Hyletic and kinetic facticity of the absolute flow and world creation

Natalie Depraz

pp. 25-35

in: John Brough, Lester Embree (eds), The many faces of time, Berlin, Springer, 2000

Abstract

The Lectures Husserl gave in 1908 were concerned with the constitution of space. By studying the process of perception, the phenomenologist opens the way to the idea that the in-formation of sense-materials through noetic functions of apprehension amounts to a "creation" of nature itself, which is due to that perceptual consciousness itself. Instead of creation one would have expected the word "constitution." How is the perceptual activity of consciousness able to be the creator of nature as a whole? What is that power of perception? Another question is: How is there to be a creation without any kind of temporality? Even if the above quotation does not mention time at all, it is well known that the act of perception involves a temporalization in the form of a teleology: an object is perceived through an indefinite succession of partial perceptual acts. Although each one is able to give the object itself, the whole process of perception is temporalized. The question is then: If creation is also a sudden creation of time out of timelessness, which kind of creation will be able to be a movement of temporalizing in the same way as the perception of consciousness?

Cited authors

Husserl Edmund