International Phenomenological Society

Kant, Husserl, and Heidegger on Time and the Unity of "Consciousness"

Author(s): Ronald P. Morrison
Reviewed work(s):
Source: Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, Vol. 39, No. 2 (Dec., 1978), pp. 182-198
Published by: International Phenomenological Society
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2106977 .
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 KANT, HUSSERL, AND HEIDEGGER ON TIME
AND THE UNITY OF "CONSCIOUSNESS"
In his Kant and the Problem of Metaphysics, Heidegger at-
tempts to show that the unity of consciousness is essentially temporal
in character for Kant. This is not really a Kantian position, however,
but a Husserlian one. The distortion of Kant poses a danger for
Heidegger's reader, especially if he leaves out of account the anti-
Kantian attack on "representationalism" which Heidegger takes up in
several other works. The danger is that of concluding, as Charles M.
Sherover has done, that it is "a short step ?rom Heidegger's Kant to
Heidegger himself."1 It is however, a longer step from Kant to
Heidegger than Kant and the Problem of Metaphysics may seem to
indicate. We can appreciate the length of the stride by considering
the influence on Heidegger of Husserl's doctrine of time. Husserl's
analysis of the temporality of consciousness is in important respects
antithetical to Kant's. In an effort to relate the respective roles that
time plays in Kant's theory of human knowledge and in Heidegger's
theory of human existence, I will mediate them by a discussion of
Husserl's theory of time and the unity of consciousness. I will present
Husserl's doctrine of time as if it were in response to Kant's, and
Heidegger's doctrine of time as if it were in response to Husserl's. In
fact, Husserl's book on time, The Phenomenology of Internal Time-
Consciousness, does not discuss Kant, and Heidegger more frequently
responds to Kant than to Husserl. The place to begin, ther., is with
Kant.
Kant: Kant's theory of time owes a great deal to the fact that he
believed, as Hume did, that sensation is a matter of discrete atomic
impressions. It is equally important, however, that he did not believe
that these impressions could be presented directly to the under-
standing as completely separated from each other. What is presented
to the understanding is rather a manifold of impressions. The ap-
pearance of a manifold, while of subjective origin, is not due to the
spontaneity of the mind -in the association of impressions, for ex-
ample -but to the formal structure of the mind's capacity to receive
impressions. Kant held that all receptivity whatsoever is conditioned
by the form of time. It is the form of time which accounts for the
gathering up of discrete impressions into a manifold.
The appearance of a manifold in intuition is due to a temporal
"synopsis." Synopsis must be distinguished from synthesis. "Synthesis"
' Charles M. Sherover, Heidegger, Kant and Time (Bloomington: Indiana
University Press, 1971), p. 221.

182
 KANT, HUSSERL, AND HEIDEGGER ON TIME AND THE 183
UNITY OF "CONSCIOUSNESS"
refers to the mind's spontaneity in representing the manifold. "Synop-
sis" refers only to the presentation of the manifold. Synopsis has its
origin in time as the formal condition of all receptivity, and it is the
pivotal factor in bringing the materials of intuition to the synthetic
structures of consciousness.
Every intuition contains in itself a manifold which can be represented as
a manifold only insofar as the mind distinguishes the time in the se-
quence of one impression upon another; for each representation, in-
sofar as it is contained in a single moment, can never be anything but an
absolute unity.2
In this passage time seems to account not only for the appearance of a
synoptic manifold, but also for the absolute discreteness of its parts
insofar as they are contained in different moments.
Although Kant is rather cryptic concerning the nature of synop-
sis, he evidently finds no difficulty in attributing a synopsis to a tem-
poral sequence of absolute parts. "Time," he says, "is not a discursive,
or what is called a general concept, but a pure form of sensible intui-
tion. Different times are but parts of one and the same time."' It
seems clear, however, that synopsis itself does not explain why there is
in time a unity of absolute parts, but rather that the synopsis of intui-
tion is explained by the unity of time. How then does Kant account
for the unity of time?
Time is not only a form of intuition, but also a "pure intuition."
In part this means that time can be represented a priori. As a
representation, time is referred to the spontaneity of the mind and is
therefore a synthetic unity. In this respect time belongs to the
transcendental structure of consciousness as pure "matter." This
means, as becomes especially clear in the doctrine of schematism,
that formal time is an a priori or pure manifold.4 It is only as
schematic determinations of this pure (temporal) manifold that the
pure concepts of the understanding become applicable to sensory in-
tuition. As containing a manifold in itself, time is not a simple unity;
it is only a unity in relation to the pure concepts.
Just as there are no inherent unities in the matter of empirical in-
tuition, there is no inherent unity in its pure temporal form. The
representation of what appears to consciousness is a synthesis of a
manifold of intuitional contents. But since no synthetic unity in em-
pirical intuition can be the direct product of the understanding, the
understanding is the ground of the synthetic unity of empirical intui-
2 Immanuel Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, Norman Kemp Smith, trans.
(New York: St. Martin's Press, 1965), A99.
3 Ibid., A31/B47.
4Ibid., A138/B177, also B160.
184 PHILOSOPHY AND PHENOMENOLOGICAL RESEARCH

