Augustine and Husserl on Time and Memory

Abstract

This paper explores the relationship between Augustine’s and Husserl’s conceptions of time, consciousness, and memory. Although Husserl claims to provide a phenomenological understanding of the paradox of time so famously formulated by Augustine in his Confessions, this paper explores the apparent similarities between Augustine’s concept of distentio animi and the Husserlian concept of inner time-consciousness against their more profound differences. At stake in this confrontation between Augustine and Husserl is a fundamental divergence in the sense of time as the movement of transcendence in immanence. Within this discussion, the contrast between speaking time (rhetoric) and seeing time (perception), time and eternity, and contrasting notions of the past and future are explored.