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HORIZON 10 (1) 2021 : I. Research : U. Vëgners : 186-211
ФЕНОМЕНОЛОГИЧЕСКИЕ ИССЛЕДОВАНИЯ • STUDIES IN PHENOMENOLOGY • STUDIEN ZUR PHÄNOMENOLOGIE • ÉTUDES PHÉNOMÉNOLOGIQUES
https://doi.org/10.21638/2226-5260-2021-10-1-186-211
HUSSERL AND DIMENSIONS OF TEMPORALITY: A FRAMEWORK FOR THE ANALYSIS OF TEMPORAL EXPERIENCE
ULDIS VEGNERS
Doctor in Philosophy, Assistant Professor.
Institute of Philosophy and Sociology, University of Latvia.
LV-1940 Riga, Latvia.
E-mail: uldis.vegners@gmail.com
Temporality is one of the key components of our experience, but the experience of time is hardly one and the same for all of us throughout our lives. The experience of time in its entirety is not solid and simple. It is a fluid and complex phenomenon consisting of a multitude of dimensions. In medical phenomenology and phenomenological psychopathology there are ample cases of different temporal experiences analysed in the context of the illness experience. However, only a few attempts have been made to propose a conceptual framework that could not only be used to conduct a concrete analysis in a more systematic manner, but also provide a solid and comprehensive theoretical basis. The aim of this article is to draw on the rich distinctions found in Husserl's phenomenology to outline a framework of different temporal dimensions for the analysis of temporal experience. The framework could provide conceptual tools to analyse temporal experiences in any field of study that deals with the human experience, including medical phenomenology and phenomenological psychopathology. The resulting analysis would be not only clearer, more comprehensive and precise, but also more systematic and conceptually consistent. The framework consists of fourteen dimensions of temporal experience ordered in seven binary distinctions: (1) change and structure, (2) immanence and transcendence, (3) ownness and intersubjectivity, (4) passivity and activity, (5) receptivity and spontaneity, (6) presentation and representation, (7) unthematized temporality and thematized temporality.
Keywords: phenomenology, Edmund Husserl, time experience, temporality, framework, altered states of consciousness, psychopathology, qualitative research.
© ULDIS VËGNERS, 2021
ГУССЕРЛЬ И ИЗМЕРЕНИЯ ТЕМПОРАЛЬНОСТИ: КОНЦЕПТУАЛЬНЫЙ КАРКАС ДЛЯ АНАЛИЗА ТЕМПОРАЛЬНОГО ОПЫТА
УЛЬДИС ВЕГНЕРС
Доктор философии, доцент.
Институт философии и социологии, Латвиийский университет.
LV-1940 Рига, Латвия.
E-mail: uldis.vegners@gmail.com
Темпоральность — один из ключевых компонентов нашего опыта, однако опыт времени едва ли остается неизменным на протяжении всей нашей жизни. Опыт времени во всей его полноте не является цельным и неделимым. Это подвижный и сложный феномен, состоящий из множества измерений. Медицинская феноменология и феноменологические исследования психопатологий богаты различными примерами темпоральных переживаний, анализ которых происходит в рамках опыта болезни. Однако было предпринято лишь несколько попыток предложить концептуальный каркас, способный обеспечить прочную всестороннюю теоретическую основу, а не способ систематизировать отдельные исследования. Цель настоящей статьи — очертить рамки множества темпоральных измерений для анализа темпорального опыта, опираясь на ряд различений, обнаруженных в феноменологии Гуссерля. Подобный каркас может предоставить концептуальные инструменты для анализа темпоральных переживаний в любой исследовательской области, имеющей дело с человеческим опытом, в том числе в поле феноменологического исследования психопатологий и медицинской феноменологии. Полученный в результате анализ будет не только более прозрачным, комплексным и точным, но также систематическим и концептуально-последовательным. Каркас содержит четырнадцать измерений временного опыта в семи бинарных различиях: (1) изменение и структура, (2) имманентность и трансцендентность, (3) самость и интерсубъективность, (4) пассивность и активность, (5) рецептивность и спонтанность, (6) представление и репрезентация, (7) нетематизирован-ная темпоральность и тематизированная темпоральность.
Ключевые слова: феноменология, Эдмунд Гуссерль, переживание времени, темпоральность, концептуальный каркас, измененные состояния сознания, психопатологии, качественный анализ.
1. INTRODUCTION
Although temporality is one of the key components of our experience, it does not mean that it remains the same for all of us all of the time. Rather than being solid and simple, the time experience in its entirety is a fluid and complex phenomenon consisting of a multitude of dimensions. There is a range of experiences in which changes in our temporal experience are most noticeable, the experience of illness being one of them. According to the body of work in medical phenomenology and phenomenologi-cal psychopathology, not only does illness change dramatically our embodied existence, but it also modifies our temporal experience. In phenomenological psychopathology
a considerable attention has been given to temporal aspects of the illness experience by drawing on insights and conceptual distinctions from phenomenology, most notably, from the works of Edmund Husserl and Martin Heidegger (Aho, 2020, 260; Fuchs, 2005, 195, 2013, 547; Moskalewicz, 2016, 235; Moskalewicz & Schwartz, 2020, 208)1. Although in medical phenomenology and phenomenological psychopathology there is ample literature analysing changes in temporal experience based on phenomenological concepts, only a few attempts, implicitly or explicitly, have been made to propose a conceptual framework that could not only be used to conduct a concrete analysis in a more systematic manner but also provide a solid and comprehensive theoretical basis. Among the relatively recent attempts are those of S. Kay Toombs (1990), Thomas Fuchs (2005, 2013), Saulius Geniusas (2015, 2020), Moskalewicz (2016), and David H. V. Vogel et al. (2020)2. Although these frameworks provide great conceptual tools for analysing temporal experience, my contention is that conceptual distinctions drawn from Husserlian philosophy could provide a conceptual framework that is theoretically more consistent and comprehensive. It might also open up a possibility for a richer and more precise analysis of temporal experience3.
Husserl's philosophy has yielded a multitude of distinctions of temporal experience (Brough, 2002, 142), and his insights and concepts to a varying degree have already been used analysing temporal experience and incorporated into the frameworks already mentioned in the literature of medical phenomenology and phenomenological psychopathology. However, these analyses and frameworks have not employed the full potential of Husserl's phenomenology, a united conceptual framework for the analysis of temporal experiences based on Husserl's philosophy has not been developed yet and its potential has not been fully exhausted. Therefore, my aim here is to draw on this rich potential that lies within Husserl's phenomenology to outline a framework for the analysis of temporal experiences (FATE). One of the major goals of the frameworks elaborated by Toombs, Fuchs, Geniusas, Moskalewicz and Vogel et al. is to make the analysis of different and changed temporal experiences more systematic and conceptually consistent, as well as clearer and more precise4. And FATE—with the help of Husserl—serves
1 Henri Bergson is another important source (Fuchs, 2013, 547).
2 Another notable attempt to provide conceptual tools for analysing temporal experiences is made by Benny Shanon (2001b), however, he situates his work in cognitive psychology.