tion only mediately through the synthesis of the form of all intuition,
time. It is in representing the pure temporal manifold that the pure
concepts of the understanding become categories of experience, or
unities in experience. Because all unity, whether of experience or of
formal time itself, derives from belonging to one synthetic con-
sciousness, that unity, though necessarily bound up with time, is in
itself a nontemporal unity. The unity of consciousness is conceptual
and not temporal' in character.
This conclusion is borne out by the fact that it is precisely
because of the temporality of empirical consciousness that Kant seeks
a transcendental solution to the unity of consciousness. For Kant, the
unity of consciousness consists in having an identical subject of con-
ceptual apperception. This identity, however, cannot be discovered
in empirical consciousness. "No fixed and abiding self can present
itself in this flux of inner appearances. Such consciousness is usually
named inner sense, or empirical apperception."' There is no em-
pirical consciousness of a "fixed and abiding self' for two reasons.
First, empirical self-consciousness is not the intuition of a subject, but
consciousness of appearances as subjective occurrences. As subjective
occurrences, appearances are governed by time, the form of inner
sense. And it is time, secondly, which makes empirical consciousness
a disjunctive manifold of succession. It is for these reasons that Kant
accounts for the unity of consciousness on a transcendental level. It is
plain, moreover, that the transcendental analysis of this unity is in-
tended to show that the subject of consciousness is a "fixed and
abiding," nontemporal subject.
Inner sense is subjective. But from a transcendental point of view
consciousness is purely objective; it is the a priori representation of a
"transcendental object = x." There is only one transcendental ob-
ject, which is to say that the a priori conditions of possible experience
are at all times the same. Pure, objective consciousness is thus the very
opposite of ever-changing subjective (empirical) consciousness; it is
changeless. The subject of consciousness is the "correlate" of the a
priori representation of an objective unity. Its identity is correlative to
objective unity and consists in the changelessness of this objective uni-
ty in pure apperception. The subject of this pure apperception is "the
abiding and unchanging 'I,' "8 "All consciousness as truly belongs to

5Ibid., A103 & A112.

6 Ibid., B159.
7 Ibid., A107.
8 Ibid., A123.
 KANT, HUSSERL, AND HEIDEGGER ON TIME AND THE 185
UNITY OF "CONSCIOUSNESS"
an all-comprehensive pure apperception, as all sensible intuition, as
representation, belongs to a pure inner intuition, namely, to time."9
There is no doubt that for Kant the subject of consciousness, and
therefore the unity of consciousness, is essentially contrasted with the
temporal character of consciousness. There is a subject only insofar as
consciousness as such is the a priori thought of an (one) unchanging
object in general. There is no intuition of the subject here either.
There is only "the bare representation 'T' ";10 the mere thought "that
I am."911
Kant's position is that the unity of consciousness is logically prior
to the temporality of consciousness. As the form of change, time
breaks consciousness up into discrete moments. Kant accepts the em-
piricist doctrine that there are no unities inherent in the matter of in-
tuition, and he attributes this disjunction to time. It is true that time is
synoptic; but the possibility of synopsis depends on the synthesis of
pure intuition. And there is no synthesis in the form of time without
the schematization of the pure, timeless concepts which represent ob-
jectivity. Although formal time is constituent in the transcendental
unity of consciousness, it does not account for that unity. It only
determines consciousness as the representation of the unchanging
throughout change.
Time means change and change means a lack of unity in con-
sciousness because the change is always from one absolutely discrete
moment to another. It is for this reason that the problem of the unity
of consciousness boils down to accounting for a permanent subject. A
succession of absolute momentsrequires a fixed point outside itself as
the basis for determining its order. It is important to note, however,
that the subject is not that "against which" the order of time-
consciousness can be determined. The subject is only the correlate of
the "timeless" transcendental object. Kant makes it clear in the
"Refutation of Idealism" that it is the object which makes possible the
determination of the time-order of the subjective flow of ap-
pearances. The object is immediate to consciousness, whereas the
consciousness of appearances in inner sense (time-consciousness) is
mediate.
In turning to Husserl, one thing will stand out very clearly: con-
tinuous change, as an aspect of time-consciousness, is so far from be-
ing a stumbling block to the unity of consciousness that Husserl bases
the unity of consciousness precisely on its temporal form. The unity of
9 Ibid., A123-A124.
10Ibid., A117n.
" Ibid., B157.
186 PHILOSOPHY AND PHENOMENOLOGICAL RESEARCH

