Abstract

The dissertation's central concern is the experience of time. It is structured in two sections, one critical, one constructive. The first section addresses the mistaken tendency to describe the experience of time in terms appropriate to objective time. ;The first section begins with an exposition and a critique of Aristotle's account of time. The critical analysis will point out that although Aristotle's account of time contains examples of experiential time, it is basically an elucidation of objective time. Next, Franz Brentano's account of time is similarly summarized and criticized. Brentano's explanation, although meant as a description of psychological time, is shown to have several key features in common with the Aristotelian treatment of objective time. Finally, one of Husserl's earliest accounts of time is examined. Although clearly intended as a description of the immanent experience of time, Husserl's analysis, like Brentano's, is shown to have certain key features in common with the Aristotelian account of time. While there are certain features of Aristotle's analysis that can be properly related to an account of experiential time, the features that are shared by all three philosophers are inappropriate to an account of experiential time. ;The second section of the dissertation takes up the task of providing an adequate account of the experience of time, free from the limitations that occur when the experience of time is explained in terms of a linear and quantitative model. Rather than reducing the experience of time to movement along a line, this dissertation shows that certain aspects of the experience of time can only be explained by describing the intricate relation between the experience of time and the experience of language. It will be shown that the linearization that obscures the experience of time is paralleled by an interconnected linearization of language. The second section of the dissertation concludes by phenomenologically challenging the validity of any sort of thinking that operates within such inadequate, linearized accounts of language and time