Research

in
Phenomenology
Research in Phenomenology 40 (2010) 34–54 brill.nl/rp

The Primacy of the Present:

Metaphysical Ballast or Phenomenological Finding?

Andrea Staiti
Boston College

Abstract
In this paper I argue that the primacy of the present in Husserl’s philosophy is not an unques-
tioned ballast inherited from the tradition of metaphysics but rather a genuinely phenomeno-
logical discovery. First, I explore the present of things and argue that the phenomenological
primacy of the present in this domain should be understood in terms of what Husserl calls “affec-
tion.” Strictly speaking originary affection and associative syntheses (as the most basic phenom-
ena for the givenness of things) can only take place in the present or starting from the present.
Second, I consider the present in the egological sphere and analyze its primacy for both the
transcendental and the personal ego. Finally, I move to the experience of the other and argue that
only the perception of the other’s body in the present gives rise to an authentic empathic experi-
ence as the experience of the other’s governing in his own body.

Keywords
Husserl, affection, time, ego, empathy

The phrase “metaphysics of the present” embodies a thesis originally put forth
by Heidegger.1 According to Heidegger, the whole history of Western philoso-
phy is dominated by the unquestioned presupposition that the present enjoys
a primacy with regard to the other two dimensions of time, the past and the
future. The present (Gegenwart), as the moment of presence (Anwesenheit),
would thus be tacitly viewed as the fundamental ontological dimension of

1)
I am much indebted to Carmine Di Martino, Nick De Warren, Philippe Merz, and Frank
Steffen for their valuable insights and critiques of an earlier version of this paper, which I origi-
nally presented in German on July 4, 2009 at the International Hermeneutics Conference at
Albert Ludwigs Universität Freiburg. I would like to thank the organizers, Hans-Helmuth Gan-
der and John Sallis, for having encouraged me to present my work as well as all the participants
for their insightful comments and questions. Jerome Veith helped me with the translation of the
text into English.
© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2010 DOI: 10.1163/008555510X12626616014583
 A. Staiti / Research in Phenomenology 40 (2010) 34–54 35

reality and of subjectivity, whereas the past and the future, as modes of absence
(Abwesenheit), would have been degraded to a merely privative status. ‘The
things in their presence,’ ‘the subject in his presence’: these would be the two
invariant coordinates of thought in which the history of philosophy as meta-
physics unfolded. The uncovering of this tacit presupposition through Hei-
degger’s ‘destructive’ method of interpretation should serve as a first step in
order to eventually move beyond it.
This Heideggerian thesis is doubtless one of the strongest and most influen-
tial in his whole work. Consider, for instance, the decisive influence it had on
the development of Jacques Derrida’s thought. Notoriously, Derrida radical-
izes Heidegger’s thesis and affirms the impossibility of going beyond the meta-
physics of presence: The task of deconstruction, as Derrida articulates it,
consists rather in a constant disturbance and problematization through a work
at the margin of the metaphysical discourse. In this context, Derrida is the first
to interpret Husserl as explicitly belonging to the tradition of the metaphysics
of presence. This interpretation is for Derrida, at the same time, a critique:
that Husserl worked throughout his career according to a presupposition
whose legitimacy was not proved in terms of the things themselves but, rather,
was uncritically taken up from the foregoing tradition. Accordingly, Husserl’s
claim of presuppositionlessness for his phenomenology would be disproved
precisely with respect to his conception of the present: The primacy of the
present—to be found at all levels in Husserl’s phenomenology—would be
metaphysical and not phenomenological in nature.
Following Derrida’s interpretation of Husserlian phenomenology, some
Husserl scholars, especially in the seventies and in the eighties, put their efforts
into trying to lay bare the metaphysics of the present in different areas of
Husserl’s thought, in order to spell out Derrida’s thesis.2 The preferred works
for this purpose were Logical Investigations, Ideas I, and The Idea of Phenome-
nology. ‘Metaphysics of the present’ eventually became a philosophical catch-
phrase whenever Husserlian phenomenology was at issue.
In the following years, a new tendency developed in the scholarship. Prom-
inent phenomenologists such as Dan Zahavi attempted to show in various
ways and in different contexts that, contrary to Derrida, absence plays an essen-
tial role in Husserl’s phenomenology. As Zahavi puts it, Husserl thoroughly

2)
See for instance: Wolfgang W. Fuchs, Phenomenology and the Metaphysics of Presence (Den
Haag: Nijhoff, 1976); Rudolf Bernet, “Is the Present ever Present? Phenomenology and the
Metaphysics of Presence,” Research in Phenomenology 12 (1982): 85–112; David Carr, Interpret-
ing Husserl: Critical and Comparative Studies (Dordrecht: Nijhoff, 1987).
36 A. Staiti / Research in Phenomenology 40 (2010) 34–54

acknowledged the interplay of presence and absence, and accordingly, he “by

no means succumbed to a naïve adoration of presence.”3 In Husserl, as Zahavi
explains, there can be no metaphysics of the present, because the present is
always and only taken into consideration in its constitutive connection with
elements of non-presence. The new assessment of Husserlian phenomenology
in this “second wave” of scholarship thus tends to limit the centrality of the
present, if not to deny it outright. The texts most frequently cited to under-
score this thesis are the lectures On the Phenomenology of the Consciousness of
Internal Time, Analyses concerning Passive Synthesis, and various unpublished
manuscripts.
Yet this second tendency in the scholarship can be viewed as compatible
with the first: The Derrida-inspired interpreters are inclined to see in the very
point of departure of this controversy an aporetic trait pertaining to Husser-
lian phenomenology as a whole (and the finding of aporias is notoriously one
of the major tasks of deconstruction): In his ‘official’ published texts, Husserl
would operate thoroughly within the framework of the metaphysics of the
present, whereas at the same time, in his lectures and research-manuscripts, he
would elaborate the premises for its problematization. David Carr formulates
this position succinctly when he states: “It seems to me justified to count Hus-
serl among those who give priority to the present, and to attribute this doc-
trine to the influence of metaphysical remnants in his thought that should
have been overcome by phenomenology. Moreover, this view seems to contra-
dict the most important insight of the lectures on time-consciousness.”4
As the tone of these considerations has perhaps already disclosed, I intend
in this paper to develop a different line of argument, yet without diminishing
the value of the work accomplished along the two aforementioned directions
of research. My thesis, to put it briefly, is as follows: There is, to be sure, a pri-
macy of the present in Husserl’s phenomenology. This primacy, however, is not
metaphysical but genuinely phenomenological in nature. It is possible to show
through phenomenological descriptions that the present enjoys a peculiar pri-
macy that cannot be reduced to an unquestioned presupposition or to a meta-
physical vocabulary. In order to show this, it is necessary to engage in a deeper
and more substantive analysis of the present, whereby the present is not
reduced to a punctual mode of temporality beside the past and the future, but

