TEMPORALITY AS A SPATIAL FIELD OF PRESENCE

Abstract

According to Merleau-Ponty in his Phenomenology of Perception, we experience time as a “field of presence.” In his words, “It is in my ‘field of presence’ in the widest sense […] that I make contact with time, and learn to know its course.” This field is fundamental. It elucidates my spatial apprehension. In his words: “Perception provides me with a ‘field of presence’ in the broad sense, extending in two dimensions: the here-there dimension and the past-present-future dimension. The second elucidates the first.” In other words, I understand the spatial “here-there” dimension in terms of the temporal dimension. The “there” is what I immediately grasp in still having in hand “the immediate past.” In this article, I propose to examine the general conception of time as a field of presence. This examination can be seen as a kind of “thought experiment,” where we see what happens when we reverse this relation—i.e., when we elucidate the “past-present-future dimension” in terms of the “here-there dimension.” Such a reversal, I will argue, brings to the fore the pragmatic, spatial character of lived time. Not only does it bring about a revision of horizonal structure of the field of presence, it also has consequences for psycho-analytical research.