1 Introduction

There has been much debate in recent Husserlian scholarship on the nature of the difference between the three levels of consciousness identified in On the Phenomenology of the Consciousness of Internal Time. One of the leading voices in this debate, Dan Zahavi, seems to suggest that there are actually only two levels of consciousness, and that two of the levels that Husserl distinguishes are actually one and the same level viewed from different angles. This is contrasted to the work of other leading Husserlian commentators, most notably John B. Brough and Robert Sokolowski, who maintain the significance of three distinct levels of consciousness. The “Zahavi–Brough/Sokolowski” debate touches on issues of extreme importance to anyone trying to get an accurate picture of Husserl’s theories of time-consciousness, the transcendental ego, and constitution, which is to say, to anyone trying to get an accurate picture of Husserl’s transcendental phenomenology.

A quick glance at Husserl’s Analyses Concerning Passive Synthesis (Hua XI) would seem to bolster Zahavi’s claim. In this work, Husserl discusses the “fundamental stratification” of the life of the ego into the passive and the active “levels” of consciousness (Hua XI, p. 64). As such, this work seems to suggest that there are only two layers of consciousness at work, and hence that Zahavi must be correct in the debate with Brough and Sokolowski. However, I intend to show that a more careful examination of the Analyses will show that there are, in fact, three levels of consciousness at work even in this text. Their grouping into two levels—passive and active—helps explain an ambiguity that gives rise to the debate, and the analysis provided of the passive sphere and its relationship to the active sphere in fact helps us better understand the nature of the difference between all three levels of consciousness discussed in Hua X.

I will begin by summarizing the core issues of the debate and suggesting that what is at stake in this discussion is a particular issue of objectivity (Sect. 2). Then I will suggest a way to map the three levels of consciousness discussed in Hua X onto the two levels discussed in Hua XI, and vice versa, by suggesting a new three-fold distinction between active synthesis, passive association, and internal time-consciousness (Sect. 3). Next I will discuss the issue of objectivity as it pertains to passive association and internal time-consciousness (Sect. 4). I will then explain how passive association and internal time-consciousness can help us make sense of the two levels of constituting consciousness that are at the heart of the debate (Sect. 5). In doing so, I hope to establish a common ground that could help provide a solution to the problem raised by this debate.

2 The Zahavi–Brough/Sokolowski Debate

In published form, this “debate” consists mainly of Zahavi’s critiques of Brough and Sokolowski, followed by his elaboration of what he takes to be a more accurate account of Husserl’s theory of consciousness.Footnote 1 At stake is a proper understanding of what Husserl means by the following passage:

Now that we have studied time-consciousness … it would be good to establish and run through systematically for once the different levels of constitution in their essential structure. We found:

  1. 1.

    the things of empirical experience in objective time (in connection with which we would have to distinguish still different levels of empirical being, which up to this point have not been taken into consideration: the experienced physical thing belonging to the individual subject, the intersubjectively identical thing, the thing of physics);

  2. 2.

    the constituting multiplicities of appearance belonging to different levels, the immanent unities in pre-empirical time;

  3. 3.

    the absolute time-constituting flow of consciousness (Hua X, p. 73).

Zahavi’s interest in this passage is primarily with Husserl’s theory of self-awareness. He claims that Brough and Sokolowski hold acts to be immediately given, even prior to reflection, as full blown inner objects distinct from the absolute flow of consciousness, which is also given to itself (SA, p. 70). On such an interpretation, Zahavi claims, the primary givenness of acts of consciousness is an object manifestation,Footnote 2 which yields too easily to the sort of “reflection theory” he is at pains to disprove.Footnote 3 The problem with the Brough/Sokolowski position as Zahavi sees it is that it suggests that the act is not self-given, but is brought to givenness by something else (i.e., inner time-consciousness). Hence, it merely “defers” the problem of self-awareness to the level of inner time-consciousness, which leads, Zahavi contends, either to an infinite regress or to positing “an implicit or intrinsic self-awareness” that can just as easily be posited of the act itself as of some deeper level of inner time-consciousness (SA, p. 70). Hence, this interpretation of the different levels of consciousness in Husserl cannot adequately explain the need for the deepest level of the “flow” of consciousness, because it does not adequately explain the connection between this flow and the acts of consciousness.

