Abstract

The phenomenological study of time, as Husserl conceives its progression, should make accessible, through reduction, the appearing time of the temporal objects and the temporality of intentional acts, but also the origin of those 'times': the flow of absolute consciousness. A number of major interpretations, such as those of J.-P. Sartre and R. Bernet, question the achievement of phenomenological reduction and the absoluity of absolute consciousness; they insist on the fact that absolute consciousness, the ultimate constitutive consciousness, seems to require the constituted in order to constitute itself. We support the hypothesis that these interpretations share a common presupposition that had to lead them to set down the aporiae of husserlian analyses of the temporality, namely the understanding of absolute consciousness as selfconsciousness. Nevertheless, such an understanding is itself problematic, as selfconsciousness already belongs to the constituted. As a conclusion, we suggest an interpretation of absolute consciousness based on the assets of German idealism, in which the absolute consciousness is determined, both infra-subjectively and infra-objectively, as pure activity