The Time of Phantasy and the Limits of Individuation

Husserl is known to have oriented many aspects of his extensive analyses of phantasy around a contrast to perception: what phantasy and perception have in common, for example, is their intuitiveness; yet, while in perception something is encountered ‘in the flesh,’ in phantasy this experience is modified by its ‘ as if in the flesh’ character. However, both in the majority of Husserl’s reflections on phantasy and in much of the secondary literature on the topic, we find few further details concerning the difference between both modes of intuitiveness: ‘in the flesh’ and ‘ as if in the flesh.’ In this paper, I draw on sources from Husserl’s later work in order to get clarification on at least one important point of difference, namely the ways in which individuation and identity, that is, constitutions of individual and identical objects, clearly set apart phantasy from perception. As we will see, this requires an understanding of Husserl’s account of objective time, and of the constitution of individual identical objects with their unique positions in objective time. After an introductory discussion of the meaning and the conditions of individuation in the methodical framework of phenomenology, I will lay out the different levels of the constitution of objective time (1+2). In the second part of the paper, I will try to follow and explore one of Husserl’s arguments that contrasts the constitutional performances involved in the constitution of phantasy objects with the individuation of real objects in objective time (3+4). The textual basis for this discussion is to be found in Husserl’s last book, Experience and Judgement . In what follows, I will begin with a short discussion of the concepts of individuality, individuation, uniqueness and identity, and also ask why these issues may be of special interest for a phenomenologist who is investigating the phenomenon of phantasy.