MSS. C4

August 1930

(before the trip to Chiavari)

Practical norms. - The universal self-reflection, ultimately as science, as phenomenology. - We and our surrounding world, we as transcendental subjectivity, as world-constituting, finding ourselves humanly objectivizing in the world, living in the world as persons and exercising self-preservation; individual-personal self-preservation in communal-personal world life; personal communities as unities of higher order and the meaning of their self-preservation. Explanation of the Idea of self-preservation and its levels. Self-preservation in the already pregiven world; waking life as striving life; the waking I-subject already constituted for itself as world-subject; the perceiving, experiencing striving merely in service. Human purposes, purposes of mature human beings, the organization of interests and purposes of mature human beings.

The mature human being has his future before himself, the totality-representation of future life, of the person in the mode of future being in direction to his "life's purpose," which organizes the multiplicity of particular purposes. But does each human being have a "life's purpose?" Each human being has explicitly constructed the representation of his universal future, even if he has no unitary life's purpose before himself. In what form? Is that a determinate, a univocally fixed foresight of the surrounding world that will exist for him in the future and of the factuality of his future comportment toward it in acting and suffering? Of course not. The future in general, which exists for me, that of my outer world and its manner, as it exists for me in access orientation (near-far, right-left etc.) for each future present, is not so construable in the living present, in the way in which the my past world and my past life is contained in it as one existing for all time; as that upon which I myself repeatedly reflect in the present, that which I can repeatedly member and reflect upon as the same. In the total memory of my past, when individual stretches and pre-pasts and individual stretches and processes are indeterminate and their ontic meaning doubtful or merely probable, I can fluctuate between many possibilities as they actually were, but I can proceed to clarify my past, I can always further improve my memory, and what "actually was" can finally be found out. My freedom, my capacities (I can), which of course are restricted often enough, underlie the approximation to that which already existed in itself, exists in advance (that it exists, is something underlying completely without doubt, however doubtful I may otherwise be), thus the process of searching for the givennesses of the past which exist in the mode of little clarity and contentful fullness. The limit is - although an ideal - the completely clear memory as original self-givenness of the past as such, and accompanying it the evidence of repetition - identification with the: I can always again identify in the mode "it itself, as it was."

In contrast with this, that which is coming into being has an entirely different relationship to my "I can" of the streaming present...

Just so regarding anti-cipation [Vor-Erinnerung], expectation, fore-projection, the project of my future, as I have it or can have it in the actual living present. My future contains my future surrounding world as it appears to me, is meant, is valid...

To my life belongs with respect to the past - now the future is forward-projection of the past, thus is validly present as something similar - the fact that it is existent for me, appearing, as existing validly, then further verifying with validity a `long time,' then however is perhaps canceled.

What is the case now with the determinateness and ontic certainty of my future? ...In the present I could have my actual past.. There exists a priori past as a sphere of actual being... of actually become past...

What now is the case with respect to the future? My future! Its intuitive mode of givenness in the present is "anticipation," prefiguration. This can be completely clear, be clearly formed. But does that give it a future being as future actuality, as a certainty on the basis of self-giving evidence, which forms the being in the `always again' as one and the same, to be known uniquely? The future, as it is accessible in each present through my capacity for anticipation, is no field of original experience, a self-givenness of future being as something obtainable by me now in the actual present or ideally attainable actuality.

The being in advance of the future-memory [Zukunftserinnerung] in contrast with the being of the pat in regressive memory!? - Prefiguration no actual self-giving!

...The future can be conscious for me in the certainty of belief, but this certainty nevertheless is fundamentally different than that which pertains to the past. We said already that memory can also occur in the mode of indeterminateness, unclarity, doubtfulness, nugatoriness, a mere possibility in a space of equally justified possibilities; but all that has within it another meaning and role than for anticipation. This is precisely in principle prefiguration, it projects an image, how it is able to come, how it is to be expected, in accordance with the primal image-character lying in the present and past. It projects only "possibilities," and leaves always still other possibilities open. [There can always in principle be a fulfillment of a memorial intention], while the picturings, the prefiguring presentations are not fulfilling, but quasi- fulfilling, precisely prefiguring.

