Transcendental Arguments

Transcendental arguments are partly non-empirical, often
anti-skeptical arguments focusing on necessary enabling conditions
either of coherent experience or the possession or employment of some
kind of knowledge or cognitive ability, where the opponent is not in a
position to question the fact of this experience, knowledge, or
cognitive ability, and where the revealed preconditions include what
the opponent questions. Such arguments take as a premise some obvious
fact about our mental life—such as some aspect of our knowledge, our
experience, our beliefs, or our cognitive abilities—and add a claim
that some other state of affairs is a necessary condition of the first
one. Transcendental arguments most commonly have been deployed against
a position denying the knowability of some extra-mental proposition,
such as the existence of other minds or a material world. Thus these
arguments characteristically center on a claim that, for some
extra-mental proposition P, the indisputable truth of some general
proposition Q about our mental life requires that P. Eighteenth
Century Prussian philosopher Immanuel Kant is usually credited with
introducing the systematic use of the transcendental argument. His use
of it included arguments aimed at refuting epistemic skepticism, as
well as arguments with the more fundamental purpose of showing the
legitimacy of the application of certain concepts—in particular those
of substance and cause—to experience. Later scholars have developed a
variety of general objections to the transcendental argument strategy.
In response, some recent and contemporary philosophers have offered
updated strategies similar in form to transcendental arguments, but
with less controversial premises and/or more modest goals.

1. Transcendental Reasoning and Skepticism

"Transcendental" reasoning, for Kant, is reasoning pertaining to the
necessary conditions of experience. Though he did coin the term
"transcendental argument" in a different context, Kant actually did
not use it to refer to transcendental arguments as they are understood
today. He did sometimes use the term "transcendental deduction" for a
range of arguments concerning the necessary conditions of coherent
experience. Early uses of the term "transcendental argument" for
arguments of this type have been noted in Charles Peirce and J. L.
Austin. Often, the purpose of a transcendental argument is to answer a
variety of epistemic skepticism by showing that the skeptical position
itself (or its expression) implies or presupposes the possibility of
the very knowledge in question. In this way, as Kant puts it in his
Critique of Pure Reason, "the game played by idealism [is] turned
against itself." The skeptic is shown to presuppose the very facts he
or she calls into question. (Kant also had a more modest use for
transcendental arguments pertaining merely to establishing the
applicability of certain fundamental concepts; see Section 8, below.)

Kant's anti-skeptical arguments were inspired by a number of figures,
but his primary concern was with what he saw as the empiricist
skepticism of David Hume. In his Treatise of Human Nature, Hume argues
that all ideas are derived from simple sense-impressions, simple
impressions of reflection, and reflection on the mind's operations. He
goes on to argue that complex ideas of material objects are not fully
grounded in the data of the senses, but are based in part on
psychological propensities to pass from one idea to another. Our
senses do not present us with the characteristics of mind-independence
and perdurance; rather, our experience consists in sequences of
impressions, some of which exhibit a resembling constancy with each
other over time. To this picture, Hume argues, we must add an
imaginative propensity to identify, and thus attribute continued
existence to, impressions exhibiting constancy and coherency. Since
the distinctness of these impressions conflicts with our propensity to
identify them, we posit enduring and independent items that are
responsible for various subjective impressions. One natural conclusion
from this line of reasoning is that, whatever compulsion we might feel
to acknowledge external, material things, neither reason nor the
senses can be said to yield knowledge of such items.

Kant addresses skepticism about the material world most directly with
his "Refutation of Idealism" in the second edition Critique of Pure
Reason. There he argues that the possibility of recognizing the
time-order of one's own perceptions depends on the application of the
concept of alteration to one's own mental states. And in order for us
to possess and apply the concept of alteration, it must be exhibited
in the sensory experience of objective alteration. This experience
cannot be based on patterns or regularities in experience (including
its constancy and coherence), since the recognition of any such
pattern depends on the organization of one's experiences in time. The
possibility of the organization of one's own experiences in time (and
even recognizing that one's own states have a determinate time-order
at all) requires relating changes in those experiences to objective
alterations. Since we do make judgments about the time-order of our
own experiences, we must have experienced objective alteration.

Kant's answer to the skeptic thus takes roughly the following form:

(1) I make judgments about the temporal order of my own mental states.
(2) I could not make judgments about the temporal order of my own
mental states without having experienced enduring substances
independent of me undergoing alteration.
(3) Hence independent, enduring substances exist.

He thus establishes a claim to knowledge of the existence of enduring,
independent objects by showing that the skeptic is committed to
something (in this case, consciousness of one's own perceptions as
ordered in time) that is impossible without the existence of such
objects. The skeptic thus is either committed to the existence of such
things by virtue of accepting the obvious fact that we are conscious
of our own perceptions as ordered in time, or presumes the existence
of such things in the very attempt to raise doubt about it. This
result would license the conclusion that we have knowledge of material
objects, or at least that skepticism about the very existence of such
items is incoherent.

Kant's refutation of skepticism matches the template for a common
understanding of the classical form of a transcendental argument:

(1) Some proposition Q about our mental life, the truth of which
is immediately apparent or presumed by the skeptic's position.
(2) The truth of some extra-mental proposition P, our knowledge of
which is questioned by the skeptic, is a necessary condition of Q.
(3) Therefore P.

Transcendental arguments are further distinguished by the fact that
the necessity they draw on is, characteristically, neither empirical
nor analytic necessity. Rather, claims like those found in the second
premise imply some claim to synthetic a priori knowledge—knowledge of
substantive facts about the world derived by a priori metaphysical
reasoning. If such claims were based on empirical observation, they
would beg the question against most relevant forms of skepticism; if
these claims were merely analytic, then it is unlikely any substantive
conclusion could be derived from them.

Transcendental arguments can be characterized as demonstrations that
the skeptic's articulation of her own position is self-defeating in
some way. These arguments imply that the skeptic cannot even
coherently articulate a given position. Epicurus is reported to have
argued that, without free choice, one assents to propositions only
because one is determined to do so. Without free choice, then, it
would be impossible to rationally assent to any proposition—that is,
to assent to it because one has good reasons to think it is true,
rather than because one must. The proposition that one has no free
choice is thus self-stultifying, in that, if true, it cannot be
warranted. This reasoning implies the following argument:

(1) I am able to rationally assent to the proposition that there
is no free choice.
(2) I could not rationally assent to any proposition if there were
no free choice.
(3) Hence, there is free choice.

Hilary Putnam (1981), drawing on his concept of content-externalism,
holds that we cannot refer to brains and vats if we are brains in vats
who have never actually experienced such things. If we have never had
contact with external objects, our language is "Vat-English," rather
than English. Since reference, in his view, is partly determined by
its context and causal history, it would be impossible for a permanent
brain-in-a-vat to raise doubts about whether she is a brain in a vat.
Given this theory of reference, the proposition that all persons are
and have always been brains in vats is self-defeating, in that it is
either false or not affirmable by anyone. Insofar as the skeptic
supposes that the issue is a legitimate one to raise, she presupposes
that the relevant concern is moot:

(1) I am able to raise the question as to whether all persons have
always been brains in vats.
(2) I could not refer to brains in vats unless some person (that
is, myself) were acquainted with such things.
(3) Hence, it is not the case that all persons have always been
brains in vats.

Finally, it is an implication of Kant's reasoning in the Refutation of
Idealism that the proposition that no one has had any contact with
material objects would be literally unthinkable without contact with
material objects to give one a sense of an objective system of
temporal relations (in turn enabling inner time-determination). If
Kant is right, then such a proposition is performatively
self-falsifying in the strongest sense: the possibility of the skeptic
articulating her own position would prove its falsity.
2. The Modal Objection

One general objection commonly raised against transcendental arguments
concerns the very type of necessity transcendental arguments rely
upon. Transcendental arguments characteristically center on a claim to
synthetic a priori knowledge. Take, for example, Kant's claim that the
experience of enduring objects undergoing alteration is a precondition
of subjective time-consciousness. This claim is neither grounded in
experience nor follows from the meanings of the terms involved. He
does provide some (often rather obscure) reasoning to support this
claim, but that support, again, typically involves claims to synthetic
a priori knowledge. Such claims have been portrayed as ultimately
relying on a mysterious faculty of philosophical intuition, of insight
into the natures of things not grounded in observation or experiment,
the legitimacy of which is at least as doubtful as sensory perception
or empirical inference.
3. The Analytic/Criteriological Approach

Partly in response to concerns about the modality of Kantian
transcendental arguments, and in response to allied concerns about
claims to synthetic a priori knowledge, Peter Strawson, Jonathan
Bennett, and others have promoted a strategy structurally similar to
Kant's, but which is intended to avoid such problematic claims. Their
strategy is analytic, in that it concerns relationships between
beliefs or concepts and the conceptual frameworks needed to give those
beliefs or concepts their content.

In Individuals, Strawson (1959) offers a transcendental argument
purporting to demonstrate the existence of other minds. He argues
that, to employ the concept of one's own mind in the self-ascription
of mental states, one must be able to distinguish between one's own
mental states and the mental states of others. This requires the
ability to predicate mental states of both oneself and others. But, he
continues, in order to employ (or understand) any general concept one
needs criteria for its application. In order to ascribe mental states
to oneself, then, one must be in possession of logically adequate
criteria (that is to say, behavioral criteria) for ascribing mental
states to others.

Strawson's (1966) approach in The Bounds of Sense to reconstructing
Kant's Refutation of Idealism argument works similarly. His
reconstruction states that, to give content to the idea of one's being
in some particular conscious state at some particular time, one needs
"the idea of a system of temporal relations which comprehends more
than those experiences themselves." One's experiences thus must be
taken as experiences of things independent of oneself with their own
temporal order. The idea of temporal order, he argues, cannot be
gleaned from one's own case alone; the application of the concept of
temporal ordering depends on the possession and application of a
concept of objectivity. But does the requirement that one have and
apply the concept of an objective order guarantee that there really
exists such an order? Is it not sufficient that we think there is one?
Similarly, is it not sufficient for the self-ascription of mental
states that we think there are other minds? Strawson's reply rests on
his "principle of significance," which states that "there can be no
legitimate, or even meaningful, employment of ideas or concepts which
does not relate them to empirical or experiential conditions of their
application." One's assessment of the analytic/criteriological
approach depends on one's assessment of this verificationism-inspired
principle.
4. The Verificationism/Idealism Objection

In a much-cited essay, Barry Stroud (1968) argues that, to any claim
that the truth of some proposition is a necessary condition of some
fact about our mental life, the skeptic can always reply that it would
be enough for it merely to appear to be true, or for us merely to
believe that it is true. Transcendental arguments, he claims, at best
demonstrate how things must appear, or what we must believe, rather
than how things must be. Anti-skeptical transcendental arguments of
familiar sorts are thus left with a gap to fill. Stroud's
contention—which is now widely accepted—is that such arguments, when
aimed at refuting epistemic skepticism, can only close that gap by
adverting either to a sort of verificationism or to idealism. In the
case of Strawson's arguments above, even supposing that we must be in
possession of some criteria for applying concepts of other minds
and/or an objective world, this fact only has anti-skeptical
consequences if we also accept that there is no meaningful
concept-application without experiential criteria sufficient for
knowing whether the concept is instantiated. As Stroud points out,
such a principle is implausible. Further, if we accepted such a
principle, other aspects of transcendental arguments would be
superfluous. All we would have to show is that we meaningfully employ
external-world concepts; it would be impossible for any form of
skepticism to be meaningful or intelligible.

As Stroud goes on to point out, another way of closing the gap between
it being necessary that things appear a certain way and things being
that way, would be to embrace an idealism that reduces how things are
to how things appear, or must appear, to us. Kant did not rely on any
verificationist principle in making the case against skepticism, but
according to many scholars his "transcendental idealism" made possible
the jump from how things must be experienced by us to how things must
be by reducing objects of experience to mere mental representations.
But such idealism is unacceptable to most: embracing idealism to
answer the epistemic skeptic results in a Pyrrhic victory at best.

Despite Stroud's blanket assertion, it should be noted that the
verification/idealism objection only applies on a case-by-case basis.
Some arguments that take the form of transcendental arguments may have
other deficiencies, but do not rely on either verificationism or
idealism. A few scholars have observed that Descartes's "Cogito, ergo
sum" argument can be re-conceived as a transcendental argument:

(1) I think.
(2) In order to think "I think," it is necessary to exist.
(3) Hence, I exist.

This argument meets the criteria for a transcendental argument: it
takes a fact about one's mental life as a premise, adds that some
extra-mental fact is a necessary condition of the truth of that
premise, and concludes that the extra-mental fact holds. This argument
would turn on the claim that the statement, "I do not exist" (or
better, the proposition that no one exists) is performatively
self-defeating in the sense that the fact of its performance counts as
conclusive evidence against its truth. That is what connects the
mental fact (I am thinking about whether I exist) to the relevant
extra-mental fact (I exist). Regardless of how this argument might
fail in some other respect, it presupposes neither verificationism nor
idealism in closing the gap between the internal and the external.
5. The Uniqueness-of-Conceptual-Framework Objection

Another important general objection to transcendental arguments
concerns the hidden assumption requiring the uniqueness of the
conceptual scheme that is held to be a precondition of experience in
any given transcendental argument. Kant, for example, argues that
experience is only possible if certain concepts are applied a priori
in its organization, such as the concepts of substance and cause.
Strawson similarly argues that experience is only possible via the
application of the concept of an objective system of temporal
relations. Stephan Körner (1974), however, famously characterized
arguments resting on such claims as hopeless, because there is no way
to establish the uniqueness of the relevant conceptual precondition.
His concern is that other conceptual schemes and principles—perhaps
unimaginable to us—might suffice as well. But if such schemes cannot
be ruled out, then the validity of any such argument cannot be
decisively established. All transcendental arguments make some claim
about necessary enabling conditions. Given that the sense of necessity
in question is not logical, how can the uniqueness of the enabling
conditions ever be shown?
6. Modest Transcendental Arguments

In response to some of these concerns Stroud has proposed that we keep
transcendental arguments, but moderate the goal we hope to achieve
with them (Stroud 1994 and 1999). The goal of a "modest"
transcendental argument is just to show the indispensability of some
belief, concept, or conceptual framework. The conclusion such
arguments hope to draw is not a refutation of some variety of
epistemic skepticism via a demonstration of the alternative, but
rather a demonstration of the unintelligibility of the skeptical
position. The idea is that, by showing that it is impossible
consistently to maintain a given position, one also shows that it is
legitimate to ignore it. Arguments of this sort seek to show that
beliefs about, say, an external world or other minds are indispensable
to coherent experience or the use of language.

The modest strategy in replying to external-world skepticism would be
to concede that one cannot prove transcendentally that there is an
external world, but to show that one must believe in such a world, or
presuppose such a world as part of one's interpretive framework, as a
precondition of coherent experience. This, Stroud argues, would be
sufficient to entitle one to ignore external-world skepticism. We are
entitled to hold a belief, according to this line of thought, if that
belief can be shown to be incorrigible or invulnerable to correction.

One major advantage to modest transcendental arguments is that they
are not subject to the verificationism/idealism objection. All that
such arguments seek to show is that we must believe a certain way, not
that the world must be a certain way. Thus there is no gap to be
closed between showing that the world must appear a certain way and
eliminating the possibility that the world really is not that way.
7. Objections to Modest Transcendental Arguments

Arguments relying on the relative necessity of some conceptual
framework or set of beliefs, however, are subject to certain general
objections. A version of Körner's uniqueness objection still seems
applicable. To provide some response to the epistemic skeptic, an
indispensability argument would have to show that a given belief is
indispensable as such, rather than just indispensable for us. And to
do that is impossible; we can only argue for the uniqueness of a
conceptual or doxastic framework on the basis of our own concepts and
beliefs. As Stern (2000) puts it, if indispensability "is weaker than
infallibility in so far as it leaves open the possibility that our
belief that p is false, how can p be immune from doubt?; and if it is
immune from doubt though possibly false, isn't this a vice rather than
a virtue?" If the "necessity" of some set of beliefs or conceptual
framework just follows from our own inability to think outside that
framework, then the discovery of this necessity is just a discovery
about our own limitations, rather than a discovery about the world
around us. Indispensability may indeed be all a modest transcendental
argument needs to show that skepticism is inert (for us), but is this
an interesting result if it stems just from our own incapacities?

This kind of concern is reflected in a challenge to the classical
claim that radical skepticism about reason is self-defeating. How can
we know that logical inference really is truth-preserving? How can we
know that the principle of non-contradiction is true? It would seem
that such a skeptical position is unanswerable, because any answer
involves argument, which presupposes the validity of deductive
inference. But, as Aristotle first suggested in his Metaphysics, when
one makes a statement asserting the impossibility of rationally
supporting any claim one makes, one presupposes the theoretical
possibility of claims being rationally supported (c.f. Meynell 1984).
The framework under which we suppose that it is possible to rationally
support claims is, in other words, indispensable, and the belief that
it is possible to do so is invulnerable. This argument is,
effectively, a modest transcendental argument.

But why can't the skeptic make the same point while limiting herself
to asking for proof of the universal and necessary validity of
deductive inference? The skeptic need not on this approach make some
claim to the effect that statements may not be rationally supportable
(a claim, in other words, that itself calls for support). An inherent
inconsistency in the affirmation of some such claim need not, then, be
a concern (see Fowler 1987). In asking for proof, of course, the
skeptic in some way implies that there is at least some prima facie
doubt with regard to the operation of reason in finding truth. So in
that way the skeptic must be implying at least a prima facie
possibility that reason is inadequate to that task.