consciousness can therefore be explained without having to bring an

identical, changeless subject into account. Husserl's account of the
unity of consciousness centers on demonstrating that there is an ab-
solute continuity, not an absolute discontinuity, in time-
consciousness.
Husserl: If Hume's empiricism is a backdrop to Kant's theory of
time, it may also be instructive to view Husserl's theory in the light of
the radical empiricism of James. Unlike its predecessor, radical em-
piricism holds the relations among the parts of experience to be as
directly evident as the parts themselves. Consciousness is not a dis-
junction of absolute units, but is conjunctive as well. James draws the
''generalized conclusion" that
the parts of experience hold together from next to next by relations that
are themselves parts of experience. The directly apprehended universe
needs, in short, no extraneous trans-empirical connective support, but
possesses in its own right a concatenated or continuous structure."
James draws short, however, of concluding that the continuity in the
stream of experience points to an absolute. A pluralism of "points of
view" is more enticing to James than the lure of the absolute."3
A pluralism of this sort is inherently denied in Husserl's
phenomenological reduction to transcendental consciousness. In
Ideas, transcendental consciousness is called a "realm of 'absolute'
Being." It is the "original region" of Being "in which all other regions
of Being," such as those encountered from the various viewpoints of
the special sciences, "have their root, to which they are essentially
related, on which they are therefore one and all dependent in an
essential way. "14 Transcendental consciousness is the absolute point
of view in which all other points of view find their unity and possibili-
ty.
If the phenomenological reduction discloses such an "absolute"
realm of consciousness, it does not explain its possibility. An explana-
tion must show that transcendental consciousness is an uninterrupted
continuity in which there are ultimately no disjunctions. All the parts
of experience must be seen to be "constituted" within this continuity.
Whereas James requires no "trans-empirical connective support" for
the direct apprehension of the continuity of experience, Husserl
believes that the time-form of consciousness is just such a nonem-

12 William James, The Meaning of Truth (New York: Greenwood Press, 1968),
pp. Xi- xlii.
James, The Will to Believe (New York: Dover, 1965), p. viii.
3IWilliam
Edmund Husserl, Ideas, W. R. Boyce Gibson, trans. (New York: Collier,
'4
1972), p. 194.
 KANT, HUSSERL, AND HEIDEGGER ON TIME AND THE 187
UNITY OF "CONSCIOUSNESS"
pirical support. Thus, with reference to the problematic of time,
Husserl says in Ideas,
The transcendental "Absolute" which we have laid bare through the
reductions is in truth not ultimate; it is something which in a certain
profound and wholly unique sense constitutes itself, and has its primeval
source in what is ultimately and truly absolute.'"
At this point, Husserl refers us back to the analyses which are col-
lected in The Phenomenology of Internal Time-Consciousness. It is
here that we find Husserl's explanation of how the "self-constituting"
unity and continuity of consciousness has its possibility in the time-
form of consciousness. Such an explanation amounts to a reversal of
Kant's procedure and this is the aspect of Husserl's theory of time
which interests us.
Husserl distinguishes more exactly than Kant between objective
time ("clock time"), subjective time, and the form of time. Objective
and subjective time are not as clearly distinguished in Kant, perhaps
because the form of time is called the form of subjective, inner sense.
Possibly, inner sense becomes objective time when its sequence of
moments is determined with regard to the object. Nevertheless, it is
fundamental to Kant that consciousness of inner sense (subjective
time) presupposes objective consciousness. In objective consciousness
there is a purely formal time. Is objective time, then, the pure form of
inner sense, and subjective time a materially-filled inner sense? If so,
then there is no distinction between objective time and the form of
time.
This is not the case for Husserl. The form of time is to be
distinguished from both the subjective time of "immanent objects"
and the objective time of "transcendent objects." Moreover, objective
time is derived from internal time. It is in internal time-consciousness
that the phenomenological "absolute" is discovered; it is
"phenomenological time." Husserl says in Ideas, ". . . the unity of
the immanent time-consciousness . . . is the all-enveloping unity of
all the experiences of a stream of experience, and indeed a unity of
consciousness that binds consciousness with consciousness."1 In com-
plete contrast to Kant, Husserl calls phenomenological time the
"primary synthesis."'7 As we shall see, this primary synthesis is ex-
plained by the form of time. Primary synthesis takes place not in the
"pure"representation of an objective unity, temporally schematized,
but directly in "concretely filled" time-consciousness.

II Ibid., p. 216.
16 Ibid., p. 307.
17
Ibid., p. 308.
188 PHILOSOPHY AND PHENOMENOLOGICAL RESEARCH