3 I will refrain from giving a survey of these frameworks—not to speak of a critical comparison between them and FATE—as it would go beyond the scope of this article.
4 For example, by introducing his conceptual distinctions Fuchs explicitly aims to extend the analytical arsenal employed by phenomenological psychopathology, claiming that there are significant distinctions not taken into account or ignored analysing pathological temporal experiences and
exactly the same general purpose. FATE consists of fourteen dimensions of temporal experience that are arranged in seven binary distinctions.
My hope is that FATE will increase awareness and appreciation of the richness and diversity of dimensions of temporal experience and, eventually provide conceptual tools to make the analysis of temporal experiences more precise and systematic. Thus, although FATE is primarily proposed against the backdrop of the body of work and frameworks developed within medical phenomenology and phenomenological psycho-pathology, the scope of its possible application, in principle, extends beyond these fields and includes qualitative research carried out in any field of study that deals with human experience. FATE could be used in analysing a wide array of experiences, for example, being ill, ageing and dying, sleeping and dreaming, grieving and being shocked, experiencing art and music, meditating or being in trance, being sleep deprived, being intoxicated or having substance addiction, going through mystical experiences, having sex or orgasm, being bored and anxious, or having a near-death experience.
There are several things I want the reader to bear in mind while reading this article:
a) I do not claim that FATE exhausts all the distinctions of temporal experience to be found in Husserl's philosophy of time5. FATE represents what I believe to be the most important major distinctions within Husserlian phenomenology that could facilitate the analysis of temporal experiences.
b) The dimensions of FATE, as theorised within Husserlian phenomenology, have complex relationship with one another, the full exploration of which lays outside the scope of this article.
c) With the previous point in mind, the dimensions of FATE should not be taken as necessarily separate and exclusive features, but rather as different temporal aspects of any temporal experience as a whole.
d) FATE should not to be considered as an exhaustive conceptual tool that is automatically applicable to the analysis of different temporal experiences. Rather, it is the first outline of a conceptual framework that could provide general guidelines for such an analysis.
e) In the scope of this article a full and comprehensive presentation of the dimensions of FATE is not possible; what is provided in this article is only an outline.
that there are conceptual distinctions which are taken from phenomenological works but which are often misunderstood (Fuchs, 2013, 547, 555).
5 E. g., Brough makes a list of different times that Husserl speaks about in the Bernau manuscripts (Brough, 2002, 144), some of which are not included in the framework presented here.
The article consists of seven sections, each dedicated to one distinction (D1 to D7). Due to the complex nature of the relationships among the dimensions of the distinctions within Husserl's phenomenology there is no one way the sections of the distinctions could be ordered. But the order is not completely random either, some distinctions precede the others, because they are prior in understanding to the other distinctions.
At the end of each section dedicated to a specific distinction an example will be provided to illustrate the distinction. Although I have selected examples that, to my mind, best illuminate the distinction, there are three considerations that I want the reader to bear in mind:
a) In my examples I largely rely on written accounts of the experiences of other people. Due to the limited extent of information and linguistic uncertainties of the reports it is not always easy to fully assess the exact nature of temporal experience described in the example. Therefore, I cannot entirely rule out the possibility of other possible interpretations of the example.
b) It should be noted that the examples of distinctions are not exclusive, namely, they are not limited to only one temporal dimension. Actually, one and the same example can be considered from the perspective of all of the distinctions.
c) Lastly, I want to stress that the given examples do not necessary represent the respective distinctions or dimensions in their entirety. There might be aspects within the distinction or dimension that fall beyond the scope of the example. The purpose of the examples is to accentuate the distinction between certain dimensions of temporal experience rather than to exemplify a certain dimension in its entirety.
2. D1: CHANGE AND STRUCTURE
I will start with the distinction between the dimension of change (D1a) and the dimension of structure (D1b), a distinction that Husserl makes in the context of discussing temporal constitution of an individual perceptual object. According to Husserl, perceived objects and temporal moments within which they are given have their positions in relation to both the now and other objects and temporal moments (Brough, 2002, 147; Husserl, 1966, 427)6. In terms of its relation to the now a partic-
Husserl does not use the terms "dimension of change" or "dimension of structure" to refer to this distinction. Instead, Husserl employs terms "subjective time" and "objective time" (Husserl, 1966,
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ular moment in the perception of an object is either now or not now (not anymore or not yet). The now is not inhabited by one and the same moment. Moments that occupy the now are changing, they are coming and going replacing one another in the now. Temporal moments relative to the now are changing their position (future-now-past). In terms of its relation to other moments, however, a particular moment is either before, after, fully or partially simultaneous with them, it has an identical, fixed position among other moments (first-this-then-that) whether it is given now or is not. Since temporal moments in relation to each other do not change their position, their position remains the same. The dimension of change (D1a) describes the changing relation of a moment to the now, while the dimension of structure (D1b) describes the motionless, fixed relation of a moment to other moments7. "[O]rchestras playing in concert halls, trains rushing into stations, houses standing in the midst of gardens. Such objects are given in the temporal modes of now, past, and future, and in relations of simultaneity and before and after" (Brough, 2010, 25).
For example, as a melody is being played, the sounds that constitute it not only appear and disappear, but also by doing so form a specific order. Although the moment of a tone in the melody has passed, while fading deeper and deeper into the past, it still retains its positional identity among other moments. Thus, the moments that constitute the melody not only change, but also reveal a certain temporal pattern which not only makes it unique in the sense of being identifiable as different from other melodies, but also individualizes it in the sense of being identifiable as a specific occurrence among other melodies and other occurrences of the same melody. The dimension of change is the way the dimension of structure originally reveals itself. Husserl describes the constant changing of moments as subjective time and motionless temporal order as objective time (Kortooms, 2002, 76).
427). However, as Husserl also uses terms "subjective" and "objective" to refer to other temporal distinctions presented in this article, to avoid any terminological confusions for this distinction I have chosen terms that best convey the meaning of the distinction.