A modest transcendental argument establishing the indispensability of
a conceptual framework has the effect of reducing the skeptic either
to inconsistency or to raising doubts in the abstract. Since the
alternative is inconceivable, the skeptic cannot consistently commit
to the possibility of the alternative. Yet it seems too quick to go
directly from showing that some conceptual framework is necessary for
us to deny any relevance to questions about the truth of the
framework. It is not clear, then, that any modest transcendental
argument really renders its target skepticism inert. Even if the
skeptic is shown to be unable consistently to raise a certain
possibility, that possibility is not thereby taken out of contention.
However abstract (or even inexpressible) the doubt may be that
remains, the modest transcendental argument falls short of
establishing epistemic entitlement.
8. A More Modest Project for Kant

There is another kind of modest application of transcendental
arguments that is not subject to the above concerns, owing to its
pursuit of a different kind of result. Part of Kant's project is not
so much concerned with responding to the epistemic skeptic as with
responding to an opponent who questions the very conceptual legitimacy
of external-world concepts like substance and cause. Despite an
emphasis in contemporary philosophy on epistemic skepticism, for Kant
conceptual legitimacy appears to be the primary or fundamental
application of transcendental reasoning. This project is the major
concern of his "Transcendental Deduction of the Categories" in the
Critique of Pure Reason. He employs a legal metaphor at the beginning
of his defense of our use of such conceptsto distinguish between "what
is lawful (quid juris) and that which concerns the fact (quid facti)."
His avowed focus, then, is on the "lawfulness" of our application of
external-world concepts. He is concerned, as a first goal at least,
with the applicability (or "objective validity") of these concepts
quite independently of their instantiation. That this should be a
primary goal for Kant makes a lot of sense in light of some of his
major precursors. Though in other respects having very different
views, Leibniz, Berkeley, and Hume each questioned the legitimacy of
the application of concepts like substance and cause to experience.
Leibniz denied not only the existence of material substance but its
metaphysical possibility. Because matter is infinitely divisible, he
argued, it cannot be a basic constituent of the universe. Only minds
can be substances, so the concept of substance is not even
appropriately applied to matter. Berkeley argued that all we can
describe are our ideas, and there is no sense in saying that ideas
resemble material objects or their qualities. Talk of material objects
independent of the mind is incoherent. Finally, Hume argued that it is
impossible to find a source for the concepts of substance and cause in
perception sufficient to explain either the occurrence or even the
content of such ideas.

Leibniz, Berkeley, and Hume all have in common, then, the position
that external-world concepts like substance and cause are either
incoherent or inapplicable to perceptual experience. In modern terms,
they held that such application, if possible at all, is a category
mistake. It is not difficult to see how at least part of Kant's
project in his transcendental deduction of these concepts is to refute
this view, as distinguished from the project of proving that we
veridically experience a world of causally-related substances. His
strategy in doing so is notoriously hard to pin down, but the gist of
it is that he claims that the concept of an objective world (which
would include the concepts of substance and cause) is needed as an
organizing principle—a rule or set of rules—for reproducing and
synthesizing in judgment one's various and otherwise inherently
unconnected representations. For example, because all experience qua
one's subjective flow of perceptions is successive, the concept of
cause is needed to distinguish between a succession of experiences
representing the experience of an object (which could be experienced
differently and yet be thought of as the same object) and a succession
of experiences representing the experience of an event (the order of
the stages of which determines the way it can be experienced). Because
the thought of a causal relationship between event-stages is
constitutive of the thought of an event, and because distinguishing
between an accidental and externally-determined sequence of
experiences is necessary to time-determination, the a priori
possession of the concept of cause is a necessary condition of
coherent experience.

The legitimacy of the concepts of substance and cause would also be a
consequence of some of Kant's more explicitly anti-skeptical
arguments. A consequence of his reasoning in the "Refutation of
Idealism," for example, is that objective time-determination is
implicated in subjective time-determination. The application of
concepts relevant to determining an objective time-order (as the
concepts of substance and cause are, he had explained earlier) is
inseparable from subjective self-awareness. Since each of Kant's
precursors allow for an inner mental life, they cannot consistently
deny the legitimacy of applying concepts like substance and cause to
perceptual experience. This would not prove the existence of
causally-related material substances, but it would accomplish quite a
lot: it would demonstrate the inadequacy, in a certain respect, of
Leibnizian metaphysics, Berkeleyan phenomenalism, and Humean
empiricism.
9. Prospects for Strong Transcendental Arguments

Defenders of strong anti-skeptical transcendental arguments still
exist. Kenneth Westphal (2003), for example, is more confident than
most that some of Kant's core transcendental arguments can be
successful. He believes that the process by which Kant identifies our
basic cognitive capacities and their enabling conditions (Westphal
calls this "epistemic reflection") has been confused with simple
introspection, which is an empirical enterprise concerned with the
contents of one's consciousness. He argues that Kant does convincingly
show that we legitimately apply certain concepts a priori as a
necessary condition of coherent consciousness, and that there are, in
fact, "perduring, perceptible, causally interacting physical objects."

Despite Kant's remaining defenders, however, few now believe that
transcendental arguments can yield a direct refutation of epistemic
skepticism. Most now agree that more modest goals are in order if such
arguments are to remain relevant. Such modest variations on the
transcendental argument form continue to appear in a variety of
contexts.
10. References and Further Reading

* Aristotle, Metaphysics, Book Γ.
* Austin, J.L. (1939). "Are There A Priori Concepts?", Proceedings
of the Aristotelian Society 18.
* Bardon, Adrian (forthcoming). "The Aristotelian Prescription:
Skepticism, Retortion, and Transcendental Arguments," International
Philosophical Quarterly.
* Bardon, Adrian (2004). "Kant's Empiricism in His Refutation of
Idealism," Kantian Review 8.
* Bardon, Adrian (2005). "Performative Transcendental Arguments,"
Philosophia 33.
* Bennett, Jonathan (1966). Kant's Analytic (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press).
* Berkeley, George (1979). Three Dialogues between Hylas and
Philonous, ed. by Robert Adams (Indianapolis: Hackett).
* Brueckner, Anthony (1983). "Transcendental Arguments I." Noûs
17, pp. 551-76.
* Brueckner, Anthony (1984). "Transcendental Arguments II." Noûs
18, pp. 197-225.
* Cassam, Quassim (1999). Self and World (Oxford: Oxford University Press).
* Cassam, Quassim (1987). "Transcendental Arguments,
Transcendental Synthesis, and Transcendental Idealism," Philosophical
Quarterly 37.
* Davidson, Donald (1984). Inquiries into Truth and Interpretation
(Oxford: Oxford University Press).
* Fowler, Corbin (1987). "Scepticism Revisited," Philosophy 62, pp. 385-88.
* Genova, A.C. (1984). "Good Transcendental Arguments."
Kant-Studien 75, pp. 469-95.
* Gram, Moltke (1975). "Why Must We Revisit Transcendental
Arguments?" The Journal of Philosophy 72, pp. 624-6.
* Guyer, Paul (1987). Kant and the Claims of Knowledge.
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press).
* Hintikka, Jaakko (1962). "Cogito, Ergo Sum: Inference or
Performance?", The Philosophical Review 71.
* Hume, David (1978). A Treatise of Human Nature, 2nd ed. (Oxford:
The Clarendon Press).
* Kant, Immanuel (1998). Critique of Pure Reason, ed. and trans.
by Paul Guyer and Allen Wood (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press).
* Körner, Stephan (1974). Categorial Frameworks (Oxford: Basil Blackwell).
* Leibniz, G.W. (1998). Monadology, in G.W. Leibniz: Philosophical
Texts, trans. by Richard Franks and R.S. Woolhouse (Oxford: Oxford
University Press).
* Lewis, C.I. (1946). An Analysis of Knowledge and Valuation. (La
Salle: Open Court).
* Lewis, C.I. (1969) Values and Imperatives, ed. by J. Lange
(Stanford: Stanford University Press).
* Lipson, Morris (1987). "Objective Experience." Noûs 21, pp. 319-43.
* Lonergan, Bernard (1970). Insight (New York: Philosophical Library).
* Meynell, Hugo (1984). "Scepticism Reconsidered," Philosophy 59,
pp. 431-42 .
* Peirce, C.S. (1931 & 1958). Collected Papers of Charles Sanders
Peirce, 8 vols., vols. i-iv ed. C. Hartshorne and P. Weiss (Cambridge,
MA: Harvard University Press, 1931-5), vols. vii-viii ed. A. Burks
Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1958).
* Putnam, Hilary (1981). Reason, Truth, and History (New York:
Cambridge University Press).
* Rosenberg, Jay F. (1975). "Transcendental Arguments Revisited."
The Journal of Philosophy 72, pp. 611-24.
* Schaper, Eva (1972). "Arguing Transcendentally," Kant-Studien
63, pp. 101-16.
* Stern, Robert (2000). Transcendental Arguments and Skepticism
(Oxford: Oxford University Press).
* Strawson, P.F. (1966). The Bounds of Sense (London: Methuen & Co.).
* Strawson, P.F. (1959). Individuals (New York: Methuen & Co.).
* Strawson, P.F. (1985). Skepticism and Naturalism: Some Varieties
(New York: Columbia University Press).
* Stroud, Barry (1999). "The Goal of Transcendental Arguments," in
Robert Stern (ed.), Transcendental Arguments: Problems and Prospects
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999).
* Stroud, Barry (1994). "Kantian Argument, Conceptual Capacities,
and Invulnerability," in Paolo Parrini (ed.), Kant and Contemporary
Epistemology ( Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers).
* Stroud, Barry (1968). "Transcendental Arguments," Journal of
Philosophy 65 (1968).
* Westphal, Kenneth (2003). "Epistemic Reflection and
Transcendental Proof," in Strawson and Kant, ed. by Hans-Johann Glock
(Oxford: Oxford University Press).

Toleration

When we tolerate something we deliberately refrain from negating that
thing. More abstractly, toleration can be understood as a political
practice aiming at neutrality, objectivity, or fairness on the part of
political agents. These ideas are related in that the goal of
political neutrality is deliberate restraint of the power that
political authorities have to negate the life activities of citizens
and subjects. Related to toleration is the virtue of tolerance, which
can be defined as a tendency toward toleration. Toleration is usually
grounded upon an assumption about the importance of the autonomy of
individuals. This assumption and the idea of toleration are central
ideas in modern liberal theory and practice. The present article will
discuss toleration as found in the works of John Locke, Baruch de
Spinoza, Voltaire, Immanuel Kant, John Stuart Mill, John Rawls and
other contemporary philosophers.

1. Conceptual Analysis

The English words, 'tolerate', 'toleration', and 'tolerance' are
derived from the Latin terms tolerare and tolerantia, which imply
enduring, suffering, bearing, and forbearance. Ancient Greek terms,
which may also have influenced philosophical thinking on toleration,
include: phoretos which means bearable, endurable, or phoreo,
literally 'to carry'; and anektikos meaning bearable, sufferable,
tolerable, from anexo, 'to hold up'.

Today, when we say that someone has a 'high tolerance for pain,' we
mean that he or she is able to endure pain. This ordinary way of
thinking is useful for understanding the idea of toleration and the
virtue of tolerance: it underscores the fact that toleration is
directed by an agent toward something perceived as negative. It would
be odd to say, for example, that someone has 'a high tolerance for
pleasure'.

With this in mind, we can formulate a general definition of toleration
that involves three interrelated conditions.

When an agent tolerates something:

(1) He holds a negative judgment about this thing;

(2) He has the power to negate this thing; and

(3) He deliberately refrains from negation.

The first condition requires a negative judgment, which can be
anything from disapproval to disgust. Judgment here is meant to be a
broad concept that can include emotions, dispositions, tastes, and
reasoned evaluations. This negative judgment inclines the agent toward
a negative action toward the thing in question. This broadly Stoic
conception of judgment is a common assumption in discussions of
toleration. Defenders of toleration assume that we can, to a certain
extent, voluntarily control the expression of our negative reactions
by opposing them with different, countervailing, judgments. Although
judgments and emotions are both thought to have motivating force, they
can be resisted by some other judgment, habit or virtue.

The entity toward which an agent has a negative judgment can be an
event, an object, or a person, although with regard to tolerance as a
moral and political disposition, the entity is usually thought to be a
person. Although we speak of tolerating pain, for example, the moral
and political emphasis is on tolerating some other person, a group of
people, or their activities.

The second condition states that the agent has the power to negate the
entity in question. Toleration is concerned with resisting the
temptation to actively negate the thing in question. To distinguish
toleration from cowardice or weakness of will the agent must have some
capacity to enact his negative judgment. Toleration occurs when the
agent could actively negate or destroy the person or object in
question, but chooses not to.

The word negate is used here in a broad sense that allows for a
variety of negative reactions. Negative actions can include:
expressions of condemnation, acts of avoidance, or violent attacks.
The continuum of negations is decidedly vague. It is not clear, for
example, whether condemnation and avoidance are negations of the same
sort as violent action. Despite the vagueness of the continuum of
negative activities, the focal point of the second criterion is the
power to negate: toleration is restraint of the power to negate.

The third condition states that the agent deliberately refrains from
exercising his power to negate. Tolerant agents deliberately choose
not to negate those things they view negatively. The negative
formulation, 'not negating,' is important because toleration is not
the same thing as positive evaluation, approbation, or approval.

Tolerant restraint of the negative judgment is supposed to be free and
deliberate: one refrains from negating the thing because one has a
reason not to negate it and is free to act. Good reasons for
toleration are plural. They include: respect for autonomy; a general
commitment to pacifism; concern for other virtues such as kindness and
generosity; pedagogical concerns; a desire for reciprocity; and a
sense of modesty about one's ability to judge the beliefs and actions
of others. Each of these provides us with a reason for thinking that
it is good not to negate the thing in question. As mentioned already,
there also may be other non-tolerant reasons for refraining from
negation: fear, weakness of will, profit motive, self-interest,
arrogance, etc.

Although there are many reasons to be tolerant, traditional
discussions have emphasized respect for autonomy and pedagogical
concerns. Underlying both of these approaches is often a form of
self-conscious philosophical modesty that is linked to the value of
respect for autonomy. As John Stuart Mill and others have argued,
individuals ought to be left to pursue their own good in their own way
in part because each individual knows himself and his own needs and
interests best. This view does, however, leave us with a lingering
problem as toleration can easily slip toward moral skepticism and
relativism. It is important to note then that toleration is a positive
value that is not based upon total moral skepticism. Proponents of
toleration think that toleration is good not because they are unsure
of their moral values but, rather, because toleration fits within a
scheme of moral values that includes values such as autonomy, peace,
cooperation, and other values that are thought to be good for human
flourishing.
2. Historical Development
a. Early History

The spirit of tolerance is evident in Socrates' dialogical method as a
component of his search for truth. Throughout the early Platonic
dialogues, Socrates tolerantly allows his interlocutors to pursue the
truth wherever this pursuit might lead. And he encourages his
interlocutors to offer refutations so that the truth might be
revealed. Sometimes Socrates' tolerance can appear to go too far. The
Euthyrphro concludes, for example, with Socrates allowing Euthyphro to
proceed in the prosecution of a questionable court case. And Socrates'
relationship with Alcibiades, as discussed in the Symposium, shows
Socrates as perhaps too tolerant toward this reckless Athenian youth.
In the Gorgias (at 458a) Socrates describes himself in terms that
establish a link between philosophical method and a form of
toleration. Socrates says, "And what kind of man am I? One of those
who would gladly be refuted if anything I say is not true, and would
gladly refute another who says what is not true, but would be no less
happy to be refuted myself than to refute, for I consider that a
greater benefit, inasmuch as it is a greater boon to be delivered from
the worst of evils oneself than to deliver another." The pursuit of
truth is linked to an open mind, although of course this form of
dialogical toleration is supposed to lead to a unitary vision of the
truth.

One can see a more developed form of tolerance celebrated in the
Stoicism of Epictetus (55-135 C.E.) and Marcus Aurelius (121-180
C.E.). The Stoic idea is that we should focus on those things we can
control—our own opinions and behaviors—while ignoring those things we
cannot control, especially the opinions and behaviors of others. The
Stoic idea is linked to resignation and apathy, as is clear in the
case of Epictetus, whose social position—raised as a Roman slave—might
explain his advice about bearing and forbearing. Of course, the
problem here is that slavish forbearance is not the same as tolerance:
it seems clear that tolerance properly requires the power to negate,
which the slave does not possess. With the Emperor Marcus Aurelius,
however, tolerance is seen as a virtue of power. Tolerance might be
linked to other virtues of power such as mercy and benevolence, as
suggested, for example by Seneca. However, it is important to note
that the Stoic approach to tolerance was not explicitly linked to a
general idea about political respect for autonomy and freedom of
conscience, as it is in the modern liberal tradition. Moreover, Roman
political life was not nearly as tolerant as modern political life.
For example, although Marcus' Meditations contain many passages
invoking the spirit of tolerance, Marcus was responsible for
continuing the persecution of Christians.

Religious traditions provide further historical background for the
idea of toleration. For example, the spirit of tolerance can be
discovered in the Christian Gospel's message of loving enemies,
forgiving others, and refraining from judging others. Christian
tolerance is linked to other virtues such as charity and
self-sacrifice. And it seems to go beyond tolerance toward a
self-abnegating type of love and acceptance. Christ's command to "love
your enemies" is one example of this attempt to go beyond tolerance.
It should be noted that other religious traditions also contain
resources for developing toleration. For example, Buddhist compassion
can be linked to the idea of toleration. Indeed, in the third century
B.C.E., the Buddhist emperor of India, Ashoka, called for official
religious toleration. Likewise, in the 16th Century C.E., the Islamic
emperor Akhbar made a similar attempt at establishing religious
toleration on the Indian subcontinent.