On the face of it, it would seem that the temporality of con-

sciousness makes its unity problematic. To use Husserl's own exam-
ple, the first phases of the perception of the tone "C" are past as con-
sciousness reaches towards the last phases which are not yet present.
Kant had seen that if an appearance contains a temporally extended
manifold, the perception of it cannot be restricted to what is con-
tained in the actual now-point of consciousness. On the contrary, the
perception must include that part of the manifold which is not ac-
tually now. This is possible, Kant thought, because the imagina-
tion reproduces the content of each passing moment, making a single
and unitary apprehension of the manifold possible. Without
reproduction in the imagination, Kant emphasized, the perception of
a unitary object would not be possible. The unity is derived from the
concept of the object as the rule by which the reproduction occurs. It
is therefore the case that the determination of the temporal phases of
an appearance in inner sense is dependent upon the "changeless" con-
sciousness of an object. For Kant, "internal time-consciousness" is not
immediate.
In Husserl's discussion of Brentano's theory of time, we find a
doctrine which becomes very important for Husserl's own theory.
Brentano believed that the passing phases of an appearance belong to
t i"without mediation."1 This would be impossible if time were the
succession of absolute units that Kant believed it to be. Brentano
believed that the passing phase of an appearance is immediately con-
joined to the now-phase. The now, therefore, always occurs in the im-
mediate context of thnejust-past. This conjunction is a matter of sen-
sation and not conceptualization. But if the past is distinguished from
the present by the absence of a stimulus, then it is clear that a past
sensation cannot be conjoined with the present as something "real" or
"really" conjoined. Brentano therefore attributes the conjunction to a
process of "primordial association" whereby the passing phase of an
appearance is conjoined to the now-phase as a "phantasy-idea." If
there is to be an immediate conjunction in this process, then it is the
case, as Husserl notes, that "The sensation itself now becomes pro-
ductive. It produces a phantasy-idea [Phantasievorstellung] like, or
nearly like, itself with regard to content and enriched by a temporal
character."1 This process is the origin of time-consciousness. The
now alone does not constitute time-consciousness. Husserl notes that
18 Edmund Husserl, The Phenomenology of Internal Time-Consciousness,
Martin Heidegger, ed., James S. Churchill, trans. (Bloomington: Indiana Universi-
ty Press, 1973), pp. 29-30.
'9 Ibid., p. 32.
 KANT, HUSSERL, AND HEIDEGGER ON TIME AND THE 189
UNITY OF "CONSCIOUSNESS"
the content of the now "acquires no new characteristic" by adding
"now."20 It does acquire a new characteristic in adding "just-past."
This acquisition of a temporal character takes place in primordial
association.
Not only is primordial association "immediate," it is further
distinguished from Kant's reproductive process in that a particular
moment is continually altered as it gets "pushed back" farther into
the past. A now becomes a just-past, then the just-past of a just-past,
and so on. In the continual production of a phantasy-idea with an
ever-modified temporal character, there is a more dynamic
characterization of the temporal process than we find in Kant.
Husserl finds a "phenomenological core" of truth in Brentano's
theory once it is shorn of such "transcendent presuppositions" which
hold that sensation is caused by stimuli. The immediate result of this
"reduction" is that in phenomenological time-consciousness it is un-
necessary to regard the past as a phantasy-idea. "In fact, the whole
sphere of primordial associations is a present and real lived ex-
perience."2' For Husserl the' content of the past is retained as just
what it was in the present, neither as a reproduction of the imagina-
tion, nor as a phantasy-idea produced in sensation. The past and pre-
sent are "really" conjoined. In a possible reference to Kant, Husserl
says that in retention the past is not given in a "figurative con-
sciousness."22 Kant defined a figurative synthesis as the representation
of "anobjectthat is not itselfpresent. The past is not accessible as
"23

the static configuration of a reproduced intuitional manifold. In the

continual modification of its temporal character the content of the
past is directly connected with the present without being confounded
with the present. It is not necessary to distinguish past and present
through some kind of metamorphosis in the content of consciousness.
The "actuality" of the content of consciousness in no way affected as
it sinks back in the flow of consciousness. It is the same content which
sinks farther and farther back and which remains as the "real," lived,
and experienced context of the present.
Time-consciousness is a continuum in which a present-phase and
a past-phase are only abstractions. Consciousness extends beyond the
now. In this temporal extension the now is only an "ideal limit"24 and
the retained past is "the living horizon of the now."25 This living
2 Ibid., p. 34.
21 Ibid., p. 39.
22 Ibid., p. 56.
23 Critique of Pure Reason, B151.
24
The Phenomenology of Internal Time-Consciousness, p. 63.
25 Ibid., p. 66.
190 PHILOSOPHY AND PHENOMENOLOGICAL RESEARCH

horizon extends on the other side of the now in "protention."

