The Phenomenological Papers IV: The Malady of Memory

This is the fourth essay in my series, The Phenomenological Papers, a series of essays on topics in phenomenology and metaphysics. You can find the first essay here, the second here, and the third here. This one discusses the phenomenology of time, and how we should respond to the facts presented to us in temporal experience. I don't argue for it here, but there is an ontology implicit to this that I basically endorse.

I. The future is essentially experienced as something that is open. For example, tomorrow I will eat lunch, even though I have not yet decided what I will eat. What will come to be, how the world will come to exist—that is, what I will eat—will be subject, at least in part, to my choice. We go about every day imagining the outcome of such choices, before we make them. Of course, I will be hungry is not up to my choice, nor are a lot of other things. But a whole lot else is. And it is in these things which our experience of the future as being open consists. We experience imagined possibilities in a kind of nascent state, as a set of paths we can choose to bring about, or not, rather than as something already real. They are not possibilities we do actually have to encounter, but only could, or might.

However, note that it is not sufficient to characterise our experience of the future by merely saying that it ‘could’ happen, because otherwise contingent events from our past would feel the same way, as they only ‘could’ have happened themselves. It might have happened that I chose a different place to live or won the lottery. These past possibilities, nor the fact that they did not happen, which were equally contingent, are not experienced as something that is open in the same way. Indeed, we even experience future events that are ‘inevitable’ (that we are certain or near certain will occur) as open, like ‘the last day of the present year.’ These events are experienced as certainly coming to be, as necessary, but still as something open in the sense I am putting forward. 

Part of this is epistemic. The precise details of the future can only be predicted, but not known. There are a number of different ways we think it could play out, but none of them can be right until some event actually comes to pass. Even if we are certain that some event will happen, like the last day of the present year, we only know anything about it in an abstract sense, as we cannot know anything about the actual content of that event, about what will acually happen. We can only predict it. This means that even if we investigate such events (as we do when we predict natural disasters, or the economy), there is no guarantee that our predictions will be the things borne out by reality. This means that our relationship to even inevitable future possibilities something open, and unsettled. And they are such precisely until they come to pass, until they stop being mere possibilities.

More importantly, and more obviously, we see the future as open because we reason about it in a way that we do not about the past. We reason about the future because we (rightly) think that it is not settled, and that it could go a number of different ways, conditional on our reasoning about it. Reasoning is nothing but the consideration of possible futures against our desires, aversions, and values. We reason to bring about the future in a particular way. This could not intelligibly be done if we experienced the future as settled in advance, and not at least partially subject to our choice. Even a sincere fatalism that denies we ‘really’ have a choice in the matter would not refute this experience, as we still must respond, and reason about, the fate we are subject to, given our responses and reasoning are as much a part of that fate (even if we are fated to do it in only one way).

Given the epistemic and practical dimensions of future experience, these events are fundamentally experienced as something changing, indeterminate, loose, subject to our reasoning and action, all of which constitute our experience of them as open.

The past, on the other hand, is essnetially experienced as settled. For example, suppose I ate carbonara for lunch yesterday. What came about, how the world came to exist, that is, what I ate, may have been subject to my choice, but has now been chosen and is weaved into the fabric of the universe. At least we experience it as such (and we are right to do so). We go about every day utilising these past events in their capacity as configurations and patterns of the world that can actually happen. We do this in order to act well by making judgements about present or future action that resemble in relevant ways. This is what we call memory. In stark contrast to our future possibilities, we experience (the objects of) our memories as something settled, unable to be changed, and determinative of where we are now. They are possibilities we actually did encounter and insofar as we remember them (rather than imagine them), we experience them as something that is part of the makeup of the world, something to which we observe and expect others to adhere to through their use of memory, and that in virtue of which we are where we are now.

It is worth lingering for a moment on the idea that we experience the past as determinative of where we are now, of the present. What do I mean by this? Simply put: we experience the past as being responsible for the present. My past choice to study at Victoria University is (partially) responsible for the fact that I presently live in Wellington. New Zealand voters are responsible for the present government, the existence of pre-human primates are responsible for humans, and so on. We experience this relationship between our past and the present as (to use a term from the existentialists) our situation. Our situation is not merely the present, as this has the unfortunate connotation of separating itself from the past and future. Rather, our situation is the culmination of a past which is settled and the beginning from which a future that is open, must proceed. Therefore, the past is responsible for our situation and constrains the trajectory of the future. It is from our situation, the conditions determined by the past, that our life plays out.

