Husserl, Protention, and the Phenomenology of the Unexpected

Abstract

Although there has been a great deal said about Husserl’s account of time-consciousness, little attention has been specifically paid to future-consciousness. This article gives an Husserlian account of future-consciousness. It begins by arguing that protention should be understood as a future-directed version of retention and so that future-consciousness should be understood as perception. This account is developed in two ways: (1) the future need not be determinately given in protention and so future-consciousness can be vague; (2) cases when the future turns out to be other than we perceived it to be (cases when the unexpected happens) can be understood as temporal illusions. This account of future-consciousness both illuminates some of Husserl’s more obscure remarks on time-consciousness and (more importantly) provides a means of understanding an often neglected phenomenon of independent philosophical interest: our awareness of the future.