Although protention may be indeterminate in the case of perception,
there is always at least an "empty" protention in which "what is deter-
mined is only that after all something will come."26 But neither the
extensiveness of this consciousness beyond the now, nor its constant
modification prejudices the "formal" unity of time-consciousness or
the unity of its contents. Where a kind of double discontinuity is
possible in other theories -either a qualitative discontinuity between
the content of the present and the content of the past, or a formal
discontinuity in the nature of time itself- Husserl finds a double con-
tinuity. It is the result of the "double intentionality" of time-
consciousness, to which we now turn.
In time-consciousness an object is always experienced as
stretched out in a continuity of retention-now-protention. In the con-
tinual temporal modification of this consciousness, however, the ob-
jective or "transverse intentionality" remains the same. That which is
constantly modified is the temporal mode of givenness. But, the
transverse intentionality of consciousness does not account for its for-
mal unity. What must be accounted for is the unity of consciousness
qua flux. This is a formal unity because consciousness is a "flux" only
in a metaphorical or formal sense. In time-consciousness it is the tem-
porality of the immanent object that is experienced and not con-
sciousness itself as a temporal flux. Husserl calls the flux itself, within
which the object is constituted, a "quasi-temporal order."27 It is
quasi-temporal because it is not given in time-consciousness but is the
temporal form of consciousness.
As a quasi-temporal order, the flux is a formal unity correlative
to the unity of that which appears in it. Husserl expresses this cor-
relativity as "double intentionality." One aspect of this double inten-
tionality is the transverse intentionality of consciousness with regard
to its object. The other aspect is called a "longitudinal intentionality"
uniting consciousness qua flux.
By means of the one, immanent time is constituted. . . In the other is
constituted the quasi-temporal disposition of the phases of the flux...
This pre-phenomenal, pre-immanent temporality is constituted inten-
tionally as the form of the temporally constitutive consciousness and in the
latter itself.28

The form consists in this, that a now is constituted through an impression

and that to the impression is joined a train of retentions and a horizon of
26 Ibid., pp. 76 & 140.
27 Ibid., p. 108.
28 Ibid., p. 109.
 KANT, HUSSERL, AND HEIDEGGER ON TIME AND THE 191
UNITY OF "CONSCIOUSNESS"
protentions. This abiding form, however, supports the consciousness of a
continuous change.
The double intentionality of consciousness means that the
(longitudinal) unity of consciousness is coordinate with the unity of its
temporally extended object. For Husserl the unity of consciousness is
explicable solely in terms of its temporal form.
Now let us compare Husserl with Kant concerning the relation
between time and the unity of consciousness. It is interesting to note
that for both Kant and Husserl the unity of consciousness is coor-
dinate with the unity of the object. But there are two different objects
involved. In Kant's case, it is a nontemporal transcendental object. In
Husserl's case, it is something in internal time, a temporal object. In a
radical inversion of the Kantian position, Husserl maintains that it is
only because the same thing appears throughout the constant
modifications of internal time-consciousness that it is possible to
speak of a "transcendent" object independently of internal time. The
difference in objects can be seen to be significantly dependent upon
different theories of time. In this regard, the relation between the
form of time and the "form" of consciousness in their respective
philosophies is very important.
For Kant, the abiding "form" of consciousness is the conceptual
representation of an objective unity in general. As a pure manifold,
or pure discontinuity, the form of time is a necessary ingredient in
this representation (without it it would not be "synthetic"). This unity
is experiencable because the concepts are schematic determinations
of time as the form of inner sense. But it still could not be said that
consciousness in general has a quasi-temporal form. Concepts are not
themselves temporal determinations of the manifold, but require a
kind of quasi-temporalization, so to speak. For Husserl, on the other
hand, consciousness has as its. form nothing other than a unity of
quasi-temporal determinations. One might say that consciousness is
the representation of the unity of time as such. This unity is not
transcendentally objective in a Kantian sense, for it takes place not in
spite of, or over and against, inner sense, but in and with internal
consciousness as such. It is for this reason that time is the "ultimate"
phenomenological absolute. As the formal unity of consciousness,
which is coordinate with the "immediate" consciousness of a tem-
porally extended unity, time makes the realm of "reduced" con-
sciousness phenomenologically significant. Such significance is
theoretically impossible from a Kantian point of view, because con-
sciousness of unity in time cannot be immediate. Because the form of
29 Ibid., p. 153.
192 PHILOSOPHY AND PHENOMENOLOGICAL RESEARCH

time itself requires a synthesis, it cannot be identical with the unity of

consciousness as it is for Husserl. Kant believed it to be an important
result of his theory that inner sense cannot serve as a philosophical
foundation, for without the immediate consciousness of an external
object, the "mere" appearances of inner sense would be devoid of uni-
ty. For Kant, the discontinuity which is a formal property of time,
and therefore of its contents, makes the question of the unity of con-
sciousness a question about something other than time itself. For Hus-
serl, the unity of consciousness is manifest in time-consciousness and
can only be explained in terms of time. Thus it can be said, that
Kant, by recognizing time as a necessary component of consciousness,
sought to deny as a philosophical foundation that which Husserl, by
making time "absolute," was able to affirm. The significance of time
is even more strongly emphasized by Heidegger.
Heidegger: The relation between time and being indicated by
Husserl becomes Heidegger's principal theme. For Husserl,
phenomenological consciousness is the "original region of being"
which has its source in the prephenomenological temporal structure
of consciousness. Heidegger believes that from the beginning of
Western philosophy time has been "the perspective governing the
disclosure of being."30 However, he seeks the origin of this perspective
not in a special philosophical frame of mind, but in the most basic
conditions of human existence. From this point of view, he is severely
critical of the notion that in "consciousness" a "subject" experiences
an "object." At the same time, he regards this as an historically ac-
curate description of modern man's technologized experience of the
world. He therefore treats consciousness as derivative from a more
fundamental disclosure of Being which none of the above terms can
adequately describe. Instead of a subject-object polarity, Heidegger
speaks of "Dasein." More fundamental than consciousness is
"disclosedness." With Heidegger we are therefore interested to learn
how the unity of disclosedness is related to the temporality of human
existence.
Human existence (Dasein) is the disclosure of a world of things in
themselves. This is not the inner consciousness of external or of im-
manent objects. It would be incorrect to say that Dasein discloses a
world "external" to itself, for this would make human existence
something internal. Heidegger believes that in the disclosure of a
world of things Dasein is disclosed to itself as "out there" (Da-sein).