We observe the living present. In it a core component of simple, intentional-immediate perceptual present. It is streaming present and "progresses" tendentially as continuous fulfillment; it is continuous tendency to what is continuously coming next, the continuously forthwith oriented, precisely as fulfillment.

The streaming is primal phenomenon, it is not an explicit succession. To the primal phenomenon of streaming belongs also a phenomenon of intensification (a phenomenon of intensifying `measure,' a graduality)... The concrete streaming perceptual present (nuclear present) begins with the wakening in every waking period, and the intensification of enduring goes forth up to the maximum - perhaps to a complete day, thus up to sleep. This continuing duration of the primal phenomenon can co-determine the feeling: "it lasts unbearably long."

Now we consider the other side. The perceptual present is not only streaming - streamimg-forth, i.e. forward directed toward the future, in itself thus the most original future, which lies in the living present itself, bearing: it is indeed on the other hand reverse-streaming, not protentional but retentional modification of this being-directed. Thus the talk of direction no longer has the tendential meaning, or as such, only a secondary meaning. Tendency is tendency toward something, of something lying in the present toward the future (of course here is not meant a tending as a feeling- or willing-kind of striving); in the "just now" lies a having been just now toward the future, as a modification.

Perhaps it is correct to say that the hyletic present most originally affects, that it is the first-affecting and that the affective pull proceeds in the direction of fulfillment. The implicitly second is then the affection on the basis of the horizon. Also the future horizon has then an affective precedence over the memorial horizon. Then we had thus in tendencies the distinction of protentional streaming in primal phenomenal fulfillment, continuously predesignating protentional horizons. On the other hand the retentional streaming as fading away and thereby constantly modifying. Transformation of the currently fulfilling Now and of the streaming away of protentional pre-intending and itself in the form of Now fulfilling. And the streaming away, the fading away, constantly streaming away itself, fading away, without end, constantly losing in fullness and prominence up to complete emptiness and undistinguishability, which does not mean that this null in general is null, leads over into nothingness.

But both horizons are in another sense filled out, namely with secondary intentionality which belongs to the Now (to each point of the Now and to each concrete streaming primal impression) in the continuity of the just-now-conscious, which is self-streamingly copresent and just so for the total continuity of protention.

Regarding that we have the dark unliving distance-horizon, that of the repeatedly awakenable memorial past and that of the to be prefigured future. Both horizons show their existence through the possibility of interrogation, through possible affection and repeated awakening, recollection, etc...

...The future time of my existence is an inauthentic time, my future existence,...the "I will be," not the "I was," the "I will live," not the "I have lived"... But while I am, am in the most original present, I show myself originally on its basis, precisely through the self-giving of the immediate future, as nothing other than the one who lies precisely in the present itself and is continuously self-actualized in streaming forth. The wide and far future however, which exists on the basis of my past or otherwise inductively predesignated, exists as long as it is given merely prefiguratively, presumption; I know nothing certain, whether I will live; if I experience or have experienced it, that I live, only then can I have indubitable certainty or an actual certainty of experience. There is in the immediacy of the present, no actual experience of the future, a self-giving experience (whereby the future would cease to be future). //((Randnotiz:)) But is that not paradoxical: living, existing in the streaming present, must I believe unquestioningly that I will live, if I nevertheless know that my death is immanent. ((Schluss der Randnotiz!))// It is absolutely apodictically certain only that, to each (waking) living present there belongs a future horizon, an anticipatory belief and a predesignation of the future. It is evident that concrete ceasing, naturally ceasing of the living streaming present, is not conceivable as a fact, not as a being, not as something experienceable. This would indeed mean that I constituted this ceasing, and had repeatedly ceased the ceasing, and after the ceasing had a past, etc. Sheer nonsense! Does the necessity of anticipatory belief mean nothing other than the fact that a "ceasing" is inconceivable? Is that not "nonrepresentable?" Reresentation is indeed possible experience. Can that mean then: I do not know earlier whether I will live, until I actually live? Do I not know that it is inconceivable that I will not live. And "I live," does that not mean, I live as human being, I live in the pregiven world? And how is it transcendental? It is conceivable for each particular life with particular prominent futures, that it does not occur. Within the apriori predesignated form of the future, as necessary presumed present, and from there originating past, something then occurs as different, from which that of the now factically presumed stretches [?]. The invariable essence form of my transcendental conscious life in its universality as temporal life (immanent time-form) leaves open even the possibility that world experience changes itself entirely and loses the form of world experience. It is only "unthinkable" for me that I transcendentally cease. Ceasing as human being in the world, dying in the objective world, while others continue to live corporeally, that requires another explication that does not belong here. But it is already to be seen in advance that "dying" must be compatible with the "inconceivability" of the ceasing of a transcendental being.

