NPPF Commentary Line 209, P. 163

[Michael Joseph]

To my knowledge, Husserl didn't consider in vitro experience and the
phenomenology of the foetus, if that is what you mean. I imagine pre-birth
time sense would be unlike anything we know--with the possible exception
of air travel, and maybe reading John O'Hara. Husserl talks about the
experience of time (as past, present, and future) as a continual stream
that underlies every act of awareness (so-called intentional acts, e.g.
remembering, imagining, etc.), which he calls "primal prescencing." How
would a foetus--and I guess we're talking about older foetuses, the more
mature kind (the suave foetuses in smoking jackets sipping single malt
mother's milk)--come to primal presencing? Does a foetus possess a
database of post-conceptual undulations within its little developing brain
with which it can piece together the simple narrative of time? Why
doesn't anyone remember pre-birth stuff, then?

Husserl does postulate that the transcendent I (a kind of ultimate dative)
exists independent of primal presencing, and it's easy to think of it in
its grand aloofness as a foetus, but you know sort of an Arthur c. Clarke
super-foetus, not really paying attention to trivia like the passing of
time, and, if its awareness is not formed temporally, then it dwells apart
in a non-Husserlian universe.

I'm not sure I've answered your question. Most of the recent posts are
beyond my comprehension as well, actually, but I keep hoping.

Thanks.



Michael








 > At 10:38 AM 10/9/03 -0400, Michael Joseph wrote:
>
> ...[Husserl] did believe that no individual experiences their own
> >birth, because birth could not be related "phenomenologically" to a prior
> >experience.
>
> Most of this post and other recent ones are beyond my comprehension. But I
> do remark that there is  life prior to birth. Is it an experience? Perhaps
> it is an experience, but not one that can be related to birth?
>
> Mary Krimmel
>
>
>
>