Our experience of the past has different epistemic and pragmatic features to the future. We experience the contents of the past as knowable in a different way to the future. This is because some event actually happened and there is only one way it did. Any investigation into it, therefore, is an investigation into that specific event. Insofar as we lack knowledge of it, it is a matter of finding it out, not producing or predicting it. Practically speaking, we learn from our past, rather than reason about it. We use our past experience to inform our present and future judgements and actions. We assume that like circumstances give rise to, and will keep giving rise to, like circumstances, and we navigate the world on these assumptions. Of course, we might reason in order to find out about how the past unfolded, its causal conditions or alternate possibilities, but we do not do so because we can act on these possibilities, we only do so because it could tell us more about what did happen and what is was contingent on. Or about how our situation now might play out. When we desire that the future comes to be a certain way (and we think that our situation allows it) we hope, but when we desire the past to be different we merely wish.

Given the epistemic and practical dimensions of past experience, these events are fundamentally experienced as something unchanging, determinate, written into the history of our situation, all of which constitute our experience of them as settled.


II. Sometimes we forget that we did something entirely, or sometimes we merely forget the details. The latter is often much harder to deal with than the former. In such cases, we know that something happened, but we don’t know what it is. But this means there is a kind of terror in forgetting, even the small details, of our lives. We know that we were somewhere, were seen by others, and remembered by others (we vainly think), but do not know what we did, how we were seen, and how we were remembered. In other words, we know we are, in fact, responsible for our situation (including others’ thoughts), but not how we are responsible for it. The precise ways in which we author the world are invisible to us. This possibility is lacking from future experience because anything we entertain is merely possible and can be avoided, sometimes by our explicit action to avoid it (something we do at almost every moment) and sometimes simply by stopping thinking about it, stopping worrying about it.

The difference is stark. Imagining embarrassing yourself at an important dinner a week in the future is much different to remembering actually embarrassing yourself at an important dinner you’ve already attended. In future thought you may cringe at the idea, but you know you are still open to avoid it. In the past case, things are settled: you really did embarrass yourself (or at least you think you did). Having really done it (or having thought you’ve really done it), hurts a lot more. It hurts us because of our experience of it as settled, as determinative of our situation, rather than as open, as in our power to avoid.

In this sense it would be appropriate to say that the past, and our memory (or lack thereof), haunts us. It is the dead (in the sense that it is unable to be changed) impressing itself upon our situation, founding it, and never going away. How are we to deal with this fact?

The first thing to notice is that we can have appropriate or inappropriate attitudes towards the objects of our experience, merely by recognising the status of those objects in relation to our action. (This is a profound stoic insight.) We have a deep understanding of this already, but seldom recognise it explicitly. This is evidenced by our everyday life. For example, there are times when it is appropriate to be angry at someone: (1) when they do something wrong and (2) when their behaviour is regulated by others’ expression of such moral emotions, so that they are less likely to act that way in the future. In such situations anger can be appropriate. (Though it should be noted that we often have much more sophisticated norms about this. In our society, anger is very rarely, if ever, sanctioned in everyday interactions.) When we get angry at a computer, on the other hand, this is inappropriate. The computer is not behaviourally responsive to such anger, let alone able to participate in the complex norms constitutive of our moral life that sanction or condemn such expressions. The former is sensible, while the latter is futile.

This point can be made in a much simpler way. Take two rocks, one barely larger than a pebble and the other rightly called a boulder. It is, in some sense, appropriate (or at least not-inappropriate) to lift the large pebble, but inappropriate to lift up the boulder, simply because one action is possible and has virtually no drawback, while the other is impossible, and you risk hurting yourself. Once again, we recognise the appropriate or inappropriate merely by taking notice of our relationship to the object.

So what is the appropriate attitude towards time? We know that the past is settled and determinative of our situation, while the future is open and subject to our choice. From this, we can say there are two elements to an appropriate attitude towards time. The first such element is acceptance.

To take on an attitude of acceptance towards the past is to be at peace with its settledness. To be at peace with settledness is to accept that it cannot be changed. Insofar as you think of how things could have been, you only think about them for the purposes of history or future action and never in wishing things could have been different, which a truly accepting attitude avoids at all cost. The past cannot be different, making no wish that it could be, sensible. What difference is there really between trying to lift the heavy boulder we cannot lift, and wishing things had been different? Both thoughts are both futile and harmful.

Thus, we cannot escape the fact that our past happened, but we can come to terms with it. Though of course, this is not easy. Merely recognising this fact is different from accepting it. Recognising is mere knowing, which we all already do. Acceptance is an existential attunement towards the world, a person-wide orientation towards one’s life in time that always holds the past as constant and final in every situation. (I explore something like this difference in a previous entry here.) To reach such an orientation it must be learned and practiced, first as a habit. We can cultivate it by recognising and reminding ourselves of this settledness everytime we find ourselves wishing things could have been different, everytime we wish instead of hope. Once we are there, once we truly recognise the futility of changing the past, we come to recognise that the only appropriate objects of desire or aversion can possibly be the objects of our situation and our future, those objects which we still have some say over encountering.