3)
Dan Zahavi, Husserl’s Phenomenology (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2003), 94.
4)
David Carr, Interpreting Husserl: Critical and Comparative Studies, 208.
 A. Staiti / Research in Phenomenology 40 (2010) 34–54 37

rather is disclosed in its concrete breadth and grasped as the “originary present
[Urgegenwart], which is not a temporal mode.”5
I will articulate the phenomenological primacy of the present in three
points: I. the present of things; II. the present of the ego; III. the present of
others.
Before I proceed I would like to make a further preliminary remark in order
to clarify the overall aim of this paper: I am aware of the fact that by criticizing
the Husserl scholarship inspired by Heidegger and Derrida, I am, at the same
time and implicitly, criticizing its inspirers. However, in order to articulate a
robust and convincing critique of Heidegger and Derrida from a Husserlian
point of view, it would be necessary to address more general issues raised by
these latter such as the role of language in philosophy and the overall structure
of rationality. Since this is not what I am going to do in this paper, my critical
considerations should be understood as exclusively referred to the aforemen-
tioned directions of scholarship. Moreover, I find it more interesting to out-
line positively what I consider to be a phenomenologically sound account of
the primacy of the present than to engage in a thorough critique of different
positions in the post-Husserlian phenomenology. If I succeed in doing this, I
will have at least set a basis for further, more extensive discussions between
Husserlian and post-Husserlian phenomenologists.

I. The Present of Things

A first and widespread critique of Husserl conducted under the heading ‘meta-
physics of the present’ pertains to Husserl’s alleged intuitionism. The primacy
of the present is thereby closely related to Husserl’s teaching concerning the
primacy of intuition in perception. According to Husserl’s view, the percep-
tual things are given in their highest degree of manifestation in the present
perception. For only in this present perception are the corresponding noetic
intentions fulfilled through which perceptual things are posited as really exist-
ing. The being-given in the present perception would thus, at the same time,
be the specific moment of reality of the things. Consequently, the present
would have a primacy both from an ontological and from an epistemological
point of view. Fuchs writes, for example: “According to the epistemological
teaching of Husserl, the epistemological moment is the moment of living

5)
“Die Urgegenwart, die keine Zeitmodalität ist.” (Edmund Husserl, Zur Phänomenologie der
Intersubjektivität: Texte aus dem Nachlaß: Dritter Teil [1929–1935], vol. 15 of Husserliana, ed. by
Iso Kern [The Hague: Nijhoff, 1973], 668).
38 A. Staiti / Research in Phenomenology 40 (2010) 34–54

presence given in intuition, and this is the only possible mode of originary
consciousness.”6 Zahavi highlights the ontological formulation of this view as
follows: “The more immediate the object shows itself for the subject, the more
it is present. And the more present it is, the more real it is.”7
This idea of the present as the highest degree of intuitive givenness and
therefore of reality of things would be particularly prominent in Husserl’s phe-
nomenological key-concept of primal impression (Urimpression): “It is the
notion of primal impression that Husserl works through in order to think out
the meaning of ‘now.’ It is as absolute presence, that is, the presence of the
object of intuition in consciousness in the present that this notion of primal
impression has meaning for Husserl.”8 Furthermore, the connection between
primal impression, intuition, full givenness of things, and the present would
be a sign of Husserl’s theoreticism, i. e., of the primacy accorded to the theo-
retical determination vis-à-vis the practical engagement with things: The pri-
macy of the present would then coincide at the same time with a primacy of
theory. The present would be, in the first place, the mode of temporality in
which things reveal themselves as accessible to a theoretical determination. To
sum up, it is possible to identify three theses pertaining to the primacy of the
present in Husserl’s phenomenology: (1) The present has an ontological pri-
macy (i.e., things are real only in the present); (2) the present has an epistemo-
logical primacy (i.e., things have their highest degree of givenness in their
impressional present); (3) the present has primacy as the originary dimension
for the theoretical determination of things.
I would now like to respond to these three theses from a Husserlian point
of view and then offer an alternative thesis about the present of the things.
Thesis (1): Heidegger was not the first to thematize and criticize the philo-
sophical position according to which the present would have an ontological
primacy: Husserl was already familiar with it and made significant efforts to
rebut it in his famous 1905 lecture On the Phenomenology of the Consciousness
of Internal Time. Here he attributes this thesis to his teacher Franz Brentano in
the context of a critical consideration of Brentano’s doctrine of time, which
represents the point of departure of Husserl’s own analysis. According to
Brentano, the temporal characters of a perception merely possess an altering

6)
Fuchs, Phenomenology and the Metaphysics of Presence, 72.
7)
Zahavi, Husserl’s Phenomenology, 95. It should be noticed, however, that Zahavi is not commit-
ted to this view. He proposes this happy phrasing in his brief exposition and critique of the
notion of ‘metaphysics of presence’ along the lines I presented at the outset.
8)
Fuchs, Phenomenology and the Metaphysics of Presence, 65.
 A. Staiti / Research in Phenomenology 40 (2010) 34–54 39

function, not a determining one, with respect to the correspondent inten-

tional content: “A louder tone c is nevertheless a tone c, and so too is a weaker
tone c. On the other hand, a tone c that was is not a tone c, a red that was is not
a red. Temporal determinations do not determine: they alter essentially, exactly
as the determinations ‘represented,’ ‘wished,’ and the like.”9 From a phenom-
enological standpoint, however, Brentano’s doctrine is very problematic to
defend.10 The assumption of a strong ontological discontinuity between pres-
ent and past of the same thing is incompatible with the constant, unbroken
continuity that we find within our experience of time. When I listen to a
melody—to use one of Husserl’s examples—I have absolutely no hint of an
ontological difference between the tone that is sounding now and the tones
that just sounded away. Rather, they all belong together to one and the same
continuum that we call ‘melody.’ Husserl’s well-known descriptions of the
retentional consciousness aim precisely at a clarification of the ontologically
homogeneous continuum that characterizes temporal objects such as melo-
dies. Thus, the present is not an ontologically severed moment. The c sound-
ing right now is apprehended as ‘real’ as much as the just-faded-away d and e.
All together in their retentional continuity they constitute the unitary con-
sciousness of the presently sounding melody.
Thesis (2): As already mentioned, the idea of an epistemological primacy of
things in their present revolves around the concept of primal impression. With
‘primal impression’ Husserl denominates the originary coming about of an
immanent lived-experience (Erlebnis) that founds the retentional process. In
the example of the melody, the primal impression is the acoustic occurrence
correlated with the first tone of the melody, to which a series of retentions
attaches as the melody unfolds in further tones. Once the first tone has faded
away it is no longer ‘really,’ i.e., impressionally, entailed in consciousness but

