposed to Kant in this regard as James is to Hume. Heidegger's interpretation of Kant must be placed within the larger context of his attack on representationalism as the imposition of meaning in an essentially technological project. Here, Heidegger develops a Husserlian theme in connection with the temporality of "consciousness" and not a Kantian one. It is Husserl's doctrine of time, with certain modifications, which allows Heidegger to interpret the region of Being as the immediate world of human existence.

RONALD P. MORRISON. WESTBROOK COLLEGE.



kant, husserl, and heidegger on time and the unity of "consciousness"

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