Despite these antecedents, toleration does not become a serious
subject of philosophical and political concern in Europe until the
16th and 17th Centuries. During the Renaissance and Reformation of the
15th and 16th Centuries, humanists such as Erasmus (1466-1536), De Las
Casas (1484-1566), and Montaigne (1533-1592) asserted the autonomy of
human reason against the dogmatism of the Church. Although religious
authorities reacted with the formation of the Inquisition and the
Index of Forbidden Books, by the 17th Century philosophers were
seriously considering the question of toleration.
b. The 17th Century

Following the divisions created by the Lutheran Reformation and the
Counter-Reformation, Europe was decimated by war and violence fomented
in the name of religion, which culminated in the Thirty Years War
(1618-1648). Through events such as these scholars became acutely
aware of the destructive power of intolerance and sought to limit this
destructive force by re-examining the biblical roots of toleration and
by re-considering the relation between religious belief and political
power. Additional influences on the cultural landscape of Europe
during this time include the struggle to define sovereignty and to
"purify" religion in Britain during the British Civil Wars
(1640-1660), as well as increased information about cultural
differences with the beginning of global exploration. Among the
thinkers of this period who defended tolerance were Milton
(1608-1674), Bayle (1647-1706), Spinoza (1634-1677), and Locke
(1632-1704).

One of the worries of the humanist thinkers of the Reformation was
whether it was possible to have infallible knowledge of the Divine
Will such that one could justify the persecution of heretics. This
concern with human fallibility lies at the heart of what will be
described subsequently as "epistemological toleration." When
recognition of human fallibility is combined with critique of
political and ecclesiastical power, more robust forms of political
toleration develop.

In this vein, Spinoza concluded his Theological-Political Treatise
(1670) with an argument for freedom of thought. It is not surprising
that Spinoza should have written this treatise, for he was himself a
product of a tolerant society: he was a Portuguese Jew living in
Holland. Indeed, the 17th Century saw the rise of toleration in
practice in certain parts of Europe, perhaps as a result of increased
trade and social mobility. Spinoza's argument for toleration focuses
on three claims: first, he claims that it is impossible for the state
to effectively curtail liberty of thought; second, he claims that
liberty of thought can in fact be allowed without detriment to state
power; and finally, Spinoza argues that political authority should
focus on controlling actions and not on restricting thought. This
emphasis on the difference between thought and action is crucial for
subsequent discussions of toleration in Locke, Mill, and Kant.

Somewhat different versions of Spinoza's basic insights can be found
in Locke's famous Letter Concerning Toleration (1689), an essay that
was written during Locke's exile in Holland. Locke's argument focuses
specifically on the conflict between political authority and religious
belief. He articulates a view of toleration based on the
epistemological claim that it is impossible for the state to coerce
genuine religious belief. He argues that the state should refrain from
interfering in the religious beliefs of its subjects, except when
these religious beliefs lead to behaviors or attitudes that run
counter to the security of the state. This exception allows him to
conclude that the state need not tolerate Catholics who were loyal to
a foreign authority or atheists whose lack of religious conviction
left them entirely untrustworthy.
c. The 18th Century

In the 18th Century, discussion of toleration was tied to the problem
of skepticism and to a more sustained critique of absolutism in
politics. Voltaire (1694-1778), who expressed his admiration for the
development of religious tolerance in England in his Philosophical
Letters (1734), was extremely worried about the tendency of religion
to become violent and intolerant. Moreover, he suffered under the
intolerant hands of the French authorities: he was thrown in jail for
his views and his books were censored and publicly burned. Religious
tolerance forms the theme of his Treatise on Tolerance (1763), which
argues vigorously for tolerance even though it retains a bias toward
Christianity. A concise summary of Voltaire's argument for tolerance
can be found in the entry on Tolerance in his Philosophical Dictionary
(1764). Voltaire's claim is that toleration follows from human frailty
and error. Since none of us has perfect knowledge, and since we are
all weak, inconsistent, liable to fickleness and error, we should
pardon one another for our failings. Voltaire's approach focuses on
tolerance at the level of personal interaction and risks slipping
toward moral skepticism and relativism: like his contemporary David
Hume (1711-1777), Voltaire presented a skeptical challenge to orthodox
belief.

Immanuel Kant (1724-1804), in response to skeptics such as Voltaire
and Hume, tried to avoid skepticism while focusing on the limits of
human knowledge and the limits of political power. In his essay, "What
is Enlightenment?" (1784), Kant argues for an enlightened form of
political power that would allow subjects to argue among themselves,
so long as they remained obedient to authority. This position is
further clarified by Kant's claim in Perpetual Peace (1795) that
philosophers should be allowed and encouraged to speak publicly.
Kant's point in this later essay is that public debate and discussion
lead to the truth, and that kings should have nothing to fear from the
truth. Kant's views on religious toleration are clarified in his
Religion within the Limits of Reason Alone (1793). Here Kant argues
against religious intolerance by pointing out that although we are
certain of our moral duties, human beings do not have apodictic
certainty of God's commands. Thus a religious belief that demands a
contravention of morality (such as the burning of a heretic) can never
be justified.

Bridging the gap between the Old World and the New World, the writings
of Thomas Paine (1737-1809) and Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826) express a
theory of toleration that is tied directly to political practice.
Paine's and Jefferson's ideas followed Locke's. Not only were they
critical of unrestrained political power but they were also committed
to an ecumenical approach to religious belief known as deism. Paine
makes it clear in his Rights of Man (1791) that toleration for
religious diversity is essential because political and ecclesiastical
authorities do not have the capacity to adjudicate matters of
conscience. "Mind thine own concerns. If he believes not as thou
believest, it is a proof that thou believest not as he believeth, and
there is no earthly power can determine between you."

At the end of the 18th Century, we see tolerant ideas embodied in
practice in the U.S. Constitution's Bill of Rights—the first 10
Amendments to the Constitution (ratified in 1791). Collectively these
amendments serve to restrain political power. Specifically, the First
Amendment states that there can be no law, which prohibits freedom of
religion, freedom of speech, freedom of the press, freedom of
assembly, and freedom to petition to the government. Subsequent
developments in U.S. Constitutional law have led to a tradition of
respect for citizens' freedom of thought, speech, and action.
d. The 19th Century

In the 19th Century, the idea of toleration was developed further in
line with the liberal, enlightenment idea that moral autonomy is
essential to human flourishing. The most famous argument for
toleration in the 19th Century was made by John Stuart Mill in On
Liberty (1859). Mill argues here that the only proper limit of liberty
is harm: one is entitled to be as free as possible, except where one's
liberty poses a threat to the well-being of someone else: "the only
purpose for which power can rightfully be exercised over any member of
a civilized community, against his will, is to prevent harm to
others."

Mill expands the notion of privacy that was implicit in Locke and Kant
to argue that political power should have no authority to regulate
those activities and interests of individuals that are purely private
and have no secondary effects on others. Mill also vigorously argues
that freedom of thought is essential for the development of knowledge.
Mill's general approach is utilitarian: he claims that individuals
will be happier if their private differences are tolerated and that
society in general will be better off if individuals are left to
pursue their own good in their own way.

In the 19th Century and into the early 20th Century, religious
toleration was also a subject of consideration for thinkers such as
Soren Kierkegaard (1813-1855), Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882), and
William James (1842-1910), who emphasized the subjective nature of
religious faith. For example, in his Varieties of Religious Experience
(1902), James argued that religious experience was diverse and not
subject to a definitive interpretation. Although this fits with
James's larger metaphysical commitment to pluralism, his point is that
religious commitment is personal—a matter of what he calls in another
essay, "the will to believe." It is up to each individual to decide
for himself what he will believe: if we properly understand the nature
of religious belief, we should respect the religious liberty of others
and learn to tolerate our differences.
e. The 20th Century

In the 20th Century, toleration has become an important component of
what is now known as liberal theory. The bloody history of the 20th
Century has led many to believe that toleration is needed to end
political and religious violence. Toleration has been defended by
liberal philosophers and political theorists such as John Dewey,
Isaiah Berlin, Karl Popper, Michael Walzer, Ronald Dworkin, and John
Rawls. It has been criticized by Herbert Marcuse and others such as
Iris Young who worry that toleration and its ideal of state neutrality
is merely another hegemonic Western ideology. Toleration has been the
explicit subject of many recent works in political philosophy by Susan
Mendus, John Horton, Preston King, and Bernard Williams. Much of the
current discussion focuses on responding to John Rawls, whose theory
of "political liberalism" conceives of toleration as a pragmatic
response to the fact of diversity (see "Political Toleration" below).
A recurring question in the current debate is whether there can be a
more substantive commitment to toleration that does not lead to the
paradoxical consequence that the tolerant must tolerate those who are
intolerant.

Further recent discussion, by David Heyd, Glenn Newey, and others, has
attempted to re-establish the link between tolerance and virtue. These
writers wonder whether tolerance is in fact a virtue and if so, what
sort of a virtue it is. A concern for racial equality, gender
neutrality, an end of prejudice, respect for cultural and ethnic
difference, and a general commitment to multiculturalism has fueled
ongoing debates about the nature of toleration in our age of
globalization and homogenization. Finally, in the U.S., First
Amendment Law has developed to allow for a broad idea of freedom of
speech, freedom of the press, and freedom of religion. And under the
influence of an interpretation of the equal protection clause of the
14th Amendment, mechanisms to ensure equality have given support to
those minority groups who were once the victims of political
intolerance.
3. Epistemological Toleration

An epistemological argument for toleration can be traced to Socrates.
However, this ideal becomes explicit in the thinking of Milton, Locke,
and Mill. The epistemological claim is that one should tolerate the
opinions and beliefs of the other because it is either impossible to
coerce belief or because such coercion is not the most useful
pedagogical approach. This idea can be developed into a claim about
the importance of diversity, dialogue, and debate for the
establishment of truth. Finally, this approach might lead to a form of
relativism or skepticism that puts the idea of toleration itself at
risk.
a. Socrates

Socratic tolerance is discovered if we take seriously Socrates' claims
to ignorance. Socratic ignorance is linked to virtues, such as
sophrosyne (self-control), modesty and tolerance. These virtues are
essential components in the formation of the philosophical community
and the pursuit of philosophical truth. Throughout Plato's dialogues,
Socrates restrains himself deliberately—he modestly claims ignorance
and allows others to develop their own positions and make their own
mistakes—out of recognition that this is the best, perhaps the only,
way to proceed in the communal pursuit of truth. Socrates' main goal
is to discover the truth through open-minded debate. But there would
be no dialogue and indeed no education without tolerance. Socrates'
commitment to tolerance is part of his epistemological faith in the
autonomy of reason. We each must discover the truth for ourselves by
way of disciplined, modest, and tolerant dialogue.
b. Milton

Centuries later, John Milton's Areopagitica (1644) offers a similar
defense of the truth. Milton vigorously defended freedom of speech in
response to a censorship decree of the English parliament. His
argument relies upon the epistemological claim that open dialogue
supported by a tolerant government fosters the development of truth.
Milton's basic assumption is that the truth is able to defend itself
in a free debate. "Let truth and falsehood grapple; who ever knew
truth put to the worse, in a free and open encounter?" Milton further
argues that outward conformity to orthodoxy is not the same as genuine
belief.
c. Locke

These ideas were developed further by Locke in his Letter Concerning
Toleration. Locke argues that the civil and ecclesiastical authorities
ought to tolerate diversity of belief because one cannot force another
human being to have faith. In a claim that is reminiscent of Milton,
Locke claims "the truth certainly would do well enough if she were
left to shift for herself… She is not taught by laws, nor has she any
need of force to procure her entrance into the minds of men." This is
so because the authority of judgment resides within the free
individual. It is impossible to force someone to believe something for
external reasons. Rather, truth must be arrived at and believed for
internal reasons.

This epistemological claim is the focal point of Jeremy Waldron's
recent critique of Locke's account. Waldron claims that Locke's
argument is weak because it relies upon the false assumption that
beliefs cannot be coerced. The point is that we often believe things
quite sincerely without any good reason whatsoever. Moreover, Waldron
argues that the epistemological argument is too weak to provide a
moral limitation on coercion. Even though coercion cannot produce
genuine belief, an intolerant regime may not be interested in
producing genuine belief. It may simply be interested in guaranteeing
conformity. Waldron's point is important: the epistemological critique
is useful only if one is committed to the claim that genuine belief in
the truth is an important political or moral value. An epistemological
argument for toleration must claim not only that it is impractical or
impossible to impose belief upon others, but also that we ought to
value genuine commitment over mere conformity.
d. Mill

Mill's epistemological argument is quite similar to Locke's, although
Mill goes farther in advocating freedom of speech as essential for the
discovery of truth. Mill's epistemological argument begins with the
assumption that individuals know best what is good for them. This
claim runs counter to the traditional Platonic claim that often
individuals do not know what is in their own best interest. Mill
supports his claim by pointing out that the individual always has the
best access to his/her own interests and desires: others do not have
access to the kinds of internal evidence that would allow them to
judge for the individual. It is important to note that Mill does not
equate this access problem with relativism. Indeed, in his essay
Utilitarianism (1863), he famously defends a hierarchy of goods based
on the fact that those who have experienced both "lower" and "higher"
goods will prefer the higher ones (e.g., "it is better to be Socrates
dissatisfied than a fool satisfied"). The epistemological point
remains the same here, however: it is up to the individual to judge
for himself about what is good for him.

Mill's general argument for freedom of thought is based upon a
recognition of human fallibility and on the need for dialogue and
debate. Mill's argument for freedom of thought in On Liberty contains
the following claims. (1) Silenced opinions may be true. To assume
they are not is to assume that we are infallible. (2) Even false
opinions may contain valid points of contention and parts of the
truth. To know the whole of truth we might have to weave together
parts of truth from different sources. (3) To claim to know the truth
means that we are able to defend it against all vigorous opposition.
Thus we need to be able to hear and respond to false opinions in order
to know all of the arguments for a proposition. (4) Truth that is not
continuously and vigorously contested becomes mere superstition. Such
dogmatically held superstitions may thus crumble before even weak
opposition and will not be heartily believed or defended.
e. The Problem of Relativism

Like Socrates, Mill and Locke both arrive at the notion of toleration
from a non-relativistic understanding of belief and truth. However,
under the general rubric of epistemological toleration we might also
include the sort of toleration that follows from skepticism or
relativism. For the relativist or skeptic, since we cannot know the
truth or since all truths are relative, we ought to be tolerant of
those who hold different points of view. Contemporary American
philosopher, Richard Rorty has articulated an argument something like
this. The problem with this approach is the same problem with all
sorts of skepticism and relativism: either the claim
self-referentially undermines itself or it provides us with no
compelling reason to believe it. If we are skeptical about knowledge,
then we have no way of knowing that toleration is good. Likewise, if
truth is relative to a system of thought, then the claim that
toleration is required is itself merely a relatively justified claim.
The form of epistemological toleration espoused by Mill, at least,
attempts to avoid these problems by appealing to a form of fallibilism
that is not completely skeptical or relativistic. Mill's point is not
that there is no truth but, rather, that toleration is required for us
to come to know the truth.
4. Moral Toleration

We have seen that epistemological concerns can lead us to toleration.
Moral concerns can also bring us to toleration. Tolerance as a moral
virtue might be linked to other moral virtues such as modesty and
self-control. However, the most common moral value that is thought to
ground toleration is a concern for autonomy. We ought to refrain from
negating the other when concern for the other's autonomy provides us
with a good reason not to act. Toleration that follows from a
commitment to autonomy should not be confused with moral relativism.
Moral relativism holds that values are relative to culture or context.
A commitment to autonomy, in opposition to this, holds that autonomy
is good in a non-relative sense. A commitment to autonomy might
require that I allow the other to do something that I find abhorrent,
not because I believe that values are relative, but because I believe
that autonomy is so important that it requires me to refrain from
negating the autonomous action of the other. Of course, there are
limits here. Autonomous action that violates the autonomy of another
cannot be tolerated.

Mill's account of the principle of liberty is helpful for
understanding this idea of toleration. Mill tells us that we should be
given as much liberty as possible, as long as our liberty does not
harm others. This is in fact a recipe for toleration. Mill's argument
follows from certain basic assumptions about individuals.

1. Each individual has a will of his own.
2. Each individual is better off when not compelled to "do better."
3. Each individual knows best what is good for him.
4. Each individual is motivated to attain his own good and to
avoid actions that are contrary to his self-interest.
5. Self-regarding thought and activity can be distinguished from
its effects upon others.

Some of these claims (for example, #3) are linked to epistemological
toleration. However, the point here is not only that individuals know
what is in their own self-interest but also that it is good for
individuals to be able to pursue their own good in their own way. Such
an approach makes several important metaphysical assumptions about the
nature of human being: that autonomy is possible and important, that
individuals do know their own good, that there is a distinction
between self-regarding action and actions that effects others. Moral
toleration follows from these sorts of claims about human being.
a. The Paradox of Toleration

Of course, toleration and respect for autonomy are not simple ideas.
Much has been made about the so-called "paradox of toleration": the
fact that toleration seems to ask us to tolerate those things we find
intolerable. Toleration does require that we refrain from enacting the
negative consequences of our negative judgments. This becomes
paradoxical when we find ourselves confronting persons, attitudes, or
behaviors, which we vigorously reject: we then must, paradoxically,
tolerate that which we find intolerable. This becomes especially
difficult when the other who is to be tolerated expresses views or
activities that are themselves intolerant.