...What other meaning may ceasing have than that of something representable? The ceasing of a conscious life in the special sense - an act-life. That can only be the consequence of the ceasing of all manifolds of experience. ...

In any case, at first the ceasing of the future manifolds, the predesignation of a manifold future horizon is in a certain way representable, and so as consequence sleep (the deep, actless, prominenceless) and death in the special inner sense (if it can be called death) which would be nothing other than sleep, out of which no awakening comes. Sleep is the sleep of interest, of I-activity.

The core of the living present, the streaming primal impression prescribes essentially in unison with the constitution of the fresh and then further identical past a nearer and further future. In it lies the source of all manifolds. How do we come to the limit or rather to ceasing? Primal phenomenally there belongs to the primal impression the distinction (unexplicated) between likeness and unlikeness, between likeness as continuously concretely like itself (unchanged), of unlikeness as continuously concretely similar with itself, further of unlikeness as a discontinuity, a prominence-formation. And that in unison with the primal phenomenal duration, what e.g. as living streaming primal impression produces a prominent tone with a discrete beginning and end as a stretch of the self-similar. Moreover the primal phenomenal coexistence of the like.

I can now vary, present, the fact that the manifold, which constitutes itself in the streaming of the primal impression in primal phenomenal form, becomes always more uniform, so we come to the limit of uniformity. But not as though it were necessary for sleep that we actually sought simplification, impoverishment in order to induce sleep. ... In tiredness all activity is difficult and unpleasurable. Affective force is relinquished. Indeed already in tiredness becoming-affected is painful, all stimulus is disposed of, one instinctively turns away, pulls bach from it. Sleep-instinct, an implicit striving to pull back. The I does not respond any longer. Every interest becomes lame and dies away.

That has thus two sides: the sympathy of the I and the manifold experiential givenness. Manifold life, predesignating life future, constituting life past, is not yet awake, not yet interested, striving life, as something directed to the future, the primal present, and the distant and through them, through future interest to the region of the memorial past. Since in any event the necessary even if not sufficient condition of interest is the passive manifold living present (as core), the case representable as limit here has the significance of uniformity. The sleeping I - I as center of interests - is the interestless I, the "passive" [I]. Herein lies the question, is the passive underground, which is passively temporalizing, affectionless in the authentic sense, or is affectionlessness the incapacity for affection? Is an affective tendency always present? Only that the I is too "tired" to follow it? And how is it with the fading of the manifold of "prominences; is a prominenceless continuity not also tendential, but is the force of this tendency at the null-limit or does it come entirely near as a null of intensity?

Have then the possible interpretations of sleep, of birth, of death been given? Can one say that sleep is the sinking of an individual transcendental subject into an enduring inactivity, in an enduring being inaccessible of the I, [when it] senses the affective stimulus [which is able to achieve a penetrating advance), it is active: struggle of stimuli, struggle, quarrel of interests; actual interests, dominating, current, on the other hand momentarily breaking in, perhaps a stimulus breaking in "disturbingly." Is sleep the inactivity of the I, while that which is without I-participation, or what is the same thing, ...the ongoing self-constitution of its underlying stream of experience, remains undisturbed?

[What is the case with respect to the hyle when I sleep?] It is of course also the problem of the "completely unobserved" background, which belongs to the sphere of presence, but also of the sedimented retentional and protentional background. In a certain manner I sleep relative to this background. ...

