Abstract

In his magnum opus Temps et Récit, Paul Ricouer diagnoses three aporias of time in Husserl’s phenomenology. Of these, the first aporia is the most decisive, as it serves as the basis for the other two aporias. The first aporia identified by Ricœur refers to the retentional and protentional extension of “now” (jetzt), the present. The aporia of the present has its origin in the contrary conceptions of time by Aristotle and St. Augustine. The Aristotelian world time, as represented chiefly in the harmonious movement of celestial bodies, seems to contradict the Augustinian conception of time, namely the time of soul – as distentio animi. In Husserl’s attempt to extend the punctiform “now” by a retentional and protentional time-consciousness, Ricœur sees the inevitable aporia of a fusion of two modally opposed representations of time, namely, movement and stasis. In my paper I try to show how the first aporia of time identified by Ricœur can be seen not merely as an aporia of the present (Gegenwart), but as the aporia of the presentification (Vergegenwärtigung) of secondary memory, as represented in Husserl's propaedeutic explanation of the retentional extension of a time-object (Zeitobjekt) in subjective time-consciousness. The time-object and its intentional in-existence in consciousness, which is primarily conceived by Brentano in a temporal ‘original association’ and later by Husserl in retentional and protentional extension, is thereby extended in a mnestic and furthermore historical framework. It is primarily an attempt to establish the existential autonomy of the in-existent time-object in consciousness. Memory as an in-existent temporal phenomenon seems to contradict the tacitly assumed primacy of noesis or noetic construction in phenomenology and thus illustrate its equally autonomous presentification in consciousness in the form of a temporal aporia.