THE CORRELATIONAL INTENTIONS OF PERCEPTION AND MEMORY—THE MODES OF TIME-CONSCIOUSNESS1
Let us now consider the mode of consciousness “remembrance.” As unmodified consciousness, it is “sensation” or what amounts to the same thing, impression. Or, more clearly, it may include phantasms, but it itself is not the modification according to phantasy of another consciousness as the corresponding sensation. However, an Appearance is included therein. I remember something past; in the remembrance is contained the imaginary Appearance of the occurrence, which appears with a background of Appearance to which I myself belong. This total appearance has the character of an imaginative Appearance, but in a mode of belief which characterizes memory. We can then posit the memory itself in the phantasy, can have memory in the phantasy and also in the memory. I dwell on [lebe in] a memory and the memory suddenly emerges “that I have remembered such and such,” or I phantasy that I have a memory. At the same time, to be sure, we find the modality of the memory transformed into a corresponding phantasm, but the matter of the memory, the memory-Appearance, is not itself further modified any more than the phantasms contained in it have been further modified. There is no phantasm of the second level. And the entire memory-Appearance making up the matter of the memory is phantasm and likewise does not undergo further modification.
If, furthermore, I then have a memory of memory, there appears in association with a process of remembrance—i.e., a consciousness in which imaginary Appearances in the qualitative mode of remembrance stand forth and run off—a “modified” remembrance. In view of this, essentially the same is to be said as before. The qualitative mode of the simple memory is replaced by “memory of memory,” i.e., I have a phantasm of memory (going along with that of the entire process of remembrance). But the phantasm of memory is a character of memory of … based on an imaginary Appearance, and this is identically the same in the case of simple memory and memory-of-memory [Erinnerungs-Erinnerung]. If one says that it is characteristic of memory, in contrast to everything that forms its content, that there is an apprehension which supplies the reference of the memory to the actual perceptual reality, this is certainly correct but changes nothing of what has been said. With regard to this apprehension itself, then, we must distinguish the content and the mode of belief. In the case of simple memory, which, let us say, I now have, the apprehension is naturally a different one from that of the memory-of-memory, in which the remembered memory refers to a remembered now as the point of actuality. But the principal thing here is that the Appearances (which we take wholly empirically, just as appearances) can undergo no modification. And the same is true for the contents of the apprehensions of memory, which give the Appearances reference to the now, these naturally being not completely intuitive.
This reference to the actual now, which is the characteristic of memory and distinguishes it from “mere phantasy,” is not, however, to be grasped as something added on externally. This reference has an obvious analogue in the reference of every perception to an actual here. Furthermore, just as every memory points to an infinite nexus of memory (to something earlier), so every perception points back to an infinite nexus of perception (a manifold infinity). (The here is not perceptible thereby, i.e., not itself given in the memory.) We can now also take a perception purely for itself, outside its nexus. However, this nexus, although not really present as the connection of the perception with additional perceptions, nevertheless lies “potentially” in the intention. That is, if we consider the complete perception at any moment, it still has connections, in the sense that belonging to it is a complex of determinate or indeterminate intentions which leads further and which when evaluated is fulfilled in additional perceptions. This nexus of intentions is not to be cut away. As far as the individual sensation is concerned, it is in truth nothing individual. That is, the primary contents are at all times bearers of rays of apprehension [Auffasungsstrahlen] and never occur without these rays, no matter how indeterminate the latter may be. The same thing is true of memory. It has in itself its “nexus,” i.e., as memory it has its form, which we describe as forward-and-backward-directed intentional moments, without which it cannot be. Its fulfillment requires lines of memories which discharge into the actual now. It is impossible to separate the “memory for itself” without regard to the intentions which connect it with others. It is equally impossible to detach these intentions themselves.
“Memory for itself” already has these intentions. There is no “mere phantasy” to be gathered from it. But one might say that memory is still memory of a former now, a quasi-perception, which brings about consciousness of a temporal flow. Why shouldn’t we hold fast to the entire phenomenon and be able to cut away the real intentions of memory on either side? This question may be answered as follows: the perception itself, the “originary” act, not only has its nexus of spatiality but also its nexuses of temporality. Every perception has its retentional and protentional halo. The modification of a perception must also—in a modified way—contain this double halo, and what distinguishes “mere phantasy” from memory is that this whole intentional complex has at one time the character of actuality, at another that of inactuality.
