Husserl's question of history

the parallelism between his theory of association and the narrative theory of history

Shigeto Nuki

pp. 409-422

in: Philip Blosser, Eiichi Shimomissé, Lester Embree, Hiroshi Kojima (eds), Japanese and Western phenomenology, Berlin, Springer, 1993

Abstract

There exist remarkable parralelisms between the phenomenological time structure of associative remembering and that of narratives proposed by A. C. Danto as explaining our experience of history. Both show themselves as selective, segmentary, multi-dimensional time continua, and we can speak of "backward causality" in both cases. Consequently, contrary to the view that Husserl's phenomenology lacks the true concept of history, it is maintained that the phenomenological origin of historical consciousness must be discovered in the domain of remembering not in that of innate time-consciousness. The time structure of associative remembering may thus be regarded as a schematic function that provides a structure for time as it is lived.

Cited authors

Husserl Edmund