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In both his published and unpublished works, Edmund Husserl, the “father of phenomenology,” struggles repeatedly with the relation of the individual subject and intersubjectivity. Since his phenomenology is based upon the temporalizing foundations of the subject, though, he is often accused of solipsism, and his efforts at integrating the subject with an intersubjective existence are registered as falling short of their goal. Important philosophers who use phenomenology as their basis, such as Martin Heidegger and Maurice Merleau-Ponty, furthermore, while implicitly criticizing his limitations, assume the existence of intersubjective foundations without taking up the existence and formation of these foundations themselves.

Husserl’s earliest structure of temporalizing consciousness, discussed prior to 1908, was somewhat different from what he developed later, and it was also more problematic. We will give merely an overview of this earlier temporal structure here, turning primarily to the careful and extremely helpful analyses carried out by John Brough and Rudolf Bernet. Both lay out this early schematic of temporalizing consciousness for us and also describe how Husserl turned to develop a structure that would work better with his system of phenomenology.

In his , Dan Zahavi wishes to defend phenomenology against accusations of solipsism, and he takes his cue from linguistics. Zahavi’s approach is actually two-fold: First, he executes a careful analysis of Husserl’s phenomenology, integrating Husserl’s later texts and developments into a more traditional understanding of phenomenology and introducing his own interpretation of these developments; second, Zahavi argues that philosophers of language, especially Habermas and Apel, have based their criticisms of phenomenology upon a crucial misinterpretation. This misinterpretation says that phenomenology’s focus upon the subject is ultimately fatal, because it neglects the integral intersubjective nature of a subject’s development and language. Zahavi argues not only that phenomenology is open to intersubjectivity but also that it provides analyses key to Habermas’ and Apel’s own projects and goals:

As we already know, Husserl spent extensive time and energy working on two important topics in his phenomenology (among others): inner timeconsciousness and intersubjectivity. Interestingly, he hardly worked on these two areas together. This has led to interpretations that these two levels are distinctly separate, fostered by Husserl’s own references to them as separate levels of phenomenological existence. Husserl typically separates the “primordial” pre-temporal nature of consciousness from an “intersubjectivecollective” nature. At the same time, though, he sees these as two levels . But this insight introduces questions typical in this area of phenomenology: If all “otherness” is already in my consciousness, then how is it at all? Or, if it is truly , then how can I experience it? Here, in chapter three, I will review these two “levels” or areas of phenomenology briefly, showing that, if they are to be considered truly separate, then it becomes very difficult to explain our experience of a “now” amongst different subjects. In other words, if each individual constitutes her own now for her own consciousness, and if this level is distinctly separate from the level of intersubjective existence, then we cannot easily explain how the is experienced as fundamentally the by . In response to this difficulty, I will take up Husserl’s reference to the notion of “world-time.” I will analyze what this notion might mean in itself, how it could fit into our understanding of Husserlian phenomenology and his structure of temporalizing consciousness, and how it might solve the difficulty of the “shared now.”

As we know, there is a constant aspect of the “no-longer” in present consciousness. In Husserl's earliest analyses, this was usually referred to as the “fresh memory,” or “primary memory,” of the “now-phase,” terminology which corresponds to the period of Husserl's analyses prior to his turning to absolute consciousness as the foundation of inner time-consciousness. We will set aside the importance of absolute consciousness for now, and focus instead on the qualities Husserl assigns to the notion of primary memory at this early point, especially those which remain consistent as his description of the structure of temporalizing consciousness matures.

In chapter four, we turned to Husserl's discussions of association, habitualization, and apperception in order to explain the function of far retention. By doing so, we already entered into a discussion of passive genesis. Here we will return to the notion of apperception (and, implicitly, appresentation) as our guide to understanding passive genesis, not only because it is a notion with which we are already familiar, but also because Husserl himself says essentially that an understanding of the genesis of consciousness requires an understanding of apperception:

Husserl’s early works on time (1893-1917), published in , give relatively little attention to what we now call protention. For this reason, in our review of these early discussions of a consciousness of the “not-yet,” we will find indications of what Husserl would accomplish more thoroughly in later writings. The notion of a consciousness of the “not-yet,” in fact, is often only implicated through analyses of other concepts at this early stage. And sometimes the term “not-yet,” is not even mentioned, and yet the discussion centers around the importance of consciousness of the “” aspect of a certain notion or relation. For example, we find that Husserl’s early descriptions already show a “futural” aspect of consciousness to be to our intentional relation to objects. In a text written as early as 1893, Husserl says that temporalizing consciousness is directed forward, and that what comes an intuition (in this case, “interest”) what is actualized:

“Far ,” to my knowledge, is not a notion that Husserl ever considered.240 Since the notion of “far ” was not taken up systematically for itself, even in Husserl’s extensive analyses of passive syntheses where it was mentioned, perhaps it is not surprising that “far protention” never surfaced. However, given the activity of passive syntheses, association, and appresentation in my relation to other subjects, and the fact that each of these activities relies at least partially upon the protentional aspect of the structure of temporalizing consciousness, we could at least hypothesize as to the possibility of far protention in this area. Working parallel to the structure we established for retention, we could suggest that there might be both near protention and far protention, where near protention would act as the “immediate” protending activity based on the current constitution of the living present. Far protention, correlatively, would be a more extended anticipation in the living present and would be based not only upon current constitution but also on typifications that are sedimented through passive synthesis. Far protention would thus be only partially based on current, originary experience, and it would be involved in current constitution through its protention of general types and habits (in conjunction with far retention). Given far protention’s probable relation with both the current presentation and the sedimentations in far retention, it would be the activity more fittingly applied to my appresentation of another subject’s consciousness (as described by Husserl in his ), rather than near protention. The consciousness of the other is a very different aspect of her being that I seemingly can only protend on the basis of my experiences of myself. For this reason, I must rely upon a more extended aspect of protention than traditionally understood, one that reaches back into far retention as well as takes me beyond the physical being before me.

My work up until now has meant to establish the foundations of a notion for which Husserl’s analyses opened the door. I have shown that, at each level of temporalizing consciousness, there exists a connection to an intersubjective structure and content, and I have suggested that this connection be called “intersubjective temporality.” Here I will review the accomplishments of each chapter, bringing these individual arguments together to create the complete picture of intersubjective temporality as understood from the paradigm of Husserlian phenomenology. I will present the individual arguments, placing them alongside one another in order to show their overall contribution to a phenomenological understanding of intersubjectivity. Each individual aspect of temporalizing consciousness reveals its own link to intersubjectivity, and in the same way that the different functions of temporalizing consciousness interrelate with one another, so too do their individual links with an intersubjective structure and content work together to establish intersubjective temporality.