One way of resolving this paradox is to recognize that there is a
distinction between first-order judgments and second-order moral
commitments. First-order judgments include emotional reactions and
other practical judgments that focus on concrete and particular
attitudes and behaviors. Second-order moral commitments include more
complicated judgments that aim beyond emotion and particularity toward
rational universal principles. With regard to the paradox of
toleration there is a conflict between a first-order reaction against
something and a second-order commitment to the principle of respecting
autonomy or to the virtues of modesty or self-control. The paradox is
resolved by recognizing that this second-order commitment trumps the
first-order reaction: principle is supposed to outweigh emotion. Thus
we might have good reasons (based upon our second-order commitments)
to refrain from following through on the normal consequences of
negative first-order judgments. However, when there is a genuine
conflict of second-order commitments, i.e., when the tolerant
commitment to autonomy runs up against an intolerant rejection of
autonomy, then there is no need to tolerate. In other words the
paradox is resolved when we realize that toleration is not a
commitment to relativism but, rather, that it is a commitment to the
value of autonomy and to the distinction between first-order judgments
and second-order moral commitments.
b. Tolerance vs. Indifference

Of course, the ideal of toleration is a difficult one to enact. This
difficulty is related to the tension between first-order reactions and
second-order commitments that is found within the spiritual economy of
an individual. This is why the idea of tolerance as a virtue is
important. Virtues are tendencies or habits toward good action. In the
case of the virtue of tolerance, the tendency is toward respect for
the autonomy of others and toward the self-discipline necessary for
deliberately restraining first-order reactions. Virtues are usually
thought to be integrated into a system of virtues. Tolerance is no
exception. The virtue of tolerance is closely related to other virtues
such as self-control, modesty, generosity, kindness, mercy, and
forgiveness. One must be careful, however, not to conclude that the
virtue of tolerance is a tendency toward indifference or apathy.
Tolerance demands that we moderate and control our passions in light
of some larger good, whether that good be respect for autonomy or an
interest in self-control; tolerance does not demand that we completely
refrain from judging the other.

Moral toleration asks us to restrain some of our most powerful
first-order reactions: negative reactions to persons, attitudes, and
behaviors which we find repugnant. Without the tension between
first-order reactions and second-order commitment, toleration is
merely indifference. Indifference usually indicates a failure at the
level of first-order judgment: when we are indifferent, we do not have
any reaction, negative or positive, to the other. Such a state of
indifference is not virtuous. Indeed, it would be vicious and wrong
not to react strongly against injustice or violations of autonomy.

We often confuse indifference with toleration. However, indifference
is flawed as a human response for two reasons. First, it rejects the
truth of first-order reactions. First-order reactions should not be
ignored. Our emotional responses are important ways in which we
connect with the world around us. When we react negatively to
something, this emotional reaction provides important information
about the world and ourselves. Tolerance does not ask us to deaden our
emotional responses to others; rather it asks us to restrain the
negative consequences of our negative emotional responses out of
deference to a more universal set of commitments. Second, indifference
is often closely related to general skepticism about moral judgment.
The moral skeptic claims that no set of values is true. From this
perspective, both first-order reactions and second-order commitments
are mere tastes or preferences without any final moral significance.
From this skepticism, indifference with regard to any moral evaluation
is cultivated because all of our moral values are thought to be
equally groundless. The difficulty here is that moral skepticism
cannot lead to the conclusion that it is good to be tolerant, since
the skeptic holds that no moral value can be justified. If we claim
that toleration is good and that tolerance is a virtue, toleration
cannot be the same thing as indifference.

This distinction between tolerance and indifference is important for
explaining the spiritual disruption that occurs when we strive to
become tolerant. Indeed, the difficulty of toleration can be
understood in terms of the difficulty of the middle path between
indifference and dogmatism. Indifference is easy and satisfying
because it sets us free, as it were, from the difficult human task of
judging. Likewise, dogmatism is easy and satisfying because it follows
from a seamless synthesis of first-order reaction and second-order
commitment. Toleration is the middle path in which there is a conflict
between first-order reaction and second-order commitment. Toleration
thus requires self-consciousness and self-control in order to
coordinate conflicting parts of the spiritual economy. The discipline
required for toleration is part of any idea of education: we must
learn to distance ourselves from first-order reactions in order to
move toward universal principles. First-order reactions are often
wrong or incomplete, as are immediate sense perceptions. And yet,
education does not ask us to give up on first-order reactions or sense
perceptions. Rather, it asks us to be disciplined and self-critical,
so that we might control first-order reactions in order to uphold more
important principles.
5. Political Toleration

Moral toleration emphasizes a moral commitment to the value of
autonomy. Although it is linked, by Mill, for example to a political
idea about restraint of state power, moral toleration is ultimately
concerned with clarifying the second-order principle that is supposed
to lead to toleration.

While moral toleration is about relations between agents, political
toleration is about restraint of political power. The modern liberal
state is usually not thought to be a moral agent. Rather, the state is
supposed to be something like a third party referee: it is not thought
to be one of the parties engaged directly in the process of judgment
and negation. Political toleration is thus an ideal that holds that
the political referee should be impartial and unbiased. The term
toleration has been used, since Locke, in this political context to
describe a principle of state neutrality. The connection between moral
and political toleration can be understood in terms of the history of
the pre-modern era when the state was an agent—a monarch, for
example—who had particular judgments and the power to negate. As the
idea of the state has evolved since the 17th Century toward liberal
democratic notions of self-government and civil rights, the notion of
political toleration has evolved to mean something like state
indifference. Political toleration is now thought to entail respect
for privacy, separation of church and state, and a general respect for
human rights.
a. John Rawls

In the 20th Century, the idea of political toleration has developed,
especially under the influence of John Rawls (1921-2002) and his
books, Theory of Justice (1971) and Political Liberalism (1995).
Rawls' approach attempts to be neutral about moral values in order to
establish political principles of toleration. Rawls argues for
toleration in a pragmatic fashion as that which works best to achieve
political unity and an idea of justice among diverse individuals.
Although the idea of political toleration has been most vigorously
defended by Rawls, it also forms the basis of other pragmatic and
political accounts of toleration, including those of John Dewey,
Jürgen Habermas, Michael Walzer, and Richard Rorty. The danger with
this approach is that it tends toward relativism by self-consciously
limiting itself from articulating a metaphysical defense of autonomy
and toleration. The difficulty is that the idea of state neutrality
can become paradoxical: a state that is neutral about everything will
undermine its own existence.

The idea of political toleration begins from the claim that diverse
individuals will come to tolerate one another by developing what Rawls
calls "overlapping consensus": individuals and groups with diverse
metaphysical views or "comprehensive schemes" will find reasons to
agree about certain principles of justice that will include principles
of toleration. This is in part an empirical or historical argument
about the way in which diverse individuals or groups eventually
resolve their differences by way of a pragmatic commitment to
toleration as a modus vivendi, or means of life. One could trace this
idea back to Hobbes' idea of the social contract as a peace treaty.
Diverse individuals in the state of nature will, according to Hobbes's
argument in The Leviathan (1651), engage in the war of all against
all. This war is ultimately unsatisfying and so individuals relinquish
their warring power and create the social contract. The problem is
that this pragmatic account leaves us without a metaphysical
justification of the principles of toleration. Rather it comes to
toleration from the pragmatic assumption that diverse individuals
motivated by self-interest will agree to support the neutral state,
which is then supposed to act as a referee in their disputes. Of
course, Hobbes' account of the absolute sovereignty of the Leviathan
calls into question the idea that a social contract view will always
lead to a tolerant liberal state.

Rawls' idea of "justice as fairness" attempts to set limits to
political power without trying to evaluate the relative merits of
different conceptions of the good. Rawls clarifies his approach by
insisting that the principles of justice are political and not moral
principles. They are based upon what he calls "reasonable pluralism."
What he means by this is that the principles of toleration will be
agreed to by individuals from diverse perspectives because these
principles will appear reasonable to each individual despite their
differences. The idea of toleration results from a political consensus
that is developed by way of the ideal social contract that Rawls
describes at length in Theory of Justice. Like Mill, Rawls theory of
justice claims that the first principle of justice is the liberty
principle: "Each person has an equal right to a fully adequate scheme
of equal basic liberties which is compatible with a similar scheme of
liberties for all." These basic civil liberties form the basis for
political toleration.
b. Risks and Benefits

Political liberalism focuses on the problem of diversity without
appealing to a larger metaphysical theory. This problem is exacerbated
when political liberalism takes up the question of international human
rights and the problem of intolerant groups or individual who demand
to be tolerated. Political liberalism aims at the creation of a global
human rights regime that is supposed to support politically tolerant
states and that is sensitive to the issue of group rights. From the
perspective of political liberalism, human rights—basic defenses
against the intolerant expansion of state power—are thought to be the
result of overlapping political consensus. From this perspective,
human rights, such as the right to autonomy that forms the basis of
moral toleration, are thought to be, not metaphysical givens, but the
conditions for the possibility of political consensus building.

The idea of a developing "overlapping consensus" in international
affairs was articulated in the 1950's by Jacques Maritain and was
developed in practice by international agencies such as the United
Nations. More recently Jürgen Habermas' approach links principles of
toleration to the very nature of political argument: for us to have a
political argument, we must agree to certain principles of fair
argumentation. The difficultly here is that diversity is even more of
a problem on the international scene, where discussions of human
rights are essential. At the local or national level, the point of
liberalism is that the neutral state ought not interfere or comment on
the quality of individual lives unless the lives and actions of
private individuals become a menace to the rights and privacy of other
individuals. Internationally, Rawls follows Kant in specifying "the
Law of Peoples" that is supposed to maintain order among diverse
mutually tolerant nations.

A further complication arises at the level of group rights (both
within national and international politics), where groups and their
members claim the right to be tolerated by larger political
organizations. Here the idea of tolerating the practices and
identities of groups may paradoxically result in toleration for
intolerant groups. This is the case for example, when tolerant
governments consider groups who advocate violence, discrimination, and
other intolerant practices. Such groups can be intolerant toward their
own members, toward the tolerant liberal societies in which they
subside, and indeed toward those international organizations who
support toleration throughout the globe.

The risk of political liberalism is that it hovers uneasily between
pluralism and relativism, while seeking to avoid metaphysical
dogmatism or political imperialism. The basic pluralism of political
liberalism supports political toleration by recognizing that
conflicting comprehensive doctrines can each be justified as
reasonable according to the standards internal to them. This leaves us
with the conflicts of reasonable pluralism: each of the conflicting
comprehensive doctrines is reasonable on its own terms and to the
extent that it recognizes the reasonableness of other comprehensive
doctrines. Thus, for Rawls, cooperation between reasonable
comprehensive doctrines is a practical political task. The state
should refrain from entering into a discussion of which comprehensive
doctrine is better morally, epistemologically, or metaphysically quite
simply because such a discussion would be unjust for a neutral state
confronted with the fact of diversity. By defining his account of
state neutrality as political, Rawls wants to distance his account of
reasonable pluralism from a more robust form of philosophical
skepticism. This is reminiscent of Locke's approach to epistemological
toleration: since we cannot in practice force individuals to agree
about moral or metaphysical truths, we should tolerate diversity at
the political level.

Rawls does, however, hold that there is a best political arrangement,
even if the truth about the best political arrangement is arrived at
by way of pragmatic concerns for what works politically in light of
the fact of diversity. And thus his idea of political consensus tries
to avoid the slide toward skepticism and relativism. It seems that for
political toleration, there is at least one non-relative value—that of
toleration and peaceful coexistence—even if this is merely
pragmatically justified by the concrete historical need for peaceful
coexistence among those who cannot arrive at consensus about their
views of the good.

The approach of political liberalism has appeared to succeed in
practice. One could argue that the idea of the neutral state and of
political consensus about the need for toleration has been gradually
developing in Constitutional Law in the U.S. and in international law
by way of the U.N.'s Declaration of Human Rights. Article 26 of the
U.N. Declaration states explicitly that education is a universal right
and that education should aim to "promote understanding, tolerance and
friendship among all nations, racial or religious groups." We are
still far from actualizing the idea of a tolerant international
community. However, it is fairly clear that in the last several
decades the idea of political toleration has succeeded in the United
States and in other Western countries.

Despite this success, critics such as Michael Sandel, in his
Democracy's Discontent (1998), have argued that the tolerant attitude
of what he calls "the procedural republic" must be grounded in a more
comprehensive moral theory. Without such a ground, Sandel worries that
the tolerant neutral state will ultimately lose its connection with
the moral lives of individuals. Sandel claims in his arguments against
Rawls and against certain developments in Constitutional Law that the
approach of political liberalism cannot ultimately take account of the
depth of commitment that most individuals have to their own
comprehensive doctrines. Rawls admits that for his idea of overlapping
consensus to work, he must assume a weakening of private faith in
comprehensive doctrines. The problem here is that it argues for
toleration by underestimating the power of those forms of private
faith that must be tolerated.

A further problem of the political approach is that it struggles to
define the nature of privacy. Moral toleration claims that there are
certain private activities which are only of concern to the individual
and that the state would be unjustified in interfering with these
private activities. A merely political approach to toleration is
however unable to draw the line dividing public and private in a
metaphysical fashion. Rather, the sphere of privacy is itself defined
only as a result of the process of building political consensus. Thus
the worry is that the principles of political liberalism are not
clearly defined and that toleration, as a mere modus vivendi, could be
violated if the political consensus were to shift. In other words, if
there is no metaphysical basis for a sphere of privacy, then it is not
exactly clear what the politically grounded idea of liberal toleration
is supposed to tolerate.
6. References and Further Reading

* Beiner, Ronald. What's the Matter with Liberalism (Berkeley:
University of California Press, 1992).
* Berlin, Isaiah. "Two Concepts of Liberty" in Four Essays on
Liberty(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1969).
* Cook, John W. Morality and Cultural Differences (Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 1999).
* Dworkin, Ronald. Sovereign Virtue (Cambridge, MA: Harvard
University Press, 2000).
* Dworkin, Ronald. Taking Rights Seriously (Cambridge: Harvard, 1977).
* Fiala, Andrew. "Toleration and Pragmatism" in Journal of
Speculative Philosophy, 16: 2, (2002), 103-116.
* Habermas, Jürgen. Moral Consciousness and Communicative Action
(Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1990).
* Heyd, David, ed. Toleration: An Elusive Virtue (Princeton:
Princeton University Press, 1996).
* Horton, John and Peter Nicholson, eds. Toleration: Philosophy
and Practice (London: Ashgate Publishing, 1992).
* King, Preston. Toleration (London: Frank Cass, 1998).
* Kymlicka, Will. Liberalism, Community, and Culture (Oxford:
Clarendon Press, 1989).
* Laursen, John Christian. "Spinoza on Toleration" in Difference
and Dissent: Theories of Tolerance in Medieval and Early Modern
Europe, edited by Nederman and Laursen (Lanham, Maryland: Rowman and
Littlefield, 1996).
* Locke, John. Letter Concerning Toleration in Steven M. Cahn ed.
Classics of Modern Political Theory (New York: Oxford University
Press, 1997).
* Mara, Gerald M. "Socrates and Liberal Toleration" in Political
Theory, 16:3 (1988).
* Marcuse, Herbert. "Repressive Tolerance" in Wolff, Moore, and
Marcuse, eds., A Critique of Pure Tolerance (Boston: Beacon Press,
1969).
* Maritain, Jacques. Man and the State (Chicago: University of
Chicago Press, 1951).
* Mendus, Susan and David Edwards, eds. On Toleration (Oxford:
Clarendon Press, 1987).
* Mendus, Susan. "Locke: Toleration, Morality, and Rationality" in
John Horton and Susan Mendus, eds., John Locke: A Letter Concerning
Toleration in Focus (London: Routledge, 1991).
* Mendus, Susan. Toleration and the Limits of Liberalism (Atlantic
Highlands, NJ: Humanities Press International, 1989).
* Mill, John Stuart. On Liberty and Other Essays (Oxford: Oxford
World Classics, 1998).
* Milton, John. Aereopogatica in Encyclopedia Britannica's Great
Books of the Western World, vol. 29 (Chicago: University of Chicago
Press, 1991).
* Newey, Glen. Virtue, Reason, and Toleration (Edinburgh:
University of Edinburgh Press, 1999).
* Oberdiek, Hans. Tolerance: Between Forbearance and Acceptance
(Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 2001).
* Paine, Thomas. The Complete Writings of Thomas Paine ed. by
Philip Foner (New York: The Citadel Press, 1945).
* Popper, Karl. The Open Society and its Enemies (Princeton:
Princeton University Press, 1971).
* Rawls, John. A Theory of Justice (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard
University Press, 1971).
* Rawls, John. Justice as Fairness: A Restatement (Cambridge:
Harvard University Press, 2001).
* Rawls, John. Political Liberalism (New York: Columbia University
Press, 1995).
* Rawls, John. The Law of Peoples (Cambridge: Harvard University
Press, 2001).
* Razavi, Mehdi Amin and David Ambuel, eds. Philosophy, Religion,
and the Question of Intolerance (Albany: State University of New York
Press, 1997).
* Ricoeur, Paul, ed. Tolerance Between Intolerance and the
Intolerable (an edition of Diogenes, No. 176, Vol. 44/4, Winter 1996).
* Rorty, Richard. Contingency, Irony, Solidarity (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1989).
* Rosenthal, Michael A. "Tolerance as a Virtue in Spinoza's
Ethics" in Journal of the History of Philosophy 39:4 (2001), 535-557.
* Sandel, Michael. Democracy's Discontent (Cambridge: Harvard, 1998).
* Sandel, Michael. Liberalism and the Limits of Justice
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982).
* Sen, Amartya. "Human Rights and Asian Values" in The New
Republic 217: 2-3 (1997), 33-40.
* Spinoza, Baruch. Theological-Political Treatise and Political
Treatise (New York: Dover Publications, 1951).
* Tan, Kok-Chor. Toleration, Diversity, and Global Justice
(University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2000).
* Voltaire. Philosophical Dictionary (Cleveland: World Publishing
Co., 1943).
* Waldron, Jeremy. "Locke: Toleration and the Rationality of
Persecution" in John Horton and Susan Mendus eds., John Locke: A
Letter Concerning Toleration in Focus (London: Routledge, 1991).
* Walzer, Michael. On Toleration (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1997).