Zahavi attempts to solve this problem by linking the absolute flow of consciousness and the temporally constituted act to Husserl’s notions of functioning and thematized subjectivity, respectively.Footnote 4 The main thrust of what Zahavi contends is novel in his approach is based on the assertion that “Husserl’s investigation of inner time-consciousness is nothing apart from an investigation into the temporality of prereflective self-awareness” (SA, p. 71) because “inner time-consciousness is simply the name for the prereflective self-awareness of our acts” (SA, p. 80). In other words, Husserl’s account of inner time-consciousness is an account of the way in which acts of consciousness show themselves to us even as they (also) give us something else (namely, the intentional object): acts are therefore both self- and hetero-manifesting (SA, pp. 71–72).Footnote 5 Hence, in Zahavi’s opinion, inner time-consciousness is not “a particular intentional act” but “a pervasive dimension of self-manifestation” that is a passive self-affection (SA, p. 72).Footnote 6

Husserl’s account of double intentionality is an elaboration of this model: “Whereas the flow’s constitution of the duration of its object is called its Querintentionalität, the flow’s awareness (of) its own streaming unity is called its Längsintentionalität” (SA, p. 73). This second “intentionality” cannot be understood as an object-intentionality; it is rather an account of how the intentional objects constituted in the Querintentionalität show themselves to us primarily (SA, pp. 73, 75).

At the heart of the disagreement lies the issue of objectivity: in what way can we speak of acts of consciousness as “objects,” since Zahavi himself concedes that Husserl does, at times, speak of our acts this way (SA, p. 75)?Footnote 7 To answer we must turn to the relationship between passive and active syntheses, and to how they are connected to the related notions of pre-reflective and reflective awareness or pre-phenomenal and phenomenal being (cf. SA, p. 78; Hua X, p. 129). For Zahavi, it is precisely, and only, the difference between pre-reflective and reflective awareness that allows us to distinguish between the second and third levels of constitution elaborated by Husserl (SA, p. 81). That is, for Zahavi, the two levels differentiated by Husserl are but two different ways of looking at one and the same thing (SA, p. 80), namely, the flow of acts and lived experiences.

3 Are There Two or Three Levels of Consciousness?

But Zahavi’s understanding of the layering of consciousness is not entirely binary. Rather, he seems to admit of a three-fold layering when he states that inner time-consciousness can make us aware of the following three levels of consciousness:

  1. 1.

    “the transcendent objects in objective time (intentional consciousness)”;

  2. 2.

    “the acts as demarcated temporal objects in subjective time (reflective self- awareness)”Footnote 8;

  3. 3.

    “the stream of consciousness (prereflective self-awareness)” (SA, p. 81).

However, given that the second and third levels of consciousness are merely different modes of self-awareness, the heart of the matter for Zahavi seems to be a two-fold distinction between self-manifestation and hetero-manifestation.

Zahavi claims that his position is supported by Husserl’s distinction between functioning and thematized subjectivity. This distinction plays out in Husserl’s analyses of passive and active synthesis. In this work, Husserl claims that the “fundamental stratification” of consciousness is its split into passive and active levels (Hua XI, p. 64), which would seem to support Zahavi’s two-fold focus. However, a closer examination of Husserl’s analyses in Hua XI shows that there remain at least three levels of constitution, and hence three levels of consciousness, at work here. Further, the apparent similarity between Zahavi’s self- and hetero-manifestation and Husserl’s passive and active syntheses is not so readily apparent once one asks whether the distinction between functioning (passive) and thematized (active) subjectivity maps onto Zahavi’s pre-reflective and reflective self-awareness (which are two different modes of self-manifestation) or on to his distinction between self- and hetero-manifestation. If the latter, then how can we distinguish between the two different modes of self-manifestation?

To begin to answer these questions, let us turn to Husserl’s account of the relationship between functioning and thematized subjectivity. Husserl is adamant that thematized subjectivity presupposes functioning subjectivity: it is only because of passive syntheses that the ego is able to actively direct its regard (Hua XI, p. 120). The essential elements of passive constitution are associative structure, affection, and attention (cf. Husserl 1948, §§ 16–18).Footnote 9 Attention must be understood as a “tending of the ego toward an intentional object, toward a unity which ‘appears’ continually in the change of the modes of its givenness” (Husserl 1948, p. 85). This tending occurs because of affecting (Affektion),Footnote 10 that is, the allure (Reiz), “the peculiar pull that an object given to consciousness exercises on the ego” (Hua XI, p. 148).Footnote 11 Without this affecting, Husserl insists that “there would be no objects at all and no present organized with objects” (Hua XI, p. 164).

