Below activity: Association as superior continuation of temporality

Abstract

Already in the fourth of the Cartesian meditations, Husserl points that anything built by activity necessarily presupposes, as the lowest level, a passivity that gives something beforehand; and, when we trace anything built actively, we run into constitution by passive generation (1983, 78). Accordingly, I propose to understand, first of all, how the field of phenomenological passivity is positioned as methodologically prior to all activity of consciousness and, second, how is it within this sphere of research, association appears as a derivation of the analyses of immanent temporality and yet constitutes a higher degree than it. If all activity is based on the constitutive and synthetic processes of an attentive consciousness, we will see with passivity how is that before all of this, it is already operating previously a passive stratus of consciousness, giving account for certain processes of genetic order which occur in and despite of it. Here we find specifically temporality, association and affectivity. Well then, focusing on the first two, the aim will be to clarify how is it that the outline of immanent temporality offers to us an explanation about the form in which the temporal flux of experiences structures, and nevertheless, leaves unfinished a series of problems that takes us to the necessity of wondering about its content, which is precisely the explanation that association offers to us.