The structure of living-through as the structure of time-consciousness (Husserl)

This study attempts a phenomenological elucidation of two notable facts using varioius Husserlian concepts: firstly, that consciousness in any given moment goes in one specific direction rather than another and, secondly, that consciousness goes in a direction at all and does not, so to speak, come to a halt. Our task, then, is to reveal and conceptually grasp a motif that functions in the deepest foundations of living-through. This motif is presented to us as the result of the mutual influence of two tendencies: most generally we have described them as understanding and doubt - to this end we have used the well-known Husserlian schema of time-consciousness, which thus gains an interesting further characteristic. Thanks to this characteristic the structure of temporal consciousness acquires a qualitative aspect: it is shown that consciousness is limited by these tendencies so that it forms a qualitative spectrum of shades which, at the same time, is concentrically structured into zones of increasing, resp. decreasing intensity, as Husserl described with his conception of center and background. This structure reveals consciousness to be a force field constituted by these tendencies, while at the same time as a continuous sphere of motivation, which always drives a particular living-through towards one of the limits. In a further description of this structure we apply Husserl's conception of double intentionality and these two tendencies in this way naturally crystallise into a form which can be referred to using two traditional concepts: "perception" and "reflection". The key part of the work is an extensive description of perception and reflection as structural moments of living-through. The result of these analyses can be expressed by the following thesis: living-through is in each particular instance shaped as a unique proportion of the synthesis of perceptual synthesis and reflexive synthesis. The main contribution of this work is, then, the acquiring of means to systematically describe all possible forms of living-through.