Quand l’esprit « dit » le temps: la conscience du temps chez Aristote, Augustin et Husserl

This essay contests the standard historical comparison that links Husserl's account of time-consciousness to the western philosophical tradition by way of Book XI of Augustine's "Confessions." I argue that this comparison holds only with respect to Husserl's 1905 lectures on time, which explains the apprehension of time by recourse to a memorial distenction of consciousness, and not his later theory dating around 1908, which claimed that the earlier lectures advanced the flawed and counter-intuitive position that memory extends perception. After tracing the shortcomings of Augustine's and Husserl's 1905 theory of time, I develop Husserl's maturely articulated distinction between memory and retention from 1911 and examine the hypothesis that Aristotle's theory of time from "Physics IV," particularly its reliance on "the mind pronouncing the the 'nows' are two, might be a better historical anticipation of Husserl's later theory.

Abstract licence: CC BY-NC-ND

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