However, acceptance alone cannot completely free us from the haunting of the past. It can go a long way to reconciling us with our situation, but it cannot make the fact that we were involved in bringing it about go away. Being responsible for what we have done and how we have made people think can itself be difficult, even when we accurately portray this to ourselves and do not necessarily wish it to be otherwise. Merely the fact that our very being is weaved into a past that is now fixed and a situation that we are responsible for, can be oppressive. And without further existential orientation, acceptance alone may not let us escape this. Thankfully, another attitude suggests itself, merely by the given structure of the time: transcendence. 

To take on an attitude of transcendence towards the future is to vigorously helm its openness by continually shaping and creating your situation. To do so is to discern (accurately pick out your abilities and constraints) and then utilise the elements of your situation to craft a future that, while genuinely constrained by one’s situation, is subject to your vision, and choice. Such an attitude is sensible merely by noticing that the past, while it is responsible for our situation, and while it determines the trajectory of the future, does not determine its destination. We know this because we know that the future is essentially open and this is just what it being open consists of. Forgetting this fact means we stop reasoning and just go with what is always already ‘going to happen.’ We become mere subjects of fate.

Such an attitude implicitly denies something we know: that the future is open to us. Denying yourself an always active choice, an always active flight from your situation is essentially denying yourself the truth of openness. (Sartre calls this 'bad faith.') While less obviously so, this is just as inappropriate as trying to change the past and it is just as sensible to always everywhere choose, as it is to accept the past is settled. Thus, to take on an attitude of transcendence is to always be choosing the path that we tread, insofar as we can, given the constraints of the situation, which can never be so comprehensive as to leave us no choice. We fail to live up to this attitude, the appropriate response to the fact of openness, insofar as we unthinkingly go along with things and deny our own agency in life.

But how does this help with the haunting of the past? How is this supposed to allay our worries about being responsible for the past and for our situation? Here, I must admit, we probably cannot escape a certain inevitable regret that we are responsible for some aspects of the past, especially those that we are, for the most part, cut off from, like other’s thoughts. As above, acceptance can go some way in ameliorating this, but not the whole way.

However, there is some consolation to be had. I have written so far that transcendence is merely an attitude among others that could or could not be sensible, depending on the temporal situation. It is appropriate, I have been arguing, in our case, in light of the openness of the future. However, there is a kind of transcendence that is not just an attitude but a fact, a fact for which I reserve the identical nomination, for the attitude is the proper realisation of this fact. We only need to recognise the structure of time to see this.

As the future comes to be and as the past lays out behind us, we have no choice but to act. I mean something quite specific by this: no matter what you do, no matter the situation you are in, and no matter how incapacitated you are, two things will always happen: (1) that which you have done will slip into the past and (2) you will come to be something new. In other words, time is passing, and we are a part of it but cannot change it. But if, in every situation (every ‘moment’), what you are becomes past and you are always coming to be something else, then in every situation you are a becoming that is necessarily different from the past, and are, at the same time, transcending it. However it is more than this. To speak of moments is to decompose a movement that is perpetual, into discrete stages after the fact. There are no discrete stages, there is just the passage of transcendence. You are in a constant state of fleeing your past and gnawing into the future, constantly depositing yourself into history. This means you never are what your past is: you necessarily transcend it. And you never are where you are headed, because you never stop at any destination. (Sartre calls this ‘anguish’ which “is characterised by a constantly renewed obligation to remake the Self”.)

But if this is right, then your past cannot define you, or constitute your essence, because it never is you. We, in the sense of ourselves, are therefore not responsible for our situation, because we are straightforwardly not the set of our past actions. We are transcendence, something necessarily beyond those actions. But if your past cannot define you (at pain of contradiction) and you in fact are transcendence, then there is nothing to say you must take on the burden of your past, the burden of that which you are not. The past that you are responsible for is just another aspect of your situation, but is never you. The past determines our situation, but never us, and never what we do with it. Hence letting ourselves be unduly dragged down by our past is a superfluous attitude. What is not superfluous is the choices we must make in our situation, that churning realm upon which we cannot deny our own freedom, and presence. The only burden you should therefore accept, is your situation, and what you do with it. And to accept this burden is to wear it:

I will wear it like an apron

The hills sit tightly knit,
inaccessible the way the past is. How blue
it all becomes, the further
we get. The dial turns. My young
tomatoes—
fruited, stalked, dead in less than a year.
Distance fades all shape
into flatness. The pots thirst
for new soil. The dial turns. The sun
does not go through me
as I have certainly wished. Instead
I absorb it. The sky turns.
Instead I cast a continuous shadow
(wild fennel grows
unintentionally through the path).
I am going to somehow
pick it up, somehow
wear it.

 — Sophie Rae-Jordan