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Time and the Constitution of the Self
(Formerly entitled,
“The Phenomenology of Time”)
Dr. Louis N. Sandowsky
Autumn Semester – 2002-2003 –
MA
We all know what time is until we begin to talk
about it. The most significant philosophers of the Occident have flexed their
intellectual muscles over the problem of time and its articulation. This course
charts the various forms of temporal discourse that have evolved from the
pre-socratics to the contemporary era of Husserl, Heidegger and Einstein. It is
on the basis of the radical turns that such discourse has taken that the notion
of the Self as a selfsame, monolithic entity, which must be presupposed by any
act of consciousness, has found itself to be shaken to the very core. The
tradition that put the Self or Ego at the center of all discourse on
consciousness actually put the cart before the horse. In the wake of
phenomenology and existentialism, rather than presupposing the pre-existence of
the Self as an essential substrate of consciousness, the question has become:
how is the Self constituted through the temporalization of consciousness?
This is a
lecture and seminar based class and it involves close reading of Edmund
Husserl’s ground-breaking writing On The Phenomenology of the
Consciousness of Internal Time. His meticulous investigations
demonstrate the structural dynamics that are necessarily in play in the
constitution of the linearity and continuity of experience (which are
complementary to the objective discourse of Einstenian relativity). As well as
examining the issue of how linear time is constituted – as the principle
condition of the possibility of a continuous identity / Self – the aim is to
facilitate awareness of the non-linear temporal forms that are also in play
throughout this constitution. Such discourse on pluri-dimensional temporalities
has now become an almost commonplace theme along with the evolution of computer
information dissemination technology (cyberspace).
Please address all questions
about my courses to: cafedifferance@yahoo.com
See my web page: http://cafedifferance.haifa.ac.il/