Being affected can pass over into passive constitution, however, only because of the process of association, that is, only because what is currently affecting us “recalls”Footnote 12 something in the past. This process of passive association works on two levels: first, it enables us to reproduce things from our past in the present: seeing something now automatically calls to mind some previous experience. This calling-to-mind is most often done on the basis of similarity: that which is reproduced from the past is in some way like that which is perceived in the present. This type of reproductive association is “an absolutely necessary lawful regularity … without which a subjectivity could not be” (Hua XI, pp. 118–119; cf. also Hua XI, p. 124), because in it “the entire past-consciousness is co-awakened” (Hua XI, p. 122). Reproductive association enables our present consciousness to be united to our past-consciousness, and thus makes possible the historicity of the subject.

This historicity, in its turn, is shown to be necessary for the life of the subject through the second, “higher” level of association: expectations. Expectations are closely related to apperception, and hence to perception and the primary constitution of objects as what they are. My previous experiences are retained in a horizon “of actual and possible expectations” (Hua XI, p. 119) that enables me to experience any object as the object it is. For example, I perceive the chair as a chair, though I only perceive one side of the chair at this time. How can I do this? Because I have a horizon of expectations that enables me to expect, with varying degrees of certainty, how the other sides of the chair could be perceived if I were to make those other sides available to me in a primary presentation (i.e., by walking around so that I could see the back of the chair directly). Because of my past-consciousness, I am able to expect other, currently non-present sides of the chair, and this allows me to apperceive what I see as a chair, a thing like other chairs. Without this horizon of expectations, I would not be able to apperceive things in the world.

This two-fold association must be kept distinct from internal time-consciousness. While internal time-consciousness is a necessary presupposition of associative syntheses (cf. Hua XI, § 27), the two are not the same. Association is needed to “awaken” the associated objects, as retention and (especially) protention are empty. Without association, Husserl claims, internal time-consciousness would be “meaningless” (Hua XI, p. 125) because it abstracts from content, and hence cannot give us “any idea of the necessary synthetic structures of the streaming present and of the unitary stream of the presents” (Hua XI, p. 128). However, without internal time-consciousness and the temporalization of consciousness that it makes possible, the idea of association, either reproductive or expectative, would be impossible. Hence, association is founded upon, but distinct from, internal time-consciousness.

But association must also be kept distinct from the actively intentional acts of the ego. Association is a passive synthesis, as Husserl points out time and time again, and as such is distinct from active syntheses.Footnote 13 Indeed, the “specific intentions” of active consciousness arise from, and hence presuppose, passive syntheses (Hua XI, p. 118).

We are left, then, with three distinct levels of constitution:

  1. 1.

    active syntheses, i.e., specific, egoically-directed intentional acts;

  2. 2.

    passive associations;

  3. 3.

    internal time-consciousness.

The three distinct levels of constitution at work in the analyses of passive and active synthesis are reminiscent of the three levels of constitution in Husserl that we discussed earlier (from Hua X, p. 73). If the parallel between the two lists holds, a clarification of the distinction between internal time-consciousness and passive association would help to mediate the debate between Zahavi and Brough/Sokolowski. In order to clarify this distinction, however, we must first examine it in light of the issue of objectivity, which I hold to be the key issue at stake in the debate. In turning to an analysis of objectivity and passive synthesis,Footnote 14 then, we should be able to see a bit more clearly how and why objectivity is a central problem in the debate.

4 Objects and Passive Synthesis

In its contribution to giving us things in the world, association precisely does not yield objects. Rather, by bringing together similar hyletic data, association enables us to form “objectlike formations” (Gegenständlichkeit).Footnote 15 These objectlike formations must still be acted upon by the ego to become fully formed objects. Specifically, they must be judged, the similarities held before the thematizing gaze and understood in their essences. It is only by passing through the tribunal of judgment that beings can appear for me as objects (Hua XVII, p. 69).

Passing through the tribunal of judgment, then, marks the move from passive to active synthesis as a “quantam leap,” a qualitative and not merely a quantitative difference (Ryan 1977, p. 46). The difference is between the unthematized thing of experience and the object of thought characterized by judgment. It is only with this last step, that of (active) judgment, that we can speak properly of objects (Husserl 1948, p. 81 n.1). Properly speaking, within the sphere of passive synthesis we have only tendencies, “habitualities” (Fink and Husserl 1995, p. 10),Footnote 16 horizons.

Returning to the question of objectivity in the passive sphere, then, we see that we can speak, if not of objects, then at least of objectivity (including objectlike formations) here. In fact, one can distinguish at least three different dimensions of objectivity in Husserl’s account of passive synthesis: individual, intersubjective, and cultural.Footnote 17 The first is a weaker dimension of objectivity, limited as it is to a “single perceiving Ego-subject” (Hua III, pp. 316–317). This is the type of objectivity attained by a single stream of consciousness and its “ideal perceptual multiplicities” (Ibid.). Here we find the most rudimentary ability of the subject to see unity in multiplicity. This objectivity is moved to a higher level when the object can be intersubjectively verified: in discussion, I can come to see that my perception of the object is like or unlike others’ perceptions of it. The more agreement we can come to about the object, the greater its level of objectivity. Because it has been tested in the fire of multiple subjects’ experiences, this level of objectivity is higher (more accurate, more verified) than that which is held by one subject alone.

