What Does Protention "Protend"?

Abstract

REMARKS ON HUSSERL'S ANALYSES OF PROTENTION IN THE BERNAU MANUSCRIPTS ON TIME-CONSCIOUSNESS In the version of the Lectures on the Phenomenology of Inner Time Consciousness that was edited by Martin Heidegger in 1928, protention is only mentioned in a few places.1 If we compare this with the analyses of retention, which are distinctly dominant both quantitatively and qualitatively, protention appears like a phenomenon that is mentioned only for reasons of symmetry and fairness. Husserl writes: "Every original constituting process is animated by protentions, which emptily constitute, gather, and bring to fulfillment that which is to come."2 Another thesis is: "In each primal phase [Urphase], which constitutes originally the immanent contents, we have retentions of the preceding phases and protention of the coming phases of the same contents. And these protentions are fulfilled, as long as the contents last."3 Retention and protention are presented to a large extent to be analogous phenomena. Occasionally retention is denoted as "primary recollection" and in analogy protention is denoted as "primary expectation," protention is characterized as a kind of expectation of hyletic contents "which are going to come."4 In addition to the fact of the minor treatment of protention is the further fact that nearly all passages of the Lectures dedicated to protention stem from the phase of Husserl's reworking this material in Bernau in September 1917. But what is to be found in the Lectures is not the only outcome of the new and deeper reflection on protention in the year 1917. In the research manuscripts written shortly after the reworking of the Lectures, now published as the Bernauer Manuskripte zum Zeitbewu[beta]tsein (1917/18) the analysis has become more differentiated. In what follows I will present the details of this analysis and draw from them what I think to be useful and to the point. The very experimental character of the Husserlian research manuscripts often results in aporetic and seemingly contradictory concepts. Thus I do not see the Bernau Manuscripts as a kind of last and definite theory of protention, but in them there is some work done that has promise for further development. First I will give a short overview over the character of Husserl's analyses of time constitution in general. In the second part I will delineate the theory of protention in the Lectures. In the third part I will treat the theory of protention in the Bernau Manuscripts as far as it is worked out. In the fourth part I will try to draw some conclusions that may go beyond the state of reflection in the Bernau Manuscripts. The Project of the Time Analyses: Constituting Time Out of Hyletic Data In the Lectures Husserl works out how sensual data and their duration can be constituted on the experiential ground of a hyletic flow. They constitute or we may say "show" themselves in the interplay of hyletic data (Urhyle) and the retentional contents. This kind of "showing themselves" is the basic kind of time constitution. The experiential ground of this constitution consists of a hyletic stream and of retentions sinking or descending in different levels. Retention is the designation of an originary faculty of the human mind, one that enables us to keep hyletic data for a short time alive and intuitive. Retentions keeps contents given to us, although gradually weakening in intensity. But even as the contents are sinking in intensity up to the point of vanishing entirely, they remain given, even though they have already lost any sensual character. We might interpret this weakening as a characteristic of a time perspective. Husserl himself uses the analogy between a spatial perspective and a perspective in time.5 What is more important for further constitutive achievements is that there are synthesis of coincidence established between the different kinds of contents in inner time consciousness: between the primal presence (Urprasenz) and the different levels of "sinking" retentional contents that are co-given in a certain phase. …