Chapter 36: Temporal Structure of Experience

Husserl’s threefold structure of time-consciousness—retention (just-past), primal impression (now), protention (about-to-be)—is reformulated categorically. The three moments are three components of a section over a temporal cover. Retention is the restriction of the section to the immediate past context; primal impression is the section at the present context; protention is the section’s extension to the anticipated future context. Temporal synthesis—the composition of the three moments into experienced duration—is the gluing operation on temporal overlaps. The categorical formalization matches Husserl’s phenomenological analysis while making precise what “gluing across temporal moments” means. This chapter provides the phenomenological account of time; for the ontological account, see the relevant chapter.