On the Constitution of the Time of the World: The Emergence of Objective Time on the Ground of Subjective Time

Abstract

My contribution is discussing some of Husserl’s attempts to answer the question how objective time (time of the world) is constituted on the basis of the experienced subjective time. Besides that this task is introduced already in the Lectures from 1904 to 1905, we may find concrete attempts to answer this question only in the Bernau Manuscripts. The first step of this solution concerns my own past that does never appear in the form of singular static pictorial memories but in short narrative stories raised by memories that already own an internal order of time. But this internally ordered stories are not yet ordered externally, somehow they are still lying “side by side” and they lack an objective, synthetic coordination in time. This synthetic unification of my narrative memories in an objective unity and order is the first step towards objectivation of time. But nevertheless this first synthetic unification is done only by myself and thus we have not yet reached an intersubjective-objective order in time. The objective order in the full sense we are searching for necessarily depends on communication, critique and agreement by other persons. The communicative ways, authorized subjects and rules of this common constitution of objective time in a community are discussed by Husserl only in the late C-Manuscripts. Therefore, based on suggestions and elements from this two sources – but exceeding both – I discuss the contribution of common intersubjective constitution to the formation of a full objective time of the world.