Durations of Identity, para 34, Supplementary B1 to: On the Phenomenology of the Consciousness of Internal Time

by Corry Shores
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Durations of Identity

Despite

Continuous Alterations of the Same

Edmund Husserl

On the Phenomenology of the Consciousness of Internal Time

B: Supplementary Texts

I "On the Introduction of the Essential Distinction between 'Fresh' Memory and 'Full' Recollection and about the Change in Content and Differences in Apprehension in the Consciousness of Time"

No. 2

Evidence Pertaining to the Perception of Time, to Memory, etc

Paragraph 34

Husserl will characterize our experience of duration.

We hear note A. It sustains. And thus it endures across a series of moments. Despite the fact that each temporal moment is distinct, the note A retains its identity, even if its qualities fluctuate somewhat while it sustains. Each point in time is continuous with its neighbors. So the same A transits across different moments. In this way, A may continuously be the same A, despite the slight modifications and temporal extents that might distinguish different phases of its perdurance.

What characterizes the experience of duration? A endures; the A belonging to each individual moment of the duration is the identical A, not a separate one. As the time-points are continuously united, so the A is continuously the same. We are conscious of the continuous identity in time. We are conscious of it in such a way that the continuous alteration of A, which attaches itself to the always present A, is not only continuously united with the latter but also finds its fulfillment in it. The past A is continuously the same as the present A. The A is a continuously identical content. (158c, boldface and underlining are mine)

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Husserl, Edmund. On the Phenomenology of the Consciousness of Internal Time (1893-1917). Vol 4 ofEdmund Husserl: Collected Works. Ed. Rudolf Bernet. Trans. John Barnett Brough. Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1991.