Running-Off Representations, para 50, Supplementary B1 to: On the Phenomenology of the Consciousness of Internal Time

by Corry Shores
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Running-Off Representations

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. 7

Intuition, Evidence of Being-Past – Mere Represenation of Being-Past.

Apparent Necessity of Assuming a Change of Content in Primary Memory

Paragraph 50

Husserl wonders now about prior experiences. He considers two possible ways that we might treat them. He wonders how much we treat them as having passed (being-past), and how much is their pastness not evident to us. Also he wants to know how and why we might not have an intuition of a past experience.

To pursue his inquiry, he distinguishes 1) the representation of the past and 2) the experience of the past.

Consider this example first. We hear a melody, it runs-off and ends. We wait a bit. Then we recall it. We call to mind how it transpired and ran-off. But the melody is not actually running off right now. We only represent its running-off. But when we are hearing it, we intuit it, and thus we are not at that moment representing it.

we must make a distinction between representation of the past and experience of the past. I represent the past event as past and also believe in the being-past of the event, but I do not experience its passing and its being-just-past – I do not intuit these. A melody I recall may also run its course in memory. But the running-off is here only re-presentative [repräsentativ]. The melody is not actually running off now, and I do not even have an intuition of a running-off that has already occurred. In memory, the running-off that appears is re-presentative; in intuition, it is not re-presentative. (162d)

[Directory of other entries in this series.]

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.