This is a collection of my papers, some written as an undergraduate and/or graduate student. I take full responsibility for errors, omissions, and general misunderstandings that may be present in my writings.
Graduate School Paper: Death and Protention
One of the most perplexing and yet liberating aspects of phenomenology is the notion of internal time consciousness. Taken by itself internal time consciousness is a fascinating study. However, there is an interesting corollary when we examine internal time consciousness through the lens of Heidegger’s concept of Dasein. For Heidegger Dasein projects toward future possibility a sort of quasi-protention. An implicit connectedness exists between protention and Dasein’s projection of possibilities. Protention is that which set forth the future as an expectation of what is coming in the future. (Poellner,2001). In this way protention as a projection toward a future fullness of being, such as what occurs in death, takes precedence over other ways that internal time consciousness might be construed.
Protention as a component of internal time consciousness seems to be the fundamental concern for Dasein given the future possibility of death. For this reason, an explication of the correlatives of death and protention deserve treatment in order to understand the confluence of these distinctives.
Death is that which comes to Dasein, not as some anonymous affair but that which separates Dasein from the crowd. Robert Solomon notes this when he deals with Heidegger’s conception of death. He writes “The call of conscience announces personal death nevertheless, and it is this “call” which brings man to realize his true essence as Being-unto-death” (Solomon, 1972). If we are to become authentic, we must acknowledge that protention is a precursor to acknowledging not what might happen but what shall happen. Death is something coming. Therefore, even though the three moments of internal time consciousness might be inseparable it does not follow that they are coequally ultimate. In fact, when considering the fullness of being in death protention obtains a place of prominence.
It is possible to subdivide internal time consciousness into what Sokolowski calls immanent and transcendent time. At bottom, immanent time provides the foundation for transcendent time. Most of us are concerned with transcendent time. We watch our clocks, mark our calendars, and might receive an invitation that asks us to “save” the date. In this way, our intercourse with time focuses on transcendent time.
A further parsing of immanent time occurs when we consider the nature of the living present. The living present is comprised of retention, protention, and primal impressions (Sokolowski, 2000 ). Simply, these are recollections of the past, projections into the future, and the impression of the moment that encompasses both recollection and projection. In our everyday conception of time, we experience a flow of time that conjoins the consciousness of time in these three moments.
The possibility of death elicits mixed emotions. Protention forces us to look toward the future in a way that is distinct from retention and primal impression. Dasein does not always recognize protention as the coming of that which is an end. They say, “It is certain that ‘Death’ is coming” (Heidegger, 1962) but not as a mechanism of internal time consciousness or a flow of three correlative aspects of internal time consciousness. This protention is merely something that may come later on. A broader horizon is necessary if we are to examine protention as a reciprocal of the approach of death. The abstraction from living time to three inseparable moments bears upon the notion of protention as substantive Causa Sui possibility of the coming to an end for Dasein.
However, when taken as a unified living present protention reduces unnecessarily as a coequal to retention and primary impression. This seems misguided for at least three reasons. Protention anticipates the fullness of being. If we follow Heidegger’s assertion that death is the coming fullness of Dasein, then protention anticipates being in a new way. Protention constitutes the primary consideration for these reasons. Retention and primal impression become secondary concerns with respect to internal time consciousness as related to death.
Retention presupposes primal impressions, which take precedence over retention. Husserl makes this point in various ways when he argues that “the a priori necessity of the precedence of a perception or primal impression over the corresponding retention” (Moran, 2002 )In fact, Husserl contends that every retention refers back to an impression. Employing this line of reasoning it should be clear that retention contains no content at all, a point that Husserl concedes. The question of retention when bound up with primal impression should lead us to conclude that retention and impression are on equal footing or if needful to posit a hierarchy; retention plays a secondary role.
Primal impressions are the” “source point” with which the “generation” of the enduring Object begins” (Moran, 2002 ). In other words, the primal impressions precede retention and this happens by necessity. A key consideration for both primal impressions and retention seems to be that they need not be real or even existent. Husserl acknowledges as much in his assertion that “I can also have a perception of A although in reality A does not exist.” (Moran, 2002 )This presents a difficulty if we view internal time consciousness as an inseparable pairing of three abstract parts since protention can and does have certainty with respect to the end of being. In other words, when considering how death is correlative to internal time consciousness only protention offers certainty. There is no such thing as indubitable certainty with respect to primal impressions and retention. Memories are often mistaken and our impressions of particular situations can be suspect. However, the end of our existence is as certain as our existence.