But this model of intersubjective verification requires dialogue between different subjects, and therefore requires the involvement of active egos. It seems to be no longer passive, but active. But there is a non-active way for other subjects to be involved in the ego’s constitution of objectlike formations: the cultural. Simply put, previous cultural achievements are “virtualized” (Hua VI, pp. 372–373) and can then be sedimented in the subject’s horizons. That is, not just my own but also other people’s cultural achievements (including achievements of knowledge and judgment) become part of my experience of the world, to be recalled in association and used in the passive constitution of objectlike formations (cf. Hua XV, pp. 214, 234–235).Footnote 18 This is necessary, Husserl claims, to the constitution of ideal objects, which have a “persisting existence” even during periods in which no one is “wakefully” related to the object (Hua VI, p. 372). This is to say that ideal objects have a “continuing-to-be even when no one has … realized them in self-evidence” (Ibid.). Ideal objects, then, transcend mere historical occurrences or facts, even as they are based upon them: ideal objects are types of experience that are clearly recognized by individuals as a “guiding norm for future engagements with the world” (Gyllenhammer 2004, p. 193). As guiding norms for future engagement, they become candidates for sedimentation into the horizons of expectation discussed above.

We have already shown that time-consciousness and passive synthesis must be kept distinct: passive synthesis provides the content that gives time-consciousness meaning, while time-consciousness provides the temporalization of the subject that founds passive synthesis.Footnote 19 But can we mark this distinction beyond the seemingly Kantian language of form and content? I think we can, because the two levels of constitution seem to correspond to two distinct accounts of fulfillment and of objectivity. Time-consciousness achieves the general fulfillment of retained protentions and protended retentions in non-intuitive differentiation (cf. Hua XXXIII, pp. 21–27), while passive synthesis achieves the particular fulfillment of the domain of intuition (Hua XXXIII, pp. 30–39, 227ff.). This is to say that protention does not protend some state of affairs but rather only a coming retention, that is, protends only a temporal continuity that it also, and simultaneously, retains.Footnote 20 It is only in passive associations that I expect some particular state of affairs intuited in the world (e.g., the next note in the symphony).Footnote 21

The “objects” of the two levels of constitution, then, are distinct: time-consciousness, in being fulfilled by the retention of previous protentions, has as its object elements within the realm of time-consciousness itself, and hence achieves the “self-relatedness” (Selbstbezogenheit; cf. Hua XXXIII, p. 207) necessary for the stream of absolute consciousness. The unity of the temporal ego itself—the relation that holds between its own past-presents and future-presents—would thus perhaps be the purest form of the ego’s ability to see unity in multiplicity, which we described as individual objectivity above.

Passive synthesis, on the other hand, is fulfilled by the intuition of the world, and hence has, as a two-fold objects: the things in the world and my horizons of experience with them. This is to say that the “objectlike formations” of passive synthesis are simultaneously the world and the self (its retentional horizons, etc.): in passive association I am concerned not only with the things before me in the world, but also with my own previous experiences of relevantly similar things and the expectational capabilities that these previous experiences provide me. In passive association understood as a “purely immanent connection of ‘this recalls that’” (Husserl 1948, p. 78), both the (intersubjectively verifiable) thing before me (“this”) and the sedimented things of my temporal (retentional and expectative) horizons (“that”) are intended. In passive association, the ego is concerned with both the thing before it and its own nature as temporal.

Hence we can say that passive association achieves a measure of self-manifestation (the manifestation of the temporal horizons of the ego, of which they are themselves a part), while still maintaining, simultaneously, a measure of hetero-manifestation (the manifestation of the things in the environing world). This would seem to suggest that the second level of constitution does not so much mark a borderline between self- and hetero-manifestation, as Zahavi suggests, but a transition that is also a connection between them.Footnote 22 It provides not only three distinct dimensions of objectivity, but also an account of the connection between those dimensions. For this reason too, as we will now try to show, it provides the beginnings of a single—if complex—account of self-awareness.