9)
Edmund Husserl, Zur Phänomenologie des inneren Zeitbewusstseins (1893–1917), vol. 10 of
Husserliana, ed. Rudolf Boehm (The Hague: Nijhoff, 1966), 14; translated by John Brough as
On the Phenomenology of the Consciousness of Internal Time (1893–1917), vol. 4 of Collected
Works (Dordrecht: Kluwer, 1991), 15.
10)
For an extensive presentation and discussion of Brentano’s view, see Nicolas De Warren, Hus-
serl and the Promise of Time: Subjectivity in Transcendental Phenomenology (Cambridge: Cam-
bridge University Press, 2009), chap. 3. Interestingly, Brentano’s position roughly amounts to
the so-called ‘tensed theories of time’ in analytic philosophy as presented in Yuval Dolev, Time
and Realism: Metaphysical and Anti-metaphysical Perspectives (Cambridge: MIT University Press,
2007). According to the tensed-theorists the ‘Now’ has a special ontological primacy vis-à-vis the
other temporal tenses.
40 A. Staiti / Research in Phenomenology 40 (2010) 34–54

only maintained in the modified form of retentional consciousness.11 Accord-

ing to the second thesis, the highest degree of intuitiveness should be attrib-
uted to the moment of primal impression. Upon closer inspection, however,
this equation of primal impression and intuition qua highest degree of intu-
itiveness is fundamentally mistaken: A primal impression per se still has no
objectual reference, and therefore, as regards the givenness of the correspon-
dent thing, it is not an apex but rather a zero-point. The intentional reference
to an object ‘sprouts up,’ so to speak, to the first primal impression only within
the continuity of the retentional modification through which it gets syntheti-
cally linked to further primal impressions. One could say that the intuitive
givenness of the temporal object ‘melody’ runs through the whole temporal
stretch, in which the melody appears ‘in person’ (leibhaft). Therein, for sure,
the primal impressions within which the singular tones come about imma-
nently are originary occurrences. This, however, does not mean that the high-
est degree of intuitiveness of the melody is to be found in the impressional,
singular tones. Rather, in these latter per se no melody comes to manifestation.
The same goes for the singular tones considered in themselves as well: It is
only the retentional continuum of the underlying tonal moments that pres-
ents the full-blown tone in originary intuitiveness. The impressional tonal
moments as such are, just like the single tones in the melody, non-indepen-
dent parts within the apprehension-whole (Auffassungsganze) of the tonal con-
sciousness. Thus, what is present in the strictest sense “now after now” are only
the primal impressions. This originary being-present, however, cannot have
any epistemological primacy, since per se it possesses no intuitive relevance.
Precisely because the intuition is the originally dative consciousness, the primal

11)
This presentation of retentional consciousness is deliberately simplified, in order to adapt it
to the specific goal of this paper. In fact, it is somewhat misleading to conceive of retention as
following or “attaching to” primal impression, given that this kind of language suggests a tempo-
ral relation between primal impression and retention, while primal impression and retention
(together with protention) are originary occurrences that bring about temporality in the first
place. More properly speaking, impression and retention (and protention) always occur ‘together’
(zugleich) in an originary threefold structure, although not ‘at the same time’ ( gleichzeitig) or
after one another, provided that time is constituted by them. On this issue see John Brough,
“The Emergence of an Absolute Consciousness in Husserl’s Early Writings on Time-Conscious-
ness,” Man and World 5 (1972): 298–326. However, Husserl himself makes use of a dynamic
description of primary impression and retention in his notorious time-diagrams, where the pri-
mary impressions of a given experience are depicted as a progressive series of points on a line
eventually fading out and leaving a tail of retentions behind them as a new impressional point
comes about. To learn more about Husserl’s time-diagrams, see James Dodd, “Reading Husserl’s
Time-Diagrams from 1917/18,” Husserl Studies 21 (2005): 111–37.
 A. Staiti / Research in Phenomenology 40 (2010) 34–54 41

impressions cannot be understood as originary and intuitive presence of the

things for the correspondent consciousness. Accordingly, the present under-
stood in the strict sense of the primal impression, has no epistemological pri-
macy at all.
Thesis (3): In what sense, then, does the present of things have a primacy
vis-à-vis the other temporal modes? The answer to this question goes along
with a rebuttal of the third thesis, according to which the primacy of the pres-
ent would imply the primacy of theory over against praxis. In order to ade-
quately grasp the primacy of the present with respect to perceptual things, it is
necessary to take into consideration the phenomenon of affection (Affektion).
I would like to argue that the present of things has neither an ontological, nor
an epistemological primacy, but rather an affective primacy. To phrase it differ-
ently: Only in their present are the things able to exert an originally affective
force on the ego and thereby engender an interest in the ego. Even an absent
thing, in order to reach and strike the ego, needs some affective ground or
point of departure (Anhaltspunkt) in the concrete present. This can be shown
through a short description of the phenomenon of affection. Husserl defines
affection as follows: “By affection we understand the allure given to conscious-
ness (bewusstseinsmäßiger Reiz), the peculiar pull that an object given to con-
sciousness exercises on the ego; it is a pull that is relaxed when the ego turns
toward it attentively, and progresses from there, striving toward self-giving
intuition, disclosing more and more of the self of the object, thus, striving
toward an acquisition of knowledge, toward a more precise view of the
object.”12 From a phenomenological viewpoint, however, ‘a conscious object’
is no absolute, consciousness-independent thing, i.e., no ‘thing in itself ’ that
happens accidentally to bump into consciousness. Rather, a conscious object
is the result of associative syntheses that take place passively between imma-
nent data of lived-experiences. The consciousness-immanent allure or stimu-
lus (Reiz) that Husserl is talking about here should not be conflated with a
causal, external influence on the nervous system: It is rather the peculiar
becoming-salient (Sich-Abheben) of complexes of sensuous data that occurs
passively in the pure immanence of consciousness: “Sensible data (and thus
data in general) send, as it were, affective rays of force toward the ego pole.”13