The distinction between the dimension of change and of structure in a limited sense can be also understood in reference to McTaggart's distinction between A-series and B-series as two ways of ordering events or positions in time. It is noteworthy that Vogel et al. (2020, 239) in their framework draw a distinction between Flow and Structure that also resembles McTaggart's B-series and A-series. However, if Flow in the framework of Vogel et al. is associated with the past and the future in the form of recollections and expectations (Moskalewicz & Schwartz, 2020, 209; Vogel et al., 2020, 240), the distinction presented here is not. Rather, following Husserl (Husserl, 1966, 35), recollections and expectations are considered as separate types of experiences in the dimension of representation (D6b) alongside perception in the dimension of presentation (D6a). The dimensions of change and of structure (D1) usually characterise both the dimension of presentation and of representation.
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2.1. Example: ayahuasca, books & eternity
I will illustrate the distinction between the dimension of change and of structure using descriptions of experiences induced by Ayahuasca, the Amazonian psychotropic brew, which have been extensively investigated by Benny Shanon (2001a, 2001b). Although the temporal experience induced by the brew is rather complex and may vary from one user to another, one of the aspects that characterizes it is the experience of eternity. In this experience "all events have an equal temporal status. In a certain sense, they are all there and one only has to look at them. From the perspective of the eternal, the temporal may, in a fashion, be reduced to the spatial" (Shanon, 2001a, 50). Shanon compares the experience with more ordinary experiences of instantaneous knowing all at once a book one has read or grasping all at once a whole symphony as, for example, Mozart was said to be able to do (Shanon, 2001a, 50). If I have recently read a book, when I look at it or remember it, all the temporal order of the events in the book is, so to say, instantly laid out in front of me, i.e., sequentially occurring temporal events are condensed in an instant. By rereading a well-known book, it does not matter on which page I am and which events depicted there I acquaint myself with, at every moment I already have the entire story at my disposal. "When one knows something well, the grasping of this knowledge (as distinct from specific demonstrations of it) seems to require little or almost no time" (Shanon, 2001a, 50).
Translating this example of instantaneous grasp of temporal events in terms of the distinction between the dimensions of change and structure, what is specific to this experience is that in this case temporal events are grasped in terms of their temporal order in the dimension of structure (D1b) outside of the dimension of change (D1a). As there is no change in the experience, the dimension of change is lacking. At the instant when I grasp the whole book or symphony, nothing changes. The book or the symphony, from the beginning to the end, is all equally and unchangingly present to me. And, yet, despite the lack of change, what I instantaneously grasp is temporally structured. Thus, the distinction explains how it is possible to experience something that does not change as temporal without falling into contradictions or postulating paradoxical nature of temporal experience.
3. D2: IMMANENCE AND TRANSCENDENCE
Another distinction that characterizes temporal experience is the distinction between the dimension of immanence (D2a) and the dimension of transcendence (D2b). Although the distinction between immanence and transcendence is extensive-
ly used in Husserl's phenomenology, the exact meaning of the distinction depends on the context in which it is used. In this context immanence will be understood as the level of consciousness consisting of lived experiences (immanent temporal unities), and transcendence will be understood as the level of intentional objects that goes beyond immanent temporal unities through which they are given. In other words, an intentional object can be understood as the "what" (object) of lived experiences. The distinction could be also expressed as a distinction between the dimension of lived experiences and the dimension of intentional objects, or between subjective and objective temporality (Husserl, 1982, 41)8.
To understand the distinction, it is necessary to briefly touch upon what Husserl calls "two-sidedness of conscious life." On the one hand, we undergo a wide variety of types of lived experiences, such as sensing, thinking, feeling, doubting, wishing, remembering. All these different types of lived experiences pertain to immanence, because they are fully and completely given. There is nothing more to a lived experience than its concrete temporal occurrence; there are no hidden undisclosed sides of it. On the other hand, lived experiences are "about" or "of" something. My visual sensation of a tetragonal white extension might be about a sheet of paper that lies on the table, my tactile sensation of hardness and slipperiness might be about a stair railing, and so on. It means that my lived experiences are intentionally directed toward something, i.e., an intentional object that transcends them. A sheet of paper cannot be found in a visual sensation but rather through it. The intentional object is not a part of lived experience in the sense that it could be found in it; rather, it is what is apprehended, i.e., grasped through intentional directedness of lived experience as this or that, with lived experiences serving as modes or ways in which intentional objects appear. Intentional objects are transcendent not only because they transcend lived experiences, but also because they are never given completely, always transcending their situational appearance. For example, if I experience a person approaching me, the person as she is approaching me from afar, constantly changes her way or mode of givenness to me, that is, the lived experiences or perceptual profiles through which the person is given are changing. Her bodily configuration, the interplay of colours and light, the steadily increasing size of the body, more and more visual details become salient. All the while the lived experiences of the person's perceptual givenness to me change, certain visual sensations come and go, but the person is still experienced as one and the same person. The existence of the person is not limited to her givenness in lived experiences. That is, although I notice the
This is the second distinction of temporal experience, which Husserl describes in terms of the distinction between "subjective" and "objective." To avoid any confusion, "immanence" and "transcendence" were chosen to best capture the essence of the distinction.
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person now, I do not think that the person did not exist before it came to my visual field and I noticed her. In the same way I assume that the person will still exist, even after she will have disappeared from my sight. Moreover, while I am attentively following how the person is approaching me, there is more to the person than she is actually given to me, for example, even if I do not see the back of the person, I assume that the person has one, I assume that the person has perspectives and profiles that I might experience but for now they are not or even will never be experienced.
The levels of immanence and transcendence have different temporal characterizations. Although immanence is the condition for appearance of transcendence, or, in other words, what makes it possible for transcendence to appear, immanence and transcendence do not share the same temporal characterizations9.
First, the dimension of immanence takes place within what Husserl calls "internal time-consciousness" (Husserl, 1982, 41), i.e., a universal form of immanent unities (lived experiences) (Husserl, 1973, 73). Internal time-consciousness is constituted through three temporal modes of consciousness—retention, protention and primal impression (presentation). Retention is the consciousness of what has just happened, primal impression is the consciousness of what is right now, and protention is the consciousness of what has not happened yet. The dimension of transcendence, on the other hand, lies beyond internal time-consciousness in the form of an all-encompassing continuum that orders and unites individual intentional objects (Husserl, 1973, 257). Therefore, while the dimension of immanence (D2a) entails the dimensions of change (D1a) and structure (D1b), the dimension of transcendence (D2b) is expressed solely through the dimension of structure (D1b).