Every sensation has its intentions, which lead from the now to a new now, and so on: the intention toward the future and on the other side the intention toward the past. As far as memory is concerned, it also has its memorial intentions of the future. These intentions are fully determinate insofar as their fulfillment (provided they, in general, are at our disposal) proceeds in a definite direction and is fully determined with regard to content. However, in the case of perception the intentions of the future are in general not determined with regard to their matter and are first determined through the actual additional perception. (What is determined is only that after all something will come.)
As regards the intentions of the past, they are wholly determinate but reversed, so to speak. There is a definite connection between the actual perception and the chain of memories, but it is such that the intentions of memory (as unilaterally directed) terminate in the perception. Now these memories are obviously only possibilities; they are only exceptionally, or only a few of them, actually given with the perception. On the other hand, it is still true that the perception is endowed with matching intentions of the past, but with empty ones, corresponding to those memories of nexuses of memories. Not only the empty just-past, which has its orientation on the actual now, but also, as one might well say, vague, empty intentions which concern what lies further back are directed toward the now. These intentions become actualized or attain fulfillment in that, so to speak, through recollection we go back at a bound to the past and then again intuitively presentify the past progressively to the now. One can say that the present is always born out of the past, naturally, a determinate present out of a determinate past. Or better, a determinate flux ever and again runs its course. The actual now sinks away and goes over into a fresh now, and so on. If this is a necessity of an a priori kind, still it implies an “association,” i.e., the past nexus is determined experientially, and further determined is “that something or other will come.” But we are now led from this secondary factor (the complex of temporal intentions of experience) to the originary one, and this subsists in nothing other than in precisely the transition from the actual now to the new now.
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 [vorblickend] faces each one. The wakeful [wache] consciousness, the wakeful life, is a living-in-face-of [Entgegenleben], a living from one now toward the next. By this, we are not merely or primarily thinking about attentiveness. Rather, it seems to me that independently of attentiveness (in the narrower and in the broader sense) an originary intention goes from now to now, being linked with the now indeterminate, now more or less determinate intentions of experience which spring from the past. These, indeed, trace out the lines of linkage. The regard from the now to the new now, this transition, however, is something originary, which first smooths the way for future intentions of experience. I said above that this belongs to the essence of perception; it is better to say that it belongs to the essence of impression. It is certainly true of every “primary content,” of every sensation. “Phantasm” and content of memory imply the corresponding modification of this consciousness, as “as-if consciousness” [Gleichsam-Bewusstsein]. And if it is to be real memory, an ordering into the past belongs to this as-if consciousness. The modification of consciousness consists in this, that the entire originary consciousness of the moments concerned preserves its modification fully and completely. This is also true, therefore, of the temporal intentions in whose nexus the impressional regard wholly and completely belongs, and it is in general true of the entire intentional nexus in which that originary impression fits and from which it receives its character.
We consider sensation as the primordial time-consciousness. In it is constituted the immanent unity color or sound, the immanent unity wish or favor, and so on. The activity of phantasy is the modification of this time-consciousness; it is presentification. In it are constituted presentified color, wish, and so on. However, presentification can be memory, expectation, or also “mere phantasy,” in which case we cannot speak of a modification. Sensation is presentative time-consciousness. Presentification is also sensation, is actually present, is constituted as unity in presentative time-consciousness. The differences between now-presentation and just-now-presentation [Soeben-Gegenwärtigung], which together belong to concrete presentation-consciousness, come into question only as modes of presentative time-consciousness. Furthermore, this is also true of the difference between actual presentation, which in itself has its now-presentation phase, and independent autonomous retention, which indeed has reference to the actual now but itself does not include a now-presentation, e.g., the consciousness of a tone which has just sounded. Accordingly, we have as essential modes of time-consciousness: (1) “sensation” as actual presentation and essentially entwined with it but also capable of autonomy, retention, and protention (originary spheres in the broader sense); (2) positing presentification (memory), co-presentification, and re-presentification (expectation); (3) phantasy-presentification as pure phantasy, in which all the same modes occur in phantasy-consciousness.
1. To § 33, pp. 96ff.