12)
Edmund Husserl, Analysen zur passiven Synthesis: Aus Vorlesungs- und Forschungsmanuskripten
(1918–1926), vol. 11 of Husserliana, ed. Margot Fleischer (The Hague: Nijhoff, 1966), 148;
translated by Anthony Steinbock as Analyses Concerning Passive and Active Synthesis: Lectures on
Transcendental Logic (Dordrecht: Kluwer, 2001),196.
13)
Ibid.
42 A. Staiti / Research in Phenomenology 40 (2010) 34–54

The sensuous data, through which an object announces itself originally within
consciousness, are precisely the aforementioned primal impressions that initi-
ate the retentional and synthetic process of objectification. The more encom-
passing and the more coherent with regards to the content the associative
synthesis between primal impressions is, the stronger their affective force and
the clearer the standing out of the correspondent synthetic object from the
unthematic sensuous background will be.
Primal impressions are, as clarified above, originary moments of present.
Therefore Husserl points out in one of the C-manuscripts: “All association has
its seat in the unity of the primitive-modal [urmodal ], of the originary flowing
present.”14 ‘Present,’ strictly speaking, means nothing but the infinite and infi-
nitely plural whole of the originally affective data, which constitutes the
ground for all the active intentionality as explicit object-directedness. In Hus-
serl’s words: “The living present . . ., viewed as a whole, . . . is an affective unity,
has accordingly a unitary vivacity [Lebendigkeit] into which all special affec-
tions that belong to the affective unity are integrated as moments, as moments
that are unified synthetically within it.”15 Affection produces itself only “in the
impressional present”16 and this present is, accordingly, “the most universal
genetic phenomenon”17 whose correlate is the wakeful, consciously directed
ego of interests (Interessen-Ich). This obviously does not mean that the ego can
only have interests directed towards presently affecting things. The awakening
provoked by affection in the sphere of the present can reach into the past and
the future, primarily in the well-known form of a suddenly occurring recollec-
tion or expectation. Moreover, interests can establish themselves as stable
interests that pertain to a subject’s life as a whole. But the ground or point of
departure (Anhaltspunkt) for any interest whatever is essentially affections that
originate in the present, impressional lived-experiences (Erlebnisse).
An exhaustive treatment of these phenomena would require a more thor-
ough analysis of the principles of association and awakening than can be
elaborated here. This short characterization, however, should have clarified at

14)
“Alle Assoziation hat ihre Stätte in der Einheit der urmodalen, der urtümlichen strömenden
Gegenwart” (Edmund Husserl, Späte Texte über Zeitkonstitution (1929–1934): Die C-Manuskripte,
vol. 8 of Husserliana-Materialien, ed. D. Lohmar [Dordrecht: Springer, 2006], 295).
15)
Edmund Husserl, Analysen zur passiven Synthesis, 168; Anthony Steinbock, Analyses Concer-
ning Passive and Active Synthesis, 216.
16)
Edmund Husserl, Analysen zur passiven Synthesis, 149; Anthony Steinbock, Analyses Concer-
ning Passive and Active Synthesis, 197.
17)
Edmund Husserl, Analysen zur passiven Synthesis, 137; Anthony Steinbock, Analyses Concer-
ning Passive and Active Synthesis, 184.
 A. Staiti / Research in Phenomenology 40 (2010) 34–54 43

least in outline the upshot of Husserl’s inquiry: Past and future things possess
no affective force in themselves. This latter pertains exclusively to the things in
their present, i.e., in their impressional, primal mode of manifestation that
makes possible the passive genesis of affective unities.
What effect does this have, however, as regards the third thesis about the
alleged primacy of theory over against praxis? Husserl makes clear that the
original mode of the egological turning toward an object in the context of
affection is, as already intimated, that of interest. This means that what per-
tains to the most original and concrete present is not a neutral theoretical
regard but rather an inclination (Zuneigung) or aversion (Abneigung) that
urges to action. The original, living present is therefore not primarily the seat
of theory but rather of praxis. Husserl speaks here of a “practical present” in
which “the constitution of beings, of objects . . . is nothing other than the con-
stitution of interests. Pre-givenness of the world means: a universal interest is
founded and unceasingly constitutes the individual form of all interests.”18
The present, as the originary seat of the affection/interest correlation, is thus
primarily a practical dimension, within which theory itself is embedded as a
particular interest (and perhaps, as the highest.)

II. The Present of the Ego

We already touched upon the problem of the ego with the description of the
present as originary affective sphere. In this second section, I would like to
treat the ego more extensively in order to show the phenomenological primacy
of the present with respect to it. According to many post-Husserlian phenom-
enologists, the influence of the metaphysics of the present is particularly strong
in Husserl’s conception of the ego. Husserl is charged with attributing to the
subject a self-transparency in the present accomplishment of reflection that
unacceptably overlooks its complexity and historical mediatedness. From a
non-Husserlian point of view, the reflective access to ourselves is a dramati-
cally reductive perspective that hides the essential feature of our subjectivity,
i.e., its historicity. And historicity has much more to do with the past and the
future than with the present.

18)
“die Konstitution von Seiendem, von Gegenständen . . . nichts anderes [ist], als die Konstitu-
tion von Interessen. Weltvorgegebenheit besagt: Ein universales Interesse ist gestiftet und hinfort
individuelle Form aller Interessen.” (Edmund Husserl, Späte Texte über Zeitkonstitution (1929–
1934): Die C-Manuskripte, 74).
44 A. Staiti / Research in Phenomenology 40 (2010) 34–54

This encapsulates, in a simplified form, the critique raised against Husserl’s

conception of the ego. However, I am convinced that Husserl’s emphasis on
the present experience of the ego has a much more basic meaning than that of
an alleged reflective self-transparency. On the one hand, Husserl wants to
highlight the difference between transcendental and historical-personal ego.
Transcendental and historical-personal ego are not two rival conceptions of
subjectivity but rather two strata, viz., dimensions within one and the same
subjectivity that can be distinguished precisely as regards their specific tempo-
ral modes. The transcendental ego is, contrary to the personal, the originally
present ego. On the other hand, however, the personal ego is also always and
originally related to the present. This can be accounted for without necessarily
having to deny or reduce its historical density.
To start out our analysis, a short remark by Husserl is of great help. In a
research manuscript he writes: “I am of a constant presence. Actually, I cannot
say ‘I was’ in the sense ‘I am past’.”19 This remark is illuminating. In fact,
nobody can pronounce the words “I am past” seriously. They only amount to
an empty intention, as words in the sentence “this taste is green.” But why is
it so? And what kind of ego is that which can only be in a constant present? It
is only possible to experience as past something that came about as an imma-
nent datum (primal impression) in a precisely determinable time-point within
the stream of consciousness and subsequently was conserved according to the
specific modification of retention. Something must have had an experience-
able beginning, in order to be able to have an end, and subsequently to be
experienced as past. This is not the case with one’s own ego. We can have tem-
porally extended experiences and thereby distinguish between past, future,
and present in the familiar sense of these terms only because the point of view
that we ourselves constitute is not itself really (reell ) contained within the flux
of experience. Accordingly, our ego lives in a present that is not affected by the
universal manner of modification of retention. The ego, as the center of orien-
tation and the principle of articulation of all temporal experience, is itself not
temporal but rather originarily present. In Husserl’s words: “The ego is a ‘per-
manent and abiding’ ego; it does not arise and then go by like a lived-experi-
ence. It is not temporally extended being, i.e. something being different in
every time-phase and only being one and the same by constantly undergoing

