Ryabushkina Tatyana
Abstract: The article analyzes the relationship between temporality and causality as causation that forms the structure of conscious experience. It is traditional for phenomenology and transcendental philosophy to posit temporality as a fundamental characteristic that determines the existence of consciousness. According to D. Hume, perceptions succeed each other, and nothing persists through change. For I. Kant, every synthesis is necessary condition of time-consciousness. In E. Husserl’s theory of constitution, the content of one’s current experience is shaped by the quasi-temporal flow. For M. Heidegger, ‘original temporality’ determines the horizon of Being. According to J.-P. Sartre, time is a condition of possibility of consciousness as existing at a distance from itself. However, the attribution of fundamentality to the temporal flow leads to a simplified understanding of causality. If to suppose that the temporal flow of consciousness is an immediately given basis of conscious experience, then there is no need to consider a causal relationship as a connection that explains emerging of new contents of consciousness and their order. Since new сontents are delivered and ordered by the temporary flow, the question of the conditions of newness is not posed. According to Hume, causality arises from a habit of mind to repeated sequence of experiences. In Kant’s view, causality is a rule that gives the sequence an objective character. Referring to non-obviousness of causal laws, Husserl diminishes the role of causation in consciousness. The assumption about the priority of temporality in comparison with causality determines the poststructuralist thought (the most typical example is the concept of J. Derrida). According to the author, the abyss between the idea and its embodiment and between the mental and the physical world, as well as the impossibility to find a place for freedom in the phenomenal world, are
the results of primacy of temporality over causality.
Keywords: phenomenology, transcendental philosophy, perceptions, temporality, causality, intentionality, the quasi-temporal flow of consciousness, subjectivity.