30 Martin Heidegger, An Introduction to Metaphysics, Ralph Mannheim,

Trans. (New York: Doubleday, 1961), p. 172.
 KANT, HUSSERL, AND HEIDEGGER ON TIME AND THE 193
UNITY OF 'CONSCIOUSNESS"
Heidegger calls this the "ecstatic" nature of human existence. The
question of the unity of disclosedness cannot, therefore, be stated in
Kantian fashion as concerning the relation between objective and sub-
jective unity. The unity of disclosedness is at once the unity of the
"world" and of existence.
How is this to be understood? The double intentionality of con-
sciousness in Husserl provides an important clue. Bearing in mind the
inadequacy of the word, it is as if Heidegger "externalized" internal
consciousness in such a way that in the "transverse" disclosedness of
the thing there is a "longitudinal" unity, not of internal con-
sciousness, but of the world in which things appear. Thus there is a
reciprocity between world and thing in disclosedness just as there is
between the flux of consciousness and the constituted object. Heideg-
ger sometimes calls the relation between world and thing "ontological
difference." While insisting upon the reciprocity or correlativity be-
tween the two, it is called a "difference" in order to emphasize that
the world is not itself thingly, but is the different phenomenon of the
being or meaning of things.
Heidegger's explanation of how the world is manifest in ecstatic
human existence further distinguishes disclosedness from con-
sciousness. Disclosedness is not a theoretical, detached observation of
objects, but comes about in a "concerned" involvement with things in
the world. Things appear as useful or threatening or beneficial in
relation to or for something else as a result of our practical activity. In
this way the world is manifest as a relational totality of significance.31
The unity of this world depends upon something unifying in human
existence, and here is a problem.
From a practical point of view the unity of existence is more
perplexing than is the unity of consciousness vis a vis its object. Man is
always living "ahead of himself' in anticipating, planning, getting
something done, etc. Insofar as human existence is oriented toward
the "not-yet" it seems to lack unity. Heidegger believes that an ac-
count of the unity of human existence must include the preeminent
role of the not-yet. In this regard, the unity of existence cannot be
modelled on the unity of an object, as if, for example, its unity were a
synthesis of moments that is coordinate with an objective synthesis.
Rather, what "unifies" human existence is the manner in which it
bears itself toward its future. Of central importance is the manner in
which death is faced. Heidegger believes that the authentic unity of
human existence is possible in a "resoluteness" toward death. It is on-
" Martin Heidegger, Being and Time, John Macquarrie and Edward Robin-
son, Transs. (New York: Harper & Row, 1962), p. 120.
194 PHILOSOPHY AND PHENOMENOLOGICAL RESEARCH

ly in this resoluteness that human existence becomes a self for itself.