19)
“Ich bin in beständiger Gegenwart. Ich kann eigentlich nicht sagen, ich war, in dem Sinn,
ich bin vergangen” (Edmund Husserl, Zur Phänomenologie der Intersubjektivität: Texte aus dem
Nachlaß: Zweiter Teil [1921–1928], vol. 14 of Husserliana, ed. Iso Kern [The Hague: Nijhoff,
1973], 221n).
 A. Staiti / Research in Phenomenology 40 (2010) 34–54 45

modifications. Nor is it ‘something identical-in-a-continuity’ in different

momentary states—which constantly differ and are at most alike.”20 This thor-
ough present dimension of the ego must obviously not be conflated with the
personal one. The ego that does not arise and does not go by is the transcen-
dental ego, i.e., the ego that must necessarily always be present as the condi-
tion of possibility of all concrete experience. Although the transcendental ego
is not a real component of one’s own stream of consciousness, it relates itself
essentially to this latter, and within this relatedness it assumes enduring, spe-
cifically personal characteristics: “The ego has no material properties; it has
determinate being exclusively as a subject of self-instituted convictions.”21
I—as this person that I am—am defined through the convictions (in the
broadest sense of this term) that took shape within my active and passive con-
duct vis-à-vis the world and other human beings. This includes also all wishes,
life-plans, expectations, and hopes that are connected to these convictions. All
that defines me as this unique person that I am is—contrary to what defines
me as transcendental principle of articulation of the experienced reality—tem-
porally conditioned. The convictions and hopes that each one of us had when
we were ten years old are largely different from those that characterize our
personal life in later years. They arose and went by, and our present ones are
bound to follow the same course, whereas we, as unrepeatable transcendental
subjects, live forth directed towards the world within an unchanging halo of
the present. One could say: each one of us is one and the same (transcenden-
tal) ego but a different person compared to ten or twenty years ago. The
present, accordingly, enjoys a special primacy as the originary seat of the tran-
scendental ego that each one of us unceasingly is, while one’s own personal life

20)
“Das Ich ist ‚stehendes und bleibendes’ Ich, es ist nicht entstehend und vergehend wie ein
Erlebnis. Es ist nicht ein zeitlich Extendiertes, also in jeder Zeitphase anderes und nur dasselbe
wie ein sich Veränderndes, oder überhaupt in verschiedenen Momentanzuständen, die immer
wieder andere und höchstens gleich sind, Identisches in der Kontinuität” (Edmund Husserl,
Die Bernauer Manuskripte über das Zeitbewusstsein [1917–18], vol. 33 of Husserliana, ed. Rudolf
Bernet and Dieter Lohmar [Dordrecht: Kluwer, 2001], 280). For a full account of the concept
of “transcendental ego” or “pure ego,” see Edmund Husserl, Ideen zu einer reinen Phänomenologie
und phänomenologischen Philosophie. Zweites Buch: Phänomenologische Untersuchungen zur
Konstitution, vol. 4 of Husserliana, ed. Marly Biemel (The Hague: Nijhoff, 1952), translated
by Richard Rojcewicz and André Schuwer as Ideas Pertaining to a Pure Phenomenology and to
a Phenomenological Philosophy. Second Book: Studies in the Phenomenology of Constitution (Dor-
drecht: Kluwer 1989), 103–28.
21)
Edmund Husserl, Phänomenologische Psychologie. Vorlesungen Sommersemester 1925, vol. 9 of
Husserliana, ed. Walter Biemel (The Hague: Nijhoff, 1962), 212; translated by John Scanlon as
Phenomenological Psychology: Lectures, Summer Semester, 1925 (The Hague: Nijhoff, 1977), 162.
46 A. Staiti / Research in Phenomenology 40 (2010) 34–54

constantly assumes new forms and shapes within the temporal stream of
experience.
However, this does not mean that the present has a primacy exclusively as
regards the transcendental ego. Rather, since the present is the originary seat of
the transcendental ego, it also at the same time has a primacy for the personal
ego. It has this primacy because personal and transcendental ego can only be
conceived of as two interrelated strata or dimensions within one and the same
subjectivity.22 The personal ego lives in the present in a peculiar and preemi-
nent way too. Put differently, the present—and the present only—is the tem-
poral dimension in which the specific trait of the personal being comes to
light. In order to show this, I would like to pick up on some analyses presented
by Robert Sokolowski in his recently published book Phenomenology of the
Human Person and try to develop them further.
In the first chapter Sololowski distinguishes between two different usages of
the word “I” in ordinary language. The word “I” can have either an informa-
tive or a declarative function.23 In the first case we use the word “I” in order to
report objective states of affairs. For example, I can say: “I live on the East
Coast,” “I like to play rugby,” or “every morning I drink an espresso for break-
fast.” In all these cases I convey objective pieces of information about myself.
But things are different when, for instance, I say something like “I distrust
you.” Here we have, according to Sokolowski’s terminology, a declarative usage
of the word “I,” i.e., a usage in which we do not simply articulate a state of
affairs but rather, at the same time, declare ourselves thereby. When I pro-
nounce the words “I distrust you,” I do not simply articulate an objective
feature or a habit that attaches to myself. Rather, I commit myself to what I
say in a peculiar way, and therein I become visible as the subject of this com-
mitment. Behind these words there is me as the one who takes responsibility
for them. “Distrust” is not an objective state of affairs that casually attaches to
myself. Rather, it expresses my personal stance, which I took up as the result
of a rational involvement with the person I say I distrust. Therein I come to
light as person. Sokolowski writes about the declarative I-sentences: “These