Timon (fl. 279 BCE)

TimonTimon was a disciple of Pyrrho and philosopher of the sect of the
Skeptics, who flourished in the reign of Ptolemy Philadelphus, about
279 BCE. and onwards.The son of Timarchus of Phlius, Timon first
studied philosophy at Megara, under Stilpo, and then returned home and
married. He next went to Elis with his wife, and heard Pyrrho, whose
tenets he adopted. Driven from Elis by straitened circumstances, he
spent some time on the Hellespont an the Propontis, and taught at
Chalcedon as a sophist with such success that he acquired a fortune.
He then moved to Athens, where he passed the remainder of his life,
with the exception of a short residence at Thebes. He died at the age
of almost ninety. Timon appears to have had an active mind, and with a
quick perception of the follies of people which betrays its possessor
into a spirit of universal distrust both of men and truths, so as to
make him a skeptic in philosophy and a satirist in everything. His
agnosticism (to use a modern term) is shown by his saying that people
need only know three things — namely, what is the nature of things,
how we are related to them, and what we can gain from them. But as our
knowledge of things must always be subjective and unreal, we can only
live in a state of suspended judgment. He wrote numerous works both in
prose and poetry. The most celebrated of his poems were the satiric
compositions called silli, a word of somewhat doubtful etymology, but
which undoubtedly describes metrical compositions of a character at
once ludicrous and sarcastic. The invention of this species of poetry
is ascribed to Xenophones of Colophon. The Silli of Timon were in
three books, in the first of which he spoke in his own person, and the
other two are in the form of a dialogue between the author and
Xenophanes of Colophon, in which Timon proposed questions to which
Xenophanes replied at length. The subject was a sarcastic account of
the tenets of all philosophers, living and dead — an unbounded field
for skepticism and satire. They were in hexameter verse, and from the
way in which they are mentioned by the ancient writers, as well as
from the few fragments of them which have come down to us, it is
evident that they were admirable productions. (Diog. Laert. ix. 12,
109-155; Euseb. Praep. Ev. xiv. p. 761).

Phenomenology and Time-Consciousness

Edmund Husserl, founder of the phenomenological movement, employs the
term "phenomenology" in its etymological sense as the activity of
giving an account (logos) of the way things appear (phainomenon).
Hence, a phenomenology of time attempts to account for the way things
appear to us as temporal or how we experience time. Phenomenology
offers neither metaphysical speculation about time's relation to
motion (as does Aristotle), nor the psychological character of time's
past and future moments (as does Augustine), nor
transcendental-cognitive presumptions about time as a mind-dependent
construct (as does Kant). Rather, it investigates the essential
structures of consciousness that make possible the unified perception
of an object that occurs across successive moments. In its nuanced
attempts to provide an account of the form of intentionality
presupposed by all experience, the phenomenology of time-consciousness
provides important contributions to philosophical issues such as
perception, memory, expectation, imagination, habituation,
self-awareness, and self-identity over time.Within the
phenomenological movement, time-consciousness is central. The most
fundamental and important of all phenomenological problems,
time-consciousness pervades Husserl's theories of constitution,
evidence, objectivity and inter-subjectivity. Within continental
philosophy broadly construed, the movements of existential
phenomenology, hermeneutics, post-modernism and post-structuralism, as
well as the work of Martin Heidegger, Jean-Paul Sartre, Maurice
Merleau-Ponty, Hans George Gadamer and Jacques Derrida, all return in
important ways to Husserl's theory of time-consciousness. After
devoting considerable attention to Husserl's reflections on
time-consciousness, this article treats the developments of the
phenomenological account of time in Heidegger, Sartre, and
Merleau-Ponty.

1. Husserl, Phenomenology, and Time-Consciousness

Phenomenology maintains that consciousness, in its very nature as
activity, is intentional. In its care for and interest in the world,
consciousness transcends itself and attends to the world by a myriad
of intentional acts, e.g., perceiving, remembering, imagining,
willing, judging, etc.—hence Husserl's claim that intentional
consciousness is correlated (that is, co-related) to the world.
Although the notion of intentionality includes the practical
connotations of willful interest, it fundamentally denotes the
relation conscious has to objects in the world. Of these many modes of
intentionality, time-consciousness arguably constitutes the central
one for understanding consciousness's intentional, transcending
character. Put differently, time-consciousness underscores these other
intentional acts because these other intentional acts presuppose or
include the consciousness of internal time. For this and other
reasons, Husserl, in his On the Phenomenology of the Consciousness of
Internal Time (1893-1917) (1991), deemed time-consciousness the most
"important and difficult of all phenomenological problems" (PCIT, No.
50, No. 39). Together with Analyses Concerning Passive and Active
Syntheses (2001), Cartesian Meditations (1997) and Die 'Bernaur
Manuskripte' über das Zeitbewußtseins 1917/18 (2001), this work seeks
to account for this fundamental form of intentionality that the
experience of temporal (e.g., spatial and auditory) and non-temporal
(e.g., mathematical and logical) objects alike presupposes.

All experience entails a temporal horizon, according to phenomenology.
This claim seems indisputable: we rush, we long, we endure, we plan,
we reminisce, we perceive, we speak, we listen, etc. To highlight the
difficulty and importance of explaining the structures of
consciousness that make possible the experience of time, Husserl, like
his contemporaries Henri Bergson and William James, favored the
example of listening to a melody. For a melody to be a melody, it must
have distinguishable though inseparable moments. And for consciousness
to apprehend a melody, its structure must have features capable of
respecting these features of temporal objects. Certainly, we can
"time" the moments of a temporal object, a melody, with discrete
seconds (measured by clocks). But this scientific and psychological
account of time, which, following Newton, considers time as an empty
container of discrete, atomistic nows, is not adequate to the task of
explaining how consciousness experiences a temporal object. In this
case of Newtonian time, each tone spreads its content out in a
corresponding now but each now and thus each tone remains separated
from every other. Newtonian time can explain the separation of moments
in time but not the continuity of these moments. Since temporal
objects, like a melody or a sentence, are characterized by and
experienced as a unity across a succession, an account of the
perception of a temporal object must explain how we synthesize a
flowing object in such a way that we (i) preserve the position of each
tone without (ii) eliminating the unity of the melody or (iii)
relating each tone by collapsing the difference in the order between
the tones.

Bergson, James and Husserl realized that if our consciousness were
structured in such a way that each moment occurred in strict
separation from every other (like planks of a picket fence), then we
never could apprehend or perceive the unity of our experiences or
enduring objects in time otherwise than as a convoluted patchwork. To
avoid this quantitative view of time as a container, Husserl's
phenomenology attempts to articulate the conscious experience of
lived-time as the prerequisite for the Newtonian, scientific notion of
time's reality as a march of discrete, atomistic moments measured by
clocks and science. In this way, Husserl's approach to
time-consciousness shares much in common with these popular nineteenth
Century treatments of time-consciousness. Yet to appreciate fully
Husserl's account of time-consciousness—the uniqueness of his
contribution beyond other popular nineteenth Century accounts
(deWarren 2008), and the priority he affords it in his own thinking—we
first must understand phenomenology's methodological device, the
phenomenological reduction.
a. Phenomenological Reduction and Time-consciousness

Husserl believed that every experience for intentional conscious has a
temporal character or background. We experience spatial objects, both
successive (e.g., a passing automobile) and stationary (e.g., a
house), as temporal. We do not, on the other hand, experience all
temporal objects (e.g., an imagined sequence or spoken sentence) as
spatial. For the phenomenologist, even non-temporal objects (e.g.,
geometrical postulates) presuppose time because we experience their
timeless character over time; for example, it takes time for me to
count from one to five although these numbers themselves remain
timeless, and it takes some a long time to understand and appreciate
the force of timeless geometrical postulates (PCIT § 45; see Brough
1991). To this point, common sense views of time may find Husserl
agreeable. Such agreement ceases, however, for those who expect
Husserl to proclaim that time resembles an indefinite series of nows
(like seconds) passing from the future through the present into the
past (as a river flows from the top of a mountain into a lake). This
common sense conception of time understands the future as not-yet-now,
the past as no-longer-now, and the present as what now-is, a thin,
ephemeral slice of time. Such is the natural attitude's view of time,
the time of the world, of measurement, of clocks, calendars, science,
management, calculation, cultural and anthropological history, etc.
This common sense view is not the phenomenologist's, who suspends all
naïve presuppositions through the reduction.

Phenomenology's fundamental methodological device, the
"phenomenological reduction," involves the philosopher's bracketing of
her natural belief about the world, much like in mathematics when we
bracket questions about whether numbers are mind-independent objects.
This natural belief Husserl terms the "natural attitude," under which
label he includes dogmatic scientific and philosophical beliefs, as
well as uncritical, every-day, common sense assumptions. Not a denial
of the external world, like Descartes methodologically proposed, the
phenomenological reduction neutralizes these dimensions of the natural
attitude towards experience in order to examine more closely
experience and its objects just as they appear to conscious experience
(Ideas I §§ 44-49; Sokolowski 2000). Put less technically, one could
consider phenomenology a critical rather than habitual or dogmatic
approach to understanding the world. To call phenomenology a critical
enterprise means that it is an enterprise guided by the goal of
faithfully describing what experience gives us—thus phenomenology's
famed return to the things themselves—rather than defaulting to what
we with our dogmas and prejudices expect from experience—thus
phenomenology's famed self-description as a "pressupositionless
science" (Logical Investigations)

That the phenomenologist suspends her natural attitude means that a
phenomenology of time bypasses the inquiry into both natural time
considered as a metaphysical entity and scientific world time
considered as a quantitative construct available for observation and
necessary for calculation (PCIT § 2). Without prejudice to the
sciences, the reduction also suspends all philosophical
presuppositions about time's metaphysical, psychological or
transcendental-cognitive nature. Hence, the phenomenological reduction
enables Husserl to examine the structures of consciousness that allow
us to apprehend and thus characterize the modes of temporal objects
appearing as now, past or future. As Husserlians often express it,
Husserl concerns himself not with the content of an object or event in
time (e.g., listening to a sentence) but with how an object or event
appears as temporal (Brough 1991).

As this discussion about the effect of the reduction on Husserl's
account of time implies, Husserl distinguishes three levels of time
for our consideration: (3) world[ly] or objective time; (2)
personalistic or subjective time; and (1) the consciousness of
internal time. We can make assessments and measurements, e.g.,
declaring things simultaneous or enduring, at the level of objective
time only because we experience a succession of mental states in our
subjective conscious life. Our awareness of objective time thus
depends upon our awareness of subjective time. We are aware of
subjective time, however, as a unity across succession of mental
states because the consciousness of internal time provides a
consciousness of succession that makes possible the apprehension and
unification of successive mental states (PCIT No. 40; Sokolowski
2000).

Husserl's contention that all experience presupposes (1) at first
appears as an exhaustively subjective denial of time's reality,
particularly in light of the reduction. Moreover, since we believe
that natural time precedes and will outlast our existence, we tend to
consider (3) more fundamental than (1). As such, some may find
Husserl's privileging of (1) counterintuitive (Sokolowski 2000). Of
course, such a passively received attitude or belief about time and
our place therein amounts to cultural prejudice in favor of the
scientific view of human beings as mere physical entities subject to
the relentless march of time. A brief example may help us better
understand Husserl's objective and thus dispel these reservations:
When listening to a fifty minute lecture (level 3), one may experience
it as slow or as fast (level 2). Still, each listener's consciousness
has a structure (level 1) that makes it possible for her to apprehend
(3) and (2). This structure in (1) functions in such a way that each
listener can agree about the objective duration of the lecture while
disagreeing about their subjective experience of it. If (1) changed
subjectively as (2), then we never could reach a consensus or
objective agreement about (3). For the phenomenologist, who seeks to
give an account (logos) of the way things appear as temporal, the
manifest phenomenon of time is not fundamentally worldly/objective or
psychological/subjective time (Brough, 1991). Concerned with how
temporal phenomena manifest themselves to conscious perceivers, the
phenomenologist examines (1), namely the structures of intentional
consciousness that make possible the disclosure of time as a worldly
or psychological phenomenon. To begin to explain the priority of (1),
Husserl highlights how the now and past are not a part of time
considered according to the natural attitude view of (3) or (2).
b. Phenomenology, Experienced Time and Temporal Objects

It should be clear already that Husserl does not privilege the
Newtonian view of time as a series of now, past and future moments
considered as "things," containers for "things," or points on the
imagined "time-line" (PCIT §§ 1-2, No. 51). Conversely, he considers
the present, past, and future as modes of appearing or modes by which
we experience things and events as now, no longer (past) or not yet
(future). For example, though I experience the event of the space
shuttle Columbia's explosion as past, the past is not some
metaphysical container of which the Columbia shuttle tragedy is a
part; the past is the mode in which the Columbia shuttle tragedy
appears to me. This does not mean that Husserl views time as something
that flows willy-nilly, or that the time of the Columbia shuttle
tragedy is contemporaneous with the time of your reading this entry.
Husserl acknowledges that "time is fixed and that time flows" (PCIT §
31, No. 51). When we count from one to ten, two always occurs after
one and before three regardless of how far our counting progresses;
likewise, the temporal event of the Columbia shuttle tragedy occupies
an unchanging, determinate temporal position in world-time, "frozen"
between what came before and after it, ever-receding into the past of
world time (history) without losing its place. Phenomenology helps to
clarify the common sense understanding of time as a container—a
metaphysical placeholder—that contains events. This common sense
understanding of time as a container persists because we forget that
we first understand these fixed temporal relations and position thanks
to the modes of appearing, namely now, past and future (Brough, 1991).

As Husserlians put it, Husserl considers the now as conscious life's
absolute point of orientation from which things appearing as past and
future alter (PCIT §§ 7, 14, 31, 33). Since the now and past are not a
part of time but the modes by which things appear to me as temporal,
each now that becomes past can accommodate many events simultaneously,
e.g., one may remember where one was when the shuttle exploded, what
anchor man one might have heard, what channel one was watching, who
one was with, etc. (PCIT § 33; Brough 2005). The very fact that this
experience becomes part of one's conscious life implies that one
experienced it in the now. Moreover, I can remember what events
preceded and succeeded this tragedy, e.g., that my grade-school class
filed into the auditorium or that my teacher sniffled as she led us
back to our classroom. The very fact that one can place the event in
relation to preceding and succeeding events implies both that one
never experiences the now in isolation from the past and future and
that one experiences the relation between now, past and future without
collapsing these three modes of appearing (PCIT § 31).

These reflections on temporal objects and experienced time indicate
that the flow of our conscious life is the condition for the
possibility of the disclosure of temporal objects and experienced
time, a condition that begins from the privileged standpoint of the
now, which, again, nevertheless occurs in an interplay with past and
future rather than in isolation from them. More than this descriptive
account of some essential features of time's appearance, however,
Husserl's phenomenology of time-consciousness concerns itself with the
structure of the act of perceiving that allows us to apprehend a
temporal object as unified across its manifold moments. Indeed, our
preliminary reflections on time depend upon a series of successive
events but a succession of experiences or perceptions is not yet an
experience or perception of succession. Husserl turns his attention
toward (1)—the transcendental level of internal time-consciousness—in
order to explain how (2) and (3) become constituted conscious
experiences.
c. Phenomenology Not to be Confused with Augustine's Theory of Time

When we say that Husserl focuses his attention on (2) and (1), we mean
that his writings on time-consciousness attempt to explain how time
and experienced time appear to consciousness. This explanation begins,
for Husserl, by confronting the paradox of how to account for the
unity of a process of change that continues for an extended period of
time, a unity that develops in succession, e.g., listening to a
sentence or watching a film (PCIT No. 50). To unravel this theoretical
knot, Husserl believed, philosophy must realize that, beyond the
temporality of the object, the act of perceiving has its own temporal
character (PCIT No. 32). Consider the phrase, "Peter Piper picked a
pack of pickled peppers" at the word, "picked." In this example, I
hear "picked" yet somehow must hold onto "Peter" and "Piper" in just
the order in which I originally apprehended them. Husserl contends
that insofar as a temporal object such as a sentence occurs across
time in a now that includes what is no longer, consciousness too must
extend beyond the now; indeed, if all I heard were different words in
each new now without connecting them to past related words, then I
never would hear a sentence but only a barrage of sounding words.
Consciousness not only must extend beyond the now, but it also must
extend in such a way that it preserves the determinate temporal order
of the words and modifies their orientation to the now. Indeed, if I
preserved the words in a simultaneous or haphazard order, then I never
would hear a sentence but only a jumble of words.

