Zeigam Azizov - A Temporal Order of Things: Husserl’s ‘temporal objects’ and the (Industrial) Temporalisation of Consciousness

This is one of the papers from our 2017 Annual Conference, the Future of Phenomenology. Information and the full conference booklet can be found at www.britishphenomenology.org.uk

I will look at the concept of ‘a temporal object’ coined by Edmund Husserl and to address its complex development in the philosophy of technology by the French philosopher Bernard Stiegler as the question of the ‘temporalisation of consciousness’ . Husserl coined the term ‘a temporal object’ in order to show that ‘the object of inquiry’ (the intention of the consciousness directed towards objects of the world) is a temporal state of the investigation itself. This temporal state creates the condition for the existence of a temporal object, which gives the ‘striking evidence’(‘schlagender Evidenz’) . A temporal object means that the object is not only in time, but it is constituted through time and its flux coincides with the flux of consciousness. A temporal object plays the role in the constitution of the subject since it is an object towards which the consciousness is directed. The temporal object is the part of the content that it translates (this content is the world) . The consciousness is also a part of the content, but there is a difference: the temporal object perceived as a result of the intention may be developed by the consciousness differently: the consciousness may accept this object but also may reject it. In both cases the ‘consciousness’ performs the evidence , whereas the temporal object makes evidence available. The consciousness is the intention of the subject; the temporal object is the intentionality of the world. This idea is developed by Stiegler, who applies the notion of temporal objects to his critique of the technical “industrial temporalisation of the consciousness under the pressure of hyperindustrialisation” . I would like to show how in this process a problem of a fatal separation between the object and the subject is created and continues to influence contemporary thought in relation to technics and memory.