Image and Original in Plato and Husserl

I compare Plato’s and Husserl’s accounts of (i) the non-original appearance (termed phantasma in Plato and phantasm in Husserl) and (ii) the original with a focus on their methodologies for distinguishing between them and the phenomenological—i.e., the answer to the question of the what and how of their appearance—criteria that drive their respective methodologies. I argue that Plato’s dialectical method is phenomenologically superior to Husserl’s reflective method in the case of phantasmata that function as apparitions (the false phantasma/phantasm that is not recognized as such). Plato’s method has the capacity to discern the apparition on the basis of criteria that appeal solely to its appearance, whereas Husserl’s method presupposes a non-apparent primitive distinction between the original qua primal impression and the phantasm as its reproductive modification. On the basis of Plato’s methodological superiority in this regard, I sketch a reformulation of the Husserlian approach to appearances guided by the original interrogative context of Plato’s dialectical account of the distinction between true and false appearances, eikones and phantasmata.

Husserl’s Model of Time-Consciousness, and the Phenomenology of Rhythm

Chapter 18 examines the implications of Husserl’s model of temporal consciousness on the experience of musical rhythm. Any current moment of an experience, according to Husserl, includes three phases: retention (“holding-on” of the just-past), primal-impression (now-point), and protention (anticipation of what-is-just-about-to-come). Husserl’s analysis of time-consciousness is, the author argues, particularly useful in a study of rhythm, although this analysis does not do justice to the full complexity of the phenomenology of rhythm. First, Husserl’s framework, when applied to rhythm, suggests that listeners retain the just-past sounds and anticipate the sounds-to-come in the light of what has been heard. Short-term memory and short-term anticipation should thus be studied in close interaction. Second, Husserl’s model helps to frame a rich embodied phenomenology of rhythm. In bodily interaction with rhythm, one’s experience encompasses the perception of musical rhythm but also a bodily awareness of one’s own movements, where both aspects share the same temporal structure.

Consciência do tempo e temporalidade da consciência husserl perante meinong e brentano

In the first part of this paper we try to show how the discussion of Meinong’s distinction between distributed and undistributed objects was crucial for Husserl’s thinking about the phenomenology of time consciousness. The criticism of Meinong’s thesis that the representation of a distributed object (temporal object) is an undistributed act is presented as the central point for the development of Husserl’s own thesis about the perception as a continuum of continua and about consciousness as an unitary flux of temporal phases. In a second part, we move to Brentano’s theory about original associations in the constitution of the “presence-time”. Brentano’s position about the function of phantasy as the origin of our representation of time is refused by Husserl and, as a result, the structural composition of time consciousness in phases of primal-impression, fresh memory (later “retention”) and immediate expectation (later “protention”) appears as the core form to the intuition of the present and the constitution of time. In a last section, we follow Husserl’s revision of his own analysis of fresh memory in order to understand his final position about retention as a primitive form of Vergegenwärtigung.