To account for the unity of succession in a way that avoids these
difficulties, Husserl will not explain consciousness' extension beyond
the now in an act of perception by merely importing a view of
Newtonian time into the mind or translating such a view of natural
time into a transcendental condition of the mind. This was Kant's
dogmatic failure in the "Transcendental Aesthetic" of his Critique of
Pure Reason (Crisis 104 ff.). Nor will Husserl's account of the
"perception" of a temporal object conclude, as Augustine's did, that
consciousness extends beyond the now thanks to its "present of things
no longer" and a "present of thing yet to come" that echoed
Augustine's description of the soul's distention (PCIT § 1; Kelly
2005). Such an Augustinian account of "the present of thing no longer"
cannot explain the perception of a temporal object because it traps
the heard contents in the now (as a present of things no longer
remains present nevertheless). Augustine's notion of a "present of
things no longer" can explain consciousness' extension beyond the now
only as a result of a memorial recollection. But memory drags past
nows—and the contents occurring therein—back into the present, thereby
rendering past moments simultaneous with a present moment and
effectively halting time's flow. Any account of temporal awareness
that explains consciousness'' extension beyond the now by recourse to
memory conflates the acts of memory and perception and thus proves
inadequate to explain the conscious perception of a temporal object.
Memory gives not the perception of a temporal object but always only
what it is capable of giving: a memory (PCIT No. 50; Brough, 1991).

With respect to this problem of conflating memory and perception,
Husserl indicates two consequences. First, the distention of the now
through memory leaves us with a situation where, as Husserl admits, at
any given moment I perceive only the actually present word of the
sentence; hence, the whole of the enduring sentence appears in an act
that is predominantly memory and only marginally perception (PCIT §
12). Experience tells us, however, that we "perceive" (hear) the whole
sentence across its present (now) and absent (past or future) words
rather than hearing its present word and remembering (or expecting)
the others (PCIT § 7). Indeed, something quite different occurs when I
hear a sentence and when I remember the event of the Columbia shuttle
tragedy. Second, having conflated the past and the present by making
recourse to memory as a means to explain consciousness' extension
beyond the now, such a theory violates the law of non-contradiction,
for the mode of the present cannot present something as past, but only
as present, and vice versa (PCIT No. 14). In short, on such
Augustinian theory, everything remains 'now' and nothing can overcome
that fact (Brough 1993; Kelly 2005).

The problem of the consciousness of time becomes properly
phenomenological when Husserl asks how one explains the original
consciousness of the past upon which one can recognize an object as
past rather remembering a past moment. Put differently, the problem of
time becomes phenomenological when Husserl begins to seek an account
of the generation of a sense or consciousness of pastness upon which
(the) perception (of a temporal object) and memory depend. Indeed, to
claim that we remember something presupposes the very sense of the
past we are trying to explain (Sokolowski 2000). An adequate account
of the perception of a temporal object first requires a discussion of
how consciousness extends beyond the now, i.e., an account of the
difference between the consciousness of succession and the remembrance
of a succession of consciousnesses (PCIT No. 47; Brough 1972).
d. Phenomenology and the Consciousness of Internal Time: Living-Present

Unlike previous theories addressing the consciousness of time, Husserl
shifts his attention from an account of what is perceived as temporal
to an account of the temporality of that which does the perceiving.
Put differently, he tightens his focus, so to speak, recognizing that
when one perceives a temporal object one also experiences the flow of
the intentional act of perception (Brough 1991). In order to solve the
aforementioned paradox of how to account for the unity of a temporal
object over the succession of its parts (e.g., the sentence across it
many words), Husserl turns his attention to consciousness' lived
experience, to the structures of consciousness at level (1) that make
possible the unification of the manifold moments of that act of
perception at level (2) and the perceived object at level (3) (PCIT
No. 41).

To explain how consciousness extends beyond the now in its act of
perception, Husserl begins to think that consciousness itself must
have a "width." And this is just to say that consciousness must have a
sense of the past and a sense of the future to begin with (Sokolowski
2000). To this end, Husserl attempts to argue that consciousness
extends to capture past moments of experience and temporal objects
therein by "retaining" and "protending" the elapsed and yet to come
phases of its experience and thereby the past words that do not
presently exist (when I reach a certain point in listening to a
sentence) yet remain related to the present experience (PCIT, No. 54;
Zahavi, 2000). Rather than attempt to explain the unity of a
succession of discrete consciousnesses correlated with a succession of
discrete moments in a temporal object, Husserl attempts to explain the
consciousness of succession that makes possible the apprehension of a
succession of consciousnesses.

Husserl thus speaks almost exclusively of consciousness'
living-present, and he characterizes this life of consciousness with
three distinguishable yet inseparable moments: primal impression,
retention, and protention. This tripartite form or intentional
structure of the living-present should not be thought of as discrete,
independently occurring pieces in a process (or procession). Such an
atomistic view of the living-present's structure will not work. Were
the moments of the living-present thought as such, we would have to
remember or re-present each past state of consciousness. Not a
knife-edged moment, Husserl describes the life of consciousness, the
living-present, as extended like a comets tail, or saddle-back, to use
the image William James preferred, moments comprising an identity in a
manifold (James) (PCIT § 10).

Consciousness is no longer a punctual box with several acts
functioning in it simultaneously and directing themselves to the
appropriate instances of the object. Admittedly, it is difficult to
talk of this level of the consciousness of internal time, and Husserl
himself claims we are reduced to metaphors (PCIT §§ 34-36). In a
perhaps inadequate metaphor, Husserl's theory of the living-present
might be thought of as presenting a picture of consciousness as a
"block" with relevant "compartments" distinguished by "filters" or
"membranes," each connected to and aware of the other. In this life of
consciousness, Husserl maintains, consciousness apprehends itself and
that which flows within it. As Husserl describes it, retention
perceives the elapsed conscious phase of experience at level (1) and
thereby the past of the experience at level (2) and the past of the
object at level (3). The moments of retention and protention in the
tripartite form of consciousness that is the living-present make
possible consciousness' extension beyond the now in such a way that
avoids the problem of simultaneity and enables consciousness to attend
determinately to the temporal phases of the object of perception.
Unlike Augustine's notion of a present of things no longer, which
remembered or re-presented a past content in the now, Husserl draws a
distinction between memory and retention. On the one hand, memory
provides a "consciousness of the [instant] that has been" (PCIT § 12).
On the other hand, retention "designates the intentional relation of
phase of consciousness to phase of consciousness" (PCIT No. 50), i.e.,
a "consciousness of the past of the [experience]" (PCIT No. 47) and
thereby the instant of the object that has been.

This distinction does not mean that memory differs from retention
merely as a matter of temporal distance, the former reaching back
further into time. Rather, Husserl draws a structural distinction
between memory and retention: The former is an active, mediated,
objectifying awareness of a past object, while the latter is a
passive, immediate, non-objectifying, conscious awareness of the
elapsed phase of conscious experience. First, memory reveals itself to
be an act under the voluntary auspices of consciousness, whereas
retention occurs passively. Second, while memories occur faster or
slower and can be edited or reconstructed, retention occurs
"automatically" and cannot be varied at one's whim (though it can, at
level 2, be experienced as faster or slower, as noted above in our
example of listening to a lecture). Third, remembering re-produces a
completed temporal object, whereas retention works at completing the
consciousness of a temporal object, unifying its presence and absence.
Fourth, as the representation of a new intentional object, memory is
an act of presenting something as past, as absent, whereas the
retention that attempts to account for the perception of an object
over time constitutes an intuition of that which has just passed and
is now in some sense absent, an act of presenting something as a unity
in succession. Fifth, memory provides us with a new intentional object
not now intuitively presented as the thing itself "in person"—e.g.,
remembering my friend's face when she is absent from me in this
moment—whereas retention accounts for the perception across time of an
object now intuitively presented for me—e.g., the progressive clarity
of my perception of my friends face as she approaches me from the
street. Sixth, despite memory's character as a presenting act, when it
represents to me my friend's face it represents it in the now with a
change in temporal index or a qualification of the remembered object
as past, whereas retention holds on to that which is related to my
present perception in a mode of absences (e.g., as when I hear
"picked" while retaining "Peter Piper"). Seventh, memory depends upon
or is "founded" upon retention as the condition of its very
possibility, for memory could never represent an object as a completed
whole if retention did not first play its role in constituting across
time the object now remembered (PCIT, No 50; Zahavi; Brough 1991.

To explain time-consciousness at level (1), then, Husserl comes to
favor the theory that consciousness of the past and future must be
explained by the intentional direction of retention and protention to
the past and future of consciousness' lived experience rather than a
mode of memorial apprehension that issues from the now to animate past
impressions. Returning to our above example of listening to a
sentence, when I hear "picked," I do not remember "Peter Piper."
Rather, I intuitively perceive the sentence as a temporally
differentiated yet nonetheless related to the current [of this]
experience. To be sure, the words do not occur simultaneously; each
word passes and yet remains relevant to the presently lived
experience. The interpreter of Husserl must take care at this point
not to read the turn to consciousness as entailing a loss of the
perceived; rather, what is retained is precisely the impressional
moment as experienced in that moment and having been retained in this
experience. In fact, this account allows that the words, "Peter
Piper," have passed, metaphysically, but remain on hand in this
apprehension of "picked" thanks to consciousness' retention of its
past phase of experience wherein it heard the related words, "Peter
Piper." As a moment of the intentional relationship between the phases
of consciousness' living-present, retention "automatically"
experiences its intuitively present conscious life and determinately
provides a consciousness of the past of the experience.

Husserl's account of the living-present ultimately articulates the
condition for the possibility of all objectifying acts, a condition
itself not objectified. As such, the discussion of retention brings us
to the bottom line, the final and most difficult layer of intentional
analysis, namely consciousness' double-intentionality (PCIT No. 54).
e. The Living-Present's Double-Intentionality

The living-present marks the essence of all manifestation, for in its
automatic or passive self-givenness the living-present makes possible
the apprehension of the elapsed phases of the life of consciousness
and thereby the elapsed moments of the transcendent spatio-temporal
object of which the conscious self is aware. This is possible, Husserl
argues, because the "flow" (PCIT § 37) of conscious life enjoys two
modes of simultaneously operative intentionality. One mode of
intentionality, which he terms Langsintentionalität, or horizontal
intentionality, runs along protention and retention in the flow of the
living-present. The other mode of intentionality, which Husserl terms
the Querintentionalität, or transverse intentionality, runs from the
living-present to the object of which consciousness is aware (PCIT No.
45; Brough 1991).

Husserl explains the unity of these two intentional modes as a
consciousness wherein the Querintentionalität is capable of intending
a temporal object across its successive appearings because the
Langsintentionalität provides consciousness' self-awareness and
awareness of its experiences over time. As an absolute flowing
identity in a manifold—of primal impression, retention and
protention—the stream of conscious life in the living-present
constitutes the procession of words in the sentence that appears and
is experienced sequentially in accordance with the temporally distinct
position of each word. Husserl thus describes consciousness as having
a "double-intentionality": the Querintentionalität, which objectively
and actively grasps the transcendent object—the heard sentence—and the
Langsintentionalität, which non-objectively and automatically or
passively grasps consciousness' lived-experience—the flow of the
living-present (PCIT No. 45). That I hear the words of the
fifty-minute lecture and feel myself inspired or bored is possible
only on the basis of my self-awareness or consciousness of internal
time.

Though Husserl terms this consciousness that is the special form of
horizontal intentionality in the living-present a "flow," he employs
the label "metaphorically" because the living-present's flow manifests
itself, paradoxically, as a non-temporal temporalizing (PCIT § 32, No.
54). That the living-present temporalizes means that it grasps its
past and future as absent without reducing its past and future to the
present, thus freezing consciousness temporal flow. To capture
Husserl's image of a non-temporal flow more aptly, some commentators
prefer the image of shimmering (Sokolowski 1974). As Husserl himself
admits that we have no words for this time-constituting phenomenon,
the image of shimmering seems a more appropriate descriptor, for
Husserl understand the living-present paradoxically as a
standing-streaming (PCIT No. 54). Though non-temporal, Husserl assigns
the living-present a time-constituting status, for this absolute
consciousness makes possible the disclosure of temporal objects
insofar as it makes possible the disclosure of consciousness''
temporality by accounting for our original sense of the past and of
the future in the retentional and protentional dimension of the
living-present (PCIT § 37).

Husserl must characterize the flow as non-temporal. If that which
makes possible the awareness of a unity in succession itself occurred
in succession, then we would need to account for the apprehension of
the succession unique to the living-present, and so on and so forth,
ad infnitum (PCIT, No. 39, No. 50). An infinite regress of
consciousness, however, would mean that we never would achieve an
answer to the question of what makes possible the consciousness of
time. In order to avoid an infinite regress, then, and in accordance
with experience, which tells us that we do apprehend time and temporal
objects, Husserl describes the living-present's flow as a non-temporal
temporalizing. This argument in favor of the non-temporal character of
the living-present brings us to the two senses in which the special
form of intentional consciousness is an absolute consciousness.

First, Husserl characterizes the living-present as absolute because a
non-temporal consciousness that needs no other consciousness behind it
to account for its self-apprehension is just that, absolute, the
bottom line. Second, as the absolute bedrock of intentional analysis
(Sokolowski 2000), the absolute flow as a mode of intentionality
peculiar to the living-present conveys a move away from a model of
awareness or intentionality dependent upon a subject's relation to an
object. If philosophy construes all awareness according to an
object-intentionality model of awareness, i.e., the dyadic relation of
a subject (knower) to an object (known), then it can never account for
the relation between knower and known in the case of
self-consciousness. For example, when I am writing this entry, I am
conscious of the computer on which I am typing, as well as myself as
the one typing. To explain, philosophically, however, how I apprehend
myself as the one typing, the dyadic object-intentionality model of
awareness will not suffice. The issue, of course, concerns
self-awareness and thus philosophy's standard understanding of
self-identity over time.

In the classic treatment of self-consciousness, John Locke in his
Essay Concerning Human Understanding accounts for self-identity over
time thanks to consciousness' reflective grasp on its past states.
Locke establishes this account by distinguishing (i) simple ideas of
sense directed toward (iia) objects from (i) simple ideas of
reflection directed toward (iib) the self. In both cases, (i) knows
(iia) and (iib) in the same manner insofar as (i) takes (iia) and
(iib) as objects while (i) itself goes unnoticed or unaccounted for.
Locke's account thus turns the self or subject into an object without
ever really presenting the self. Even if a simple idea of reflection
directs itself toward the self, one self (the reflecting self) remains
subject while the other self (the reflected self) becomes the object.
In self-awareness, however, no difference, distance or separation
exists between the knower and the known. Forced to apprehend itself as
an object in an exercise of simple sense reflection, the Lockean
subject never coincides with itself, caught as it is in a sequence of
epistemic tail chasing (Locke, 1959 I; Zahavi, 1999). Such tail
chasing, moreover, entails an infinite regress of selves themselves
never self-aware. Locke's failure stems from his restriction of
intentionality to the model of object-awareness, the dyadic model of
awareness, where all awareness requires a subject knowing an object.

Husserl's account of the unity of (1) this dynamic, shimmering
living-present makes possible the consciousness of (2) psychological
or subjective time and (3) worldly or objective time provides an
alternative to the traditional account of awareness as merely an
objectivating relation of a subject to object (Brough, 1991;
Sokolowski, 1973; Zahavi, 1999). By retaining the elapsed phase of
consciousness and thereby the past of the object, retention unifies
consciousness' flow and the time-span of the perceived temporal
object, thus providing at once a non-objective self-awareness and an
objective awareness of spatio-temporal entities.

Despite the heady accomplishments of Husserl's theory of
time-consciousness as founded in the living-present's
double-intentionality, contemporary phenomenologists still disagree
about Husserl's discovery. Some commentators, under the influence of
Derrida's critique of Husserl's theory of the living-present (Derrida
1973), express reservations over the legitimacy of the status of the
living-present as an absolute, non-temporal temporalizing, arguing
that it amounts to a mythical construct (Evans, 1990). Yet decisive
refutations of these criticisms, based on their insensitivity to the
nuances of Husserl's theory, are plenty (Brough, 1993; Zahavi, 1999).
Still, even those who accept its legitimacy disagree about how best to
explain the relation between levels (1) and (2) of time-consciousness
(see Zahavi, 1999; Brough 2002). Interestingly, the very complexities
and details of Husserl's theory of internal time-consciousness, which
remain a central point of debate for contemporary phenomenologists,
proved germane to phenomenology's development and alteration
throughout the Twentieth Century.
2. Heidegger on Phenomenology and Time

If the double-intentionality of Husserl's theory of consciousness
proves fruitful, it is because it allows us to given an account of the
temporality of individual experiences (e.g., listening to a sentence)
as well as the temporal ordering of a multiplicity of experience
(e.g., recognizing the classroom to which I return each week as the
same room differentiated over a span of time) and all of these
experiences as mine, as belonging to me. Husserl's first follower,
Martin Heidegger, took up the benefits of Husserl's theory and
developed them into his own unique brand of phenomenology. In fact,
Heidegger developed his brand of phenomenology precisely in light of
Husserl's reflections on the intentionality unique to absolute
time-constituting consciousness. As we shall see, Heidegger might put
the point more forcefully, claiming that he developed his
phenomenology in opposition to Husserl's theory of absolute
time-constituting consciousness. In any event, we can begin by
identifying a fundamental difference between Husserl and Heidegger:
Husserl emphasized the retentional side of the life of consciousness
because he was interested in cognition, which builds up over time,
while Heidegger emphasized the protentional or futural side of the
subject because he is more interested in practical activity (the "in
order to" or "for the sake of").

