35 To conclude, I again point out how misleading it is to describe time
as a form of consciousness, or as form of intuition, or as a form of
sensuousness. Consciousness is certainly a constant flow of con- 273
tents. Even when a content of consciousness endures, the enduring
270 THE LOWER FORMS OF OBJECTIFICATION
does not consist in a content’s simply keeping-itself-identical, but in
a constant flow of changes. For an echo of every phase of what is
enduring remains behind. Every content fades away, and if it keeps on
enduring, then belonging to every phase of its duration is a trail-5 ing
off, a continuous fading away.
/And nevertheless, it is misleading to say that time is a form of
consciousness/, for time is first constituted in synthesis, and without
synthesis, only the possibility of the objectifying consciousness of
time obtains, but not the reality. The actual experiences, the contents
per 10 se, have their objective time positions, temporal orderings,
temporal extensions, etc. Things of this kind appertain to them, namely
owing to the ideal possibility of an objectifying consciousness that
objectifies the contents as contents and in so doing realizes the needed
identifications. /Time is not a form of consciousness, but the form of
/15 /every possible objectivity/, and only inasmuch as contents can also
be constituted as objects in perceptions and other objectifying acts do
they also have their time. Everything temporal is categorial in nature.
Just as identity, difference, multiplicity, and unity, and so on, can
only be given for an identifying, differentiating, collecting, positing
20 of unity, and on the other hand, are nevertheless not accidental, but
something objectively appertaining, and so very much so that without
them there could be no talk of objectivity in general, precisely the
same thing holds of time, which itself is the essential form of
individual objectivity. 25 Where there is nothing like now-positing, primary memory, expectation, identification, and so on, the content remains, so to speak, blind. It does not mean any objective being, any
objective duration, any objective changing, any succession, etc.
Everything that is just has an essential relationship to a possible
consciousness. Saying that 30 it is already points to possible adequacy
and points to an objective time position in which it is and in which it
necessarily calls for a before and an after. And, the fact that this or
that appertains to it presupposes that the appertaining has a primordial
sense, which refers again to the sphere of judgments and to the
possibility of one pos-35 sible categorial intuition or another.
What is important here, though, is that time is not, say, a form of
sensuousness, as if sensorial contents were already objects, as if 274
another objective time position belonged to the sensorial contents as
THE LOWER FORMS OF OBJECTIFICATION 271
a further content moment, say, some manner of quality or intensity, and
then all sensorial contents had their temporal ordering owing to this
time moment. In truth, temporal ordering is only actually realized in
time-positing acts, and where they are not really performed,
5 time is not something actual. It is, then, only objective in the sense
of numbers, which are not something existing apart from what is counted
either, but rather as ideal possibility of counting. In our case, we
would plainly not ever have underlying objectivity without the beginning
of a time-positing. On the other hand, time may not be
10 understood as an unconscious ordering function of the mind either. We
do not, in general, have to speak of minds here. We are talking about
essential properties of acts and objects. It makes no difference what
minds are or are not. And, even less do we have to speak of unconscious
functions. Time is the necessary form of individual 15 objectivity and has nothing at all to do with contingent subjectivity.
Edmund #Husserl, INTRODUCTION TO LOGIC AND THEORY OF KNOWLEDGE, LECTURES 1906/07
eidetisch 