# Husserl, the Absolute Flow, and Temporal Experience **Opening (not a real abstract):** Edmund Husserl’s phenomenological analysis of internal time consciousness has a reputation for being complex, occasionally to the point of approaching impenetrability. The latter applies in particular to his remarks about what he calls the ‘absolute time-constituting flow’,1 some of which Husserl himself describes as ‘‘shocking (when not initially even absurd)’’ (Husserl, 1991, p. 84). Perhaps it is because many readers of Husserl have found the passages on the absolute flow off-puttingly difficult that they have had fairly little impact, outside the specific field of Husserl studies, on the literature on temporal experience at large—certainly much less so than is the case for Husserl’s analysis of temporal experience in terms of the tripartite structure of primal impression, retention and protention. In a **Authors:** [[Hoerl]]