Second, the temporal passage of immanent unities is non-objectified, it occurs implicitly, without being an object of our attention, interest, or concern (Brough, 2010, 27). For example, if I am immersed in the story of a book that I read, the constant change in visual field reading letter after letter or word after word is given in an implicit, non-objectified manner, because I am focusing on the meaning of the letters and the words in the book, not on the letters and worlds themselves. They only serve as a medium through which I am directed to the object toward which I am intentionally oriented. Accordingly, the change in the dimension of immanence is not attended to, it works implicitly as the background that lets us perceive meaningful objects and their relations in the dimension of transcendence.
Third, the temporal extension of immanent unities cannot transcend their concrete, particular, individual appearance. In contrast, the temporal passage of
See also Sokolowski (1999, 130-131) for a brief, well written account of the distinction.
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transcendent unities is objectified, and their temporal extension exceeds their concrete, particular, individual appearance (Husserl, 1973, 257; 2001, 317, note 1). As Brough puts it: "Unlike external transcendent objects, which can exist whether one is conscious of them or not, the being of experiences is to be perceived (Hua XXXIII, 191), or, more precisely, to be experienced" (Brough, 2010, 26). To illustrate the third point, we can go back to the example of the approaching person. Instead of the person being given without visual disruptions let us imagine that the person actually disappears briefly for a few times from my sight due to a crowd of people and cars crossing the path between us. At the moment when the person visually disappears from my sight, all the immanent unities and visual lived experiences of that person cease to exist, they have ended. But the same is not true about the approaching person as such, because I do not think that the person has ceased to exist; she continues to exist as the same person even if for the time being her visual appearance has ceased to be given to me. The cessation of an immanent unity does not mean the end of a transcendent unity, and the beginning of an immanent unity does not mean the beginning of a transcendent unity. Although I might see the approaching person for the first time, it does not mean that I perceive the person as having just come into existence.
3.1. Example: akinetopsia & snapshots
As an example for this distinction we can take akinetopsia or visual motion blindness, which is a neuropsychological disorder that is characterized by an inability of a person to perceive visual motion (Rizzo et al., 1995; Zeki, 1991; Zihl et al., 1983, 1991; Zihl & Heywood, 2015) as a result of traumatic brain injury, neurodegenerative disease like Alzheimer disease (Tsai & Mendez, 2009), drug toxicity (Horton & Trobe, 1999), or stroke (Cooper et al., 2012). It can also be temporarily induced by magnetic stimulation of area MT/V5 of the brain (Beckers & Homberg, 1992). Although defined as the inability to perceive visual motion, it is not entirely true that persons suffering from akinetopsia cannot experience visual change; they do experience it, but in a very limited way. Persons suffering from akinetopsia do not perceive visual motion in the form of a continuous, smooth transition, but rather in the form of a sequence or jumps of stationary images or snapshots. One and the same moving object can even be experienced as two or more duplicate unmoving objects standing side by side (Tsai & Mendez, 2009, 731)10, reminiscent of Balla's painting Dynamism of a Dog on a Leash (1912). In the history of akinetopsia research the most famous case is a person known
10 A phenomenon called "visual trailing," experienced also after using LSD (Dubois & VanRullen, 2011).
in the scientific literature as LM. It was highly irritating or practically impossible for her to pour fluids as they seemed frozen like a glacier, to track moving objects like people and vehicles as they suddenly and unexpectedly changed their positions or appeared and disappeared, or even to converse with her friends as their lips rapidly jumped up and down. The bigger the changes and the faster the movement, the more difficult it was for her to trace and identify visual objects (Zihl & Heywood, 2015, 4). The whole experience that entailed rapidly changing visual data was not only difficult and effortful, but also confusing and irritating.
In the context of the distinction between the dimensions of immanence and transcendence akinetopsia has primarily affected the dimension of immanence (D2a) or the concrete, individual appearance of an object in the visual field. The dimension of immanence is about how objects of our experience appear. Objects are not presented through fluid and continuously changing immanent unities, but rather through static and momentarily changing snapshot-like immanent unities. Namely, the change in the immanent dimension of the visual field in the case of akinetopsia is discrete rather than continuous, which by itself is confusing enough, but what makes it even more confusing for the perceiving subject is that other perceptual fields (like the auditory field) are still given in a continuous way creating a discord between different perceptual fields. That is, different perceptual fields give mutually discrepant, unsynchronized experiences. For example, if there is a car that is rapidly passing by, visually it might appear as a static, unmoving object that suddenly disappears the next moment, but audially the same car, the same transcendent object, smoothly transitions from a quiet buzz to a loud roar just to fade out eventually. This discord in the dimension of immanence (D2a) might lead to the difficulty or even inability to determine and fix the course of objective events in the dimension of transcendence (D2b). One can only imagine what confusion is created in the case of experience of multiple practically identical, unchanging visual unities. As it was stated, one and the same moving object can be experienced as two or more separate unmoving objects standing side by side. The person has to make an explicit decision whether these discrete and spatially separated visual immanent unities given in the dimension of immanence (D2a) are appearances of the same transcendent object or of two or even more similar but distinct transcendent objects in the dimension of transcendence (D2b). To sum it up, akinetopsia affects the dimension of immanence producing discrepant experiences across different fields of perception and, consequently, creating a state of confusion and disorientation in the dimension of transcendence, making it hard or impossible to fix or discern the order of transcendent events or the number of objects involved in those events.
4. D3: OWNNESS AND INTERSUBJECTIVITY
The third distinction pertaining to temporal experience is the distinction between the dimension of ownness (D3a) and the dimension of intersubjectivity (D3b). In the Cartesian Meditations Husserl introduces a distinction between the sphere of ownness or the primordial sphere and the intersubjective level to show how intersubjectivity and the intersubjective world is constituted based on the sphere of ownness, and each sphere has its specific character of temporal experience11.
According to Husserl, the sphere of ownness is fundamental and constitu-tively prior to the intersubjective level, namely, it does not require intersubjective constitution but is itself a necessary condition for the constitution of intersub-jectivity (Husserl, 1982, 92-99). The sphere of ownness can be characterized as a constitutive layer of experience prior to the constitution of other egos and to the intersubjective or objective world that is experienced as shared by every conscious being. Although in this sphere there are lived experiences as immanent unities and intentional objects as transcendent unities, these unities are characterized by the lack of meaning that can only come from the recognition of the existence of other conscious beings. Let us use a watch as an example. If my experience of it were exclusively confined to the sphere of ownness and, consequentially, I completely lacked the knowledge about the device as a representation of the objective temporal passage, I could still approach and inspect it from all the different sides and angles, twist it around in my hands, smell it, shake it, follow with my eyes the movement of the hand indicating seconds, put it closer to my ear to hear its tick tock, try to taste it, lick or bite it and determine its hardness or softness and so on. To treat the watch as a perceptual object, I do not need to know anything about other conscious subjects.
