Will and Phenomenon

While Experience for both Heidegger and Sartre is both phenomenological and temporal, neither seems to recognize that the two principles conflict. Each inherits a model of the Consciousness-Phenomenon relation from Brentano, i. e. while a phenomenon is relative to a specific consciousness, it is, nevertheless, independent of it. Thus, though the course of Experience may be inter-phenomenally temporal, a specific phenomenon is experienced, intra-phenomenally, as a-temporal, e. g. Sartre's characterization of a phenomenon as 'being-in-itself', i. e. as unaffected by the temporalizing consciousness that entertains it. The systematic ramifications for each of their commitments to this uneasy hybrid are significant, e. g. Heidegger can present his readings of other doctrines as both interpretive and descriptive, and Sartre can conceive Consciousness as both a retentive and a dissociative process. In contrast, here, a phenomenon is a representation, the product of a synthesis the manifold of which is the process of Will conforming to an object that it encounters. Accordingly, a phenomenon is retained by the Comprehending mind, with the dissociation from it accomplished by a different process. And, a reading of a specific philosopher is as interpretive as the general historical theme in which it is framed.