Abstract

Within the history of the philosophy of time , most analyses of time have limited themselves to the individual subject, heralding human consciousness as the source of temporality. A similar approach seems to be found in Edmund Husserl's theory of inner time-consciousness, with the consequence that his phenomenology is repeatedly criticized as solipsistic. This project provides an argument against such interpretations by examining the internal structure of Husserl's "living present" and its constitution of objects as well as its constitution of the self and other subjects. Working with the function of "appresentation", the notion that every presentation indicates profiles of an object that are not directly, I argue that the other subject is necessarily indicated by my individual constitution of an object, as my current presentation of a whole unity always exceeds my direct, momentary perception. I continue with an analysis of each dimension of temporality, turning primarily to Husserl's later unpublished manuscripts on time. From these manuscripts, I take up certain important notions heretofore generally neglected by the secondary literature in Husserl scholarship, especially "near" and "far" retention, "association", and "affectivity". I propose that the phenomenological subject, even as characterized by the notion of "ownness," both includes and requires an abstract intersubjective structure---thereby introducing the notion "intersubjective temporality" as a way to describe the whole of Husserl's "living present", i.e., a temporality linked to other subjectivity