5 Revisiting the Debate

So far we have tried to show, first, that there is a parallel between the three levels of constituting consciousness in Hua X and the three levels of consciousness discussed in Hua XI (i.e., active synthesis, passive association, internal time-consciousness); and second, that the second level of the latter list (i.e., passive association) provides a type of objectivity that is distinct from the objectivity of the first or third levels. What remains is to relate this back to the debate between Zahavi and Brough/Sokolowski on the levels of consciousness in Husserl.

John Drummond has said that “[a]ny resolution to the dispute between Brough and Zahavi would have to account for how we might have two ‘dimensions’ or a differentiation within consciousness while preserving a single, albeit perhaps complex, notion of self-awareness” (Drummond 2006, p. 216). The suggestion of the previous section was that the distinction between passive association and internal time-consciousness would enable such a differentiation without lapsing into the “reflection” theory which multiplies self-awarenesses.

We can maintain a single self-awareness only if we are able to avoid turning passive associations into an object of internal time-consciousness. I think that we have been able to do this without losing the ability to distinguish between distinct passive associations, and hence to distinguish between discrete experiences. In the first place, the “object” of the “acts” of time-consciousness is only time-consciousness itself; therefore, as long as passive association is distinct from time-consciousness (which we have been at pains to show above that it is), it cannot be the “object” of time-consciousness. Secondly, the “constituting multiplicities” of passive association provide us with a concept of objectivity that can be distinguished from both the strong notion of the (intersubjectively verifiable) object that occurs in active synthesis and the more “formal” self-relatedness that characterizes time-consciousness as the extreme form of individual objectivity.

But this may not entirely solve the question of whether passive associations are themselves objectivities, or whether they merely yield objectivities, even if it does seem to answer in the negative the question of whether passive associations are the objects of time-consciousness. I want to contend that passive associations are themselves objectivities (though certainly not objects) to the extent that they themselves, as distinct acts, are part of our sedimented horizons. The move from individual to intersubjective and cultural levels of objectivity would seem to entail an analysis of the effectiveness of our associative acts themselves: when presented with similar stimuli, do I consistently associate things in the world in the same way as do others? Even within individual objectivity and association, it could be argued, there is the question of the reliability of the syntheses themselves: am I, so to speak, functioning properly (cf. Plantinga 1993)? That is, when tendencies are at work in passive association, at least one of these tendencies must also apply to the constituting acts themselves: not only does some stimulus recall to mind previous similar stimuli; it also recalls that previous occurrences of similar stimuli have tended to yield productive expectational capabilities. What is recalled is not merely reference to some thing in the world, but also previous acts of referring itself. Even if the effectiveness of these acts can only be judged in the realm of active synthesis via reflection or intersubjective verification (and therefore, perhaps, by being objectified in the strong sense), this would seem to presuppose an already-existent or (to use the language of self-awareness) pre-reflective objectlike-formation, since no object can exist (in active synthesis) without a prior objectlike-formation being constituted in passive synthesis. It would seem that there must be a certain degree of objectivity to our associative acts themselves, even if they are not, strictly speaking, objects—in particular, not the “objects” of time-consciousness.

6 Conclusion

My hope is that this distinction among kinds of objectivity will enable us to preserve the distinction between “dimensions” of consciousness without resorting to a “reflection theory” that makes one dimension the object of the other, and hence multiplies self-awarenesses. I disagree, then, with Zahavi’s way of elaborating the levels of consciousness so as to justify his reduction to two distinct levels (self- and hetero-manifesting), even though I acknowledge that the position I put forth here is consistent with Zahavi’s on several important points. The disagreement concerns some of Zahavi’s claims regarding inner time-consciousness: for example, that it is both self- and hetero-manifesting (SA, pp. 71–72) and that it is “simply the name for the pre-reflective self-awareness of our acts” (SA, p. 80). These latter claims improperly equate inner time-consciousness with passive synthesis as a whole, thereby conflating the active–passive synthesis distinction with the distinction in constituting consciousness found in Hua X. In contrast, I have suggested a three-fold elaboration (active synthesis, passive association, time-consciousness) that further differentiates the active–passive synthesis distinction, and in so doing, I hope, clarifies the levels of constituting consciousness discussed by Husserl in Hua X. It is passive association that is both self- and hetero-manifesting, and therefore passive association is an essential aspect of the passive dimension of self-manifestation that must be kept distinct from the purely self-manifesting “flow” of inner time-consciousness.Footnote 23

While it is my hope that this suggestion will begin to resolve some core issues of the debate between Zahavi and Brough/Sokolowski (i.e., those concerning the “objectivity” of the second level and the need to distinguish it from time-consciousness), my more modest hope is simply that this new attempt at clarification will begin to mediate (rather than resolve) the debate by providing a neutral vocabulary within which proponents of each side can exchange their views.