The I is awake, the subject of interest, I as the I that I always am, as the one that has experienced thus and thus in my earlier life, seen those and those sensuous factors, acquired such and such knowledge of things, have planned such and such, actually formed it, currently still hold such and such in my purpose, always as I of my practical future (my practical present, which proceeds precisely to the practical, the future...) can only be interested in relevance for the present, the present is the future. That is the specific temporalization of the I, that it is constituted for itself and through itself as unitary interest-I, will-I...

I thus "in the beginning" in the natural interpretation: in my birth, have still no worldliness and world for me, still no world future, in which I could anticipate something. I have no future because I still have no past - in the normal sense of a mundane past - own past of the surrounding world in its form determined multiplicity. Such past is my acquisition... On the other hand my future in capacities, to anticipate it in anticipations as field of my practical possibilities, to will it, to expect it, to form it actively as coming, as finally actualizing itself in the present, succeeding, mis-carrying etc. Nevertheless according to the doctrine of constitution we still have levels preceding the full constitution of a world.

The I that dies away - at the conclusion of the dying away, the "limit-point" death. The I thus has here the acquisitions of its entire life within itself; does that mean that the I only falls asleep, that the process of the constitution of world experience and the whole interest-life of world praxis, each praxis, only stand still as in deep sleep? Do only my achievements stand still? In my experience: the human being there in death - in sleep. I wake the sleeping, I perhaps shake him bodily, I call to him loudly etc; the living body is only an index for psychical stimuli, index for a lawfulness of connection of its hyletic prominences in the organic living corporeality in the natural objective sense, and indeed such a lawfulness that makes possible the immanent-temporal order, the grouping of hyletic data of mundane apperceptions. Translated transcendentally: hyletic data in manifold, i.e. in prominence standing under transcendental conditions for me and each I that already exists for me, the we who are and shall be able to be world constituting. Corporeal death of the other human being suspends for my experience the possibility of being able to experience him as mundanely existing I or as coexisting transcendental subjectivity in my world.

...

This can be so understood that these conditions are only precisely those pertaining to the enabling of mundane apperceptions, thus standing under the title "living body," but not conditions for the existence of subjectivity itself and the occurrence of hyletic prominences. Death for the transcendental I can mean: it loses "living corporeality," it loses world consciousness, it leaves the world-regulation.

But how is that conceivable for the enduring I? Entrance into the world-regulation signifies that the I begins with a primal presence, occurs in the hyletic prominences in such regulation and with such affective forces that the play of associative-active constituting genesis begins and can continue. Of course that has similar difficulties of understanding: can the I of a consciousness exist with an hyletic primal presence without having all prominences as pre-existence, and what is the case then with the grounds of prominence, with affective force etc?

We remain with the reflection on the representability of subjective existence in accordance with the cessation of world regulation. What can that mean? The I is not "with itself," it has nothing before it, it has indeed no world before itself, it has no memory of its earlier interests or of its earlier surrounding world with its anticipations. If it were sleeping, then it could be awakened; it would then be immediately perceptually conscious of its living body and its surrounding world; the hyletic field would have corresponding prominences and coexistences, data would elapse in unison with elapsing kinaestheses, whereupon the mundane apperceptions would be in movement, the activity of the I with the awakened earlier, implicit activity, the "I am here in my surrounding world, in the realm of my I have and I can, my anticipations going out to the future, my past;" in the "I am" lies my "I was" etc.

Death is no sleep; in the moment when it enters, my whole worldly existence, my "I am" is at an end; I can no longer have a memory of what I experienced, thought, projected, had anticipated for the future; for essentially mundane memory presupposes that I have a mundane present, in which I am human for myself.

In all that, in the life in which I am world-related, there lies included: not a sheer I which exists over and against a manifold of I-less being, but in everything, especially in all perceiving, there have been in place already egoic striving, acting, capacities, etc., and in the present, under the title of acquisition, also past intendings and goals and a being directed to the near and far future (anticipated analogy of past acquisitions).

If there would be an awakening from death as a kind of sleep, the awakening would mean - as the I who still at least remembers his worldly existence, but no longer finds himself in the world, an inconceivability; or in other words, a possible awakening or remaining awake and nevertheless not being in the world is nonsense, or death would be no "brother" of sleep, but wholly nothing other than sleep.