The dimension of intersubjectivity is a layer of meaning that is founded upon, and added to, the dimension of ownness. The dimension of intersubjectivity is an apprehension of the dimension of ownness as my subjective perspective of what in principle is accessible and "experienceable by everyone" (Husserl, 1982, 93, 96): there is one and the same time for me and for everyone else, despite the differences in our experience of it. The experience of other subjects endowed with their own separate psychic life comes with a common time-form and the dimension of ownness becomes
11 The dimension of ownness could be also described in terms of primordiality and called "subjective time," while the dimension of intersubjectivity could be called "real" or "objective time" (Husserl, 1982, 139).
"merely an original mode of appearance" (Husserl, 1982, 156) or a "subjective mode of appearance" (Husserl, 1982, 130), or my subjective time-perspective12.
4.1. Example: Encephalitis Lethargica & I Wiped the Nose
Oliver Sacks' book Awakenings (1999) provides a striking example for this distinction. In the book he recounts a case of a patient diagnosed with encephalitis lethargica. After being hospitalized, the patient named Miron V. (or Mr V.) spent much of his time in seemingly absolute motionlessness. On one such occasion of his catatonic state, the doctor noticed that Mr V. had been sitting seemingly immobile for fifteen hours with only a few shifts in his static bodily position over the course of that time. Asked about the "meaningless akinetic poses" during that occasion after undergoing L-DOPA treatment, the patient replied that he was just wiping his nose. For the doctor the activity spanning many hours was so slow that all he was able to see were static and unconnected postures. For the patient himself, however, the series of postures "were just normal movements, they took a second" (Sacks, 1999, 161, 162).
What this example shows is a very extreme case of how one and the same intersubjective event of wiping of one's nose is subjectively experienced so radically differently in temporal terms. From the subjective perspective of the patient the experience lasts very briefly in the dimension of ownness as any other wiping of the nose he has done before, whereas from the subjective perspective of the doctor it is temporally spread to such an extent that he is unable to recognize it as a continuous purposeful reconfiguration of the patient's body. However, despite the enormous difference in their respective subjective experiences of the event in the dimension of ownness
12 Although in the literature of phenomenological psychopathology and medical phenomenology there is a distinction between subjective and objective time, in Husserl's philosophy it is actually possible to speak about three, not just one meaning of the distinction. The dimensions of change and of structure (D1) expresses the first meaning, and the dimensions of immanence and transcendence (D2) and the dimensions of ownness and of intersubjectivity (D3) the second and the third meaning, respectively. In the distinction between the dimension of change (D1a) and the dimension of structure (D1b) subjective time pertains to the way how objective temporal order (D1b) is revealed or appears through change (D1a). In the distinction between the dimension of immanence (D2a) and the dimension of transcendence (D2b) subjective time is about how intentional objects and their temporality (D2b) are revealed through lived experiences and their temporality (D2a). And, in the distinction between the dimension of ownness (D3a) and the dimension of intersubjectivity (D3b) it is about how intersubjective things and events (D3b) appear from my own perspective (D3a). What is common for all three senses of subjective dimensions is that they characterize the ways how something appears, be it a specific temporal order, an intentional object or an intersubjective thing or event.
(D3a), the event as an intersubjective event accessible to everyone, as both the patient and the doctor have acknowledged after the treatment, is exactly the same for the patient and for the doctor in the dimension of intersubjectivity (D3b). Both the patient and the doctor, despite the fact that they acknowledge the huge differences in the pace of their temporal experiences, understand the event as one and the same event taking up one and the same amount of time. To sum it up, this example illustrates not only the distinction between the dimensions of ownness and intersubjectivity, but also how radically different one and the same stretch of intersubjective time can be experienced in the dimension of ownness.
5. D4: PASSIVITY AND ACTIVITY
The distinction between the dimension of passivity (D4a) and of activity (D4b) is connected with the development of genetic phenomenology in Husserl's philoso-phy13. In genetic phenomenology Husserl treats passivity and activity as two domains of conscious life. Passivity can be understood as the dimension of consciousness that unfolds independently of, or prior to, any activity of the ego (Husserl, 1973, 72). The mode of passive synthesis that is founded on the lowest syntheses of time-consciousness (Husserl, 1973, 177) and that constitutes specific unities in the passive field is association, "the purely immanent connection of'this recalls that,' 'one calls attention to the other'" (Husserl, 1973, 75). Through associative synthesis experiential unities are formed out of multiplicity based on likeness or similarity. Passivity can be also characterized as the dimension of background experiences which to a varying degree exert affective force that pulls the ego to turn to and attentively grasp them (Husserl, 1973, 77). For example, if I am at a party participating in a lively conversation with a friend, music and all the conversations of other guests most likely will be in the background of my attention. It does not mean that I do not hear other voices or the music, I do hear them, but their affective force is not strong enough to force my attention toward them. Activity can be understood as the dimension of consciousness which consists of "all acts proceeding in a specific way from the ego-pole" (Husserl, 1973, 79). The ego is active (Husserl, 1973, 72) both cognitively and practically (Husserl, 1973, 53, 80). The ego is active when, for example, it attentively turns toward something, intentionally grasps (objectifies) something, explores and inspects something, reflects, makes distinctions and generalizations, judges, infers, evaluates, exerts its will, and practical-
13 Genetic perspective on the issue of time can be found in the L-manuscripts (or the Bernau manuscripts) (Husserl, 2001) written in the years 1917 and 1918 and later further worked out in C-man-uscripts written from 1929 to 1934 (Husserl, 2006).
ly engages with or handles something. To the extent that there is an effort made on the part of the ego it is possible to speak about activity14.
