Awareness of the perceptual world

pp. 493-506

in: Aron Gurwitsch, The collected works of Aron Gurwitsch (1901-1973) III, Berlin, Springer, 2010

Abstract

The third class of facts that present themselves permanently to consciousness, at least in marginal form, pertains to the perceptual world. Whatever the theme of our mental activity, we cannot help being aware of a certain sector of the perceptual world, viz., our present perceptual environment, no matter how unconnected this sector may be, where relevancy is concerned, with that with which we are actually dealing. We may, for instance, remember a certain phase of our past and live in a "world of memory." Absorbed as we may be in this remembered world of the past, the present perceptual world in which at the moment we happen to find ourselves does not vanish from consciousness altogether.