The resolute anticipation of death "utterly individualizes Dasein, and
allows it, in this individualization of itself, to become certain of the
totality of its potentiality-for-Being."32 In facing death as the absolute
negation of any possibility for existence, the individual's existence is a
finite, comprehensible "whole." But the individual's potentiality-for-
being is not abstract and vague ("worldless," Heidegger would say). It
is rather seen in conjunction with what he already is, as limited and
directed by the world in which he finds himself, by his "facticity."
Resoluteness brings together both aspects of human existence into an
integrated relation.
Heidegger finds the true nature of the temporality of human ex-
istence in this resoluteness. The most important point is that time is
experienced as arising out of the future and not out of the present as
the impressional source-point of temporal sequence. The original
phenomenon of the future is to be explained in terms of the way
human existence "comes toward itself' in relating itself to its
possibilities.33 In thereby calling attention to what it already is there
arises the original phenomenon of the past. Heidegger designates this
past by the term -already used by Husserl in connection with reten-
tion- Gewesenheit, "beenness," or "having-been." This term stresses
that existence is a continuity of what it is not with what it already is
(has been). What existence has been is the immediate "factical" con-
text of the futural aspect of existence. The present, in this original
temporality, is not an intermediate moment between future and past.
It is rather a kind of taking cognizance of what "has presence" within
the context in which we act on our possibilities. The original
phenomenon of the present is therefore a "making-present" which is
guided by the future and the past.34 The interrelatedness of these
''moments" of temporality unify every aspect of human existence:
what it is not-yet, what it already is, and what is present (disclosed) to
it.
Although Heidegger's account of the unity of existence may seem
unusual, he notes with emphasis, "The order of the sequence in which
Experiences run their course does not give us the phenomenal nature
of existing."35 For both Kant and Husserl the problem of the unity of
consciousness involves the way in which the order of experiences is
determined. Consciousness of a now is the starting point of their in-
32Ibid., p. 310.
" Ibid., p. 372.
" Ibid., pp. 373-374.
" Ibid., p. 337.
 KANT, HUSSERL, AND HEIDEGGER ON TIME AND THE 195
UNITY OF "CONSCIOUSNESS"
quiries into the "temporality of existence." Heidegger objects that
Kant defined the past and future in terms of the present as the no-
longer-now and the not-yet-now. If to some extent this is true of
Husserl also, it is nevertheless true that he went a long way toward
seeing the past and the future as each having a unique essence. As the
retained "horizon" of the now, the past is a distinctive aspect of con-
sciousness that is not now-like. There seems to be no indication in
Kant, on the other hand, that a reproduced content has a new,
uniquely temporal character. What is new about it is that it is repro-
duced and not actual. But as reproduced it belongs to the now.
Although Husserl speaks of the future as the not-yet-now, there is a
suggestion of a unique definition of the future in the doctrine that the
present is continuous with at least an "empty" protention. The
significance which Husserl placed on protention is evident in the
following:
Now it pertains to the essence of perception that it not only has a punctual
now in view and has dismissed from view a just-having-been (and yet, in
the characteristic manner of the "just-having-been," is "still conscious of")
but also that it goes over from now to now and fore-seeing faces each one.
The wakeful consciousness, the wakeful life, is a living-in-the-face-of, a
living from one now toward the next.36
Apart from the emphasis upon the now, Heidegger's later analyses
are foreshadowed here. It is certainly the case that Husserl is thinking
of time as a horizon of unique, but interdependent, moments. The
future is more than the not-yet-now; it is a horizon of expectation
which is a distinctive aspect of the consciousness of the present. It is
this horizonal notion of time which Heidegger adapts to a human ex-
istence conceived in terms broader than those of "consciousness." In
this adaptation the present is thought of with regard to what has
presence within the temporal horizon. In this way time becomes the
central factor determining the thing as appearing in a world.
Oddly enough, the horizonal nature of temporality seems to have
occupied Heidegger more with Kant than with Husserl. There is an
extensive confrontation with Kant concerning the nature of the
horizon within which things can be met. Heidegger claims that the
kind of horizon which belongs to the temporality of resoluteness
allows things to be seen as they ate in themselves. On the other hand,
he believes that Kant's transcendental analysis of consciousness has
disclosed a different kind of horizon which determines things as ob-
jects of representation. This horizon, moreover, is the "framework"
(Ge-Stell) of the technological appropriation (or annihilation) of
things in themselves. The thing in itself appears in this horizon only
36 The PRhenomenology of Internal Time-Consciousness, p. 141.
196 PHILOSOPHY AND PHENOMENOLOGICAL RESEARCH

within the determinate limits of the represented "object in general."

Because Heidegger believes the horizon in which the thing appears as
it is in itself to be grounded in the temporality of resoluteness, he at-
tempts to explain the horizon of the thing-as-object in terms of a kind
of temporality. But it is an essentially different kind of temporality
than is manifest in resoluteness. The contrast with Kant depends,
therefore, upon his claim that for Kant too the unity of consciousness
(disclosedness) is explained by time and not the other way around.
Heidegger undertakes this task in Kant and the Problem of
Metaphysics by showing that consciousness is a three-fold unity of in-
tuition, imagination, and understanding, and by interpreting these
as corresponding to the three moments of time. Without getting into
the details of this interpretation,3 it is clear that Heidegger now has
to account for two different manifestations of human temporality. He
does this by referring to them as "temporalizations" of what could be
called a prehorizonal time. The temporality of consciousness is not
thereby put on equal footing with the temporality of disclosedness;
the latter is still the most primordial temporalization. But the notion
of temporalization means that there is an essential respect in which
time remains constant in all horizons, whether they are "ecstatic" or
internal to the subject's experience.
Heidegger's later thought takes place on this prehorizonal level.
An additional factor in retreating to this new level of inquiry is
Heidegger's increasing reluctance to see man's relation to being as
one of "transcendence." In Being and Time the possibility of
transcendence is explicated with regard to the temporal structure of
human existence. Accordingly, the nature of the "horizon" of
transcendence seems to be rooted in the nature of man. But in order
to strengthen his interpretation of human existence as Da-sein,
Heidegger comes to emphasize more strongly that the nature of man
is rooted in the "there." He therefore ceases to explain the "there" in
terms of a horizon of transcendence and begins to speak of it as a
"clearing" which does not originate in the specifically human act of
transcendence. He rather speaks of the "event" (Ereignis) of the clear-
ing as one in which the possibility of human existence first arises. The
clearing is not brought about through the activity of disclosure (or
consciousness), nor is it to be explained as originating in things (or
objects). It is an "event" which does not arise through the agency of
particular beings, either man or things. Therefore, if this clearing is