The dimension of passivity (D4a) is a dimension of automatically synthesized temporal unities and relations among them that run off in the background of attention (Streubel, 2003, 328) exerting different degrees of affective pulls on the ego. The temporal passage of background unities is fluid and fleeting, and it is difficult to distinguish their exact order, rhythm or length. I may be sure that there is something changing in the background, but as it is or has been out of my attentive grasp, it is not grasped, seized by me and consequently remains at best vague and elusive. The dimension of activity (D4b) is a dimension in which the ego attentively, dynamically establishes temporal unities and their relations (Kortooms, 2002, 213, 218, 245-246; Streubel, 2003, 328). The temporal passage of the dimension of activity is dynamic in the sense that the ego attentively tries to hold on to and trace the changes of temporal unities in its span of attention. The unities do not merely run off, they are grasped or, as Husserl also characterizes, arrested (Husserl, 1973, 60) by the ego15. For example, if I have had a relatively brief conversation with a friend and I have focused my attention on it, then after the conversation I should be able to reconstruct much from our conversation with relative ease—who talked first, what happened next etc. But if I am distracted and not focused, then that might not be the case. If I am tired, bored or uninterested, sleep deprived, intoxicated, ill, or in great pain, my attentive grasp might loosen up or fluctuate uncontrollably, experiential unities might slip out of it, and then not only a lot of what my conversation partner says might escape my notice and understanding, but also the order of events and turns of conversation might be difficult to reconstruct. To understand what one says I have to attentively grasp the sounds and combine them in meaningful words. If I cannot concentrate, I cannot grasp and hold on to the sounds to which I could bestow meaning. Similarly, if something happens too fast or too slow, or is too complicated, it can as well resist my attempts to attentively grasp it.
14 It is worth noting that this distinction in Husserlian philosophy is contextual (Husserl, 1973, 108). For example, Husserl distinguishes between original or pure passivity (Husserl, 1973, 72, 79), in which the whole pre-egoic field of experiential unities are passively constituted, and passivity in activity, in which what has once been actively accomplished by the ego can be passively brought back in subsequent experiences (Husserl, 1973, 108). For example, if I have once been bitten by a wasp, the next time I will see or hear a wasp, the previous negative experience might be automatically connected to it and make a part of its experiential horizon.
15 Or, still-held-in-grasp, retained-in-grasp (Husserl, 1973, 106-112).
5.1. Example: hypersensitivity & it's just too much
Although hypersensitivity and sensory overload can be experienced by everyone at some point in their lives, it is characteristic to many conditions and syndromes such as post-traumatic stress disorder, attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder, sensory processing disorder, chronic fatigue syndrome, fibromyalgia, schizophrenia and autism spectrum disorder (ASD). To illustrate the distinction between dimensions of passivity and activity I will focus on noise sensitivity in ASD. One of the effects of noise sensitivity is that even quiet sounds distract patients with ASD, when several sounds are "competing for, or demanding, their attention" (Landon et al., 2016, 46). As one patient reports:
If you imagine trying to focus on something and you have a sound coming in from another channel [...] it interferes and in a way if you think of it as signals interfering with one another or the thing that manages all the signals having to manage too much at once [...] it's always an issue because it overloads you [...] all this stuff coming in at once and it's coming too fast for your brain to handle. (Darren) (Landon et al., 2016, 46)
And this leads to difficulties or even the inability to concentrate. For example, if one has a conversation in such situations, it is impossible to follow what other people are saying because one is constantly distracted by the noises around. In those situations, persons with ASD experience the sounds as too excessive to ignore or filter them out, and have difficulties prioritizing or selecting inputs to focus on. It takes great effort to hold a steady direction of attention to a preferable object, but on some occasions, it might even become so overwhelming that it is difficult to focus on anything (Griffith et al., 2012, 538). As one person describes the experience of watching a movie in a crowded room: "I can't filter out distractions like voices and noise. Eventually I won't be able to process the movie at all. I'll see it, but I won't remember it" (WeirdGirlCyndi, 2007).
What the case of noise sensitivity in ASD shows is that sensory stimuli are too excessive and therefore their affective force is too strong for the person not to be attentively drawn toward them. In the case of watching a movie, one is unable to hold one's attention on it and is forced to constantly divert one's attention to the constantly intruding stimuli and thus one is unable to fix and trace changes that make it possible to build a lasting impression of temporal events in one's experience. In terms of the distinction between the dimensions of passivity and activity, attention being constantly redirected and diverted from one experiential unity to the next significantly impairs the dimension of activity (D4b). As attention quickly jumps from one stimulus to the
next, there is no time to fix and trace continuous changes in events. What was in the focus one moment, is in the background the next. The person is in a situation of a constant flow of fluid and fleeting background experiences (D4a) with discrete and diverted flashes of attention (D4b). As most of the movie is in the rapidly fleeting background, it is hardly surprising that one cannot remember it16.
6. D5: RECEPTIVITY AND SPONTANEITY
The next distinction that characterizes temporal experience is the distinction between the dimension of receptivity (D5a) and the dimension of spontaneity (D5b), or between the dimension of pre-predicative temporality and the dimension of predicative temporality.
Receptivity and spontaneity are two separate levels of activity of the ego (within the dimension of activity (D4b)) that are closely entwined in experience (Husserl, 1973, 203-204). The dimension of receptivity (D5a) is the lowest level of activity (Husserl, 1973, 80) that is characterized by an "objectifying turning-toward an existent" (Husserl, 1973, 61) that grasps what is already pregiven to it (Husserl, 1973, 250-251). In receptivity the ego is receptive, attentive of individual objects, and tries to inspect and explore them. The dimension of spontaneity (D5b) is an activity of a higher level that Husserl also calls "proper cognition" (Husserl, 1973, 199). A part of this dimension is predicative activity that forms the basis for cognition in which the ego aims at the apprehension of an object once and for all (Husserl, 1973, 198). If objects of receptivity are still not "our possession, which henceforth we have at our disposal, which we can come up with again at any time, and about which we can inform others" (Husserl, 1973, 197-198), objects of predicative judgments are sedimented into "a permanent possession of knowledge" (Husserl, 1973, 62) that is "freely available, preservable, and communicable" (Husserl, 1973, 62, 199). Objects of predication are "freely repeatable in recollections or freely producible in perceptions (when we go there and take one more look)" (Husserl, 1973, 62). Objects of knowledge are identical unities available "in an open, boundless, and free repeti-
16 Most of the sensory information is lost soon after it is experienced, and, if not attentively grasped, it fades away quite rapidly. In psychology there is the term "sensory memory," which refers to "the short-lived memory for sensory details of events. This can include how things looked, sounded, felt, smelled, and tasted" (Cowan, 2008, 23). Although some information persists, the richness is soon lost, "leaving behind more categorized memories. For example, when one hears or reads a sentence, the gist is strongly saved but the exact manner in which the material was presented is more quickly lost; verbatim wording is readily accessible only for the most recent phrase, and it is incomplete even for that phrase (Sachs, 1967; Jarvella, 1970)" (Cowan, 2008, 23).
tion" (Husserl, 1973, 62). In comparison, pre-predicative objects in the dimension of receptivity cannot be freely recalled and communicated to others. For example, there can be situations in which I can recognize that I have already experienced the taste of food I eat. I am attentively receptive of the taste, and I also identify it as the same exact taste I have felt before. But only when I grasp the object of receptivity predicatively or conceptually, I can fix it in the way that it I can freely evoke it conceptually and communicate it to others. In many cases, of course, the experience of pre-predicative object and predicative object is entwined and there is adequacy between them in the sense that my predicative understanding of the object seems to fully correspond to the givenness of the pre-predicative object, but it is not always the case. For example, I want to express my experience of the taste, but I realize that all my conceptual attempts fall short of the experience and I am unable to satisfactory convey it to others.