We define protention as “something coming.” This is the point at which the positive argument must either persuade us that protention when equivocal to the end of being is the sum and substance of immanent time or else cause us to reject the notion entirely. Either we acknowledge death as something coming with apodictic certainty or we continue to hide from death. Should we demur, our existence is relegated to inauthenticity, always positing death as something that occurs in “them.”
For Dasein death is the ultimate “something” that comes. In this way, naturally protention and death coalesce when conjoined. The “full existential-ontological conception of death may now be defined as follows: death, as the end of Dasein, is Dasein’s ownmost possibility” (Heidegger, 1962) First, the notion of protention must be linked with the end of being. In other words, protention in the absence of death univocally conjoins with retention and primal impression. However, when death conjoins analogously with protention the thrust of the argument becomes clear. Acknowledging one’s impending death is for Heidegger one of the fundamental aspects of authenticity.
Our primal impression of death and our retention of death have no bearing upon the protention of death as the end of being. We cannot recollect the impression of death. “Others” only experience this impression. Therefore, retention and primal impressions can only play subordinate roles when considering death. Perhaps one could argue that protention and death depend upon retention due to the necessity of acknowledging our temporal duration. The question remains as to whether temporal duration is a necessary precondition of protention with respect to death.
We shall not argue that protention is absent from recollection. Quite the contrary, as “every act of memory contains intention of expectation whose fulfillment leads to the present” (Moran, 2002 ) and this process intercepts that which is to come. In this way, protention has some intercourse with recollection but this sort of recollection is altogether different from the expectation of death. Accordingly, this sort of recollection only posits a horizon that is oriented on the future (Moran, 2002 ). In contradistinction to this view, the future death of Dasein is not only an expectation but is the fulfillment of the future. This fulfillment is that which-will-come; thus, protention in death represents a horizon beyond a future of the recollected.
Perhaps raising the objection of how this relates to the end of being generally and death particularly will prove helpful. Heidegger provides a unique insight into this objection. He writes, “Death is something distinctively impending. Its existential possibility is based on the fact that Dasein is essentially disclosed to itself, and disclosed, indeed as ahead-of-itself” (Heidegger, 1962). Already the nature of retention and primal impression seem to have limited points of contact with death. Conversely, protention is a distinctive that is decidedly impending. This coming to an end cannot be analogous to the way in which we view death in recollection since we recall the impression of death as experienced by others. Protention links with death in that the moment of expectation centers on something, which is still to be in the future. The concept of internal time consciousness as construed by the three abstractions of primal impression, retention, and protention does little to acknowledge the eventual death of Dasein. Thus, acknowledging death as the penultimate protention has little value when considering immanent time holistically. Recognizing the definitive nature of the end of Dasein is tantamount to understanding protention as part of being-toward-death. In other words, protention as related to death is the most important something coming.
The flow of internal time consciousness even when considered holistically discloses the certainty of death as a possibility of an end that will come. However, it does not follow that Dasein views this protention in the same way as others. In fact, the expectation of something coming when we consider the possibility of death must be viewed in a way that is unique to death. “Dasein comports itself towards something possible in its possibility by expecting it. Anyone who is intent on something possible may encounter it unimpeded and undiminished in its whether it comes or does not or whether it comes after all” (Heidegger, 1962)
Husserl has conceived of a notion of time that is stipulated by the mundane. Death when considered as a protention is of supreme importance and seems to be exemplified by considering protention as separate and superior to retention and primal impression. Perhaps, this instantiation of protention is the only one that follows this path. The nature of the case is that protention is a valuable tool in the phenomenological analysis of death and being-toward-death as something coming. A truncated treatise such as this is in no way exhaustive but may be a seed that blossoms into an analysis of protention beyond what Husserl originally conceived. In this way, perhaps the question of internal time consciousness in phenomenology is not quite settled. The fertile soil of phenomenology should lead us to a philosophy that does not take for granted the tripartite view of internal time consciousness as unified. In so doing, phenomenology may have fresh insights for many years to come.
Works Cited
Heidegger, M. (1962). Being and Time . New York : Harper and Row.
Madison, G. B. (1981). The Phenomenology of Merleau-Ponty: A Seach for the Limits of Consciousness. Athens: Ohio University Press.
Moran, D. a. (2002 ). The Phenomenology Reader . New York : Routledge .
Sokolowski, R. (2000 ). Introduction to Phenomenology . Cambridge : Cambridge University Press.
Solomon, R. (1972). From Rationalism to Existentialism:The Existentialists and Their Nineteenth Century Backgrounds . Boston : Rowman and Littlefield .
Heidegger: Thesis Paper
Below is a thesis paper that discusses Martin Heidegger’s Analysis of tools