3 For a detailed analysis of Heidegger's interpretation of Kant, see Sherover,

op. cit.
 KANT, HuSSERL, AND HEIDEGGERON TIME AND THE 197
UNITY OF "CONSCIOUSNESS"
to be explained in terms of time, the essence of time must be con-
sidered prior to its temporalized modes.
To time itself belongs a "dimensionality" which "consists in the
mutual reaching out and opening up of future, past and present."38
The unity of these three dimensions, however, must be explained in
terms of a "fourth dimension" which Heidegger calls presentingg."
Each of the three dimensions of time is a mode of presencing. Where
Heidegger says presentingg," Husserl would have said "givenness." As
we noted, Husserl distinguishes the present and the past not by an
essential change in what is given but by the way in which the same
thing is given. Heidegger's use of the term presentingg" reflects his
continued effort to find a way to state man's relation to things without
falling back upon the presuppositions of "conscious" experience. Ac-
cordingly, presencing is not the same as givenness. Yet Heidegger
would say that givenness is the way presencing takes place in con-
sciousness.
It is presencing which determines the dimensionality of time as
the clearing of being. In the entire history of metaphysics, Heidegger
believes, being has always been explained as a kind of being-present.
The manner in which the presence 9f things has been deter-
mined -whether as idea, subjective appearance, etc. -has been on-
tologically decisive. That time is the unified dimension of presencing
Heidegger calls the "event of appropriation" (Ereignis) between time
and being.39 This prehorizonal or pretemporalized time is prior to all
historical determinations of being. It cannot, therefore, be strictly
correlated with the formal quasi-temporality which for Husserl unites
consciousness as the original region of Being. From Heidegger's point
of view, being-present in internal consciousness is a particular
historical determination of being. For Heidegger there is a
prephenomenal time underlying every historical-modification in the
way man experiences the presence (being) of things. In this respect,
incidentally, I do not think that the later Heidegger's neglect of his
earlier analyses of horizon and transcendence reflects the "failure" of
Being and Time. Being and Time's analysis of disclosedness (and the
later analyses of thinking) is in some respects modelled on what
Heidegger takes to be the Presocratic experience of the presence of
things. This analysis can be seen as representing an authentic,
historically possible alternative to the technological manipulation of
things and of experience itself.
From Kant to Husserl to Heidegger time grows in significance as
38 Martin Heidegger, On Time and Being, Joan Stambaugh, trans. (New

York: Harper & Row, 1972), p. 14.

3 Ibid., p. 19.
198 PHILOSOPHY AND PHENOMENOLOGICAL RESEARCH

it is increasingly emphasized that time constitutes the unified dimen-

sion of consciousness or disclosedness. It could be argued-that Kant's
doctrine of synopsis constitutes a first step toward the recognition of
time as in itself an extensive unity. But Kant puts little emphasis upon
the doctrine of synopsis, and it is unimportant in even Heidegger's
interpretation of Kant. If time is to be recognized as an original
"region" or "clearing" of being, it is necessary that the future and the
past be put on equal footing with the present. Only in the in-
terdependence of all three moments of time is anything like a region
possible. In this respect, Husserl takes an important step toward
deemphasizing the present. However Heidegger might interpret
Kant, it is clear that both he and Husserl are opposed to Kant in
regarding time as consituting in itself the region of Being.
Husserl and Heidegger both believe against Kant that the unity
of consciousness or disclosedness must be explained in terms of time
and not the other way around. A very important factor in this reversal
is that what Husserl and Heidegger have in mind by the unity of con-
sciousness or disclosedness is far more comprehensive than what Kant
had in mind. The manifoldness of time-consciousness for Kant makes
the problem of the unity of consciousness a question of joining in one
object what time has put asunder. Because the determination of the
time-order of the manifold is relative to an object, there can be no
determinate intuition of a more extensive unity. For the more com-
prehensive unity of all appearances we can only rely on the regulative
employment of reason.
For Husserl and Heidegger, on the contrary, the "region" of all
things is immediately continuous with their appearance. Heidegger is
particularly insistent on seeing this region as one in which the mean-
ing or Being of things is disclosed and not imposed. He regards a
transcendental system of pure reason, on the other hand, as an im-
posed structure of meaning. This must be borne in mind when com-
paring Kant and Heidegger. In his Heidegger, Kant and Time,
however, Charles M. Sherover does not make it clear that Heidegger
is just as "radically" opposed to Kant in this regard as James is to
Hume. Heidegger's interpretation of Kant must be placed within the
larger context of his attack on representationalism as the imposition
of meaning in an essentially technological project. Here, Heidegger
develops a Husserlian theme in connection with the temporality of
"consciousness" and not a Kantian one. It is Husserl's doctrine of
time, with certain modifications, which allows Heidegger to interpret
the region of Being as the immediate world of human existence.
RONALD P. MORRISON.
WESTBROOK COLLEGE.