According to Heidegger, the essence of absolute time-constituting
consciousness amounted to a subject divorced and isolated from the
world because Husserl construed absolute consciousness as a theory
only about the a priori, presuppositionless and essential structures
of consciousness that made possible the unified perception of an
object occurring in successive moments. As an alternative to what he
considered Husserl's abstracted view of the human being, Heidegger
suggests that philosophy cannot advance a proper understanding of the
being of the human being by bracketing its and the world's existence.
Instead, we must understand the human being as being-in-the-world,
Dasein, literally there-being; we only can understand what the world
contributes to us and what we contribute to the world if we consider
each as co-dependent without reducing one to the other. To put it
differently, Husserl's transcendental phenomenology provides an
"upward" oriented approach while Heidegger's ontological phenomenology
provides a "downward" oriented approach, and their approaches stem
from their different views of time (Macann 1991).

Heidegger maintains that Husserl's phenomenology proves inadequate to
the task of understanding Dasein's relation to the world because
Husserl fails to articulate adequately the relation between
consciousness, or being, and time. Specifically, Husserl's
construction of the fundamental form of intentionality as absolute
time-constituting consciousness remains, according to Heidegger,
prisoner to the bias of pure presence. As Heidegger puts it, the bias
of pure presence entails the reduction of "being" to the moment that
"is" fully articulated in the conscious now at the expense of absence,
i.e., what falls outside the conscious now, i.e., the moments of past
and future. Such a view of consciousness, Heidegger insists,
capitulates to the prejudice of presence because it implies that
something can appear to consciousness only in the form of an object
now given or before one in person and unified by consciousness across
its manifold moments (BT, § 67c). At a general level of
intentionality, Heidegger wants to correct Husserl's overly cognitive
assessment of the subject. For Heidegger, an intention or intentio
literally conveys a sense of "stretching out" or "straining"
(Heidegger 1925). For Heidegger, Dasein is being in the world, a being
with goals and projects toward which it comports itself or toward
which it stretches out. The projects toward which it stretches itself
makes Dasein fundamentally futural in its intentional directedness
toward the world.

Having failed to investigate the practical comportment of the subject,
Heidegger argues, Husserl's view of consciousness seems to reduce all
awareness to awareness of an object in the present, thus reducing the
past to the present and consciousness' self-awareness to an object
among objects (Dahlstron 1999). Together, these related consequences
motivate Heidegger's conclusion that Husserl fails to perform the
phenomenological reduction completely. Or, better, Heidegger concluded
that the performance of the reduction adulterates the view of the
subject and thus should be abandoned. Heidegger's version of
phenomenology thus does not begin from a phenomenological reduction
although competing views of this matter exist (Crowell 1990; Blattner
1999).

As mentioned already, Heidegger's very conception of Dasein as
co-dependent with the world displays, he believes, his difference from
Husserl's view of the human being as absolute time-constituting
consciousness. Put negatively and in terms of his History of the
Concept of Time (1925), Heidegger criticizes Husserl for not
considering fully the existence of the human being, bracketing its
existence in favor of an analysis of the essential features of
consciousness' intentional structures (Heidegger 1925). Put positively
and in terms of his Being and Time (1927), Heidegger claims that
Dasein's essence is its existence (BT § 9). Hence, one might claim,
Heidegger introduces the movement of existential phenomenology, a
development in phenomenology concerned with the very existence of the
human being, which we have seen is termed Dasein by Heidegger.

Concern with Dasein's existence as its essence does necessarily reduce
to the assumption that Heidegger takes existence in the sense of
biological or genetic determinants. Though such factors may condition
Dasein's manner of existing, they do not determine it, according to
Heidegger. Dasein is neither fully determined nor uninhibitedly free
(BT 144). She exists in the mode of her possibilities and her
possibilities are motivated by environmental influences, her skills
and interests, etc. (Blattner, 1999). Dasein, for Heidegger, is thus a
being concerned about her being, reckoning with the world through her
activities and commitments. Centering his existential phenomenology on
how the world appears to a being concerned about its being,
Heidegger's inquiry starts from how Dasein comports herself as
manifest in the everyday activities of her life, activities to which
she commits herself or about which she cares (BT § 7). Heideggerian
phenomenology thus begins from an interest in how the world appears to
a being that cares about its existence, an intentional being but one
who, in intending the world, is primarily practical and secondarily
contemplative. Less concerned with the Husserlian search for
presuppositionless certainty and essential structures, Heidegger's
existential phenomenology amounts to an interpretive description or
hermeneutics that attempts to express the unexpressed (or articulate
the pre-predicative) mode of Dasein's engagement with the world (BT §
7). And this manner of engagement finds its fullest expression in
Heidegger's account of Dasein's temporality.
a. Heidegger and Dasein's Temporality

The notion of Dasein's projects proves crucial to understanding
Heidegger's analysis of Dasein's temporality and its difference from
Husserl's phenomenology. In discussing Dasein's projects, Heidegger
takes the term etymologically; to pro-ject means to put out there or
to put forward. That Dasein projects itself in the world implies
something fundamental about it. Dasein finds itself thrown into a
world historical circumstance and projects itself in that world. Born
(thrown) into a time and culture not of one's choosing, Dasein always
already exists in the world and suffers some limitations from which
she nevertheless may wiggle free thanks to her interests and concerns
about the world and her existence therein. The way things matter to
Dasein—how she finds herself affected, in Heidegger's language—and her
skills and interest constitute different possibilities for her,
different ways of being-in-the-world. These possibilities, in turn,
manifest themselves in Dasein's projects, i.e., in how she puts
herself forward or projects or comports herself. These conditions
suggest to Heidegger that the essential mode of being in the world for
Dasein is a temporal one. Of the three temporal dimensions
characterizing Dasein, we may say: First, the fact that Dasein finds
herself thrown into a world and characterized by certain dispositions,
etc. implies a "pastness" to her being. Second, the fact she projects
herself implies a "futurity" to her being. And, third, the fact that
she finds herself busied with the world as she projects herself in an
effort to fulfill the present tasks required by the goal that is her
project implies a "presentness" to her being (Blattner 1999).

The fundamental characteristic of the being that cares about its
being, Dasein, then, is temporality. But things are not as simple (or
common-sense) as they seem thus far. Time resembles Dasein insofar as
time projects itself or stands outside itself in its future and past
without losing itself—time and Dasein thus appear ontologically
similar, or similar in their ontological structure. Since the question
concerns the being for whom its being is a concern, and since the
fundamental structure of this being is its temporality, philosophy's
very attempt to understand Dasein fundamentally concerns the relation
between being and time at a pre-predicative level of
worldly-engagement, a level prior to articulated judgment, prior to
the conscious conceptualizations of traditional metaphysics or
Husserlian phenomenology; hence, the title of Heidegger's famous work,
Being and Time (Richardson 1967). In Heidegger's terms, an "authentic"
understanding of the being concerned about its being rests upon a
proper understanding of that being's temporality.

To understand Dasein, then, Heidegger first distinguishes originary or
authentic time understood as Dasein's way of being in the world from
worldly- and ordinary-time understood inauthentically or uncritically
by the common-sense, pre-philosophical mind (BT § 80). As the labels
imply, Heidegger articulates a hierarchical structure between these
levels of time, much like Husserl's levels of time (Sokolowski 1974).
The hierarchical structure envisioned by Heidegger looks like this:
World-time grounds ordinary-time, and both in turn are grounded by
originary-time.

To establish the fundamental feature of Dasein as originary
temporality, Heidegger distances his view of Dasein's temporality from
all common sense understandings of time as a series of nows, thereby
deferring the common sense understanding of past as no-longer-now and
future as not-yet-now. His position depends on a distinction between
how time shows itself to Dasein as world-time and ordinary-time, the
latter being derivative of the former. World-time denotes the manner
in which the world appears as significant to Dasein in its everyday
reckoning with the world at a practical level through its projects.
For example, the world appears to an academic with certain
significances or importance. Objects like chalk, books, computers, and
libraries all manifest themselves with a particular value, and time
does, as well (just consider the fact that the new year begins in late
August rather than the first day of January). When I sit in my office,
the approaching time of three in the afternoon does not appear merely
as an indifferent hour on the clock. Rather, it appears to me as the
time when, according to my project, I must head to class—just as it
may appear to a postal work as the time when she should return to the
station from her route. For me, the time-span of my class does not
merely appear as seventy-five successive minutes. Rather, the
classroom time of my project appears to me as the time when I project
myself toward my students, the material for the day's discussion and
the material equipment in the class that facilitates my teaching well.
If my class begins to go poorly, however, I may become self-conscious
about how well I meet the demands of my project as a teacher. When the
focus of my attention shifts from my project to my failures, the time
of my project ceases to be my primary focus. Perhaps in this case I
shift my focus to the passing nows or seconds of each increasingly
long minute. If such a shift occurs, Heidegger might claim that I
shift from the mode of world-time to the mode of ordinary-time, the
time understood as a measurable succession of nows, seconds, minutes,
etc.

This time that measures successive nows, Heidegger deems
ordinary-time, which depends upon world-time. Heidegger distinguishes
the two by pointing out that the significance which colors world-time
goes missing in the view of ordinary time and time appears no longer
as the span of my project but the mere succession of punctual,
atomistic nows (the Newtonian scientific view of time as an empty
container or place holder). When the time-span of practical reckoning
with the world ceases for Dasein, ordinary-time emerges (BT§ 80;
Blattner 1999). The above example does not quite get Heidegger exactly
right, however, for in it I remain interested in human concerns
(except that now I am worried about them). What the example does
convey is the shift in understanding time from a mode of time as an
extended reckoning with the world laden with significance to a mode of
time considered as a purely abstract marching of moments, a view of
time most accurately associated with the mathematical and scientific
view of time (but not to the mathematician or scientist working with
this view of time).

All of these distinctions between world- and ordinary-time are meant
to elaborate Heidegger's view that as a series of projects Dasein is
no mere entity in the world but a temporal structure peculiar to its
kind of being-in-the-world that makes manifest world- and
ordinary-time. For Heidegger, the now denotes a mode of Dasein's
manner of being that discloses the appearance of the world to us,
i.e., Dasein's way of being-in-the-world. As a series of projects,
Dasein in its originary temporality is characterized by a tripartite
mode of transcendence or process (albeit a non-sequential process,
since Heidegger has distanced himself from the ordinary view of time).
First, as transcendence, as that which goes from itself and to which
the world comes, Dasein has a futural moment. Second, as
transcendence, as that which manifests itself non-objectively while
reckoning with that which stands before it, Dasein has a present
moment as the place wherein the world appears to, or manifests itself
to, that which cares about it. And, third, as transcendence, as that
to which the world comes, Dasein has a past moment because that which
comes and manifests itself comes and manifests itself to one who
always already is there (Heidegger 1927; Richardson 1967). As
transcendence, as temporality, Heidegger describes Dasein as
"ecstatic," where ecstatic means to stand out (Sokolowski 2000). As
the kind of being that is always outside itself without leaving itself
behind, Dasein is a process of separating and consolidating itself
(Sokolowski 1974). Outside of itself in the future, Dasein projects
itself and reckons with that about which it cares; outside of itself
in the present, Dasein makes manifest or present the appearance of
that to which it goes out in its interest and according to its
projects; outside of itself in the past, Dasein drags along that which
it has been, its life, which, in turn, colors its present experiences
and future projects.

This union of past, present and future as modes of originary-time in
Dasein's being-in-the-world renders Dasein authentic—one with itself
or its own—because the projection into the future makes the present
and the past part of Dasein's project—its essence is its existence.
However, insofar as I assume a project or life-orientation passively
and without realizing myself as responsible for that project, argues
Heidegger, I live inauthentically. And this is because I am engaged in
the world without a full understanding of myself within the world. Put
differently, rather than consciously make myself who I am through my
choices, I passively assume a role within society—hence the temptation
to label Heidegger an existentialist, a label the he himself rejected.

Many rhetorical differences exist between how Husserl and Heidegger
execute the phenomenological method, particularly the phenomenology of
temporality. Despite these differences, Heidegger begins his inquiry
into Dasein's temporality much like Husserl began his consideration of
absolute, time-constituting consciousness. Just as Husserl established
that neither the now nor the consciousness of the now is itself a part
of time, Heidegger begins his account of Dasein's originary
temporality with the observation that neither the now nor Dasein is
itself a part of time (BT § 62). As Heidegger puts it, as always
already being-in-the-world, Dasein's temporality is neither before nor
after nor already in terms of the way common sense understands time as
a sequence of discrete, empty nows (BT § 65). Hence, Heidegger
translates Husserl's account of the levels of time into an account of
Dasein's originary temporality. Moreover, Heidegger and Husserl
seemingly end on the same note, for Husserl describes the
living-present as a non-objectivating transcendence, an intentional
being that transcends itself toward the world, and this description
equally characterizes Heidegger's more practically oriented discussion
of Dasein's originary-temporality. Like Husserl's notion of the
living-present, Heidegger's theory of Dasein's structure as originary
temporality considers Dasein a mode of objectivating not itself
objectified, the condition for the possibility of all awareness of
objects at the levels of worldly- and ordinary-time (BT § 70).

Still, an important difference exists with respect to their
phenomenologies of time and time-consciousness. First, despite the
implicit levels of time, Heidegger employs the phenomenological
reduction quite ambivalently and ambiguously. Second, Heidegger
explicitly rejects the outcome of the phenomenological reduction as a
privileged access to absolute time-constituting consciousness. Third,
Heidegger quite unequivocally privileges the moment of the future in
his account of Dasein's originary temporality. By emphasizing Dasein's
being-in-the-world as manifest through its throwness in the world, and
its care for the world as manifest through its projects, Heidegger's
focuses on Dasein's futural character distinguishes his account from
Husserl's, for Husserl emphasized the moment of retention in the
living-present almost to the exclusion of any remarks on protention,
the anticipatory moment of the living-present. For these reasons,
Heidegger considered his phenomenology radically different from
Husserl's. In particular, Heidegger thought Husserl's overly cognitive
account of how consciousness constitutes a unified temporal object
across a succession of moments articulated only one of the many issues
surrounding the temporality of Dasein, a merely scientific or
cognitive account of how consciousness presents an object in the world
to itself. Husserl's restrictive phenomenology of time, Heidegger
argues, overlooks the existential dimension of Dasein's temporality,
how Dasein reckons with the world at a tacit level rather than how it
cognizes the world. And in particular, Heidegger thought philosophy
could assess Dasein's manner of reckoning with the world only by
examining its futural moment as manifest in the projects that
characterize Dasein's mode of existence as the ongoing realization of
its possibilities or construction of its essence.
3. Sartre and the Temporality of the "For-Itself"

Heidegger's innovative contributions to the phenomenology of time did
not go unnoticed by later phenomenologists. Both Sartre and
Merelau-Ponty adopted Heidegger's view of Dasein as
being-in-the-world, an entity whose essence is its existence. The
originality of Sartre's phenomenology of time lies not in his
reflections on time, which, as we shall see, return to some rather
pedestrian claims. Rather, Sartre's unique contribution to the
phenomenology of time lies in his understanding of how consciousness,
the "for-itself," relates to the world, the "in-itself." What in their
discussions of this fundamental mode of transcendence Husserl labeled
absolute time-constituting consciousness, and Heidegger Dasein, Sartre
termed the "for-itself." Given Husserl and Heidegger's differing views
of consciousness' mode of intentionality and its fundamental
self-transcending nature in its mode of temporality, Sartre's theory
presents an unlikely marriage of the two.

Fusing Heidegger's view of being-in-the-world with what he considered
was a greater fidelity to Husserl's notion of intentionality, Sartre
considered the being of the "for-itself" an ecstatic temporal
structure characterized by a sheer transcendence or intentionality. In
his earliest work, Transcendence of the Ego (1939), Sartre defines the
"for-itself" by intentionality, i.e., the Husserlian claim that
consciousness transcends itself (Sartre 1936). As self-transcending,
Sartre further delimits the "for-itself" as a
being-in-itself-in-the-world. The "for-itself" is a field of being
always already engaged with the world, as Heidegger expressed Dasein
as intentional and thrown. For Sartre, however, in its activity of
engaging the world the "for-itself" reveals itself as nothing, a
"no-thing," or not-the-being-of-which-it-is-conscious. Sartre further
qualifies the being of the "for-itself" that always already is engaged
with the world as a non-positional consciousness (Sartre 1936). A
non-positional consciousness always already engaged the world, Sartre
contends, consciousness does not take a position on itself but on the
world; hence, consciousness is non-positional. To evidence his point,
Sartre maintains that I, when late for a meeting and running to catch
the subway, do not primarily concern myself with myself but only have
a consciousness of the subway to be caught (Sartre 1936). Rather than
taking a position on myself as I pursue the subway, I implicitly carry
myself along as I tarry explicitly with the world. For this reason,
Sartre argues that absolute consciousness in Husserl's sense of the
living-present does not unify a temporal experience because the unity
of consciousness itself is found in the object (Sartre 1936).