22)
As Sebastian Luft points out: “The mundane ego has no transcendental ego behind itself, as
if behind its back—to which it ‘owed’ its worldly being. Rather, the transcendental ego ‘encom-
passes’ the natural-factual” [Das weltliche Ich hat kein transzendentales Ego hinter sich—glei-
chsam im Rücken, dem es sein weltliches Sein „verdankte“—, sondern das transzendentale Ich
„umgreift“ das natürlich-faktische] (Sebastian Luft, “Faktizität und Geschichtlichkeit als Kon-
stituentien der Lebenswelt,” Phänomenologische Forschungen [2005]: 30).
23)
See Robert Sokolowski, Phenomenology of the Human Person (Cambridge: Cambridge Uni-
versity Press, 2008), 10.
 A. Staiti / Research in Phenomenology 40 (2010) 34–54 47

statements are not merely reports about myself, as were the informational
remarks we just examined. If I say, “I distrust you” I do not merely state a fact
about myself; rather, I declare myself as distrusting you, and I thereby declare
myself in my rational agency, I engage myself in what I say. This usage of the
term I expresses me, the speaker, as a rational agent and hence as a person.”24
Accordingly, Sokolowski defines the personal subject as the agent of truth, i.e.,
as rational subject that enacts its rationality in the stances it takes up and is
responsible for. This determination of the concept of person is consistent with
Husserl’s concept of person that we articulated above. To say that the personal
ego is defined by its own self-instituted convictions (selbstgestiftete Überzeu-
gungen) (Husserl) means precisely to put an emphasis on the active exertion of
rational agency (Sokolowski) and on its enduring, identity-forming trait.
Convictions are, namely, not passive remnants, but rather, enduring sediments
that spring out of rational agency. When I say, for instance, “I distrust you,”
I bring myself to light as the agent of the conviction “You are not trustworthy,”
to which truth I commit myself.
This is, in a few brushstrokes, Sokolowski’s analysis. Let us try to make it
fruitful for our concerns about the primacy of the present for the personal ego
and ask: Are the declarative usage of the word “I” and the corresponding man-
ifestation of the personal subject always possible without further ado? I would
like to argue that, upon closer inspection, a declarative usage of the word “I”
is possible exclusively in the present tense and that, accordingly, the person
that stands behind that usage can come to intuitive givenness as a rational
agent only in the present. It is not by chance that all the sentences used by
Sokolowski as examples are in the present tense. He notes this primacy of the
present as well, albeit only in passing, when he writes about the declarative
usage of the word “I”: “It expresses me as acting rationally here and now, in my
present use of the word I.”25 To keep with the previous example: The phenom-
enological difference with respect to the content of the sentence “I distrust
you” and the content of the sentence “I have distrusted you” becomes manifest
if we imagine a concrete situation in which they might occur. The first
sentence sounds very harsh: If it were to come out, for example, in a conversa-
tion with a friend or even with one’s own partner, it would not be a good
sign. The subject that pronounces it declares itself a rational agent whose ratio-
nal involvement with the interlocutor produced distrust as a result. He
commits himself as a person to the truth, viz., legitimacy of this distrust. On

24)
Ibid., 10.
25)
Ibid., 11.
48 A. Staiti / Research in Phenomenology 40 (2010) 34–54

the contrary, the second sentence (“I have distrusted you”) entails no authen-
tic declaration: If it were to occur in the course of a concrete conversation, it
is not hard to imagine how the interlocutor would probably react: he would
probably ask the question, “And now?” This question would be fully legiti-
mate, since the sentence “I have distrusted you,” upon closer inspection, has a
merely informative and no declarative function. It conveys information about
a past fact that was declaratively relevant at that time. The personal ego does
not thereby declare itself. The modification of the temporal mode from the
present to the past tense brings about a content-related modification of the
phenomenological sense of the sentence and, accordingly, a modification of
the elements that come to manifestation in the concretely experienced situa-
tion. The person of the speaker is no longer visible.
The difference between declarative and informative usage of the word “I,”
however, is not static. The same sentence can be meant one time informatively
and another time declaratively. At times, a tacit plea for forgiveness, within
which the person of the speaker does come to light, can resound in the sen-
tence “I have distrusted you.” The sentence in this case, although it is not in
the present tense, exerts an implicitly declarative function. The personal ego
who thereby declares himself, however, is manifestly the present and not the
past ego. At any rate, if we consider simple and explicit examples, it is possible
to verify that the word “I” may exert a declarative function exclusively in the
present and that, consequently, the present enjoys a phenomenological pri-
macy vis-à-vis the future and the past also in respect to the personal ego.

III. The Present of Others

The third and last context in which I intend to highlight the primacy of the
present is intersubjectivity. The critiques against Husserl’s theory of intersub-
jectivity have been copious and varied. If we limit ourselves to the issue of the
metaphysics of the present, then the critique refers primarily to the adequacy
of the Husserlian conception of empathy [Einfühlung]. With this concept,
Husserl emphasized the centrality of the present perception of an alien living-
body as the ground for the experience of the other’s subjectivity as well as for
the disclosure of the intersubjective sphere. On this point post-Husserlian
phenomenologists such as Schütz and Levinas grappled with the question
whether bodily presence really constitutes a preeminent manner of givenness
of the other’s subjectivity. One can, for instance, feel much closer to an absent
friend than to a bodily present stranger and thereby make an authentic experi-
 A. Staiti / Research in Phenomenology 40 (2010) 34–54 49

ence of an alien subjectivity (Schütz). Or it is possible to doubt the overall

adequacy of Husserl’s intentional model for the clarification of the experience
of the other: If empathy is a mode of intentionality and if intentionality is an
objectifying mode of consciousness—as Husserl points out—is it not just
merely an objectified subjectivity that appears therein? And is not, rather, an
elimination of the other’s alterity thus accomplished (Levinas)?
Both Schütz’s and Levinas’ approaches are fully legitimate, and they opened
the way to remarkably fruitful further inquiries. I believe, however, that from
an authentically phenomenological point of view, the actual empathy founded
upon bodily presence has an irreplaceable and central function. It is the only
kind of experience in which the other’s subjectivity comes to originary given-
ness. In order to show this, it is necessary to look at the structure of empathy
as a mode of presentification (Vergegenwärtigung) in the first place. According
to Husserl’s classification, empathy belongs to the same general class of expe-
rience as recollection, expectation, fantasy, and picture-consciousness, i. e.
presentification.26