These two distinct but mostly intertwined levels of activity of the ego reveal also two distinct but mostly intertwined dimensions of temporal experience. Although the ego is attentively engaged with objects of receptivity and there is a unified temporal order of their passing, the dimension of receptivity (D5a) is not the one which is freely available to me and which I can communicate again and again. It is a temporality which I attentively endure or go through but which I do not entirely own or control17. However, the dimension of spontaneity (D5b) is the one which is freely available to me and which I can communicate through temporal modalities of predicative judgment, which establish universal, communicable temporal relations of the "earlier" and "later" (Husserl, 1973, 178)18.
17 While knowledge in the proper sense is a creation of spontaneity, Husserl admits that receptivity can create what he calls habitual knowledge (Husserl, 1973, 62). Applied to temporal experience, habitual knowledge means that I might be able to get the timing or the temporal order of events right, but still might lack predicative tools to express them. For example, there might be a route which I have taken one or few times before. If I am asked to give instructions about it, I might not be able to do so, or maybe only partially. However, if I take the route myself, even if I cannot mentally or verbally reproduce the entire route, once I am at a certain point in the route, an associative awakening of a memory (Husserl, 1973, 178) occurs, and I suddenly know that here I have to turn, for example, left. I do not know the route, but, still, certain clues in the route associatively reveal what is or have to happen next in a step-by-step manner.
18 Other temporal modalities can be named here, too, such as "fast" and "slow," "before," "now," and "after," "simultaneously," "past," "future," and "present," "again" and "always." I can also resort to the clock, time of day, season, calendar and any other means that intersubjectively express what I experience temporally.
6.1. Example: Waking up & It Does not Mean Anything
We fall asleep and wake up practically every day. During the transition from sleep to wakefulness it might happen that one has an experience without understanding and recognising what one experiences:
I remember waking up one morning. For a moment I didn't know who I was or where I was. I was. That much I remember. But I didn't know who was waking up. This feeling of conscious experience persisted for just a felt moment. Then I awoke fully, accessed my memories, and knew once again who I am and where I was. (Wittmann, 2018, ix)
A similar experience is described by Paul Bowles in The Sheltering Sky (1949):
He awoke, opened his eyes. The room meant very little to him; he was too deeply immersed in the non-being from which he had just come [...] Suddenly he opened his eyes again and looked at the watch on his wrist [...] now he was awake; in another few seconds he knew where he was, he knew that the time was late afternoon [...]. (as cited in de Warren, 2010, 273)
What is described in the given examples is a brief period of time during awakening where I experience myself and things around me, but I do not know who I am, where I am or what are the things that I experience. I experience things happening but I do not know what is happening. I experience things as they are given to me in perception, I am attentive to them, but they have no meaning to me, I do not recognise them as this or that. I know neither what they are, nor what to do with them.
From the perspective of the distinction between the dimension of receptivity and of spontaneity, what I experience in these situations is the dimension of receptivity (D5a) without the dimension of spontaneity (D5b). I am awake and attentive to what is given to me in a perceptual experience, but this experience is decoupled from the vast store of knowledge which constitutes the dimension of spontaneity (D5b). When fully awake, receptivity and spontaneity are coupled together and accompany each other. I see an individual thing or event and I understand it as an instance of a general type, e.g., "dog" or "dancing." To see people dancing, I must have concepts of "people" and "dancing" and the ability to recognize individual things and events as representatives of these concepts. Individual events in the dimension of receptivity (D5a) change and thus are temporal. But the concrete temporality of changing perceptions is something completely different from the conceptualisation of temporality in the dimension of spontaneity (D5b).
7. D6: PRESENTATION AND REPRESENTATION
The next distinction of temporal experience is between the dimension of presentation (D6a) and the dimension of representation (D6b). Husserl draws a distinction between two presentational qualities of acts as intentional experiences-presentation (Ge-genwartigung) and representation (Vergegenwartigung). Acts with presentational quality posit their intentional objects as being now or present, while acts with representational quality posit their intentional objects as absent or "as it were" (Husserl, 1966, 35). Perceptual acts present their objects, but, for example, memory, anticipation, and phantasy represent their objects (Brough, 2005, xxx). Memory is consciousness of what is not anymore, anticipation is consciousness of what is not yet, and phantasy is consciousness of what is not. Presentational acts establish the field or horizon of the present, but representational acts establish temporal fields or horizons of the past, of the future and of phantasy19. If I am sitting on a bench in a park observing pigeons, what I perceptually observe is presented as what is happening now. If I start to ponder whether the same flock was here yesterday, I might dwell on memories. In this case the pigeons that are objects of my memory are not given as what is now, but rather as what is not anymore, I am experiencing them as they were. Similarly, if I wonder whether the same pigeons will be here tomorrow, the pigeons of my anticipation are not given as being now, but rather as being not yet, I am experiencing them as they will be. And if I try to imagine what would the pigeons do, if a dog appeared, my phantasy would be about what is not the case and I would experience the dog and the pigeons as they are not.
7.1. Example: Psychedelic Substances & Nothing else Matters
A good example20 that can be mentioned in the context of this distinction between the dimensions of presentation and of representation has to do with the temporal experiences produced by psychedelic drugs as described by Alan Watts in his book
19 It should be noted that, although temporality in phantasy is reproductive, it differs from the other two in that it has no strict temporal position. It has its own parallel realm, unconnected to the time of perception, memory and anticipation (see Bernet, 2005; Brough, 2002, 145-146; Husserl, 1973, 169-174; Lohmar, 2020). If I imagine some event, in comparison to a memory which I can position or at least try to locate among other events in the world, it has no set position in one unified time. For example, outside of the context of the fairy tale it makes no sense to ask when exactly the Little Red Riding Hood met the wolf.
20 Other examples are epileptic auras or meditative states in which experience seems to be reduced to the experience of the present with anticipation and memory being closed down (Wittmann, 2018, 29, 94).
