Abstract

Protention is often understood as being equivalent to retention but functioning in the other (future) direction. This, I would argue, has prevented a full appreciation of protention’s importance to phenomenological scholarship. In this paper, I will elucidate Husserl’s positive account of protention. I will argue that the view that protention is like retention, but in the other direction, is insufficient. Abandoning this negative view, I will explain what is unique about protention, and how it helps make sense of such key phenomenological concepts as fulfillment, passive intentionality, and self-constitution.