26)
In the C-manuscripts Husserl defines empathy as a “presentification of the others” (Vergegen-
wärtigung der Anderen) (Husserl, Späte Texte über Zeitkonstitution (1929–1934): Die
C-Manuskripte, 8:71), and in the crucial lectures on First Philosophy, he proposes the following
equivalence: “In the same way in which something past as past can be given originarily only
through recollection and something to come in the future as such only through expectation, so
someone else’s [alien subjectivity] as such can be given only through empathy” [So wie Vergangenes
als Vergangenes ursprünglich nur gegeben sein kann durch Erinnerung, und künftig Kom-
mendes als solches nur durch Erwartung, so kann Fremdes als Fremdes ursprünglich nur gegeben
sein durch Einfühlung] (Edmund Husserl, Erste Philosophie [1923/24]: Zweiter Teil: Theorie der
phänomenologischen Reduktion, vol. 8 of Husserliana, ed. Rudolf Boehm [The Hague: Nijhoff,
1959], 176). However, it is disputable whether empathy can be classified as a presentification
without further ado. Husserl himself seems to oscillate between two accounts of empathy: in
many areas of his work—as the ones just mentioned—he speaks of empathy simply as a distinc-
tive form of presentification. Elsewhere he insists on empathy being a mode of originary con-
sciousness and insofar sharing with simple perception the character of presentation. In an earlier
passage of First Philosophy, for instance, he points out that empathy must be viewed as a special
form of perceptual consciousness, namely, as a “perception through originary interpretation” [Wah-
rnehmung durch ursprüngliche Interpretation] (Edmund Husserl, Erste Philosophie (1923/24):
Zweiter Teil, 8: 63. Maybe the soundest way to understand empathy is to view it as a peculiar
form of intentionality that can be described only as using a mixed language taken from the
description of presentation and presentification. Empathy thus shares elements of both percep-
tion and imagination (in a wide sense), as Husserl suggests, using often the term “Mitgegenwär-
tigung” (co-presentation). In any case, Husserl seems to insist more on the presentifying than
on the perceptual character of empathy, which I think is appropriate, given the fact that the
other’s subjectivity is not merely presented as an object of perception. Moreover, Husserl wants
50 A. Staiti / Research in Phenomenology 40 (2010) 34–54

Presentifications are no simple presentations like perceptions. They possess

a peculiar structure that implies a modification of consciousness carried out by
the subject and a corresponding extension of the sphere of givenness beyond
what is simply perceived. They make something present, which, for its part, is
not simply present. Thereby, presentifications have the essential trait of what
Husserl calls iterability, which the simple perceptual presentations lack.27 I
can, for instance, have the recollection of a recollection, whereas I cannot have
the perception of a perception. In the first case (a recollection of a recollection)
the recollected content is by no means altered: I can recollect yesterday’s hike
and then, two days later, remember that I had this recollection and re-perform
it. The hike, which is presented in both recollections, is always one and the
same hike. What changes is only the “index” of the act and not the content of
the experience. An interesting question to ask as regards our concern is: Does
this invariability of the content hold for all possible iterations of presentifica-
tions? Husserl seems to believe that this is the case, although he never studied
in detail the different kinds of iteration that attach to the different kinds of
presentification. It seems to me that the situation is in fact much more com-
plex and requires a special focus when it comes to empathy. Let us try to
sketch an account of iterability in the case of empathy and to make it fruitful
for our purpose. We can have not only an empathic experience in the present,
but also a recollection of an empathic experience, or the expectation of an
empathic experience. In the latter two cases, we have no authentic bodily pres-
ence of the other but only, following Husserl’s terminology, an imaginative
phantom of him. Now, does the experience of the other’s subjectivity remain
unaffected with respect to its intentional content, as is the case with the recol-
lection of a past hike-recollection? On a closer look, it does not, as I will show
shortly. I would argue, with Husserl, that the phenomenologically minimal

to maintain an analogy between recollection and empathy—thereby stressing the presentifying

character of empathy—because both act-classes imply an ego other than the one performing the
act i.e., respectively, the past ego and the alien ego. The past ego is then experienced as standing
in a synthesis of coincidence with the present ego performing the recollection, while this is not
the case with the alien ego and the ego performing an empathic act.
27)
To simple presentifications and fantasy—as well as to the somewhat more complicated depic-
tion and indication (e.g., through indicative tokens)—pertain possibilities of repetition layered
on one another, i.e., [possibilities] of iteration. Instead of a simple recollection we can also have
a recollection of recollection.” [Schlichte Vergegenwärtigung und Phantasie—so wie die schon
etwas kompliziertere Abbildung und Anzeige (z.B. durch Merkzeichen)—[führen mit sich]
Möglichkeiten aufeinandergestufter Wiederholung, der Iteration. Statt einer schlichten Wieder-
erinnerung können wir auch eine Wiedererinnerung an eine Wiedererinnerung haben.] (Hus-
serl, Erste Philosophie (1923/24): Zweiter Teil, 8: 133.
 A. Staiti / Research in Phenomenology 40 (2010) 34–54 51

requirement for empathic experience is the experience of the other’s “govern-

ing” (Walten) in his own body. Precisely on this point, it is possible to distin-
guish between the experience of someone else (Fremderfahrung) and all other
kinds of experience. I am familiar with my own governing in my body: I can
move my arms, turn my head, and so forth. This governing is thereby always
directed toward my surrounding world. Through appropriate bodily move-
ments I can also articulate words and express my intentions. As soon as an
alien body enters my field of experience, displaying a shape similar to that of
my own body and the same kind of movements governed ‘from inside,’ a pas-
sive synthesis occurs, which Husserl calls ‘originary pairing.’ Through this
originary pairing, viz., the association of my own body and the alien’s, this
latter is apprehended as a living-body. As Husserl says, according to this appre-
hension it is “as if I were standing over there, where the other’s body is.”28 In
the movements that unfold, in the words that are spoken, and so forth, the
other subject appears as the protagonist of a bodily governing that resembles
my own, without however being my own. This constitutes the foundation of
the analogizing apprehension (analogisierende Auffassung), by virtue of which
I transfer the sense of my being a subject governing in my own body to the
other’s body and experience him as governing within it. Therein lies the phe-
nomenological source of what Husserl calls alter ego, as the noematic correlate
of empathic acts. Alter ego means nothing but the minimal content necessary
to qualify an experience as the experience of someone else’s subjectivity:29 Within
the body over there, a subject governs in the same fashion in which I govern
my own body. This primal form of experience precedes all further determina-
tions and attributions referred to the other subject.
What does this mean with regard to the issue of iterability? If we modify the
temporal index of an originary empathic experience and consider, for instance,
the recollection of an empathic experience, it becomes clear that what vanishes
is precisely the originary experience of the other’s bodily governing. Accord-
ingly, in the past (recollection), in the future (expectation), and in the imagi-
nation (fantasy) we have no authentic empathic experience.

