RECOLLECTION AND THE CONSTITUTION OF TEMPORAL OBJECTS [Zeitobjekten] AND OBJECTIVE [objektiver] TIME1
I can “repeat” the perception of a temporal Object, but in the succession of these perceptions is constituted the consciousness of two like temporal Objects. Only in recollection can I have repeated an identical temporal object. I can also verify in recollection that what is perceived is the same as that which is subsequently recollected. This takes place in the simple remembrance, “I have perceived that,” and in the recollection of the second level, “I have a memory of that.” Thus the temporal Object can become a repeated experiential act. If the Object has been given once, then it can be given as often as you like, examined again and in different acts, which then form a succession, can be identified.
Recollection is not only re-consciousness [Wiederbewusstsein] on behalf of the Object, but as the perception of a temporal Object it carries its temporal horizon with it, so that recollection also repeats the consciousness of this horizon. Two recollections can be memories of like Objects, e.g., two like sounds. However, they are recollections of the same temporal Object not when the mere content of duration is the same but when the temporal horizon is the same, when, therefore, both recollections fully and completely repeat one another with regard to intentional content, apart from differences in clarity or obscurity, incompleteness, etc. The identity of temporal Objects, therefore, is a constitutive product of unity of certain possible coincidences of identification of recollections. Temporal Objectivity is established in the subjective temporal flux, and to be identifiable in recollections and hence to be the subject of identical predicates is an essential part of this Objectivity.
Actually present time is oriented, is ever in flux and always oriented from a new now on. In recollection, time is indeed also given as oriented in every moment of the memory. But every point exhibits an Objective temporal point which can be identified again and again, and the interval of time is formed from purely Objective points and is itself identifiable again and again. What is the identical Object here? The series of primal impressions and continuous modifications, a series of similarities which establish self-coincident forms of lines of likeness or difference but within a general likeness—this series provides primordial consciousness of unity. In such a series of modifications we are necessarily conscious of a unity, the enduring sound (constantly like or altered), and from another point of view, the duration, in which the sound is one, and changes or does not change. And the sound continues; its duration “becomes greater,” and the sound “ceases,” is over. Its entire duration has expired and moves more and more into the past. Therefore, it, the sound, is given here, let us say, as a sound perpetually unchanged in its duration. But this sound unchanged in its duration—with regard to content—undergoes an alteration which concerns not the content but the entire mode of givenness of the “content in its duration.” If we adhere to the phenomenon, we quite certainly have different forms of unity. There is constant change of the modes of givenness, but through the lines of change which conform to every point of the duration, there is a unity: the tonal point. But apart from this identity, the tonal point is ever and again something other, namely, in the mode of temporal depth [Zeittiefe]. On the other hand, the continuity of the temporal flux provides unity, that of the flux of a changing or unchanging content, of the temporal object. It is this unity which moves into the past. With it, however, we still do not have complete temporal Objectivity.
The possibility of identification belongs to the constituting of time. I can again and again carry out a reminiscence (recollection), can always produce “again” any portion of time with its filling, and then in the succession of re-productions which I now have, can comprehend the same—the same duration with the same content, the same Object. The Object is a unity of consciousness which in repeated acts (therefore, in temporal succession) can appear as the same; it is that which is identical with regard to intention, which is identifiable in no matter how many acts of consciousness, that is, perceptible or re-perceptible in as many perceptions as you like. I can satisfy myself “at any time” of the identical “it is.” Thus an occurrence in time, for example: I can experience it for the first time; I can experience it again in repeated re-experiences and grasp its identity. I can come back to it again and again in my thinking and can verify this thinking through originary re-experience. Thus Objective time is first constituted and, to begin with, that of the just-past, with reference to which the process of experience in which duration is established and every retention of the entire duration are mere “shadings.” I have a primordial schema, a flux with its content, but in addition a primordial multiplicity of “I can”: I can go back to any place in the flux and produce it “once more.” As with the constitution of Objective spatiality, we also have an optimum here. The image of the duration in a simple retrospective glance [Rückblick] is unclear. In clear re-production [Wiedererzeugungen] I have it “itself,” and more clearly, the more nearly complete.
1. To § 32, pp. 94ff.