What can otherwise then occur as a possibility if it is excluded that I, the I am, I the subject of my acquired apperceptions and my acquired capacities, am nevertheless dead? Is it perhaps conceivable that my worldly being is constituted with the breaking off of this existence in the form of a "new birth," as a new beginning of a constitution, in which a new world exists, and perhaps indeed is constituted in a new world? Thus the same self-preserving monad with the same "I-pole;" but so that this self distinguishing personal I constitutively develops, or that one and the same monad objectifies itself in various human beings, and occurs in connection with other monads to constitute new worlds?

But is that actually conceivable? Now that must be realizable in its possibility, it must be demonstrable as possibility. But for whom? For me, the I who phantasizes myself with respect to my life and death, and indeed proposes meaning in a death; this makes clear to me that I seek to accomplish in the other possibility what would however probably only be a transformed version of the first attempt. But is that not with more precise reflection a clearer contradiction? How could I, out of the unity of my humanity, spring over into a new birth, in which this whole unity is absolutely forgotten, and now become a new human being while remembering myself differently, finding access to another I-being and I-life as belonging to this new human being?

But do we not know from psychiatry of the phenomenon of depersonalization, of various and changing I's in one and the same "human being?" But here the following is to be observed: we must distinguish the question, whether in our world with respect to the preservation of the identity of an organic human living body the possibility exists that the soul of this body ceases and immediately following or after a pause an entirely different soul, as is normally to be expected only in another living body and not in the continuity of physiological-corporeal life, begins and continues on.

It is further very difficult to distinguish between 1) a human being who finds himself as human in our world and therein understands himself with us, but who abruptly changes his character, and abruptly loses the personal memories of his vocational life etc. and thus becomes an entirely different human being in this world; 2)a human being whose conscious life changes in unison with his habitualities, his personal properties etc., but so that he no longer experiences himself as human being of this same world; he still finds himself as a human being but in a totally different world.

In the first case there runs through all depersonalization a powerful component of human continuity - the human being is in fact still the same, he has consciously still the same living body, still the same surrounding world etc. The entire stream of world constitution in its genesis from infancy and in its unceasing formation nevertheless goes on, even if on a certain level (which comprises the problem of depersonalization) a break occurs.

We should not allow it to escape our glance even for a moment that to the foundation of all reflection belongs the I-am in the ordinary sense, and that the phenomenological reduction gives to us at first no other transcendental subjectivity than our own, at first my own and on the basis of my living present, then the others constituted for me. Thereby I exist in advance, the I who has this world of experience, with this streaming world-experiential present etc., and we are human beings in this world - predesignated on the basis of the total transcendental subjectivity conceivable for me, on the basis of us and our world - at first on the basis of us in the fundamental normality of mature humanity, of the corresponding world of experience which is normal for us; but then the intentional transformations of normal humankind in various directions: childhood, animal existence in the various level of intentional distancing, the pathological anomalies, and finally the limit-phenomena: embryological childhood in human beings, then analogously in animals; the pathological limit cases.

The primal source of "intuition" for all possibilities of a transcendental subject lie however always in myself, in the transformation of my own inwardness. Possibilities through transformation are also produced in higher levels: "intuition" as limit case.

Empathy, the appresentation of alien subjective being, is an analogizing apperception; I understand the others, and indeed as similar to me; the "my similars" are thereby diminished, corrected, hightened etc., they develop in a space of similarity at whose middle I stand as the appropriate changeable primal image. And so I understand the child, in the same way the animal...

The embryological child can still have no world experience in the normal sense, it can still not experience its body and itself as humankind; in the same way the animal also cannot simply have the same surrounding world, and if it understands me, as I it, then we have the same world, and nevertheless not the same, such as we human beings have among one another, and the animals of the same species have among one another. Indeed what is required to produce possibilities of fulfillment is to conduct from alien experience a foresightful transformation of "analogy." In ordinary life, one does not need that, one does not need an actually intuitive insight; it is enough that one understands vaguely, and for that purpose inductively, "behavioristic" experience, wherein in order to know, essentially one must be present.