28)
Edmund Husserl, Cartesianische Meditationen und Pariser Vorträge (1931), vol. 1 of Husserli-
ana, ed. Stephan Strasser, 2nd. ed. (The Hague: Nijhoff, 1963), 152; translated by Dorion Cairns
as Cartesian Meditations: An Introduction to Phenomenology (The Hague: Nijhoff 1970), 123.
29)
On this point I agree with Tanja Staehler that the question to which Husserl’s Fifth Cartesian
Mediation is the answer is: “How is the Other given to me on the most basic level?” (See Tanja
Staehler, “What is the Question to Which Husserl’s Fifth Cartesian Meditation is the Answer?”,
Husserl Studies 24 (2008): 99–117).
52 A. Staiti / Research in Phenomenology 40 (2010) 34–54

Let us try to illustrate this thesis by carrying forward the example previously
used of a conversation, and let us suppose that my interlocutor suddenly pro-
nounces the sentence, “I distrust you.” During the conversation I not only
understand the meaning of these words, but I grasp them as the expression of
someone else’s ego. The ego of my interlocutor governs in his bodily move-
ments, in the wording that he forms in his mouth, which in this case lets his
person appear as the subject of distrust toward myself. Moreover, over the
whole course of the conversation, an empathic experience is unceasingly at
work. It constitutes the foundation upon which the linguistic communication
builds. Let us assume that after I heard the sentence “I distrust you,” I went
away offended. Later on, I sit in my room, and I cannot help thinking back to
the distressing conversation. I let the scene play again in my memory. I presen-
tify to myself the whole course of the conversation. Once again I am struck by
the insolence of my interlocutor as he offended me so rudely with his words.
His bodily movements and his face are still so vividly present in my memory
that I almost feel as if he were really present. But instead of his real body before
my eyes, what I have now is only a memory-image of it before my mind’s eye.
Apparently I am experiencing the situation exactly as it really happened in the
past, i.e., through and through accompanied by an empathic experience.
However, something is radically different. Let us assume that I can no longer
sustain the memory of the conversation, and so I begin to vary it, though only
slightly at first. Eventually, my recollected interlocutor begins to move his
arms in a ridiculous way and to say meaningless and disconnected sentences.
He makes a fool of himself. The people standing around us notice his odd
behavior and start to laugh at him.
All this did not really happen. However, the recollected scene—differently
than the one originarily experienced—tolerates such integrations and varia-
tions. A recollection is a re-production guided by me that entails everywhere
moments of imaginative integration and variation. This, however, is fatal for
the aforementioned minimal content necessary to qualify an experience as the
experience of someone else’s subjectivity, viz., empathy. In the recollected
body, or better, in the phantasm of the other’s body that inhabits my recollec-
tion, it is not the other himself who governs. It is me as the performer of the
recollection who does this. I am the one who actually guides and produces the
other’s words and movements in the recollected body, although apparently
they originate from someone else as they do in the present accomplishment of
empathy. In the recollection everything depends on my more or less faithful
reproduction. I can take pains to reproduce the conversation objectively and
accurately. But even in this case, I am the one who lets the recollected other
 A. Staiti / Research in Phenomenology 40 (2010) 34–54 53

say precisely these and those words, no matter how accurate and faithful to the
original my recollection is. In my memory (and in all further possible presen-
tifications of empathic experiences), the other is a priori my marionette. This
means that, in the experiential mode of presentification, I have absolutely no
experience of the other’s subjectivity, viz., of the other as another subject.
This result is important for a phenomenological theory of empathy. It
shows, to recast the issue of iterability, that empathy is the only case of presen-
tification that is not iterable.30 This should be viewed as an essential feature of
empathy that helps us grasp correctly its peculiar status within the species
“presentification.” The other’s real bodily presence for me is the only condition
on which an empathic experience can be made. Only in the concrete and pres-
ent face-to-face with the other can I experience him as other, i.e., as someone
else, because this is the only situation in which I can have an experience of his
bodily governing. The present of others, thus, is the only dimension in which
they can be experienced in the first place. This present is a unique and irre-
placeable dimension for us to have experiences of others as others. This is
because it is the only dimension in which their bodily governing is truly
exerted by them and not by myself.

IV. Conclusion
In this paper I tried to illustrate and defend the phenomenological primacy of
the present in three different contexts. It seems to me that a resolute emphasis
on this primacy, as the one I articulated above, is not necessarily incompatible
with a philosophical viewpoint that takes seriously the historicity of things
and of the subject. But a full treatment of this point should be the theme of
another paper.
By means of a conclusion I would like to make a short remark that might
perhaps open up a further perspective on the analysis I proposed. Before Hus-
serl, another great philosopher defended resolutely the primacy of the present,
albeit starting out from radically different problems and giving radically differ-
ent reasons for the necessity of this primacy. I am thinking here of the father
of life-philosophy, Friedrich Nietzsche. Husserl once recounted that in his
youth he used to be an enthusiastic reader of Nietzsche.31 It goes without

30)
Hence, empathy shares the essential trait of non-iterability with simple perception.
31)
See Dorion Cairns, Conversations with Husserl and Fink (The Hague: Nijhoff, 1976), 60. On
this topic see also Ronald Bruzina, Edmund Husserl & Eugen Fink: Beginnings and Ends in Phe-
nomenology (1928–1938) (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2004), 352f.
54 A. Staiti / Research in Phenomenology 40 (2010) 34–54

saying that trying to find any substantive line of connection between Husserl’s
and Nietzsche’s work would be a quite idle occupation, given the huge differ-
ence in their projects, their methods and their goals. Nonetheless, their unex-
pected accord on the issue of the primacy of the present could be considered
as a sort of “external” clue to understanding the importance of Husserl’s insis-
tence on phenomenology being a “life-philosophy.”32
On this note, perhaps it could be argued that whenever life stands seriously
in the focal point of a philosophical inquiry, regardless of the form that
this latter concretely assumes, the primacy of the present is bound to become
manifest.

32)
Edmund Husserl, Natur und Geist: Vorlesungen 1927, vol. 32 of Husserliana, ed. Michael
Weiler (Dordrecht: Kluwer, 2001), 241. I tried to spell out the implications of this point in my
dissertation Geistigkeit, Leben und geschichtliche Welt in der Transzendentalphänomenologie Hus-
serls (Würzburg: Ergon Verlag, forthcoming 2010).