This Sartrean view that the experience unifies itself not only recalls
Heidegger's insistence that Dasein is a self-consolidating process,
but also renders the notion of an absolute time-constituting
consciousness superfluous, according to Sartre. Indeed, Sartre
believed that a deep fidelity to Husserl's theory of intentionality
necessitated the abandonment of Husserl's notion of absolute
consciousness; hence, he dramatically declared that the Husserlian
notion of an absolute consciousness would mean the death of
consciousness (Sartre 1936). If one assumes, with Husserl, the notion
of a living-present characterized by the moments of retention, primal
impression and protention, Sartre argues, consciousness dies of
asphyxiation, so to speak. A consciousness divided in this way,
according to Sartre, amounts to a series of instantaneous and discrete
moments that themselves require connection. Such an instantaneous
series of consciousness amounts to a caricature of intentionality, in
Sartre's view, because this kind of consciousness cannot transcend
itself; as Sartre expresses it, an internally divided consciousness
will suffocate itself as it batters in vain against the window-pains
of the present without shattering them (Sartre 1943).

Sartre's critique of the living-present or absolute time-constituting
consciousness seems rather questionable. Indeed, this image leaves one
wondering whether or not Sartre derives this caricatured view of
time-consciousness from a caricature of Husserl's view of
intentionality. Nevertheless, Sartre abandons Husserl's notion of the
tripartite structure of absolute time-constituting consciousness in
favor of something like Heidegger's notion of Dasein's ecstatic
temporality and its projects and possibilities. And yet Sartres'
adaptation of Heidegger's notion of Dasein's possibilities seems
questionable as well. Recall that Dasein's possibilities were not
purely uninhibited, that Dasein did not simply choose its projects and
possibilities from a position of total freedom because of its thrown
condition and affective dispositions. Sartre's theory of the
"for-itself" seems to reject the kinds of limiting conditions entailed
by Heidegger's notion of thrownness. Indeed, Sartre's melodramatic
image of a consciousness with cabin fever implies that he cannot fully
embrace any limiting factors on how the "for-itself" fashions its
essence through its existence. For Sartre, the "for-itself" is
radically free (Blattner 1999), and the result of Sartre's reflections
on the temporality of the "for-itself" is a rather pedestrian view of
temporality.

Like Husserl and Heidegger, Sartre does not consider the past, present
and future as moments of time considered as contents or containers for
contents. Rather, each marks a mode in which the "for-itself" makes
manifest itself and the world. But Sartre's account neither surpasses
nor achieves either the rigor of Husserl's analyses or the descriptive
quality of Heidegger's. For Sartre, the past of the "for-itself"
amounts to that which was but is no longer—similar to the view of the
past itself, which Augustine rejected, as that which was but is
no-longer. By mirror opposite, the future of the "for-itself" amounts
to which it intends to be but is not yet—similar to the view of the
future itself, which Augustine rejected, as that which will be but is
not yet. And between the two, the present of the "for-itself" is that
which it is not, for its being is characterized as
being-not-the-thing-of-which-it-is-conscious—similar to the view of
the present, which Augustine rejected, as the thin, ephemeral slice of
the now.
4. Merleau-Ponty and the Phenomenology of Ambiguity: The Subject as Time

Whether Husserl's, Heidegger's or Sartre's account, for phenomenology
we cannot separate the issue of time from the issue of subjectivity's
structure. And Merleau-Ponty's discussion of temporality in
Phenomenology of Perception (1945) is no exception. It is, however,
the most exceptional case of the intertwining of these issues.
Developing Heidegger's notion of Dasein as being-in-the-world,
Merleau-Ponty emphasizes the being of Dasein as its bodily comportment
and declares the body an essentially intentional part of the subject.
Since Merleau-Ponty wants to make the body itself intentional, it is
no surprise that he intertwines time and the subject, (in)famously
remarking that "we must understand time as the subject and the subject
as time" (Merleau-Ponty 1945).

To situate Merleau-Ponty's account in this trajectory of
phenomenological theories of time, it is useful to bear in mind that
his account amounts to an innovative synthesis of Husserl and
Heidegger's understandings of time. Though the same can and has been
said of Sartre's account, Merleau-Ponty's synthesis of Husserl and
Heidegger differs from Sartre's on three important scores. First,
Merleau-Ponty rejects the dualistic ontology of the "for-itself" and
the "in-itself" that led Sartre to rashly criticize Husserl's notion
of absolute consciousness and superficially adopt Heidegger's
phenomenological account of Dasein's temporality as manifest in its
projects and possibilities." Second, Merleau-Ponty will not adopt
Heidegger's notion of Dasein's temporality as an alternative to some
purported shortcoming of Husserl's account of the mode of
intentionality unique to absolute time-constituting consciousness.
Rather, third, more sensitive to the subtleties of Husserl's theory of
absolute time-constituting consciousness in the living-present than
even Heidegger, Merleau-Ponty proposes to think the "unthought" of
Husserl's account of time through an intensified version of
Heidegger's account of the self's inseparability from time.

From the outset, the "Temporality" chapter of his Phenomenology of
Perception explicitly links time to the problem of subjectivity,
noting that the analysis of time cannot follow a "pre-established
conception of subjectivity" (Merleau-Ponty 1945). On the one hand,
Merleau-Ponty rejects the traditional idealist conception of
subjectivity in favor of an account of subjectivity in "its concrete
structure;" on the other hand, since we must seek subjectivity "at the
intersections of its dimensions," which intersections concern "time
itself and … its internal dialectic," Merleau-Ponty rejects the
realistic conception of subjectivity's states as Nacheinander, i.e.,
successive, punctual, atomistic instants that lack intersection
(Merleau-Ponty 1945). Hence, our understanding of Merleau-Ponty's
account of temporality and subjectivity's temporality should follow
the "triadic" structure of the Phenomenology: reject realism and
idealism to demonstrate the merits of phenomenology (Sallis 1971).

The intellectualist account of time as (in) the subject fails because
it extracts the subject from time and reduces time to consciousness'
quasi-eternity. The realist account of the subject as (in) time fails
because it reduces the subject to a perpetually new present without
unity to its flow. Both failures force upon the philosopher the
realization that she can resolve the problem of time and subjectivity
only by forfeiting the commitment to a "notion of time … as an object
of our knowledge." If we no longer can consider time "an object of our
knowledge," we must consider it a "dimension of our being"
(Merleau-Ponty 1945). Hence, an account of subjectivity's
temporality—of time as a dimension of our being—necessarily entails
the development of a model of bodily consciousness' pre-reflective,
non-objectifying awareness beyond the "pre-established conception of
subjectivity" that takes time as an object of our knowledge.

This means not that (1) "time is for someone" but that (2) "time is
someone" (Merleau-Ponty 1945). Phenomenologists and commentators alike
often attribute (1) to Husserl and (2) to Heidegger. This should not
surprise us given that Heidegger himself seemed to ascribe (2) to
himself and his examination of Dasein's lived-temporality in
opposition to (1) Husserl's account of how consciousness synthesizes
an object across time. Often one of Husserl's most sympathetic and
accurate commentators (in Phenomenology of Perception, at least)
Merleau-Ponty suggests that Husserl's theory of absolute
time-constituting consciousness in the living-present with its
tripartite intentional structure provided an account of how (2) made
time appear for reflection as (1). In short, Merleau-Ponty understood
better than Heidegger that Husserl's theory of the living-present
articulated a theory of lived-time. What remained unthought by Husserl
according to Merleau-Ponty was the inseparability of time and the
subject in the theory of the living-present. Hence, an ambiguity
intentionally pervades the account of time provided in Phenomenology
of Perception.

This ambiguity at hand in Phenomenology of Perception stems from
Merleau-Ponty's honest admission that one never can fully execute the
phenomenological reduction: "the most important lesson the reduction
teaches us is the impossibility of a complete reduction"
(Merleau-Ponty 1945). Merleau-Ponty does not advocate discarding the
reduction, however, as Heidegger somewhat equivocally did. Rather, he
aims to explain that Husserl merely meant the reduction as a critical
device that ensured phenomenologists would retain the stance of
presuppositionlessness, the stance of a perpetual beginner. The
motivation for Merleau-Ponty's reading of Husserl's phenomenological
reduction is the fact that philosophical reflection always depends
upon a pre-reflective lived experience, a lived experience that always
occurs in the temporal flux of bodily consciousness. Under the
influence of Heidegger's theory of Dasein's being-in-the-world,
Merleau-Ponty fashions his starting point in the exploration of time
as an attempt to provide an account of the structures of
pre-reflective consciousness that make reflection possible. And much
like Heidegger, who sought to articulate the pre-predicative element
of lived experience, Merleau-Ponty believed that these structures of
pre-reflective consciousness reveal themselves as primarily temporal.
(For his part, Merleau-Ponty will refer to this pre-reflective
consciousness as the "tacit cogito," his expression for the
non-objectivating, pre-reflective consciousness articulated throughout
the phenomenologists we have considered in this entry.) Hence, one
could argue, despite the watershed reflections Merleau-Ponty provides
on embodiment, time proves the most fundamental investigation of
Phenomenology of Perception (Sallis 1971).

Since phenomenology's task includes providing an account of the
pre-reflective', lived experience that makes possible reflection,
Merleau-Ponty turns to the structure of time as an exemplar of that
which makes explicit the implicit. For Merleau-Ponty, time provides a
model that sheds light on the structure of subjectivity because
"temporal dimensions … bear each other out and ever confine themselves
to making explicit what was implied in each, being collectively
expressive of that one single explosion or thrust that is subjectivity
itself" (Merleau-Ponty 1945). Since to make explicit that which is
implied in each moment means to transcend, to go beyond, one could say
that Merleau-Ponty's paradoxical expression means that time and the
subject share the same structure of transcendence. That time is the
subject and the subject is time means that the subject exists in a
world that always outstrips her yet remains a world lived through by
the subject (Sallis 1971). To clarify this structure, Merleau-Ponty
invokes "with Husserl the 'passive synthesis' of time," for the
passive and non-objectivating characteristic of time's structure in
(what Husserl called) the living-present marks the archetype of the
self's structure, its transcendence that makes possible self- and
object-manifestation. The Husserlian notion of double-intentionality
thus pervades Merleau-Ponty's account (Merleau-Ponty 1945).

That the matter of a passive and non-objectivating synthesis takes
Merleau-Ponty to a consideration of the structure of absolute
time-constituting consciousness' double-intentionality—its
transcendence and self-manifestation—as the structure of time we know
to be the case for two reasons. First, Merleau-Ponty tells us, "in
order to become explicitly what it is implicitly, that is,
consciousness, [the self] needs to unfold itself into multiplicity;"
second, in addition to the distinction just implied between
non-objectivating and objectivating awareness, i.e., pre-reflective'
and reflective consciousness, Merleau-Ponty elaborates this manner of
unfolding by claiming that "what we [mean] by passive synthesis [is]
that we make our way into multiplicity, but that we do not synthesize
it" as intellectualist accounts of time such as Augustine's suggest. A
synthesis of the multiplicity of time's moments and the moments of the
self must be avoided because it would require a constituting
consciousness that stands outside time, and "we shall never manage to
understand how a … constituting subject is able to posit or become
aware of itself in time." To avoid this error of separating
consciousness from that of which it is aware, Merleau-Ponty appeals to
Husserl's theory of the living-present's absolute flow, a
"[consciousness that] is the very action of temporalization—of flux,
as Husserl has it—a self anticipatory … flow which never leaves
itself" (Merleau-Ponty 1945).

Merleau-Ponty seemingly provides an existential-phenomenological
account of Husserl's theory of absolute time-constituting
consciousness' double-intentionality. Nevertheless, he adopts
Husserl's theory according to his characteristic philosophy of
ambiguity. Indeed, Merleau-Ponty insists that "it is of the essence of
time to be not only actual time, or time which flows, but also time
which is aware of itself … the archetype of the relationship of self
to self" (Merleau-Ponty 1945). Ultimately with such remarks
Merleau-Ponty was on the verge of bringing phenomenology toward a
theory of ontology, which theory emerged in earnest in his later work,
The Visible and the Invisible (1961). In that work, Merleau-Ponty
expressly rejects his Phenomenology of Perception for having retained
the Husserlian philosophy of consciousness. And this move from
phenomenology to ontology manifests itself in some of his most
provocative observations about time. To say that he moves from
phenomenology to ontology is to say that he rejects any privileging of
the subject or consciousness as constituting time either as a
perceptual object or through a lived experience. As he puts it in the
working notes of his The Visible and the Invisible, "it is indeed the
past that adheres to the present and not the consciousness of the past
that adheres to the consciousness of the present" (Merleau-Ponty
1961). Time now is characterized as an ontologically independent
entity and not a construct disclosed by consciousness. It is the
essence of time to be time that is aware of itself, to be sure. But
this time is no longer an archetype of the self's non-objectivating
self-awareness. Rather, time constitutes the subject according to
Merleau-Ponty, who puts to rest the phenomenological notion of
absolute time-constituting consciousness, arguably Husserl's most
important discovery.
5. References and Further Reading
a. Primary Sources

* Augustine, A. Confessions. Trans. F. J. Sheed. Indianapolis:
Hackett Publishing Co, 1999.
* Derrida, J. Speech and Phenomena. Trans. D. Allison. Evanston:
Northwestern University Press, 1973.
* Heidegger, M. Sein und Zeit. Tübingen: Max Niemeyer, 1986; Being
and Time. Trans. J. Macquarrie and E. Robinson. New York: Harper and
Row, Publishers Inc, 1963.
* Heidegger, M. Gesamtausgabe Band 20: Prolegomena zur Geschichte
des Zeitbefriffs. Frankfut am Main: Vittorio Klosterman, 1979; The
History of the Concept of Time Trans. T. Kisiel. Bloomington: Indian
University Press, 1985.
* Husserl, E. Zur Phänomenologie des inneren Zeitbewußtseins
(1983-1917). Ed. R. Boehm. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1966; On the
Phenomenology of the Consciousness of Internal Time (1983-1917).
Trans. J. Brough. Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1991.
* Husserl, E. Analysen zur passiven Synthesis. Aus Vorlessungs-
und Forschungsmauskripten (1918-1926). Ed. M. Fleisher. The Hague:
Martinus Nijhoff, 1966; Analyses Concerning Passive and Active
Synthesis: Lectures on Transcendental Logic. Trans. A. Steinbock.
Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 2001. Husserl, E. Phatasie,
Bildbewußtseins, Erinnerung. Ed. E. Marbach. Dordrecht: Kluwer
Academic Publishers, 1980; Fantasy, Image-Consciousness, Memory.
Trans. J. Brough. Dordrecht: Springer, 2005.
* Husserl, E. Aktive Synthesen: Aus der Vorlesung 'Transzendental
Logik' 1920-21. Ergäzungsband zu 'Analysen sur passiven Synthesis.'
Ed. R. Breur. Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 2000; Analyses
Concerning Passive and Active Synthesis: Lectures on Transcendental
Logic. Trans. A. Steinbock. Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers,
2001.
* Husserl, E. Die 'Bernaur Manuskripte' über das Zeitbewußtseins
1917/18. Ed. R. Bernet and D. Lohmar. Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic
Publishers, 2001.
* Locke, J. An Essay Concerning Human Understanding. New York:
Oxford University Press, 1990.
* Merleau-Ponty, M. Phenomenology of Perception. Trans. C. Smith.
New York: Routledge & Keegan Paul Ltd, 1962.
* Merleau-Ponty, M. The Visible and the Invisible. Trans. A.
Lingis. Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1969.
* Sartre, J. P. Transcendence of the Ego. Trans. F. Williams and
R. Kirkpatrick. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1957.
* Sartre, J. P. Being and Nothingness. Trans. H. Barnes. New York:
Philosophical Library, 1956.

b. Secondary Sources

* Blattner, W. Heidegger's Temporal Idealism. New York: Cambridge
University Press, 1999.
* Brough, J. B. "The Emergence of Absolute Consciousness in
Husserl's Early Writings on Time-Consciousness." Man and World (1972).
* Brough, J. B. "Translator's Introduction." In E. Husserl, On the
Phenomenology of the Consciousness of Internal Time (1893-1917).
Trans. by J. Brough. Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1991.
* Brough, J. B. "Husserl and the Deconstruction of Time," Review
of Metaphysics 46 (March 1993): 503-536.
* Brough, J. B. "Time and the One and the Many (In Husserl's
Bernaur Manuscripts on Time Consciousness)," Philosophy Today 46:5
(2002): 14-153.
* Dalhstrom, D. "Heidegger's Critique of Husserl." In Reading
Heidegger from the Start: Essays in His Earliest Thought. Edited by T.
Kisiel and J. van Buren. Albany: State University of New York Press,
1994.
* de Warren, N. The Promise of Time. New York: Cambridge
University Press, forthcoming.
* Evans, J. C. "The Myth of Absolute Consciousness." In Crises in
Continental Philosophy. Edited by A Dallery, et. al. Albany: State
University of New York Press, 1990.
* Held, K. Lebendige Gegenwart. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1966.
* Kelly, M. "On the Mind's 'Pronouncement' of Time: Aristotle,
Augustine and Husserl on Time-consciousness. Proceedings of the
American Catholic Philosophical Association, 2005.
* Macann, Christopher. Presence and Coincidence. Dordrecht: Kluwer
Academic Publishers, 1991.
* Richardson, W. Heidegger: Through Phenomenology to Thought. The
Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1967.
* Sallis, J. "Time, Subjectivity and the Phenomenology of
Perception." The Modern Schoolman XLVIII (May 1971): 343-357.
* Sokolowski, R. Husserlian Meditations. Evanston: Northwestern
University Press, 1974.
* Sokolowski, R. Introduction to Phenomenology. New York:
Cambridge University Press, 2000.
* Wood, D. The Deconstruction of Time. Atlantic Highlands:
Humanities Press International, 1989.
* Zahavi, D. Self-awareness and Alterity: A Phenomenological
Investigation. Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1999.
* Zahavi, D. Husserl's Phenomenology. Palo Alto: Stanford
University Press, 2003.