The Joyous Cosmology: Adventures in the Chemistry of Consciousness (2013). One of effects of the drug is focusing on the present: "One's normally compulsive concern for the future decreases, and one becomes aware of the enormous importance and interest of what is happening at the moment" (Watts, 2013, 100). Moreover, the present about which Watts speaks is not static:
It is a dancing present—the unfolding of a pattern which has no specific destination in the future but is simply its own point. It leaves and arrives simultaneously, and the seed is as much the goal as the flower. There is therefore time to perceive every detail of the movement with infinitely greater richness of articulation. (Watts, 2013, 27)
The whole attention is directed toward what is now, toward the present. As such the experience proceeds in the dimension of presentation (D6a) with at best a very limited, marginal presence of the future and of the past, that is, of the dimension of representation (D6b). This experience is about what is and how it is now, rather than about projecting oneself into the future of what to expect or what should be the case. Equally, it is also not about holding on to the past of what has been. Nothing else matters but what is here, present in front of one without weaving it into the intricate web of representational experiences of the past and of the future.
8. D7: UNTHEMATIZED TEMPORALITY AND THEMATIZED TEMPORALITY
The seventh distinction is between the dimension of unthematized temporality (D7a) and the dimension of thematized temporality (D7b). The distinction revolves around the question whether temporal experience itself is thematized or has become an object of interest, or is experienced implicitly, tacitly21. Temporal experience is unthematized when our attention and interest is not directed toward it. When I direct my attention toward theoretical and practical aims or when I am occupied with objects around me, although I have temporal experience of my preoccupation with them, the temporal experience itself remains implicit, unthematized. For example, when I focus on writing an article, I have multi-dimensional temporal
21 The dimensions within the distinction could be also called the "pre-reflective dimension" and the "reflective dimension," but in the context of Husserlian philosophy terms "unthematized" and "the-matized" are more appropriate to convey the distinction, because for Husserl reflection is a specific type of thematization, which is different from reflection in the ordinary sense (Husserl, 1973, 55), and a phenomenological method in which consciousness, that is, lived experiences through which intentional objects are given themselves become "evidentially apprehensible and analysable" (Husserl, 1983, 177).
experience, but in this complex what my temporal experience lacks is thematization. I experience changes, but I do not thematize them, I do not direct my attention and interest to them. However, if the article I am writing is about temporal experience, then besides unthematized temporal experience of writing the article I have also a thematized experience in which I am directly oriented toward different dimensions of temporal experience. The difference is between whether temporality is that through which I am directed toward some end, or it is the end itself. Each and every dimension of temporal experience can be in principle thematized, which means that at the same time one dimension can be experienced in a thematic way, while others in a non-thematic way.
Thematization takes place when one specifically concentrates on temporal aspects of objects and events or on temporality or time itself. Biographical and autobiographical endeavours, for example, chronicles or diaries, trying to establish the correct sequence of events involve thematized dimension of temporality. It is also present in scientific research which tries to understand time and temporal experience, or detect exact temporal lengths or patterns. It is worth adding that the products of thematiza-tion, once established, subsequently can be experienced in an unthematized way. For example, if I have learned how clock works and how it maps time, and if I can easily orient myself according to it, I do not constantly thematize it, I rather live it in my engagement with the world.
8.1. Example: Schizophrenia & Reconstruction of Time
I will illustrate the distinction between the dimension of thematized temporality and of unthematized temporality using schizophrenia as an example. One of the expressions of temporal experience in schizophrenia is fragmentation and disintegration. The things and events in the experience of persons suffering from schizophrenia are not automatically synthesized in a spatial and temporal unity, but rather present themselves in split-up, de-structured separate bits and pieces overburdening the person:
Nothing settles in my mind—not even for a second. It just comes in and then it's out. My mind goes away—too many things come into my head at once and I lose control. I get afraid of walking when this happens. My feet just walk away from me and I've no control over myself. I feel my body breaking up into bits. (Wiggins & Schwartz, 2006, 120)
In the face of this disintegration that affects also the temporal passage of things and events, the person must actively and artificially put those pieces together to con-
struct a continuous temporal flow out of them. One patient, for example, does it by taking pictures and thereby reconstructing temporal events and continuity of objects:
He regularly shows these photos to his psychiatrist with comments like: "Here, there is a car."—"There, the car did not move during the night."—"This is the same car on another day, there are dead leaves on the roof."—"Time goes by, but things do not change. I find time with photographs." (Fuchs, 2013, 562)
The patient "must actively put together the fragments of time which he captures in photographs" (Fuchs, 2013, 563).
What this example shows is that time in the dimension of unthematized temporality (D7a) has fallen apart, and in order to regain some sort of temporal unity it has to be reconstructed actively and explicitly in the dimension of thematized temporality (D7b). For the patient things and events do not make up a unified temporal order: to know what comes next or whether something is the same thing that has persisted over time or another but a similar thing, it is not enough to directly experience them, the patient has to exert some effort: she has to concentrate and actively put the given pieces together, she has to think and make inferences. Time of things and events are not given, they are so to say achieved, accomplished.
9. CONCLUSION
Inspired by conceptual frameworks for the analysis of changed temporal experiences developed in phenomenological psychopathology and medical phenomenology my aim was to make use of the rich potential that lies within Husserl's phenomenology to outline a framework for the analysis of temporal experiences (FATE) with the purpose of providing conceptual tools in the form of distinctions that could potentially make the analysis of temporal experiences and their changes not only clearer, more comprehensive and more precise, but also more systematic and conceptually consistent. FATE, as outlined in this article, consists of fourteen dimensions of temporal experience arranged in seven binary distinctions: (D1) change and structure, (D2) immanence and transcendence, (D3) ownness and intersubjectivity, (D4) passivity and activity, (D5) receptivity and spontaneity, (D6) presentation and representation, (D7) unthematized temporality and thematized temporality.
It should be noted, however, that the article gives only the first outline of the conceptual distinctions of FATE, and a lot of work is still needed for it to become a clearer and fully applicable tool. The framework requires a considerable further elaboration and concretisation not only of temporal dimensions, each taken separately,
but also of their intricate mutual relationship. Additionally, FATE should be examined not only theoretically in the context of the other frameworks mentioned in the introduction and in connection with topic-related contemporary debates in phenomenology, but also practically in terms of its applicability, opening up a dialogue with other fields of study and testing it in a wide variety of case studies, which in turn will require a development of methodology for its application.
Acknowledgements. I would like to express my gratitude to Liva Muizniece for her diligent proofreading of this article.
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